Author's Note: For those interested, there are now eight advance chapters on P-atreon (remove the spaces and dash): p-atreon/ SkySage24.

"So."

"So."

Isha's eyes flickered to the ominous edifice next to them, before she spoke again.

"Where does this lead, then?"

George shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Don't avoid the question," Isha said wearily. "You brought me here. You showed me this. So I will ask you again: where does this lead? You obviously wish to claim the Webway for your Imperium, for your species. Where does that end? With the extermination of my children, down to the last infant? With our subjugation, as eternal vassals of mankind?"

"...the latter," George admitted quietly. "I do not wish to wipe your children, Isha. Not anymore. But…"

"So what do you expect of me, then? To offer my fealty willingly?" Isha asked bitterly. "To help convince my children they should kneel before you, to accept servitude or to die?"

"No!" George said, shaking his head. "I know I cannot ask that of you. I know. If our positions were reversed…" He trailed off.

"Then why show me this?" Isha wondered. "What do you want?"

George's shoulders sagged, and he ran a hand through his hair.

"I just…" He sighed. "I want to be able to work something out," He admitted quietly. "I do not wish to fight you or force you into anything. But I could not come up with anything on my own. I hoped…you might have some ideas. Some compromise we could agree on."

Isha was silent for a long moment as she considered his words.

"I will not help you breach the Webway," She said finally. "But…there may be other options."

"What are those?" George asked, almost eagerly.

"Your people have found Warp Gates scattered across the galaxy, yes? Used them, even?"

George nodded. "Those are the remnants of the original Webway, built by the Old Ones and shattered during the War in Heaven," Isha continued. "But the modern Webway was built by my children afterwards. Much of that knowledge has been lost, but I do have some of it, enough to start with. The Black Library should have archives of the craft of warp tunnelling, and how to build your own network. "

"But you would need Cegorach's consent for that," The Emperor observed shrewdly.

"I would," Isha acknowledged. "If he refuses, then it most likely cannot be done. But we can try."

The Emperor paused for a moment, apparently debating something, before speaking. "Mankind has created warp gates before."

…what?

What?

Isha stared at him in astonishment. "You have?"

"With great difficulty and my personal involvement, yes," The Emperor nodded. "The Kalium Gate. It was one of my last projects before the Iron War. It was very difficult to build and has been left in ruins since. I thought it was no longer a viable option to pursue, for building a stable pathway through the Immaterium was difficult enough before the Age of Strife, but perhaps with your help…"

"Perhaps," Isha nodded slowly, still reeling from the revelation. She had underestimated the Emperor's genius or the extent of the knowledge he had inherited from the Old Ones.

Perhaps both.

"You said there were two options. What is the other one?"

Isha forced herself to focus. She could dwell on this new revelation later. "The odds of success on the other option are even lower, but perhaps we can." She had to try, at least. If only to avoid a war with the Emperor and Imperium.

"And that option is?"

"The Krork were the most powerful of the creations of the Old Ones, gifted with abilities and secrets even the Eldar were not privy to," Isha replied. "One of those secrets was a method of superluminal travel entirely unconnected to the Warp."

"Truly?" George asked, his eyebrows shooting up.

"Truly. I do not know the details, but it was a dimension between the Warp and the Materium, incredibly difficult to access. The Krork used it as both a method of travel and communications and as a weapon. It…may be possible for the two of us to find a way to access this dimension, so that your people may use it. It will be yours, and the Webway will be ours."

Once more, Isha wished for Vaul to be here. He had studied Krork technology during the war, he would be better at this.

But she would have to suffice.

"What is this dimension called?" The Emperor asked, intrigued.

"There were quite a few different names for it, but in human language…" Isha paused for a moment, considering which human term best applied. "I believe it would be best to call it subspace."

"Subspace," The Emperor repeated. "And you think we can find a way to harness it for mankind?"

"I do not know," Isha said honestly. "But we must try."

She had to try.

George nodded in understanding. "Where do we begin?"

"First, we have to find a way to at least detect subspace," Isha answered. "I believe we can accomplish that much, at least. My children built several devices and rituals in order to detect and predict the movement of Krork armies."

George nodded. "Come," He said, walking towards one of the alcoves on the side of the hall. "I believe this is better discussed in my labs."

Isha cast a glance backwards at the Golden Throne, still cloaked in that heavy mantle of destiny.

"Can you truly not feel it?" She couldn't help but ask.

The Emperor stopped, turning back to look at her with a puzzled frown. "What do you mean?"

"Just…everything," She waved a hand at the throne. "This machine is a keystone of fate. Tangled in destiny and prophecy. I cannot say what will become of it, but this machine…one way or another, it will be important. Not merely to your plans, but to everything."

The Emperor's gaze turned to the Golden Throne, his eyes focused on it for a long moment.

"I truly do not see anything," He said finally. "It is important, of course, but what you describe…" He shook his head.

Isha hesitated for a moment longer. For some reason, it felt important to make sure the Emperor understood the weight of the Golden Throne, and the doom around it.

She wasn't sure why he was blind to it. His own bias? Some mystery of the Warp? Whatever it was, Isha felt that he needed to understand.

"Perhaps if we shared our sense?" She suggested.

The Emperor seemed doubtful but walked back towards her. "Very well."

Isha extended a hand, and the Emperor took it.

Their minds touched, and Isha tried her best to share what she saw through it, the feeling around the Golden Throne, trying to let the Emperor see through her eyes.

