Antediluvixen

Fire Emblem: Legacy of the Empyrean Throne (A Re-imagining of FE: Fates!)

Nice

Not a Step Back - a World War II Inspired NRP

@DX3214
Fantasy bronze age type of setting where the bronze age collapse never occurred and societies developed even further and discovered gunpowder early, using it in conjunction with magic bronze to create guns

Resulting in pike and shot warfare or possibly even full on line battles

ofc with magic you can also go like "This is super extra enchanted elite armor, it will outright stop bullets even at close range"

So you can give it to your not-Sacred Band or whoever and have a literal bulletproof elite force for really dire moments

Still weighing whether to do that, or reboot this.

Not a Step Back - a World War II Inspired NRP

plz I was planning on a fantasy napoleonic bronze age instead

I'll see what I can do

From Sick Man to Savior - An 1847 Nation RP

Time to omnomnomnom China.

From Sick Man to Savior - An 1847 Nation RP

Provisional Imperial Republic of Japan

"The social insecurity of the worker is the real cause of their being a peril to the state."

- Otto von Bismark

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Government

Name: Provisional Imperial Republic of Japan
Flag/Badge:

Head of State: His Imperial Majesty Emperor Kōmei of Japan
Head of Government: Sei-i Taishōgun, Katayama Kumiko, Shogun of Japan
Ideology: Japanese Republican Imperialism:
An ideology created and espoused by Shogun Kumiko following her stunning military victories in the early days of the civil war. Japanese Republican Imperialism is an ideology espousing the rule and ownership of the nation of Japan by its population rather than by social elites, and the spreading of Japanese influence, culture, and territory through military or economic action. Lands and resources are to be managed for the public good, instead of private profit, and the surplus from this used to further expand the lands and resources of the Japanese state and to bring other peoples into the fold of Japanese society.

Military

Army Numbers: The Imperial Japanese Army practices conscription and is capable of levying hundreds of thousands to supplement its 50,000 strong professional standing army. It is notable for the high number of women in its armed forces.
Navy Numbers: The Imperial Japanese Navy is small, but growing, and efforts are underway to purchase yet more ships from abroad and construct new ones domestically.

• 4 Ships of the Line
• 11 Frigates
• 16 Sloops
• 2 Brigs
• 6 Schooners
• 2 Steamships

Army Equipment: The Imperial Japanese Revolutionary Army is equipped with modern percussion rifled muskets, artillery, and other equipment. Initially these weapons were purchased from abroad, but have recently begun domestic production following the purchase of industrial tooling from abroad.
Naval Ship Types: The Imperial Japanese Revolutionary Navy is small, but counts ships of the line, frigates, sloops, brigs, schooners, and even steamships among its fleet.

History, Expansion, and Economics

Historical Claims: The Provisional Imperial Republic of Japan is overt about its short term goals - annexing Korea, Taiwan, the Sakhalin island, and large swathes of mainland China. In the longer term, they seek to control or influence a much wider sphere, turning the Pacific Ocean to their rule.

History: Point of Divergence: 1840

The Shogun of Japan’s road to greatness began in the year 1840. Bad harvests exacerbated by the poor management and harsh taxation of the Daimyo lead to severe food shortages and riots across the entire nation. Though most of the Japanese people were secluded from the goings on of the wider world, the port city of Nagasaki was not. Hearing news of the ongoing humiliation of Qing China, a young woman living in the farms on the outskirts of Nagasaki began making waves in the local community, insisting the same might happen to them, that if their rulers could not handle the food shortages, what hope did they have against the foreigners?

Initially, she was ignored, belittled, and told to know her place. She was, for a time, regarded as little more than a madwoman - claiming to be a descendent of Tokugawa Ieyasu himself, no less. But her following grew, slowly, as news filtered in from abroad. The year was 1840 when, following the orders of a local magistrate, an order for her arrest was issued. Instead of allowing herself to be taken, the strange woman produced a short sword and slew the two men sent to arrest her.

The rebellion began in earnest, then. Buoyed by her rhetoric, many villagers and townsfolk flocked to her side. Bearing improvised weapons they overran and looted the city’s armory. The rebellion exploded overnight, seizing control of the city of Nagasaki. An army was dispatched by the Shogun to quell the uprising, but in a startling turn of events the rebels, under the stunning leadership of Katayama Kumiko, intercepted and decisively defeated the government forces.

Urgent missives were dispatched from the port of Nagasaki to any foreign empire that might lend an ear. The great bear of the east, the Russian Empire, was the first to respond. Russian ships arrived in Nagasaki, bringing old guns and cannon, powder and shot. With an eerie level of proficiency, Kumiko began the organization of a proper army from her peasant’s rebellion. With fresh supplies, new weapons, and a fanatically devoted and growing army, the Japanese civil war commenced fully. Skillfully lead both tactically and strategically, the growing rebellion pried the country away from the hands of the Shogun and Emperor piece by piece.

In the year 1844, Katayama Kumiko enters Kyoto at the head of her victorious army. The previous Shogun is executed, and with the support of her army she is inducted as the new Shogun of Japan, much to the shock of onlookers both internal and external.

Shogun Kumiko’s reforms begin almost immediately. Trade deals and alliances are forged with the Russian Empire, and the centuries long policy of isolation of the previous Tokugawa Shoguns is abolished overnight. The port city of Nagasaki is transferred to the ownership of the Russian Empire, granting the great power something it has sought for decades if not centuries - a warm water port. Women are empowered by her decree, enforced by her fanatical army, women consisting of up to thirty percent of its number. Weapons, industrial machinery, wondrous technologies, trains, and more are imported as much as the nation’s treasury will allow. The domains of the daimyo are liquidated and transferred to the ownership of the peasants who work them. Foreigners - primarily Dutch and Russian - are permitted, and encouraged, to enter the country in order to spread the technologies of the West. Samurai rebellions are put down with ruthless efficiency, the newly termed Imperial Japanese Revolutionary Army formed around a solid core of veteran soldiers from the civil war, drilled and trained in the style of European warfare. The armies of Japan stand ready to make China bend the knee and make the whole world recognize the Imperial Republic as a force to be reckoned with.

"If we are to stand against the European powers we must learn from them, and take what is rightfully ours by force, lest we be left behind to be crushed beneath their bootheel. The ways of old have served us well, but in the land of the rising sun, we must look forward into this new dawn."

-Katayama Kumiko, Shogun of the Provisional Imperial Republic of Japan

Economic Description: The economy of Japan remains primarily agricultural, but is rapidly modernizing in nearly every conceivable field. Railroads are being rapidly constructed to link as much of the country together as possible. The consolidation of farmland away from the hands of the nobility and into those of farmer’s cooperatives has boosted rice output significantly. The Japanese islands are notably resource-poor, and intensive efforts are underway to secure not only mining and extraction rights within the vast Russian territory of Siberia, but expanding the borders of the empire. At present, Japan relies on imports for its burgeoning industrial sector, built up first on foreign purchased machinery, and subsequently on an increasing number of domestically produced tools.

This is, of course, a massive gamble on the part of the Shogun. The importation of resources and the Shogun’s financial investments on the scale currently being practiced requires an equally vast incentive. The Japanese Yen has been established as a fiat currency, and intensive efforts are underway to build up a proper financial sector of the economy. As it stands, the Japanese economy has two great advantages in building itself up - cheap labor, and cheap goods. The rapidly growing economy is built on a pile of IOUs to foreign creditors, and it is in the island nation’s best interests to make good on every ounce of investment. Resources such as iron and coal flow in to newly founded factories in rivers, and cheap goods flow out to the global market. Though the standard of living has risen, costs remain low in comparison to those factories of Europe, giving the Japanese Empire a chance to grow strong on European gold.

The Grim Crusade - A Warhammer 30000 RP

Stateroom of the Legio XVI

Year: 001.M31

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The stateroom of the Sixteenth Legion upon Nikaea was a sparsely decorated, simplistic affair. Used almost exclusively by the minute delegation of Ayushmatki and her escorts, the room’s magnificent construction and opulent golden filigree stood at sharp contrast with the simple metal desk that stood at its center, flanked by a temporary sleeping arrangement reminiscent of a military encampment more than anything else. The only sign of decoration was a relatively plain white banner, upon which the numerals XVI were written in unadorned, simplistic script.

Ayushmatki Nanavna izva Kuznekhtinsk busied herself within the room, furious. Furious with Eiohsa - the thrice-damned fool who wore her heart upon her sleeve and had never learned to temper her tongue around her kin. Furious with her kin, who drove the woman she served to such heights of madness with their transgressions upon her. Furious with herself - for she knew not how to break the afflictions that haunted her.

There was no point in trying with her, she had begun to reason. There was no point in trying to get through to one as stubborn and obstinate as she. In times of crisis her iron will was an invaluable asset. Now? It served only to trap her within her own mind. She would not watch the duel that would unfold soon. She had no stomach for it. She knew, deep down - that the Sixteenth was not ready in the slightest for such a challenge. And yet she would do so anyway, throwing herself upon a grenade not to save those around her, but in a blind act of desperation.

“Equerry.” The hushed voice of one of her aides lilted over to the table to her. “There is somebody requesting entrance to meet with you. They requested you by name. A Tech-Priest, Magos Tienxia Urcurz - I think they might be part of the Twelfth Legion’s retinue.”

“Thank you, Vishala. Could you let them in?”

The aide nodded once, moving swiftly to the ornate doorway of the room and pulling the door ajar. Ayushmatki frowned as scanning readouts from the aide’s ocular cybernetics filtered through her mind, but she said nothing, instead rising to her feet to greet the new arrival.

“Magos Tienxia Urcurz, yes? What brings you here?”

Her visitor stepped across the threshold. Magos Tienxia Urcurz' heavily augmented form possessed neatly curved, molded bionic limbs and an uncomplicated, armored frame. The shoulders of her crimson Martian robes parted to make room for a bristling surface of spine-like mechadendrites that covered her shoulders and ran up and down her back and head - framing her countenance with a gleaming, silvery mane of bionic spikes. Her face had been cybernetically modified along the halves of her skull - her upper cranium bristling and overcrowded with multi-faceted lenses, omnispex sensors, and redundant utility mechanisms, while her jaw was a tri-sectioned convergence metal plates. Her visage had the seeming of some predatory xenosform.

“Testament be upon you, Adept.” Her vox-encoded voice had but a single layer of hazy, reverberant distortion and had retained the feminine intonation of her original voice rather than having assumed the traditional barbed, uninflected hiss of static favored by most priests with full voxcoder-mediated voices. “Tell me - do you believe in fate?”

