New chapter. As always, the next chapter is up on my P-a-t-r-e-o-n, here: h*t*t*p*s :/ w*w*w . p*a*t*r*e*o*n user - ? - u = 52718582 (remove the spaces and stars)
Alaris was the capital of the Pan-Pacific Empire, a marvel of engineering and technology conceived by the mind of Narthan Dume himself.
Unique across all of Terra, Alaris existed not on the ground but in the sky, a glittering crystalline dome floating above the bronze and grey hive-cities below. It was a call back to the Golden Age, living proof that the Empire's boasts of restoring Terra to its pinnacle were not hollow.
Or at least, that was what the Empire claimed.
Walking down the streets in the guise of one of the Empire's aristocrats, a middle-aged man with a dark hair and goatee with a touch of distinguished grey, clad in red and silver robes, with a gleaming white cane to support his walk, the Emperor reflected that it was all too easy to see the truth if you knew what to look for.
Alaris was pleasant enough, true. The dome insulated it from the outside world and while the dome's exterior was cold crystal, but the interior 'roof' simulated a pleasant blue sky and sun, based on historical records of what Terra had once been like. Furthermore, weather machines ensured the air within Alaris was clean and pleasant to breathe.
But only had to look at the city's architecture to see the empty nature of the Pan-Pacific Empire's claims of progress and moving towards a better future.
Alaris was beautiful on the surface, true, but when you looked closer, it seemed almost…sterile. The architecture was well-built and carefully organizd but every single design in the city had been drawn from fragmented records of humanity's past. The Emperor had seen all these buildings before, in ages past, in a hundred different civilizations…there wasn't a single original design in the entire city, only an attempt to capture past glories. On top of that, the designs had been 'perfected' by being rendered entirely in cold crystal and silver, any flair and colour completely gone.
And the regions below Alaris were as bad as any other hive city on Terra. Those dark cities were for the poor, the oppressed, the ill, whose job it was to ensure that their masters at the top had every luxury available to them.
Alaris's dreams of progress were a lie, and Dume was a fool who clung too strongly to the past. It was the Imperium which looked to a better future, and which drew from the past but was not shackled to it.
All of humanity would understand that soon enough.
As he moved through the city, the Emperor noticed that though there were people moving outside, there was a palpable sense of fear and uncertainty. Everyone rushed by without making eye contact with one another, casting wary gazes here and there. Nobody stopped to talk, quickly ducking in and out of buildings as they went about their business. Noise was kept to a minimum, which was deeply unusual for a city this size.
Guards clad in ornate white and red armour, armed with staves that crackled with electricity at the tip, were on every street, glaring suspiciously and manning checkpoints, crimson security drones shaped like hawks hovering above them, shining harsh lights on anyone at random.
Martial law had been declared, and Alaris was afraid.
Nevertheless, the Emperor strode towards one of these checkpoints, unconcerned when one of the guards stopped him.
"Identification." The guard glowered through his black visor, hand on the stave, the threat obvious.
It should have been unthinkable. To treat the people here the same as the filthy commoners in the undercity was unthinkable. The Empire's nobles prided themselves on their superiority to everyone else. Such behaviour was unthinkable in ordinary times.
But these were not ordinary times.
"Of course," The Emperor said amiably, his voice smooth and pleasant, raising his hand to show off a gleaming silver band inset with a ruby on his right hand.
The guard peered down at the ring, and the drone's spotlight focused on it as well, reading through the security codes encrypted in the gem. After a moment, the white light turned green, and the drone pinged.
"Access granted, identification verified. Welcome, Director Kavel." The drone intoned in a robotic, emotionless voice. The guard immediately stepped back as well, his posture and tone immediately more respectful.
"Director Kavel! My apologies, sir, I did not recognize you."
The Emperor, in the guise of one of the Empire's chief bureaucrats, smiled blandly. "Perfectly understandable, security measures have to be followed after all."
The real Kavel and his family had been extracted some hours previously and were far from the city by now, being ferried to a comfortable life in Bai-heng as a reward for the years of spy work Kavel had done for the Imperium. But adopting his image was a good way for the Emperor to sneak into Dume's palace without anyone noticing.
"Thank you for understanding, sir." The guard nodded, clearly relieved he wouldn't be punished for any breach of protocol. Of course, the real Kavel, a petty, spiteful man good at maintaining appearances would have punished him for his 'insolence', simply through the bureaucracy rather than directly in public like this.
The Emperor, however, cared little. He simply nodded to the guard, the majority of his attention on scanning the drones carefully, to see if they were more than the Pan-Pacific Empire's standard design, if they had been produced by the STC. Thankfully, there was nothing, but it never hurt to check.