And she felt George's alarm and surprise as he finally saw what she saw. The tangled knot of fate around the Golden Throne.

+This is…unnerving.+ He said, now psychically instead of verbally. +I don't understand, why did I never see this before?+

Isha gave the mental equivalent of a helpless shrug. I do not know.

+Perhaps if I try to breach it.+ The Emperor reached out, tugging at one of the threads of the knot, trying to see what lay in front of it.

The knot refused to budge, and the Emperor's eyes narrowed in irritation. He applied more power and more precision, trying his best to tease one of the threads, to see something of what was hidden from him.

And then the Immaterium was filled with golden light.

Isha and George both recoiled from the light, the scorching heat. It was almost like George's own power, but it was…wrong. Twisted.

There was a wrath to it, a burning hate that eclipsed even the fury that the Emperor had demonstrated on and after Iyanden. A hate so deep that it could drown the galaxy.

But more than that, there was pain. Agony beyond measure, of a kind which even Isha had seen only very rarely through the many ages that she had lived.

The golden light burned even brighter, and then Isha saw something in the flames.

A skull.

It was bleached completely white and cracked in many places. The empty eye sockets with golden fire, but the most frightening thing of all was upon its head.

A golden laurel wreath.

Then the skull opened its mouth wide as if to scream, and then exploded like a supernova.

The golden light became even more searing and horrifying, more twisted and corrupted. It roared of order and hate, of tyranny unending, of a cosmos broken and bent to a singular will.

The golden light spread across the galaxy, subjugating everything in its path. And everything it could not consume, it destroyed.

It…it reminded Isha of the Fall.

Of Slaanesh's Birth.

The future was gold, and it was a terrible future indeed.

And then the vision ended.

Isha staggered backwards from the Emperor, shaken and horrified. "What…what was that?"

"I think…" George said, looking as badly shaken as she was. "I think that was me."

He sounded utterly horrified at the idea.

"No, it was…was more than that. What we just saw… was the birth of a Chaos God. But I don't understand how…" Isha trailed off.

They had just seen a Chaos God erupt from the Emperor's skull, and yet, such a thing was surely impossible. Gods could be shattered, they could even be slain.

And such things left their mark upon the Immaterium to be sure.

But you could not birth a Chaos God by killing another god. Chaos was the deepest trauma and agony possible, a scar on the very fabric of the Sea of Souls.

Simply the death of a god like the Emperor did not accomplish such a thing, no matter who or what slew him. The Star Vampires had slain many gods during the War in Heaven, and while that had certainly contributed to the eventual rise of Chaos, never had the death of a single god created so much as a Daemon King.

And what they had just seen had been beyond a Daemon King.

Far beyond.

George was looking at the Golden Throne again, but his earlier hope and reverence had been replaced by fear.

"I just…" He shook his head. "Why did we see that? What does the Golden Throne have to do with it?"

Isha had no answers for him. She didn't understand what the Throne had to do with a future where the Emperor became a Chaos God…somehow.

For a long moment, the two of them just stood there, trying to wrap their minds around what had just happened.

Finally, the Emperor shook his head. "We will think more on it later," He declared. "For now, we should turn our minds to the actual task at hand."

Isha wanted to disagree, but truth be told, it wasn't as if she had any idea of how to make sense of their shared vision either.

So instead, she merely followed the Emperor to one of the alcoves.

Though calling it an alcove was something of a misnomer, given it was more akin to a fully equipped laboratory, gleaming with specialized equipment and hyper-advanced cogitators.

"So, how do we begin the construction of this device?" The Emperor asked, circling a table to look at her from the other side.

"To begin with, I will teach you how to construct a wraithbone. You will need to know it both to attempt any detection of subspace or to build the proper infrastructure for a Warp Gate network of your own," Isha answered.

It was a secret she had been reluctant to give up…but she had already taught the Emperor how to make dreamstones. And he had already had limited success on his own with auramite in any case.

He would figure it out eventually.

And a smaller sacrifice now would hopefully save her children in the future.

"Watch carefully," Isha told the Emperor.

Carefully, she began to pull power from the Sea of Souls. First, she shaped it into a thread and then another thread and then another. Painstakingly, she wove the threads of energy together, assembling them until they solidified into a simple crystal tree in the palm of her hand.

She could have done it much faster, of course, but the point was to teach the Emperor how to do it, to make sure he understood the process.

"I see now," George breathed, sounding awed. "It is…exquisite. And yet, so obvious now. I can't believe I never considered…"

"Try it now," Isha suggested. "It shouldn't take you long to understand."

The Emperor nodded in agreement and began.

As she watched him weave, Isha felt dread and uncertainty well up within her once more.

This was such an incredible gamble on her part. She barely even knew where to begin on how to detect subspace, much less to harness it for use.

The likelihood that this project would work was incredibly low. Nigh-impossible.

Humanity building its network of Warp Gates was slightly more likely, but not by much.

But what choice did she have? She could not simply surrender the Webway to the Emperor, nor allow him to simply continue his plans to breach it unimpeded. The binding pact they had both sworn guaranteed her children some degree of protection from the Emperor, but it was limited.

Cegorach was distinctly unlikely to give her the secrets to warp tunnelling so that she could give to the Emperor, to say the least. He might very well turn against her outright if she even suggested it.

This was the only option she had, near-impossible as it was. If nothing else, it might buy her time to think of something else.

It had to.

Author's Note: The Kalium Gate is a canonical artifact, from The Path of Heaven novel by Chris Wraight.