“Is this a test, Magos?” Replied the Equerry, raising an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. “I do not. There are, certainly, paths more likely trod. But if you ask if I believe in some universal, binding thread that ties us to a specific course of action - frankly, no. I find the concept preposterous. Have you come merely to bore me with such frivolities as this whilst this foolish duel takes place, Magos?”

Tienxia held up a placatory hand. “Patience, Adept. It is well that you do not believe in Fate. There are many even amongst the Cult Mechanicum who do not, but there are times when circumstances conspire to advise its momentary consideration regardless. Amongst those of our creed for example, are the Logis. In principle, they are merely statisticians and analysts. They identify exploitable trends and reliable patterns within confined sets of information - yet also, our faith within their talents occasionally produces results that transcend mere mathematical science. Something bordering on prophecy, as Heretechnical as it might be to suggest it. This is why The Logis are so venerated within the Cult Mechanicum.”

Tienxia halted abrupted and started pointedly at Ayushmatki, clearly expecting a reply.

“Do you speak of the influence of the Immaterium, Magos? Warp-spawned powers beyond mortal ken, beyond those that beings like myself bend to our will?” A trace of a smile crossed her synthetic lips, “I believe there are things not yet explained, or explicable, by Imperial science and reason. Certainly, there are things beyond our understanding.”

“No. That is not what I was implicating. The Mechanicum has something of a doctrinal aversion to Psykers.” Tienxia commented idly.

Ayushmatki raised a hand, “A moment, please - I did not speak of psychic powers wielded by myself, I know well the antipathy for psykers amongst your number, but of phenomena beyond such. Is that what you speak of?”

“I do not speak of any aspect of the Immaterium, such that we are presently aware of its relation to the material universe, Adept. There is indeed much that remains beyond our awareness within both, but in this matter I constrain myself to what is known of the realm in which we reside. Study and knowledge of the Immaterium is, after all, most harshly and stringent proscribed by the Treaty of Mars. Perhaps this is something of an inconvenient and inexplicable constraint, albeit one that is not relevant to the matter at hand.” Tienxia’s tone had taken on an amused, somewhat condescending lilt to it, as though she were chiding an acolyte for doctrinal error.

“Perhaps so, Magos, perhaps so. Then please, sit, and tell me what it is you have come for that we may not waste more of your valuable time on such trivial matters.” Ayushmatki nodded to an unused chair by the desk, sitting down in her own once more as she did so. “Has this to do with the Sixteenth and the Twelfth?”

Tienxia did not move. The chair erupted in billowing flames. “In a manner of speaking.” The Tech-Priest answered with a congenial nod, carrying on as though absolutely nothing untoward had happened even as the chair’s frame and upholstery blackened and began to fray away with audible cracks, embers spilling through the air.

“As a premise - you are not of my faith so I do not demand that you accept it, merely that you consider it. The Machine God encompasses all of creation, the universe, the immaterium, and so forth. The universe, and everything in it, are a part of its body. Which is to say, we are all within a machine - though not necessarily a part of it. It is the Machine God’s will that we each possess volition, of course. Hence, free will is accepted to exist as an abstraction defining an aspect of the Will of the Machine God.”

The chair crumpled and began to disintegrate into ashes across the floor, the flames that had consumed it dying down into smoldering, ruinous traceries of light.

Ayushmatki said nothing initially, merely listened to the words her unexpected visitor with an expression of apparent disinterest. “And are you here to imply the events in whose shadow we speak are themselves a factor of the will of the machine god? That the fool of a woman I follow has spoken such obscene and ridiculous things as part? Or do I misunderstand? Forgive me, Magos, I simply wish to know why it is we speak now.”

Tienxia shrugged and splayed her hands. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Who can truly say of such matters? No. What we are here to discuss is you, Adept.” Finally, it hit Ayushmatki. Tech-Priests of the Cult Mechanicum were sticklers for formalities such as titles. After all, they regularly possessed an abundance of honorifics they insisted upon being recognized in turn. Tienxia had never once acknowledged Ayushmatki’s formal role as Equerry of the Sixteenth Legion, nor even as a member of the Sixteenth Legion, and it was the emphasis with which the Tech-Priest employed the word that finally made it evident: She was explicitly insulting Ayushmatki by addressing her with the lowest title possible to afford to her, or to anybody else in the Imperium.

Tienxia finally turned away from the desk to cast her multi-faceted gaze across the heaped, blackened wreckage of the chair. Under her withering gaze, the ruined remnants abruptly split apart with sharp and violent cracks. Repeatedly.

“You see, free will exists, but Fate too exists. All of the world is a Machine, and like any Machine, there is intent and purpose in its design. Elements that enter certain realms of the Machine thus enter a course that cannot be feasibly averted, free will aside. Which is to say…”

Tienxia turned to glance almost conspiratorially at Ayushmatki. “You, Adept, have been caught up in the Machine. If Fate could be said to exist, you are now Fated.” The final remnants of the wooden chair then seemed to shudder and dissolve into nothingness, almost as if they had been atomized. Ayushmatki’s internal geiger counter briefly spiked, then subsided.

Ayushmatki laughed. A high note, only barely tinted by the inflexion of speech synthesizers, she leaned back in her chair as she laughed in the face of the Magos who stood before her. At last, it subsided, and she looked upon the woman before her in a new light, and smiled. “Ah but if it is so, Magos, then it has been so for a very, very long time. From the very moment Eiohsa laid me low when I first met her, before I had joined her, the very moment my own life became entwined with one of the Emperor’s spawn, I knew it would take a different course. You have come here only to state the obvious in meandering half measures and pathetic insults.”

“I have come here on a mission of mercy, Adept. Perhaps you have always been Fated, but now you find yourself in a part of the machine that will shortly be the end of you.” All trace of cordiality had vanished from Tienxia’s voice, replaced by a cold, iron finality. “There is a way to extricate yourself from the machine though and to carry on in service to the Sixteenth child of the Omnissiah. Make light of my direction in this matter at your peril.” She then turned to Ayushmatki, approaching the desk and laying her hands on its surface, hunching over and seeming to glower at the Equerry, her silvery spines bristling over like some manner of looming warp-horror.

Then, almost as if she had not just implicitly warned Ayushmatki of her impending death, the Tech-Priest’s former congenial tone returned and she abruptly asked: “Tell me, have you ever been to Sol? The system is quite splendid, even if you hold no love for Mars. Very little you have ever heard sung of it in praise has been exaggerated. Every Adept should endeavor to visit the cradle of Humanity at least once.”

“Once.” Came the reply, “Once, when we had first made contact with the Imperium, almost a hundred and sixty standard years ago.” She leaned forward, steepling her fingers, “What is it that you speak of within the birthplace of Humanity that will ‘save me’, hm?”

“Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun in Splendor. You may have heard of it.” Tienxia answered blithely. “There is a void fortress and Imperial laboratory in close proximity to it, even closer than Mercury. Those who visit that station and meditate in the observatory in contemplation of the heart of the Sun are said to have beheld the Sun in Splendor.”

“Ah, yes, that which I was told by the Twelfth that I would never again see, when I spoke in defense of the Edict during the Council.” She raised an eyebrow, “Certainly, the sight of the sun at the heart of Sol is an inspiring one.”

“Indeed.” Tienxia drew back from Ayushmatki’s desk, the tension seeming to drain from her body and her bristling mane of spines falling in a relaxed wave. “Of course, the Primarchs each contain a spark of the Machine God’s Divinity. The parameters of what they say are important, and not merely in the sense of what they intend to convey. In a sense, you living to see the Sun in Splendor again would be something of a Divine Paradox - a break from Fate and the Providence of the Machine God. An inviolate act of volition so pure that, in a way, it would be a truer act of veneration than if you abruptly took up the faith. It might even be possible for you to be declared a living Saint, much like our own dear Corneceus Sicanus is to be with the Omnissiah having sanctioned and mandated his practices.”

Ayushmatki’s eyes were wide in genuine surprise. She raised a finger, then lowered it, lips parted slightly as she racked her mind for a response. “I… that is certainly quite the proposal, Magos. Certainly… quite the proposal indeed.” She narrowed her eyes, “And quite the occasion for the Cult Mechanicum, I am sure. But I must ask - why this specific act, hm? It is known, the Emperor’s children are not infallible. As evidenced by Eiohsa herself. The word of the Twelfth is, in turn, certainly not the decree of any divine being. I see no reason to treat it differently than that of any other.”

“Naturally.” Tienxia nodded. “Which is where we come back to the matter of volition. Even for a Primarch, within whom resides Divinity itself, words are cheap. It is intent and action that matters. If the Primarch speaks at the eve of battle ‘We shall not allow the enemy to evade us,’ the intent is usually one of bolstering morale or generating positive sentiment - and so it does not matter in a doctrinal sense whether or not the enemy in that scenario manages to escape. If the Primarch avows themselves of the same, either in private or before a select audience, and then takes particular and discrete actions to ensure their word is true - then what they have said, doctrinally, is an oath. A geas, if you will. Perhaps even a Prophecy - which, in their case if not ours, would not even be Heretechnical. Much like with the oath of vengeance and wrath that the Twelfth Primarch has sworn against the Sixteenth for her offense.”

“It seems, then, to me that the Twelfth Primarch ought be more careful with such oaths, Magos.” Came the reply, audibly unimpressed. “Certainly, Eiohsa does not bandy about such words so freely and without restraint, I would expect the same of the Twelfth, should his words carry such weight as to be prophecy and mandate.” She forced a thin smile, “But, then, I have not been inducted into the mysteries of the machine cult like you yourself have been, and can offer only the opinions of an outsider on these matters. Forgive me for saying this, but I do not believe such a… visit would do much to assuage the threat made against my person.”

Tienxia shook her head and raised a single chiding finger. “Though I can excuse not wanting to pay much heed to the proverbial circus the two Primarchs have made of these affairs, still one should pay mind to the cognizance of their repute. Augor Astren, for example, has a reputation for honesty. He is capable of deceit, naturally, but he has made a point of demonstrating over a span of nearly two centuries that his literal word is his bond. It is one of the few things concerning his own character of which he has remarked himself to be ‘justly’ proud. Hence, the sudden crux of your capability to invoke a Divine Paradox. He is a Primarch. Even in the throes of fugue, this very possibility is something that has occurred to him, of that we can be certain. So yes - the threat might not abate. That depends on how much weight you afford his pride in this matter, but given your action would be doctrinally significant, it would certainly at least give him pause.”

