Author's Note: For those interested, there are currently two advance chapters on P-atreon (remove the spaces and dash): p-atreon/ SkySage24.
For anyone interested, here's an invite code to my Discord server: DTxYJgTk
The sky crackled with golden lightning, the flashes illuminating the horrors below.
"You," The Emperor snarled, a blade of golden fire appearing in his hand as if it had been there all along. "What have you done?"
Bel'akor cackled madly, the Titan's mouth splitting open to reveal a maw of fangs. "Come now, Anathema. Surely you are not so stupid that I need to spell it out for you?"
The Dark Master of Chaos was not truly here, Isha quickly realized. The machine he was possessing was merely a puppet, something to be controlled from a distance.
But he was here, somewhere on the planet, possessing some poor creature.
She concentrated her senses to the fullest, trying to trace the Titan's strings to wherever it was that Bel'akor was hiding, and she could feel the Emperor doing the same.
It was the only reason both of them held back, refraining from raining destruction upon the Titan where it stood.
Strangely, however, the Fabricator-General and his followers seemed oblivious to what was happening.
Or at least, to the fact that one of their greatest war machines was being controlled by a daemon.
"You think you can intimidate me with a parlour trick?" Kelbor-Hal growled. "My legions will grind you to dust."
"An illusion," The Emperor hissed. "What have you done to them?"
"Nothing they did not ask of me," Bel'akor said, oozing smugness. "They wanted a way to protect themselves from having their minds psychically influenced by you. I obliged."
Isha could see it now. An enchantment that encouraged those in its thrall to only see what they wanted to see, to blind themselves to that which did not fit their beliefs and expectations.
As far as the Mechanicum was concerned, the Machine Spirits of one of their holy god-machines had awakened and were now arguing with the Emperor.
They did not see the Chaos corruption, or truly hear what Bel'akor had to say.
It, Isha was forced to admit, a very clever move on Bel'akor's part. The enchantment was less potent than merely seizing control of the Mechanicum's minds or corrupting them into the service of Chaos, perhaps, but it was also more subtle, allowing him to avoid being noticed by herself and the Emperor until he wanted to be.
The question was…why had he revealed himself? Bel'akor had to know he couldn't stand against them. Against Isha alone, perhaps, for she had fallen far and Bel'akor had no doubt been gathering power since the last time she had encountered him.
But against her and the Emperor combined, he stood no chance.
No, Bel'akor had something in mind, some way to separate them, some way to compensate for the power gap. Arrogant though he was, the First-Damned had not outlived Daemon Kings and even Chaos Gods by being a fool.
Certainly, he was not foolish enough to attack a god like the Emperor directly, even with one of the Emperor's avatars on Luna. The countless times he had fled from her and her family before the Fall was evidence of that.
Unfortunately, there was no time to ponder that any further as the Fabricator-General screamed.
"Attack!"
The Skittari legions opened fire, the Titans lumbering forward slowly but steadily.
The mortals shrieked and panicked, but were herded back to the ship by the Custodes, who swiftly fell into formation to protect themselves.
More importantly, however, the Titan that Bel'akor had been using as a mouthpiece went silent. The marks of Chaos corruption remained, the machine shimmering with infernal power, but the presence of the Shadow Lord was gone.
Growling under her breath, Isha slipped out from under the Custodian guard, weaving her way through the plasma blasts and bolts until she was next to the Emperor.
"So, was this part of the plan?" She asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
The Emperor gave her an annoyed look as he deflected the barrage of shots with his flaming sword, batting them back at the people firing them. "You know perfectly well it wasn't."
"What do you have in mind?" Isha asked, a palm thrust generating a wave of force that sent several lines of Skitarii flying backwards. "Surely you don't think you can still negotiate with the Fabricator-General."
"I do not," The Emperor acknowledged. "He will have to be disposed of, and I will have to find someone more…malleable. There have to be limits to Bel'akor's enchantment. Even he could not cast such a spell on any substantial portion of the Martian leadership and also keep it invisible until now."
Isha nodded grudgingly, another generated wave of force striking out against the oncoming enemies. "That aside, what do we with do with Bel'akor?"
She sincerely doubted that Bel'akor's plan to deal with them was simply to throw a small mortal army at them.
If only they were so lucky.
The Emperor swung his sword, releasing an arc of golden flame straight towards the Mechanicum's lines. "I cannot sense him. Wherever he is, he's well hidden. But the Fabricator-General should have some idea, even if he does not realize it. We need to locate him and interrogate him quickly. Can you do that?"
Isha looked at him curiously. "Are you willing to let me act so openly?"
"Locating Bel'akor is paramount, and if the Mechanicum asks questions later, we can simply say you are a transhuman psyker."
"Very well. Give me a moment." Isha leapt into the air, scaling a hundred feet in a second and landing in the midst of the Mechanicum's forces with a shockwave that crushed an entire Skitarii squadron.
Isha felt a tinge of regret, knowing the Skitarii had never known anything better than service to the Mechanicum. But unlike servitors, they were permitted to retain higher brain functions, and unlike the Selenar's slaves, their loyalty came from indoctrination, not genetic programming. She could not free them unless they consented to do it or if she outright modified their minds. And the latter was hardly true freedom.
The Fabricator-General was surrounded by a dense guard of soldiers, hurrying towards the backline so that he could hide in the shadow of the Titan Legion. A sensible enough decision.
Not that Isha would let him do it.