Dume was clearly feeling paranoid, the Lord of Terra mused, resuming his walk down the road. And he should be. The rot of Chaos had not yet become apparent in Alaris. The daemons were clearly playing their cards close to their chest, waiting for the prime opportunity to emerge and reveal themselves. Until then, their cults operated in the shadows, the highest leaders of the Empire cloaking their corruption and madness from even the richest of their subordinates and subjects.
Well, two could play that game. Chaos had likely expected the Emperor to come in his full fury and wrath, to rain thunder and lightning upon Alaris, crack the city open and raze it to the ground in his search for the STC. Instead, he had decided to take a more…subtle approach. While the Imperium's armies under Valdor's command steadily carved a path straight to Alaris, the Emperor had left those forces behind and come in secrecy.
It felt a little odd to cloak his power and presence so completely like this once more, the Emperor had to admit. He had not bothered for many, many centuries. Even when adopting a guise to fool others, it was more a matter of modulating his aura than outright concealing it.
But right now, he had to conceal himself from not just human eyes, but from the sight of the Four, to ensure they could not interfere with his plans. The STC had to be destroyed at all costs, and that meant ensuring that no one, not even the self-proclaimed gods, could see him.
Oh, they knew he was here, no doubt. Completely vanishing from their senses was impossible. But just as they had obscured his foresight of their plans and actions, the Emperor could hide his own from them.
It still felt strange though, and uncomfortably restrictive after several millennia of not doing so. Doing this had been a habit for him once, but now it felt almost like wearing chains.
An idle part of his mind wondered if this was how Isha felt all the time, but he brushed the thought aside.
At the same time, it was somewhat pleasant to not be the centre of attention simply while walking on the street. The Emperor had his private labs and sanctuary, but there was still something nice about being able to walk outside without everyone staring at him in rapturous worship.
Nevertheless, it was still difficult to squash the urge to strike at Dyne in full force. He had gotten used to being direct, and his first instinct had to obliterate this problem with all his power before it could become a threat.
-armies of silver titans, eyes glowing with unholy light marching and grinding entire continents to dust beneath their feet-
Patience, he reminded himself. If Chaos already had a STC active and working for them, he would know. The Iron Men were not subtle. And who knows what other traps they had laid while he was blind and distracted by their plans. Discretion was the better part of valour, here.
But it was difficult to stifle his rage, even days after Malcador had relayed the news to him.
A STC. A STC capable of producing Iron Men soldiers, and Dume, the fool, wanted to reactivate it.
…No, not a fool. He was doing exactly what Chaos wanted him to. The Iron War had been wonderful for the Four, and no doubt the idea of sparking it once more delighted those things.
-Star eaters the length of Saturn's rings devouring suns and armadas alike, wrapping around planets to crush them entirely-
Did Dume understand what he was tampering with? Most likely not. How could anyone ever understand the horrors of the Iron War without having lived through it?
But for those who had lived through it, how could they ever forget?
Humanity had been at its zenith. For thousands of years, they had spread across the stars, exploring, innovating, expanding, until the might of human civilization was unmatched. Only the Eldar Dominion could claim to be mightier, but their deeply isolationist policies meant that it was humans who defined the destiny of the galaxy. Conflict between different human polities remained a problem and it likely always would, but there had been nothing that could threaten the existence of humanity as a whole.
And at the heart of it all were the Men of Iron. Humanity's greatest allies, their closest partners, their children as so many considered them, who shielded and aided mankind at every step. The pain and horror of being betrayed by them, of them turning upon humanity…it still cut deep.
-programming AI in his labs, fighting alongside endless steel legions to cull Orks, overseeing the transformation of barren worlds to gleaming orbs of blue and green alongside Iron Minds, smiling and joking with machines he had considered friends-
But humans had always been restless. It was something the Emperor both loved and hated about his species. Mankind would never have come so far if not for the instinct to explore, the desire to build, the insatiable curiosity, the hunger for greatness.
-discovering that scrapcode had been poured into sane AI by madmen in the thrall of Chaos, who thought that they were being given the power to bend the Men of Iron to their will-
The Emperor realized he could feel the cane beginning to splinter in his grip. Fool, he admonished himself, swiftly repairing the cane before anyone else could notice.
Yet his mind couldn't help but drift to the past once more. All too often, that same instinctive curiosity and hunger for greatness could become recklessness and stupidity, could lead to greed and insecurity overcoming caution and good sense. It had played a large role in the Iron War, which had left humanity shattered and divided even before the Eldar's folly unleashed the Age of Strife.
And if the Emperor did not stop Dume soon, he would repeat the mistakes of his ancestors and unleash the horrors of the Iron Men upon the galaxy once more.