Tienxia’s hand fell. “You can entertain the route of possible absolution, or you can let the Machine consume you.”

Ayushmatki remained silent for a time, watching the woman in front of her with an expression that belied no hint of emotion. “Thank you, Magos, for your warning.”

“Oh, no thanks is required.” Tienxia remarked flippantly as she turned to leave the room. “Why, I was practically obligated to tell you. After all, doctrinally, all that is about to transpire would mean so much less, had you not known.”

Right at the threshold of the room, Tienxia paused faintly and spoke, back still turned to Ayushmatki, in a calm and even intonation that carried with it a leaden weight.

“You will not live to see the Sun in Splendor ever again. It is the Will of the Machine God.”

The Tech-Priest left without another word.

Ayushmatki leaned back in her chair, pressing her thumb and index finger to the bridge of her nose. The burnt scent of the ashes scattered across the floor, all that was left of the chair she had offered the Magos, wafted across her face. “I suppose it was too much to hope the damn cog-fuckers would see reason and work together with us for the betterment of the Imperium as a whole, wasn’t it?”

She looked to the two Astartes that had shadowed her for near the entirety of the Council, each standing within the far corners of the room. “Kumari, Devaki, thank you. You may return to the Legion, if you wish. Eiohsa has given you leave to do as you see fit in this regard.” She sighed, “Sometimes, I wish I could still get drunk.”

[...End Log.]
[...Terminating.]
[Imperial Thought for the Day: Fear not the enemy with sword in hand before you, but that guised as your own among you.]

The Grim Crusade - A Warhammer 30000 RP

The Duel

_{Now Kill And Make Up}

Year: 001.M31

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The progenitors of both the Stargazers and the Daughters of Iron had been requested to stay on station near Nikaea after the audience with the Emperor had finally concluded. Such a request meant little from most, even some of the Imperium’s highest notables, but this came from the newly christened Warmaster. Delays galled Daena, especially in considering the severity of the situation, but they were necessary. Augor had more pressing business, and Eiohsa…. Eiohsa was far too raw after having seen her daughters toyed with like a juvenat’s schola experiments. Time was required for the both of them.

But there had been time enough. Both had been summoned not to the planet below, but to the Doomsayer’s Gloriana, the Redemption. The siblings were directed to land in a massive cargo bay that had been cleared for the occasion, the cavernous chamber empty for the moment save for the winged Warmaster herself. No grand reception awaited the Primarchs, and the Angel had even forgone her own panopoly. She sat in the exact center of the bay, dressed in plain black training gear, wings folded over herself as she focused her mind on what was to come. A part of her wished she was fighting orks instead.

Without fanfare, a single small vessel approached and docked within the vast battleship. From it, a small procession departed, headed by a massive figure. Towering over approximately a dozen companions clad in simple garb from Kayaamat and the other worlds of Saravata, the Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion strode forward, her expression blank. Since her meeting with the Emperor, and the night of merriment aboard her own flagship, she had stewed in her thoughts within her private quarters. Change was, slowly, taking form in her mind. The thoughts and sensations of those around her no longer drifted into her - still a novel sensation, or lack thereof. She was alone with nothing but her thoughts and the echoes of the dead. Eiohsa was clad not in the ceremonial armor she had worn during the council, but an unadorned and utilitarian suit of terminator armor. The heavy armored footfalls of the master-crafted suit echoed across the empty bay as she approached her target.

“Daena.” She said simply as she drew near her sister, inclining her head slightly. “My apologies that my foolish actions have lead to this.”

A sliver of Daena’s consciousness noted her sister’s arrival, the urge to grin and to frown warring within her as she appraised Eiohsa. She had been dour for so long that the Angel doubted she would understand what was so humorous about her appearance. “Sister. You have come ready for war,” the Mistress of the XIVth said in a soft voice, less accusation and more statement of fact. “I would ask for you to sit with me, but,” she added with a shrug as she trailed off, voluminous wings rippling about her as she did, sending a soft rain of feathers to the deck. “Nonetheless, be at peace. We await our brother.”

“Forgive me, then, sister.” Said Eiohsa, nodding her head once more. “I… I assumed that was why I was here.”

She nodded to the small entourage that followed her, and two attendants stepped forward, skilled hands moving with practiced ease and dexterity. The hiss of airtight seals releasing filled the air around them, mechanical locks releasing, powered connections dying down. With a small nod of thanks, she stepped down from the chassis of war, clad in a simple bodysuit similarly devoid of decoration or extravagance.

She sat down, cross legged, beside Daena to wait, “You believe, then, that he may be dissuaded from violence?”

"I was named master of war, Eiohsa. Not bringer of it," Daena murmured, the core of her attention far from the physical space that they happened to share. “I believe his vengeance may be mitigated. But now, silence while we wait.”

Their brother did not come quietly.

Clearly having made the same assumption that Eiohsa herself had, the Primarch of the Twelfth Legion had saw fit to reroute the Light of the Omnissiah, the Twelfth Legions’ own Gloriana-class vessel, to draw abreast of the Redemption less than a thousand kilometers off to its sister vessel’s starboard side. Where the Redemption was almost inconspicuous in the backdrop of space with its subdued black and silver color scheme, the Light of the Omnissiah was a blaring and brazen icon of brilliance in the void. Much of its coloration adhered to the standard pattern of Mars, albeit with the superlative addition of gold across most of its structure. The massive craft had also been given substantial external modifications that seemed to be purely aesthetic. Towering cathedrals, spires, immense icons of the Cog Mechanicum and a giant sigil depicting the Emperor in his aspect as the Omnissiah dominated the surface area of the exterior hull. Swarming about it like remoras around a shark were dozens of escort craft and what looked like personal Imperial transports. Few of these were broadcasting Twelfth Legion IFF signals, but instead seemed to be ships of the true Mechanicum, as well as the personal vessels of several Remembrancers and even two which were part of the retinue of the High Lords.

Likewise, Augor did not deign to transit over to the Redemption via shuttle, but instead by way of a light cruiser that docked directly with the comparatively massive Gloriana - sticking out almost like a vibrant thorn from the larger, darker craft’s flank.

Thankfully, their brother’s excess had halted there. He arrived in the same armor and harness he had worn during the Council, and his retinue was even somewhat smaller than Eiohsa’s, discounting the swarm of servo-skulls - though it included, notably, a number of Remembrancers who had doubtlessly been sent invitations to join him. His expression as he emerged into the hold was inscrutable - his empty gaze, the set of his mouth, and the lines of his face revealing nothing.

The atmosphere of the chamber suddenly seeming to strain and flood with the tang of ozone, remaining an indicator of his disposition.

“Warmaster.” Augor halted ten meters away and bowed expansively to Daena, before rising and making a two-handed gesture of the Cog Mechanicum with his bionic hands. “First amongst the Omnissiah’s children. I trust his will shall be furthered here between us.”

He finally smiled - though still his sentiment was inscrutable. The only thing his smile revealed was teeth. “I have foreseen it.”

Daena stood slowly, unfurling as she raised herself off of the ground. It was a show for the Remembrancers, one that she engaged in without much conscious thought, but the picts of the Primarch’s wings unfolding were no less impressive for being a show. The bow was returned in kind, the symbol of the cog pointedly not. It would not do for her to reply to it even if she did believe.

“Augor, my brother, you who found me in the dark. The first of our siblings I saw with my own eyes,” she said in a sad voice, her memories flashing to the days of the decimated Stargazers, whose losses against the Rangdan had been so terrible. In those days, Augor Astren had been a piteous, wretched shell of a man, tortured and uncertain in all things. Nothing like the confident and calculatingly severe Primarch who stood before her now. “Our Father’s will shall be done, of that you have my word. There is nothing He despises more than discord between His children, and I endeavor to solve this here and now, if you would listen. I will not deny that a great insult has been done to you.”

“‘Great’ does not sufficiently describe it, Warmaster. Civilizations have perished for even the suspicion of such accusation. Hundreds of billions of souls consigned to nucleonic fire. It was the first of the Omnissiah’s Exigencies stipulated in the Treaty of Mars, and one that required no adjustment by the ruling priesthood of the Mechanicum, for it was already their will. There is no greater adversary to Humanity than Abominable Intelligence. My sister has done no less than declare me the antithesis not only of all of Humanity, of the Imperium, and of the Mechanicum, but of our father as well.”

Augor did not even look at Eiohsa as he spoke, though he did raise a pointed talon to jab emphatically in her direction. “It is the single greatest condemnation that can be uttered. I would slay one of my own sons for aiming such a disparagement at anybody without just cause. Even a xenos. The gravity with which I take this insult cannot be understated.” Augor’s words were clearly rehearsed, and evidently just as much for show as Daena’s own motions.

“As you say,” Daena said with an inclination of her head. “And if I felt our sister spoke in truth, I would not have called you here. You know as well as I what she has seen - not just the horrors freshly of now, but those she endured in the Rangdan. I speak to you not only as my brother, but as one of few who can say they know what those days called for. I ask of you, as a father, were it not for the clarity of thought granted by the Machine-Cult, can you not imagine yourself saying the rash and impudent so soon to witnessing the desecration of your own sons?”

“Perhaps I can - but respectfully, Warmaster, I cannot conclude that my sister’s words were borne of either recklessness or grief. The subject of the gathering was one the Sixteenth Primarch was in favor of and, by her own admission, has been practicing to an extent - and furthermore, I was not the object of her legitimate and otherwise righteous wrath and despair. I made a rational appeal to the avowal of our souls to the Omnissiah, to our duty to all of mankind and our obligation to save those who might forsake their oaths. I cannot imagine a Primarch taking such leave of their senses, nor any Astartes for that matter, to such an extent as to levy such a perilous insult in that moment unless it was to elicit a calculated effect.” Augor’s intonation was clear, and he carefully enunciated every individual syllable as he carried on.

“You forget, brother.” Spoke the Sixteenth, her words carefully measured. “I do not merely see that which is around me. I feel it - I perceive it - as though the experiences of those others around me are my own. Tell me truthfully, Brother - have you held your dying sons in your arms? Felt the life slip from their bodies violated by the cruelest sciences ever dreamt by human minds? Felt that violation as if your own flesh and blood? Then have you stood before an assemblage of your kin who not only denied that such wrongs could have been perpetrated, but some claiming them to be visited by your own hand? Then, have you stood before your brother who tells you, to your face, that there is never enough?” She fixed him with an even, expressionless gaze, but the anguish in her words was evident. “My opposition was not, and never will be, to the procedures themselves. You are correct - I have used them in the past, and will continue to use them in future. What I argued for was mercy. For nuance. And in my fury, and my foolishness, I believed you had none.”