She seized the arm of a Skitarii attacking her, ripping it off and snatching the crackling Arc Maul it had intended to strike her with from its grasp. Tossing the Mechanicum's soldier away carelessly, Isha pursued Kelbor-Hal.
The Maul was not particularly to her tastes as a weapon, and she did not even really need it. But if the Emperor wished to maintain the illusion of her as merely one of his transhuman soldiers, it would be best to pretend she could not tear apart the Mechanicum's best soldiers and weaponry barehanded.
Smashing her way through the enemy lines, Isha pursued the Fabricator-General, but before she could catch up, the Warhound Titans blocked her path, moving with speed and grace that betrayed their size.
The power of Chaos burned within them, having let them intercept her faster than should have been possible.
It would not save them.
Even as the Titans opened fire, Isha was already moving. Her maul tore through the leg of a Titan as if it were merely flesh, causing the machine to stumble and fall on her. With a shove, Isha pushed it in the opposite direction as if it weighed no more than a feather, causing it to crash into one of its fellows instead.
She could have decimated the rest of the Titans attacking her, but that would be both cruel and a waste of time. Dancing between the bolter fire, Isha reached through the Materium, feeling the rot that had sunk into the Machine Spirits of the Titans. The pilot was surprisingly not corrupted, being pulled along by their spirits, but they were heading towards it and fast.
Isha excised the rot with the deft hand and precision of a surgeon, cutting it away from the Machine Spirits as if with a scalpel and casting it away into the Immaterium. The Titan pilots and Machine Spirits both screamed in pain as they were rendered motionless, incapacitated for the moment, but their souls and their sanity had been saved.
Isha could have made the process painless, but incapacitating them was a necessity.
Leaping up onto the shoulder of one of the Titans, Isha saw her prey again. Kelbor-Hal was almost to the larger Titans, about to hide behind them.
No matter. Isha raised her hand and curled her fingers. Space twisted and bent, distorting as the screaming Fabricator-General was pulled towards until she was holding his neck.
"LET ME GO, YOU MUTANT WITCH-"
Isha ignored his whining, turning in the opposite direction to look directly at where the Emperor was standing.
Catch. She spoke to the Guardian, before hurling Kelbor-Hal towards him. As an afterthought, she wrapped the leader of the Mechanicum in a layer of telekinetic protection to make sure his soldiers didn't accidentally kill him.
Now, hopefully the fool would answer the Emperor's questions quickly.
For his own sake, if nothing else.
The Emperor snatched Kelbor-Hal out of the air with an invisible hand, pulling him towards himself and protecting him from anything that might hurt him.
Honestly. He knew Isha didn't like the Mechanicum, but she could have at least brought the Fabricator-General over instead of just tossing him through a field of live fire.
Kelbor-Hal struggled in his grip, screaming in harsh binary. "I will never kneel, no matter what you do, barbarian scum!"
"Be quiet." The Emperor snapped at him, tightening his grip so that the Fabricator-General could neither speak nor move.
His first impulse was to tear Kelbor-Hal's mind apart and find the information he was looking for, but he restrained himself.
These past years with Isha had forced him to relearn that sometimes, it was best to take a more gentle path.
Even if Isha herself did not feel like being diplomatic towards the Mechanicum.
He reached into Kelbor-Hal's mind and soul, but with a relatively gentle touch, looking for Bel'akor's enchantment.
And ah, there it was. It was a slick, oily thing, a piece of scrapcode woven into both Kelbor-Hal's soul and his body, into the advanced cogitators that had replaced most of the Fabricator-General's brain, blinding him to the reality of what was going on around him and only showing him what Bel'akor wanted. Quieter and less subtle than other examples of scrapcode that he had encountered in the past, but perhaps more effective for that.
But that subtlety meant that it was not too deeply entrenched in Kelbor-Hal, unable to spread too far and become too obvious.
And that meant the Emperor could remove it.
Isha was better at this, goddess of healing that she was, but he was the Anathema. He had fought against Chaos and its tools for thousands upon thousands of years, and to remove this was well within his capabilities.
Golden light and flame flowed into Kelbor-Hal, and the Fabricator-General would have screamed if he could.
But that would only have been because of his panic. The Emperor was careful not to hurt him, only burning away the corruption without harming Kelbor-Hal's body or soul. It did hurt, but only as much as an injection might.
The oily venom tried to escape, to survive, but it was such a little thing, such a small spell, a piece of vermin, and the Emperor contained it easily.
At last, it was all gone and Kelbor-Hal awoke to reality.
The Emperor released him, letting the Fabricator-General fall to his knees before him, gasping.
"What did you do to me?" Kelbor-Hal choked out.
"I showed you the truth," The Emperor said harshly, spinning him around and forcing Kelbor to look directly at the corrupted Titans.
The Fabricator-General's eyes widened with horror, his augmented brain barely able to accept and process the data.
"This is some sort of trick, some illusion, you-"
"Think!" The Emperor thundered. "This is not the illusion, what you were seeing before was. Your empire has been infiltrated by Warp entities, that wish to destroy it from the inside out."
Kelbor-Hal struggled, but as he watched the corrupted Titans lash out, uncaring of the damage they did to the Mechanicum's own forces, he could not deny the truth of the Emperor's words.
If he had skin left for his face to turn ashen, it would have as despair set in.
"I can help you stop this, root out the corruption. But you need to listen to me."
Kelbor-Hal was silent even as the battle raged around him, but just as the Emperor was about to rip the knowledge he needed from him by force, the Fabricator-General spoke.
"What do you want?"