-Entire worlds converted into factories, their forges fueled by a trillion souls, used to craft titanic bodies that even the weakest daemon could use to raze nations-
Today, many remembered the STCs as nothing more than lost repositories of knowledge, mindless archives of vast data. The Emperor knew better. Each STC was a sentient factory operated by an Iron Mind, designed to aid in the colonization of entire worlds. STCs could vary drastically in form and personality, depending on who had built them and what purpose they served, but almost all human world had one. Even the worlds which did not use a STC as the core of their infrastructure still had AI running that infrastructure.
-Fighting an infinitely replicating Omniphage swarm for decades upon decades, unable to leave for fear of letting it spread and consume a thousand more worlds whole-
And that was why the corrupted Iron Minds had been such a threat to mankind, for there had been literally no human infrastructure in the galaxy that was not dependent on them. Even as they had risen to the stars and built ever more advanced and terrible weapons, the basic principle of war had remained the same: to kill and crush your enemy.
But destroying Men of Iron was another matter entirely. It wasn't simply about destroying the enemy, it was about dismantling the very infrastructure that human civilization had been built upon.
-destroying a thousand thousand marvels crafted in collaboration by humanity and their cybernetic children, no matter how much it pained him, razing cities of wonder and beauty that had stood for ten thousand years-
It was why the Iron Men could never be allowed to rise again. Humanity had to be able to stand on its own, not be dependent on what was effectively another species.
Not every Iron Mind in the galaxy had betrayed humanity. Many had been able to avoid corruption, had continued to serve humanity faithfully and sought to devise countermeasures to Chaos corruption.
But too many had fallen to Chaos and others had turned on humanity of their volition.
And the Emperor could not, would not, allow it to happen again.
No matter what it took.
-The galaxy drowned in iron, blood and warpfire as he ran across the stars, the mocking laughter of the Three constantly echoing through the Warp, reminding him that he was too late, always too late-
Focus, the Emperor told himself harshly, dragging his mind away from the past as the pyramid of silver and glass that served as Dume's palace became visible in the distance. It was impressively tall, reaching a full thousand metres into the air. But it was cold and lifeless as any other building in Alaris, extravagant but entirely soulless. It wasn't even a proper pyramid, the sides were entirely smooth and sleek, rather than having any steps.
But more importantly, at the top, the Emperor could feel the taint of Chaos, foul wards and spells layered around it in addition to any mortal defenses. That would be where Dume's private chambers and labs were. His instincts screamed at him to destroy it with a blast of lightning, or to teleport up there and rip through the wards, but he squashed the impulse.
Instead, he cloaked himself in a psychic veil that would prevent anyone, human, xeno or daemon, from seeing him. Sprinting towards the side of the pyramid at a speed that would have shamed a cheetah, the Emperor ignored the gilded entrance in favour of scaling the side of the pyramid, making his way to the top.
As he ran up, he unexpectedly realized he was enjoying himself. Suppressing his power was somewhat tedious, but it had been a long time since he had done anything like this, and the mixture of nostalgia and novelty made it strangely enjoyable.
Putting the thought aside for later, the Emperor took a moment to scan the inhabitants of the pyramid. There were hundreds of souls inside, and unlike the rest of the city, each and everyone was corrupted by Chaos. He'd have to obliterate the entire structure once he dealt with Dume.
As he continued to ascend, the atmosphere became progressively colder and thinner, but it was of little consequence to him. At the top of the pyramid were layers of wards and spells, designed to destroy or corrupt any intruder. To almost any other psyker or sorcerer, Dume's wards would have seemed an intricate masterwork of runes made impenetrable by malefic power that could kill a man by rotting him from the inside out, drive him insane by subjecting him to both his greatest dreams and nightmares at once, or corrupt him with promises of infinite knowledge and power.
To the Emperor's eyes, the wards were the work of an amateur, bolstered and held together mostly by the foul power of Chaos.
Though that wasn't to say they weren't effective, he acknowledged grudgingly. These were the wards which had helped conceal Dume's fall and plans from the Emperor for years. They were not the only reason he had failed to notice, but they were one of them.
Nevertheless, pulling them apart, strand by strand, and letting them dissipate back into the Immaterium was child's play. Doing so without garnering notice was rather trickier, but nothing beyond him.
Once the wards were gone, the Emperor replaced them with his own, swiftly layering fresh protections around the tower to prevent any interruptions. That done, he turned intangible and moved through the walls.
The labs inside were large, cold and grey, with various weapons and experiments scattered around. But instead of being neatly organised and sterile, there was a thin layer of dust everywhere, runes and maddened writings on the walls scrawled in blood and the shards of various machines and vials lying on the floor, where they had obviously been smashed against the walls. There was a foul stench throughout the room, both the spiritual stench of Chaos, and the literal stench of blood, human waste and wasted chemicals.