She stood, walking to him, “Show me then, that I was wrong.”

Augor held a bionic palm up and out to halt Eiohsa’s approach, and six servo-arms noticeably craned up and inwards just as she came within striking distance - giving him for all intents and purposes the appearance of a spider that was rearing up to attack.

“I spoke then, that those whose words meant nothing bore hearts of insipid ashes to be swept away by all true servants of the Imperium. You directed the most dire aspersion possible to me, my sons, and my followers. I in turn, swore a curse upon you. A personal oath of vengeance that I shall carry with me either until it is fulfilled or I am no more - an oath that I swore upon the Omnissiah himself, our father, in his very presence.”

Augor still faced Daena as he spoke, staring directly past Eiohsa’s head as she stood before him in a deliberate refusal to acknowledge her proximity. Only once he had finished speaking did he finally turn his hollow eyes to the Sixteenth Primarch.

“Unlike some, my word is my bond. I am capable of mercy. My vow in this matter affords none. You have done this to the both of us, sister. I am obligated to carry out this sentence - and I see no reason not to begin now.”

He raised his Omnissian Axe in one hand and brought its haft down to bang against the bay’s hull, as though a judge delivering his final verdict. He continued to speak, though now his words were subtly embodied by his rhetorical power, the same psyker abilities he used to deliver sermons and battlefield litanies now being directed in condemnation of his sister. Even if it scarcely had any impact upon his fellow Primarchs, the effect it would have upon their retinues would prove immense, and what the Remembrancers would bring away with them would prove the efficacy of his words - which was likely his intention.

“As to the matter of my sons and my care for them, I can say with perfect clarity that I care more for the life and suffering of a single one of my Astartes than you care for your entire legion combined. You play at war, sending your daughters to be slaughtered in droves, as if the only thing you learned from the Rangdan Xenocides was how to spend their lives freely. Do not speak to me of the cruelty of science. Do not speak to me of violation. Do not speak to me of loss. I am Augor Astren, Primarch of the Stargazers, and I have borne witness to horrors you can scarcely fathom in the darkest reaches of the cosmos beyond the light of our father’s Astronomican. I have safeguarded the Imperium of Man from the most malignant and insidious forces in the galaxy, far from the eyes of any who might offer thanks or praise, and I have not spoken of them for their very knowing would be a toxin in the minds of all fair and noble Adepts. I have liberated worlds, civilizations, dynasties from the clutches of depravity that you do not even have the basis of knowledge to comprehend - and at Vaomir, my sons and I cast down and smote the greatest threat the Imperium has ever known since the Rangdan. All of this and more, I have done while ensuring the vows and oaths sworn by us all were kept true, and doing everything within my power and where possible to preserve the lives of my sons. You speak of your daughter’s execution as if it was mercy, as if you stand upon the zenith of morality to claim that her suffering in that moment was greater than us, greater than our capacity to heal the fallen, greater than our father and his infinite insight, and perhaps most blasphemous of all - that her anguish was somehow greater than your daughter herself. You permitted her to be executed to appease a shadow. Of course I do not call your folly mercy - not when I know it was well within our power to restore to her a full life and the capability to experience joy, without forcing her to perish in ignominy and to have made a liar of her and yourself in the process. You, Eiohsha izva Bronakavh, are craven, bereft of the capability to love, and bereft of integrity - and you have not yet even begun to experience the immensity of my displeasure.”

“You dare?” Said she, her voice hollow at first, filled with more disbelief than anger. She stood, eyes wide, before responding in kind, her own voice ringing with the might that had felled empires and humbled kings. Her spear flew to her hand as she stood defiant before him, striking its butt upon the ground in turn. “You DARE!? I have faced horrors the likes of which you could scarce-dream. You dare claim I throw my daughters' lives away like the Sixteenth’s leaders of old? I and my daughters have fought without end. Fought in the darkest campaigns the Imperium has born witness to. I know more than you could even begin to comprehend of sufferi-”

“Prevaricate all you want. I shut off all the recording devices and started broadcasting neurostatic interference the moment you opened your errant mouth.” Augor cut her off lazily, not even raising his voice. The onlookers in his retinue, who might otherwise have been appalled by the shockingly low ploy, seemed to be swayed by his warp-laden words - and some of them even snickered aloud as his desired sentiment overbore their wills.

“Enough,” Daena hissed, the word a spell of its own. Though she lacked their father’s might, it nonetheless sufficed to cut through the veil of warpcraft Augor had weaved, the order laced with her gene-gift. “If you have rage enough to engage in such showmanship, then it shall be redirected. Talk is pointless if you insist on these games, brother. The both of you can lay your sorrows end upon end for all the good that the comparison will do, or you,” she said, pointedly gazing at Augor, “can fulfill your oath with honor instead of perfidy and you,” she continued, shifting her head to Eiosha, “can rid yourself of your self defeating sorrows.”

“Answer, for if you seek to continue upon your present course then neither of you shall be welcome here.”

Eiohsa’s expression did not change in response to the Warmaster’s commands. She remained silent for a moment, the air around her smelling of ozone as it crackled with energy. Eventually, she looked away from Augor, towards her sister. “I shall do as you wish, sister, if our brother will do the same.” Eiohsa nodded to Daena. “What rules would you set forth?”

“My daughters had a way of things, when they still strode upon Old Earth,” Daena said, speaking more for the cameras than for Eiosha. “Our Father had many generals and chiefs sworn to his service, most of whom had sworn mighty oaths of great calumny and rage upon one another. These could not be set aside, but neither could they be permitted to slay their foe, for their lives had been bound by oaths mightier still to the Emperor. As have yours,” she said in a flat voice, turning between Augor and Eiosha before settling her gaze upon her sister.

“Of the crime you have been accused of, I find you guilty. Of the oath sworn to seek recompense, I find it fair - kinder by far than most would receive. But I shall decide when and how it will be fulfilled, to ensure the functioning of our Father’s will. For now though, neither of you are in the mood to accept dooms pronounced. No. You shall bleed each other of your wrath and sorrow, and I shall decide when you are ready, as the Judicators of old.”

Daena paused there, and with a single leap thrust herself within the air, gazing down upon her siblings with a pitiless gaze. “The rules are simple. You shall not compromise the structural integrity of this chamber. You shall not cause damage to any other area of this vessel. You shall not bring injury or harm to any aside from each other. And you shall not kill. Know that this is not the beginning of the settlement, merely its prologue. Do you find these terms acceptable, brother, sister?”

Eiohsa nodded, giving no hint to the flurry of emotion that raged within her. Her face was like an effigy of iron, unmoving and cold. Within, she felt the warring sensations of fury and resignation. Fury that she had been forced into such circumstances. Fury that she had faltered in her duties to such an extent. Fury with the man who stood across from her. Fury even at her beloved sister. But there was resignation - she was tired of war and of conflict. Tired of constant struggle. Tired of suffering and misery and the inevitable cycle of hardship and strife. She did not want to fight. She did not want to take up her spear against her brother. She wanted no part in further bloodshed, even against him. But she gave no hint of these emotions. “Yes.” She said, the vortex that whirled within her audible only to those of her retinue who knew her well, and perhaps to the Angel who called down from above. “I do.”

“I do not.” Augor stated flatly. “Pardon me, Warmaster, but such an arena is far too disadvantageous to my opponent, and I decline to elaborate as to what parameters might render it more suitable as that would prove sufficiently disadvantageous to myself. However, beyond your choice of arena, I find your terms acceptable. If I may suggest an alternative?”

Daena smiled wryly at her brother, and then gave a nod. “By all means.”

Augor brought up a hand to the side of his head and murmured a binaric command. After a moment he uttered another before resuming his former posture. “I have just ordered one of my ships to launch a single shock charge upon the planet’s surface within the range of the current terraforming efforts - the remainder of our forces have been alerted so as to deter alarm. The blast shall level the terrain and create a relatively even, featureless waste upon which the both of us may suitably vent our wrath upon the other in accordance with your terms - and more fairly.” Augor inclined his head to Daena, ever so faintly.

“Let it be done.”

Eiohsa nodded. “Very well, then.”

888888888888

As both of the Primarchs returned to their transports - Eiohsa to return to her own ship and Augor simply heading directly to his light cruiser’s teleportarium - Mercaerath strood alongside his father with a frown.

“Father. You have deceived the Warmaster. By your own acknowledgement she is first amongst the Omnissiah’s children. Were you in your right mind, you yourself would demand just cause for your own behavior.”

Augor nodded. If there was anybody in the galaxy he would accept such chastisement from freely, it was Kyrius, savior of more than simply his life. “I weighed my obligation of loyalty to the Warmaster against the vow I swore before the Omnissiah. I concluded that insofar as one does not directly contravene the other, my vow supersedes her authority. That is why such deception was ultimately necessary. Insofar as the Warmaster permits herself to be deceived, I cannot permit her to interfere with this matter. That is why I had our Remembrancers transmitting a live feed to be edited and redistributed in real time, in case the Warmaster demanded I terminate their recording at any point. I could then truthfully claim that it was beyond my immediate power to prevent its dissemination.”

“And I imagine you believe that also justifies the orders you sent?” Kyrius asked inquisitively. “You claimed advantage simply to reap the benefits of another unspoken one?”

“I yielded a small advantage for the benefit of reaping a greater one.” Augor corrected. “Binharic invocations and communion with the Machine Spirits and Master Spirit of the Redemption would have taken time and concentration and would not have sufficiently skewed the battle in my favor, potentially. Always remember this, Kyrius - the mind, itself, is the most formidable weapon we all possess. I elected to use mine in the pursuit of the curse I lay upon my foe. That my enemy declined to do so and that the Warmaster permitted me to is the Sixteenth’s failure and the Fourteenth’s decision.”

“Some might argue that you invite further accusation of perfidy and injustice, father.”

“Such arguments are correct, but we are far beyond the grounds of reticence and reason. If I have to snuff out every star in the void to see my vow fulfilled, it will be done, and I will apologize for nothing and to nobody for what I had to do. So I swore. Would you do any differently, Kyrius?”

Kyrius was silent for several moments, staring straight ahead as they advanced before answering.

“I do not know. I permit that your sister’s trespass demands answer. I remain uncertain if all of…this remains necessary.”

“I swore before the Omnissiah.” Augor repeated. “If I deem it necessary, then so be it.”

888888888888

“Bad start,” Vairya Kurus said laconically, the Doomsayer’s Legion Mistress fitting her gene-mother’s armor onto her divine frame. “Shouldn’t have let him bring his entire entourage aboard.”

“He is the wronged party,” Daena said softly, staring impassively at a hololith of Nikaea below. The blast-site of the Twelfth Legion’s shock munition seemed exactly as promised from remote analysis, simply a wide crater in the terrain, though direct analysis would be necessary to determine whether its mundane appearance matched its nature. “I permitted him his game, but he will accept my judgement. He must,” she finished in a flat voice.

“And if he doesn’t?” the XIVth’s second in command asked, clasping her Primarch’s breastplate tight against her.

“Then he doesn’t. It would not be our first enforcement,” she muttered, though both knew what she did not say. ‘Enforcements’ were trivial affairs when the disagreements were between mortals, or even Astartes, for the will of the Legion was absolute and its might unassailable. Dealing with other Primarchs was another matter entirely.

“Mother.”

“I know, Vairya.”

888888888888

“Take up thy Armor, Strength, and bear upon thy shoulders the harm wrought by thy foe who would stand in service of the Malevolent.”

The words echoed within the throats not of thousands, but of only three. The sacred Litany before battle. In a chorus of millions, its words had formed the death knell of many an empire. Now, she took what little comfort she could in them.

“Take up thy Shield, Love, and protect those dear to your heart from thy foe who would stand in service of the Malevolent.”

The chant was broken up by the sound of armored plate sealing into place. The hiss and whine of capacitor banks charging filled the air. The mechanical rack as heavy shells chugged into place within meticulously tuned firing mechanisms. Layered forcefields of exquisite make flickered to life with a dull hum. The eerie sound of an arsenal to fell an empire assembled in comparative silence.

“Take up thy Horn, Wisdom, and lead the forces of the Light against thy foe who would stand in service of the Malevolent.”

Eiohsa stood, accompanied only by two trusted companions within this chamber. Ayushmatki had departed days ago, returning to the management of the Saravati Empire and bidding her friend of centuries a concerned farewell. None of her flesh and blood tended to her amidst sculptures worked by her own hand from the iron of a thousand sundered empires. Two mortals. A man and a woman, both from her home of Kayaamat, assisted her in the donning of her armor. Their voices spoke in perfect tandem with her own.

“Take up thy Sword, Duty, and in defiance strike down thy foe who would stand in service of the Malevolent.”

No other words were spoken during this time, for there was nothing else to say. Her spear was light and agile in her hand, perfectly crafted. It had perhaps no equal in the galaxy. Yet despite that, the weight felt magnified a thousand-fold. She had not wanted it to come to this.

“Take up thy Holy Cause, the Good Creed Devasayana in devotion to Devan above and below us, and cleanse their world of the taint of thy foe who would stand in service of the Malevolent.”

Silence elapsed as the two attendants inclined their heads slowly, marking the sign of divinity across their chests as their leader strode forth, clad in her monstrous suit of war.

---

Eiohsa spoke with a dull monotone into her armor’s vox-link. “I want the full report from your orbital scan the moment it’s finished processing. I want a full team with me to reconnoiter the area. I do not trust my brother in the slightest.”

“Understood, mother.”

“Only a fool would surrender an advantage willingly.” She scoffed. “My brother is many things - and a fool is not one of them. I will sniff out what he has attempted to rig in his favor with this battlefield. And it will be his undoing.”

“What do you intend?”

“I intend to do what is best, child.” Said Eiohsa, her expression impossible to discern behind the visor. “One way or another, I have already lost this battle. Whether it ends with my spear at his throat, or his own blade at mine, I have lost.”

888888888888

The analyst, selected by the Fourteenth, had preceded the other groups to the battlefield and carefully examined it, sampling the earth and performing penetrating scans of the terrain.

"Surface impact crater's material composition appears mundane.” She reported to Daena upon her arrival. Her tone was perfunctory and unconcerned. “Mineral composition is many times higher in density than the norm for this region, but falls inside expected parameters given forces of compressive and thermal shock due to impact from a shock-round bombardment. Surface composition is a calefaction-hardened thermal crust, trace radiation detected below the norms of what was expected. Trace heat and thermal instability in pockets throughout, all falling within expected parameters. No anomalous structures or substances detected beneath the surface. This...is a crater. In ten years it will be impossible to distinguish from a natural one."

Daena glanced down at the analyst for a moment, but only a moment. “We both know that is not true. Geologically, topographically, certainly. But in the ways that matter? This place will be remembered,” she said in a tired voice, the certainty of her pronouncement warring with the apprehension as to what it would be remembered for.

“Let my siblings proceed with their bloodletting.”

Across to the Northern edge of the crater, Augor and his retinue - now including a veritable army of Tech-Priests and Artificers - swarmed over and around the Twelfth Primarch, tending to every scant centimeter of his armor and armaments. The Primarch himself stood, unmoving, serene, and unreadable as he prepared for the fight ahead.

From the Southern edge, Eiohsa observed the crater through the visor of her helmet. Around her swarmed myriad mortals and Astartes alike, fussing over last minute quadruple checks of every single system within the armor, uttering hurried prayers for her victory, and more. Eiohsa herself remained immobile, her expression fixed into a scowl as she surveyed the land, eyes peeled for any irregularities in it.

“I suppose this cannot be delayed any further.” She said, hefting her spear and preparing to enter the crater. “Let us see what trickery my brother has intended.”

Across to the other side, Augor’s horde of technicians had finally moved away, and the Twelfth Primarch, now in his full and true wargear, leapt from the lip of the crater to land with a crowning waft of unsettled dust in the depression below - from where he began to stalk forward slowly. Turning the full might of her armor’s auspexes and her warp-sight onto her brother, Eiosha pried into everything she could discern about his gear based on sight alone.

Before her senses could even touch upon his armor itself, they passed through no less than three imperceptible, concentric rings of variant forces, each one layered over the last. Force fields, each one of a different make and with different properties. Two of them were recognizable as a refractor field and as the conversion field generated by an Iron Halo. The third eluded her repository of knowledge, but from what she had heard it seemed likely to be one of the Mechanicum’s so-called ‘Voltagheist’ fields - something she had never personally seen employed before but knew academically was employed by their frontline zealots of lower-order priests, the Corpuscarii and Fulgurites.

Finally reaching his armor itself, Eiosha immediately took in the startling degree of irregular asymmetry to the design. The chassis was one that had been taken apart and reworked painstakingly over a century. Every nodule, every bump, every groove and every segment there told a story. This was the armor of a man who learned from every injury and misstep he suffered, building himself up and around them. Each irregularity in the armor’s surface represented a moment in its history where it must have suffered substantial damage and had been subsequently modified to render it imperishable. Based solely from what she could observe on the surface, the outermost layer was some form of reactive armor rather than being a more regular and conventional ceramite or adamantine alloy. That was not the most concerning thing however.

What truly made Eiosha take notice of that armor was its recent history. Her insight informed her, certain as battle-steel, that the Twelfth Primarch’s armor had not suffered so much as a scratch inside of the last three decades. This was armor that had been tempered and molded in conflict and war until both it and its wearer had evolved to the point where injury had become a remote hypothetical.

She then turned his gaze to his weapons.

His many, many weapons. His bionic talons, she knew, were electrostatic gauntlets. He held, lightly for the moment, his Omnissian Power Axe in one hand - its configuration was abnormal even for the wildly divergent designs of the Mechanicum. She knew enough to determine that it was truthfully another weapon which, incidentally, had been adorned and also functioned as a power axe. It seemed to be channeling and siphoning radiant energies directly into it, as if it were the end-point of flowing current for the entire area. Mounted on each of Augor’s back-mounted servo arms was a different weapon module, each ensconced in an encapsulating mechanism that shielded them from her awareness, for now. Lesser mechadendrites writhed at the joints of the Primarch’s armor, each bristling with penetrating mechanisms or else digital emitters - and as she watched, Augor Astren made his first substantive move.

He hefted his power axe in both hands, and slammed its haft down onto the crust of the crater floor. Immediately, there was a massive discharge of volatile energies, and the crust where the haft had slammed down fell apart into a superheated slurry of magma and molten metal. Writhing across Augor’s armor, the insidious mechadendrite hive that had been seated betwixt his mounted limbs pulled itself across his arms, dangling itself above the superheated pool of lava...into which it then dropped itself, instantly becoming submerged and vanishing into the pool. It was then that one of Augor’s six servo-arms reared up and its capsule drew back, revealing one of the concealed weapons. Opting not to start with his favored Conversion Beamer, Eiosha could instantly discern that the dish-shaped, radial implement he was pointing at her was some kind of sonic weapon - something she had never seen employed anywhere in the Imperium before. It was something she only knew of from her encounters with the Eldar, though the make of Augor’s device was nothing like their slim and graceful designs. It bore instead the hallmark boxy and tumorous aesthetics expected of a Mechanicum armament.

Eiosha’s analysis was interrupted by the then nearly imperceptible - the barely audible whine of harmonic resonance. The sonic device was more than just a weapon - Augor was using it to scan her. Immediately, one of her armor’s alerts pinged - the sound being emitted by the device was modulating along a number of frequencies, each one reverberating until it pulsed against a layer of Eiosha’s armor or some element of her equipment, probing for weak points and applying strain to them.

As that happened, her auspexes also reported a shift in the surrounding atmospheric pressure. It was climbing. A storm was brewing, and the wind picked up, starting to fill the depression of the crater with dust - and then, a second alert pinged. Her armor’s insulation and capacitors were fighting off some impulse to dump her power reserves into the open air - and then, she felt the last of it. Augor’s psychic touch. He was reaching out across the immaterium like a leech to feed off of her vital energies.

Despite herself, Eiohsa smiled. Something in her blood, implanted so many centuries ago deep within the laboratories of Terra, revelled in the sensation of battle. That such battle might be against an equal - a foe to challenge herself, to best her, even, was a rare delight to be savored. Everything else fell away into the bottomless void of oblivion as the spirit of war took hold. She breathed deep, before her senses once more encompassed all that surrounded her.