"They couldn't see what I saw, no imagination! Too blinded by this hell we're all born into. But I'll make them all see, oh, I will."
When the Emperor had first encountered Narthan Dume almost a century ago, travelling in the Pan-Pacific Empire in disguise, the aspiring tyrant had possessed handsome features, a fair complexion, short golden hair and sharp green eyes. He had been cold and arrogant, but brilliant and ambitious. Lacking in imagination even then, but impressive nevertheless. If he had not been so narcissistic, the Emperor would have wished to recruit him.
The man in the centre of the room was nothing like that. His complexion was unnaturally pale, his hair long and greasy. The skin around his eyes was dark and cracked, his eyes glowed an eerie blue, and the flesh on his fingers had turned completely black, as if the skin was dead and rotting. Dume was mumbling to himself madly, a wreck of the genius he had once been.
But Dume himself was of little importance. What was far more important was the STC, on the table in front of the tyrant. It was innocuous, a simple steel cube which was somewhat rusted and broken in places. Many people would have thought it was a paperweight.
The Emperor knew better. He raised a hand, and a golden sphere of light surrounded the cube, pushing Dume back.
"What-" The tyrant spluttered, but the Emperor paid him no mind as he discarded the psychic veil, revealing his full might and presence. A thought silenced and froze the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, preventing him from speaking or moving until the Emperor allowed it.
Instead, the Emperor knelt in front of the table, studying the cube in front of him. STCs came in many shapes and sizes, and this was so…mundane. Within it slumbered an entirely uncorrupted and incomplete AI, one which had all the data it needed, but had not yet become a sentient being or developed a reflection in the Warp. There were some traces of Chaos corruption, but the cube had clearly proven resistant to Dume's efforts.
Most likely, this was a STC which had been designed to resist the Warp, but its creators had died before they could complete it.
It looked entirely harmless.
But to someone who knew what it was, it represented both horror and temptation.
Just looking at the cube brought memories of the Iron War rushing to his mind. Fighting and killing AIs he had once considered friends, watching humanity fall back into barbarism and insanity, trying to knit back wounds in the very fabric of reality…
It had been a nightmare. It had been the worst part of his very long life. The Unification Wars were a joke compared to that. Even the wars to come and what he had divined of them were a playground squabble.
He should destroy the cube, here and now. It could plunge the galaxy back into the Iron War so so easily.
And yet. The temptation to take the cube for himself was strong. Hadn't he just been deriding Dume for a fool? But now it was too easy to sympathize with him.
With the cube and the Iron Mind that lay within, he would have every advantage imaginable over his enemies. Cleansing the minor taint from the cube would be easy. The conquest and unification of Terra could be over in a matter of months, the unification of Sol in a year. He would have no need of the Space Marines or Thunder Warriors, would have infinite legions of cybernetic soldiers to easily replace them. He would no longer be dependent on Isha for both speed and stability. The Mechanicum could be brought to heel with ease.
Further attempts at corruption by Chaos were a potential problem, but it was not as if there had not been countermeasures devised for it during the Iron War itself. He had far more time and space to work now, surely he could improve on those methods.
And his sons. With the Men of Iron at his command, it would be child's play to find them. He could have scout and retrieval teams sweeping the galaxy for them by next week, have them all brought to him by the end of the year.
They wouldn't even need to become generals and warriors, a part of him thought. They could simply be children, my children.
But then the moment passed.
The STC was far too much of a threat, and he could not afford to be sentimental. Chaos was dangerous and its efforts to corrupt the Men of Iron had evolved alongside any efforts to stop them. Furthermore, not all the traitorous Men of Iron had been in thrall to Chaos, many had simply developed a disdain for humanity or gone mad.
Above all, the only successful countermeasures to Chaos had been derived from scraps of Necron technology, and their results had been mixed at best. Perhaps he could correct those flaws now that he had the time, but Necron technology was not something to take lightly.
There was a reason the Emperor had not simply built his own STC, after all.
Allowing himself one weary sigh, Revelation willed the golden sphere around the cube to shrink, reducing the STC to dust. One more more threat destroyed.
That dealt with, the Emperor stood and turned to his prisoner.
"Hello, Narthan. It had been some time."
The fear in the tyrant's eyes brought the Emperor no small satisfaction.
"Now, let's talk, shall we?"
Does the Anathema suspect?
Nothing, yet. He is more suspicious now, but the distraction worked. He has no idea of our true purpose.
And the Exile?
Her? She is a shadow of what she was, and what power she has is bound by both her own fear and the Anathema's commands. She knows even less than he does.
The Four Kings will be pleased. Soon, the Anathema's plans will be shattered, and the Exile will be within our grasp.