She seized upon her own armor, strong-arming its systems into line. Her mind raced against every new threat, reacting in near-instantaneous fashion against the actions of her enemy. Her armor adjusted itself as she brute-forced its systems into configurations never before intended, adjusting the resonant frequency of each component when the probing of her foe’s sonic weaponry found its mark. The tendrils of her brother’s energy writhed around her, and she seized those in turn, summoning her own reserves of strength as she repulsed his attack.

“You’ll have to do better than that!” She called, commencing her own offensive. Against such a foe, much of her arsenal would be worthless - and it was thus that the Maw of Yaman rose to its firing position, spitting forth a terrible payload of heavy bolts in the direction of her foe. Her spear sang in her hand as she pushed herself along, ethereal wisps of energy floating behind her as she raced towards her quarry at speeds that ought have been impossible.

Her enemy’s psychic attack had been rebuffed - but it instantly resumed. It would be a battle of attrition in the warp. She could continuously fend him off. He could continuously attack her. At some point the toll in concentration would be telling for one of them. As Eiosha leapt into her furious charge, unloading a storm of bolter rounds in Augor’s direction, he raised two servo-arms and their capsules drew back, revealing their implements.

The first was an eradication beamer - a well-known if still esoteric weapon of war mounted on the Mechanicum’s Onagers. Its tip pulsed, and a ray of scintillating yellow light erupted forth in a wide cone. The bolter rounds that entered that field of yellow light frayed at the edges and began to tumble and spin in their flight, some of them even unraveling and dissolving into particulate matter as the field of energy atomized them. The piteous remnants of her bolter volley that made it through the burst of light were so tattered they could no longer even be called munitions, and were swept across and away upon Augor’s force fields like dust.

The second was another well-known weapon employed by the Mechanicum’s Taghmata - an oversized torsion canon. Its workings remained a mystery even to Eiosha, but what it did was evident enough - it was a gravity weapon. But he was not aiming it at her, at least not yet. He was aiming it at the terrain -

The ground erupted beneath Eiosha’s feet, completely robbing her of traction and forward momentum as the Earth itself collapsed beneath her. A cataclysm of earth, rock, and crust flew up in every direction as the Twelfth Primarch’s Torsion cannon simply ripped the ground beneath Eiosha’s feet up and out from under her before slamming it back down on top of her. Every time she attempted to break free, he simply did the same, continuously pulling earth and rocks out from under her. The ground itself seemed to be alive under the Twelfth Primarch’s ministrations, and without traction, even a Primarch could not charge - and all the while, he continued to attack her through the warp.

Once again, she seized the tendrils of his psychic attack as soon as they latched onto her, crushing them in her grip. She snarled, hurling a furious storm of warp-lightning against her foe. A vast, torrential column of concentrated hatred that homed in upon the Twelfth. She aimed her weapons at him once more, firing off another volley of bolter rounds at him. The deafening blast filled the air as she felt the adrenaline of facing a true opponent fill her. In the miasma of debris she struggled through, many of her bolts simply went astray and even her Warp Lightning grounded in a few chunks of earth - but enough got through to remain a threat. The Twelfth Primarch still had not even moved from his starting position, simply firing another ray from his eradication beamer to sweep away her hail of projectiles, and raising a single hand to summon currents of his own warp lightning while reaching out to individually quash the psychic energies much as she did with his own. The fearsome current of her purple and blue energies wrestled in an incandescent clash in the air above the crater with the gold and red energies of her brother - all through it, her auspex scanners dutifully informed her that the Twelfth Primarch’s energy reserves seemed to be climbing rather than depleting as would be expected with such free use of such heavy and energy intense weaponry - but he could not possibly be draining the energy from her warp lightning. So how? Where was he getting his power?

She summoned her strength, forcing apart the terrain itself with an almighty head of psychic might. With a terrible groaning, boulders were torn from the earth, varying in size from that of a man to that of a tank. She cast her hand towards him, hurling the meteor swarm towards her target at such a terrific speed, they became naught but a blur. She reached out to him with tendrils of her own mind, locking around whatever could be seized in a sudden grip of iron as invisible chains lashed out from the empyrean to bind her foe.

She threw herself, armor and all, from the ground that roiled beneath her feet, into the air. Enormous golden wings of a shimmering, radiant light burst forth from behind her as she held herself aloft, wreathed in a corona of golden light. She cast her senses about her once more, straining, through every resource she had at her disposal, to root out every last detail of her foe that she could.

She was distracted from her attempts to unravel the mystery of where Augor was getting his energy when she realized she could not move.

Augor, seemingly wholly unconcerned for the golden chains binding him, still had not moved from his spot - but his torsion canon had tracked Eiosha as she leapt into the air, and its gaol-rings began to hum and spin eerily. The boulders she had shapechanged and flung came apart in shards and lumps of clod, slowing and reversing in motion before being lazily flung away by unseen force - which latched onto Eiosha and held her immobilized in place. An alert in her armor informed her that was currently experiencing more than fifty times Terra-standard gravity - and that the gravitational forces acting on her were rapidly spinning, applying immense strain to every fiber of her being. Thankfully, for a brief moment, Augor’s psychic attacks had ceased - likely as he diverted his focus to abjure the chains she had put him in.

Drawing on her reserves of strength once again, she railed against the effects of her foe’s weapon, her eyes focused on him, burning with hatred. This was folly, she realized dimly. Attempting to destroy another Primarch outright, through brute force - especially the Twelfth - was naught but a fool’s errand.

The torsion cannon loomed large in her sight, and she focused all of her might upon it, boring into its internal workings with the fury of a woman possessed. It was an unfamiliar task, on an unfamiliar device, but as she felt it shift within her grip, she felt that same innate understanding begin to flood through her. She set to her task with a vengeance, tearing loose connections and wreaking whatever havoc within its internal workings that she could manage.

It worked - she saw the gaol rings along the torsion cannon’s emitter barrel sputter, spark, and grind to a halt. The capsule that normally ensconced it drew close - and in that moment, Eiosha saw the interior of the capsule seethe. Autocimulacra - the damage she had done was temporary. The torsion cannon was gone, but only for now. It was time to finally apply some pressure to her brother -

Her armor pinged with another alarm. Somewhere within it, Augor’s sonic weapon had resonated with something she had no sensory input with. It had only detected as much because of the rippling force that then transferred to the rest of the armor. Eiosha mentally tallied down the list of every individual component in her armor that was isolated from its own internal sensors but came up with a blank. There was nothing. The only material she had with her not plugged into her armor’s systems was -

...The two-stage solid rocket fuel in her bolter ammunition.

She could almost see the contemptuous smile on Augor’s face beneath his helmet as her golden chains dissolved from around him and he raised his free bionic hand to snap his fingers.

The frequencies she was blasted with then transformed from analytic to offensive, and the frictive power and strain of the acoustic forces that washed over her caused sparks to dance in exactly one part of her armaments: Her bolter rounds.

Eiohsa swore, cursing herself and the man in front of her. A quick pulse of information to the armor, and the hardpoints jettisoned their load with alacrity. Eiohsa threw up a wall of shimmering golden energy to shield herself from the blast as thousands of rounds detonated just as Augor’s psychic attacks also resumed. She seethed, redirecting her own psychic energy onto him once more. She swatted aside his own attack and observed that another one of his servo arms had reared up to take the place of the one that had mounted the torsion cannon. Its capsule unsealed, revealing the brutal, ribbed length of a neutron laser - another weapon used by the Mechanicum’s Onagers. If her armor was hit by that, no amount of shapechanging would save it. Neutron cascading would cause its constituent atoms to break apart and after a moment of exposure, freely begin to fuse and split. She could already see the ghostly-blue light of the neutron blast forming at its head.

Within the eerie blue light of the weapon’s charging, she saw her doom. Not by the hand of Augor Austren, but by the deathly glow of an atmospheric incinerator torpedo igniting in the upper atmosphere of the world of Arretius. Around her, friends and family watched in shock and horror as the fleet of the Sixteenth Legion abandoned them to the ravages of the xenos from beyond the stars. Not merely abandoned, rather, but consigned to burn in the fires of war for the failures of their leadership. She hugged her children tight, knowing there was nothing to be done as the blast consum-

Eiohsa cast her hand out, throwing a golden aura around the neutron laser to hold it fast and wrench it away from her, now held immobile in an irresistible psychic grip. Her eyes blazed within the helmet as she stared down and focused in on his mind. Tears streaked down her cheeks as she shook within her armor. Absent all subtlety, all finesse, all pretense of anything but pure, brute force, she began her assault on his mind.

She had mentally assailed many entities in her campaigns. Twisted malformed xenos, erratic, lunatic cultists, even a few Drukhari. She had also done so, a blissfully few number of times, on those she would normally have called allies - even those with augmented minds. Augor’s was, much to her surprise, largely unaugmented. Evidently he had decided his neural matter was too precious to risk fouling with artifice - though that did not mean nothing was there. His skull and cranium were ensconced in a cybernetic dome and crown, and as her psychic might lashed at it, her thread of focus split - and seemed to coil down Augor Astren’s nervous system, coursing down, down, down through his chest, across his arms and through his legs -

The terrain where the Twelfth Primarch was standing seemed to explode in a sudden pyroclastic eruption of molten earth and metal, a massive inferno seeming to swell and spread through the terrain at Augor’s feet. Finally evidently startled and unsettled for the first time since their duel had begun, Augor took several hurried steps back - which was when Eiosha noticed. He did not seem nearly as impaired as he should have been by her attack. Even though her thread psychic focus had been split, she had still touched his mind and forced visions into his mind. Visions of death. A terrible avenging angel who had come to visit a wrath unmatched by the fury of a thousand sons. Augor saw cities burn in the light of phosphex, felt the living flame eating away at his flesh, over and over, tens of millions of souls trapped within the malevolent, hateful grip of exterminatus. The biting, searing, rending agony as a planet was consumed. He was hurled through an endless void, adrift in a vast sea of endless, infinite psychic screaming. On and on it went, never ending. The final moments of countless human beings, brought about by the hand of the Sixteenth in her wars in the Emperor’s name. Augor died. Over and over again he died. His body was torn to shreds by bolter fire. His very soul lashed at by the golden light of the Spear of Ultima. An endless, piercing, soul chilling wail pervaded it all. The world exploded into ten trillion fractal particles of endless death and destruction, hammering into the Twelfth Primarch without end, without relent. As if his own flesh and blood, consumed by the ravages of war, he felt the full, mind numbing cacophony of the Sixteenth’s mind unload itself into him. Every iota of pain, sorrow, grief, despair, fury, rage, and agony she had born upon her shoulders from the lost voices of ten trillion souls for centuries unleashed in a blinding supernova that blotted out all else.

But as she had delivered her memories through her split thread of mental contact with his mind, she too saw his own thoughts and memories in turn, as though peering down upon his memories.

She was struck by the parallels and repulsed by fresh depravities even she had never experienced. Not only the similar immensity of the horrors he had witnessed and performed, but also by the grief, the rage, the utter despair that had accompanied him. Eiosha stood and saw herself partially reflected for a single solitary instant in her brother - and then she also saw his madness.

She saw planets full of Humans, enslaved by mind-devouring parasitic xenos. Saved by Augor Astren and the Stargazers and their technology - only for the Mechanicum to declare the entire population tainted. Only to witness the entire population forcibly lobotomized and converted into servitors. Only for the planet to be deemed ‘irrevocably’ unclean, and subjected to Exterminatus. A thousand campaigns fought, trillions of souls saved through stalwart effort and might, only to then be cast away like dice due to an errant word later. To suffer horrors at his own hands, or those of his own Imperium, far worse than what their fates would have been had he left them well enough alone in the clutches of ravenous xenos. She saw shapeless, writhing titans of tumorous flesh that eclipsed warships surging across plains, the sky embroiled with turbulent warp engines that seemed like they would unravel the skein of the cosmos. She saw technology, wonderous in its applications, either smashed or dismantled on the spot in spite of the good it might have done, the lives that might have been saved. She saw Augor Astren maim, mutilate, and murder tens of thousands of ordinary Adepts with his own hands for no crime greater than rank suspicion. Crowning the back of the recesses of his mind loomed some unseen, glorious, radiant idol with indiscernible features she could not make out - and at its feet was heaped a bloodied galaxy of torment. An offering borne before it both in adulation and appalled, bottomless guilt, as though begging for absolution.

Any normal man would have shattered under her attack. Augor Astren, with the mind of a Primarch, the experiences to match her own, and with the aid of the curious defensive mechanism he had clearly just employed, managed to bear the burden and recover after visibly recoiling.

’I admit, I am impressed.’ She heard his voice vox-casting to her on an open channel. ’In all my campaigns, I think I have only ever killed a single Psyker who was more powerful than you, witch.’

Despite his words, clearly meant to intimidate her, his actual distress could not be hidden from her senses. The attack had clearly injured him and spoiled his focus, somehow. Perhaps he was hemorrhaging internally, from the almost imperceptible, buzzing slur that accompanied his words. But all the same, the mechanism intended to deter psychic attack on his mind had channeled that warp energy through his electoos and cybernetics, directly through his hands, feet, and his power axe, to ground into the earth as raw power - which, in this case, had nearly caused him to be consumed in the previously small and unassuming pool of magma he had created when the duel had first begun. The device was not perfect - but she could now sense his psychic attacks fading away as he diverted his mental abilities fully to defending himself, and her auspexes registered several new power signatures coming online within his armor - cogitators that would help filter out and handle the strain from her attack even further.

’Yes...impressive indeed. More formidable than I estimated, an error on my part. I underestimated your capabilities and overestimated my artifice. This is an error that shall never be repeated.’ She felt the last connections between their minds slip away as his full psychic power became a bastion standing between them, and the golden light that encased the Twelfth Primarch’s neutron laser faded away.

Eiosha then noticed that her brother’s energy stores had drastically increased abruptly. The wind whistling through the crater had intensified, and the sky seemed to have darkened. Crackling static energy seemed to crawl across the ground and every exposed surface of her armor, all of it radiating and flowing to the Twelfth Primarch. The stench of ozone would have been overwhelming outside her helmet.

’...But I was also expecting you to have done this sooner.’

Realization dawned on her. The magma pool. He had generated it right at the start of the duel and dropped an entire mechadendrite hive down into it - and having just dumped the brunt of her psychic attack as raw power into the earth, it had just grown substantially. It had to be tied to his steadily climbing reserves of power.

Not intending to give her a free moment to contemplate the implications, Augor reoriented his neutron laser at Eiosha and fired. A beam of ghostly blue brilliance erupted into being.

The supercharged energy beam tore through the air, a bright lance of energy that impacted its target. The deadly beam sundered all in its path. Atoms were shredded to nothing in a blinding flash of light, the sound of flesh flash-boiling and of armor being torn asunder filled the air where the Sixteenth Primarch had been. The torn, mangled shreds of what remained fell to the ground with a heavy impact and slowly began to dissipate as the illusion wore off. Augor Astren whirled as his screaming sensors alerted him to the approach he had been ignoring - so addled had he been by the duplicity of the Sixteenth Primarch, the illusion had made him ignore his own armor’s readings in a single-minded moment of tunnel vision.

Before the remnants of the illusion impacted the ground, a blur of motion surrounded in a crackling golden aura slammed into the voltagheist field of the Twelfth Primarch. The shielding of her armor’s protective fields, and the corona of golden energy that surrounded her, sparked and fizzled in a brilliant display. Though her features were obscured by a helmet, all could hear the scream of primal fury that erupted from the radiant figure as she ploughed through the defenses of the Twelfth, driving the masterwork spear Atonement straight for the heart of her quarry.

Having penetrated through his voltagheist field and knowing that neither the refractor field nor the Iron Halo’s field could deter her physical presence, Eiosha had been certain there could be no further barriers to her attack - but Augor, though deceived, had not been caught entirely flat footed. The hair across her body bristled as the Twelfth Primarch’s voltagheist field pulsed, snapping off and then erupting back to functionality as a shockwave of arcing energies that surged outwards from Augor’s armor. She could sense Augor dumping a substantial chunk of his energy reserves into the pulse as well, enough to give it physical heft that forced her back, even as the Twelfth Primarch raised his Omnissian Axe in a double-handed grip to block while also backstepping. His servo arms all realigned, and once more separated from him, Eiosha could tell she had only an instant before they unleashed their fury on her.

And then, the magma pool exploded.

The head of the mechadendrite hive burst from the surface of the pool and fired a long stream of pressurized, cutting magma at her with enough force to power through tank armor - and it also carried in its currents the writhing form of several individual autonomous, worm-like constructs, each of them incandescent with molten heat.

Within that lava she heard armageddon. A million souls trapped within howled for her blood. Phantasmal, skeletal hands grasped for her, glowing with the malevolent red aura of war. They were coming for her. They were coming for her. They were coming for her. They were coming for her. They were coming to drag her into the earth, to drown amidst the blood of all who had died by her hand.

Eiohsa reacted on instinct. A golden, incandescent wall erupted between herself and her foe, slamming into each combatant with immense, unstoppable force. She, and Augor, were hurled apart from each other and away from the erupting pool of magma. Turning, she saw the mechadendrite hive sinking back into the molten depths even as the long line of lava it had spit out pooled in a stream across the ground. Perhaps a dozen writhing mechadendrites, each one radiant and glowing with white-hot intensity, coiled where they were on the ground and began to burrow and return below.

They were laughing at her now. The skulls within the ground that stared up at her with empty eye sockets that wept endless rivers of blood. They laughed at her. Helpless. Pathetic. Those twisting warped assemblages of the enemy writhed before her eyes, they would come for her again, she was sure of it. She would not go! She would not!

She reached out, seizing the twisted mass of glowing hot mechadendrites and every other as it tried to submerge once more beneath them. Her eyes glowed as she heaved at it with all her might, wrenching it and its spawn free and hurling them into the distance. Her eyes widened as she saw the glowing light of one of her opponent’s weapons.

Then, the entire world about her was bathed yellow as scintillating, dire yellow energy poured across her frame as the Twelfth Primarch’s eradication beamer emitted a cone of deadly energies at her. The ground and air around her shivered and then dissolved, atomized and rubbed from existence by that merciless presence.

Dozens of warnings flashed within her mind as parts of her armor were destroyed outright. Her conversion field - powerful enough to weather the full might of an enemy artillery battery - offered no aid against the ray of the eradication beamer. Eiohsa hurled herself into the air once more. Not directly up, but toward her opponent, through the narrower part of the deadly cone. She hurtled towards her foe once more, spear in hand as she plotted an irregular, errant path. The Twelfth Primarch’s eradication beamer could not steadily track her movement as it fired - but his other weapons could. Even as Eiosha spied the neutron laser’s capsule closing back up and another servo arm maneuvering into firing position in its place, the sonic weapon pulsed and bombarded her with a shock of resonant force - and now, her armor, heavily damaged and missing pieces all over, could no longer be adequately shapechanged on the fly to protect everything at once.

There was more laughter. Around the rim of the canyon stood the eighteen other Primarchs, the Emperor, her dear Ayushmatki. They stood. Silent. Judging. She screamed at them to say something, to intervene, to bring this madness to an end and to end her suffering. The voiceless throng of a million souls cackling in effervescent madness reached up around her, engulfing her.

Data still streamed into her mind through the augmetic cables in her spine even as she felt skeletal hands tearing at them within, and it became immediately obvious that she would be unable to protect all of her armor from this point on. Her arms, and her body, were the most vital points - and so the decision was reached almost immediately to sacrifice the protection of her legs. Eiohsa reached out once more, tearing free from the glowing red tendrils that lept from the ground to envelop her arms, her eyes, now partially exposed by the impact of her brother’s weapons, blazing with a golden light that blotted out all else. Tears streamed from them, as she focused her psychic might around the servo-weapons of her brother. With all of the force she could muster, she strained against the connections that held his weapons in place. A daunting prospect when she felt at those connections and realized that though the enemy doubtlessly had a procedure to remove the harness itself, while connected it and the servo arms were directly secured to his spine. Telekinetic force that could sunder the earth beneath them, rend apart the armor and chassis of the heaviest of tanks, and breach the mightiest of walls seized upon those connections, and pulled. It was harder than she could have ever imagined - but she felt cables beginning to give way under the strain. Metal shrieked in protest as it was torn from bone and flesh alike, just as the armor on her legs slowly began to disintegrate from the focused attention of the sonic lance - but she roared in triumph as three servo-arms were torn from him. Held aloft in the golden aura were the transonic lance, the torsion cannon, and the neutron cannon. She extended her arm, and clenched her fist. The weapons were crushed to scrap in her grip and flung to the horizons as she hovered above her foe.

As she turned, she saw the capsule mounted on the servo arm that had been repositioning had peeled back to reveal Augor Astren’s famed conversion beamer.

From her perspective, it seemed like the entire world suddenly exploded. Having used conversion beamers herself, she recognized peripherally that the Twelfth Primarch had missed her, likely due to her wrenching off three of the other arms and damaging the back-mounted harness itself. The stream of antimatter that he had fired had likely shot right by her by a meter or so and she was caught in the explosive annihilatory blastwave that blossomed into existence where it had passed, merely engulfing her in a tremendous blast from seemingly every direction at once.

The world began to fall to pieces around her. The continents shifted and buckled beneath her feet as the cataclysm engulfed her. She was carried aloft in the irresistible flow of destruction that encompassed her reality. The hands of bone seized her again, pulling her towards a white yawning maw as the earth itself split apart beneath her to reveal a catacomb of nothing but bone, jutting out at her, clawing for her, ready to seize her and to tear her apart. Perhaps, she prayed, it would free her.

Conversion beamers, she realized, some singular strain of logic piercing through her madness. One of her own favored tools of destruction. Against the motive elemental skills of her brother, however, it would be naught but a boon for him. The deadly beamers mounted in the arms of her armor were utterly useless in this battle, and the thought of using them had not even crossed her mind. Perhaps if Augor used his own conversion weapon against her again she could attempt to block the shot with her own antimatter streams, though that was but a single forlorn thought jumbling about in her mind as she fell from the sky and into the awaiting fields of bone below.

The ground warred with her. Trapping her. At the bidding of her foe, it clawed and bit at her, great gaping maws wrenching themselves from the ground to assail her. The world opened up beneath her as hard, white protrusions burst forth from it. The earth turned to a field of bone beneath her feet, and she began to sink into it. Again those skeletal hands burst forth, wrapping themselves around her body. Red iridescent digits groped and grabbed at her, seizing hold of her arms and legs. She warred against the reverberating screams that echoed in her mind, the eerie howling of a wind that blue from the cosmos down onto her.

Eiohsa was buried in the pulverized bones of all who had died by her hand, and the world swam around her. Damage reports flickered to life before her eyes - and she realized that the weakened armor upon one of her legs had been completely destroyed in the blast. She enveloped herself in the same golden light once more, bursting forth from where she had been buried and into the sky once more. She surveyed the land, weeping golden tears as she beheld the endless fields of bone, rivers of blood pouring through them towards her foe. The enemy may have nullified some of her greatest weapons - but she held one indisputable advantage over him - and, deprived of his full control of the grasping hands that plunged into the earth to assail and destroy her, that drained the earth of its essence to feed his infernal energies, she could now use that advantage to its full effect. Warp lightning crackled around one hand, and a vast ball of warp flame gathered in the other, ethereal winds of the Immaterium howling around her as she cast the deadly spells that filled her with the force to annihilate near anything that was caught in its path. The wispy remnants of a million revenants that encircled her evaporated instantaneously in the all-encompassing blast.

Augor Astren, whose own psychic attacks have been conspicuously absent since he had switched fully to a defensive posture with them, simply held a hand aloft and retaliated with his own stream of hellish warp-lightning whilst turning his psychic bulwark to deny and diminish as much of Eiosha’s power as he could, given the gap in power between the two - but he clearly did not intend to give her the moments she needed to overwhelm him. Still unable to accurately aim his servo-mounted weapons due to the damage she had inflicted, he hunched over to draw a correct angle of fire on the Sixteenth Primarch and fired his still-functional eradication beamer. Now further out than before the ray of power was more diffuse, the constituent atoms in the affected air destabilizing and growing volatile rather than atomizing on the spot - but now, the cone was so wide that Eiosha could no longer readily evade it simply by flying out of it.

The burning light of the Emperor enveloped her, and she knew she would be washed away, burned to a cinder to drift endlessly through the universe as naught but the constituent atoms of cosmic dust. She screamed aloud, in defiance, as her body burned in the golden light that consumed her. She burned in the heat of supernova as she was enveloped fully in her foe’s light. But like so many times before she fought through the pain, setting her course on her enemy, illuminated in the horrific red glow as he called forth the forces that assailed her. He bent the light of the Emperor himself against her, burning away everything in its path.

Eiohsa responded not trying to fly away from it - but once more she hurtled forwards and upwards, towards her foe, like a comet wreathed in golden flame. Spear at the ready, she channeled her strength into reinforcing herself, her armor, and her weapons. The atomizing beam of the eradication beamer struggled against golden bonds that cinched tight the make and purpose of her armor. The exposed flesh of her leg sizzled and burned - but she did not pay heed to the pain, for she was reinforced in her purpose. The gleaming tip of Atonement crackled with an aura of golden energy as she slammed into Augor’s Voltagheist field once more, its tip hardened with its purpose - to strike home and true. As she pushed to penetrate through it, the Twelfth Primarch raised two mechadendrites from his sides, both clutching primed mindscrambler grenades that he clearly intended to detonate on the spot, and his final servo-arm’s capsule peeled back to reveal his final mounted weapon - a graviton cannon. Eiosha instantly realized that the bonds she had conjured would act only to her detriment if the power from the weapon connected with her. Atonement pierced through the voltagheist field, and predictably, Augor immediately pulsed it as he did before to bludgeon her with the raw force of its resurgence as he took a practiced backstep while moving to block. But with their purpose reinforced by the blazing corona of energy that surrounded it, spear and bearer pushed through the Voltagheist field a second time, flying with unbelievable speed towards her foe, and thrusting forward to drive the tip home in its target.

Several things then happened at once.

Augor Astren’s twin mindscrambler grenades detonated as he managed to partially deflect Eiosha’s spearblow to penetrate the side of his armor rather than his heart with his axe. The reactive armored surface detonated then, jamming the spear in place, having impaled the Twelfth Primarch and causing ruinous heat to lash across the Sixteenth Primarch’s hand. Then, Twelfth Primarch reached out and grabbed Eiosha as she stabbed at him by the dangling remnants of her now unarmored leg. Every vestige of psychic power Augor had then, he diverted away from maintaining his mental bulwark and diverted into directing his powers into the Sixteenth primarch whilst her own focus and concentration was bent on pouring her psychic might into her force spear, as well as dealing with the impairing effects of the mindscrambler grenades which had seemingly left the Twelfth Primarch unaffected.

Every power that Augor Astren had intended to use had his prior psychic attacks ever touched upon her mind now came to fruition. In that instant, Eiosha’s entire body was set ablaze, flames leaping into being across her flesh and the surface of her armor. Her blood began to boil in her veins, vital force began to pour from the point of contact like a burst dam, and immense throes of warp lightning coursed through every fiber of her being.

Eiohsa screamed in agony. Her world exploded before her as the stars bore fruit to a billion fractal universes that descended upon her in an unstoppable, infinite wave. The stars screamed at her, and she screamed back, the mocking laughter and jeers of all those who had come before returning now as gaunt, emaciated corpses danced around her in perfect synchronicity. The hands of bone and iron reached once more for her, grabbing hold of her flesh and beginning to tear her asunder. She screamed. And screamed. And the air was filled with the awful sound of one of the Emperor’s scions fighting for every breath she took.

But she took those breaths. Forcing her way through the pain, she drove an armored fist into the face of her brother, clutching his forehead in hand as she channeled every single shred of power she had into his mind - and into her spear, lodged in his side. His helmet’s external layer detonated, enveloping her hand, and once more the cranial mechanism that had defended her opponent from the previous mental attack launched at him roared to life. Power surged between the two Primarchs then, almost like a connected circuit, both of them pouring raw, hateful psychic energies into each other, which then seethed through the Twelfth Primarch’s body, through his axe and legs, and grounded itself beneath them - and as before, the Sixteenth Primarch’s immense psychic might proved so potent that the earth itself could not withstand the redirected power. Still close enough in proximity to the original magma pool that the terrain around them was already steaming-hot, it gave way readily beneath them with a fiery eruption, causing both Primarchs to sink into a rapidly-growing chasm of superheated rock and metal. The field of bones upon which she stood opened up beneath her in a vast, infinite maw that swallowed her and her opponent whole. The world ceased to exist as its burning tongue of blood and fire flooded into Eiosha’s exposed, unarmored eyes - save through her vision of her foe’s twisted and immense soul before her, writhing and battering at her as they both sank into oblivion. Her final mental assault had evidently finally deprived him of his fearsome cunning, having reduced his stratagem down to clawing at her with his bionic talons while the red hot hands of iron probed and pierced into every gap in her armor. She did not relent, and after a failed effort to pull the force spear out from the armor that trapped it, instead ripped it to the side, completely tearing away that piece of her foe’s abdomen. Another series of detonations filtered through the magma like distant, rumbling thunder, the sudden change in pressure causing her head to reel. He then savaged her arm with his talons, causing her already heavily abused fingers to slip.

The hands gripped her once again. They clawed at her in tandem with her opponent. White hot, full of hatred, they pried away at her being with relentless force. They seized around her armor, peeling away years of work in moments, and they fell upon her skin with ravenous hunger, tearing off her flesh with their burning claws and feasting upon her soul. They seized around the shaft of her spear, and pulled.

Atonement fell away from her grasp to plunge further, deeper down into the growing pool of superheated rock. A hollow pit filled Eiosha’s gut as its presence faded into the distance beneath them - a void that was then shortly replaced with rage.

They were coming for her.
They were coming for her.
They were coming for her.
They were coming for her.
They were coming for her.
They were coming to take her.
They had taken everything already. Her spear. Her world. Her mind. Her love. Her future. They tore at her soul and her flesh, and she fought against them just as she fought against the demon before her. There would be nothing left of her if she surrendered now, surrendered to the nameless, faceless abomination that fought her.

Fully submerged in the now extended magma pool, the two Primarchs tore at each other like primates. There was no elegance or technique to their blows, the thick, dense magma impeding even their enhanced strength as they struggled against each other, their armor falling away and off them, burning in pieces.

Eiohsa felt a strange clarity descend upon her as she fought in what she was sure would be her final moments. She looked before her and saw not the faceless demon enshrouded in a red cloak of war, but Augor Austren - her brother, the Twelfth Primarch. Why were they fighting? Where had gone the demon against which she had struggled? She fought against the phantasms of her mind in a final, desperate bid to save not only her own life - but that of her enemy. The golden wings sprung once more from her body and propelled her upward. Even as she ceased her attempts to destroy him, she wrapped the one arm she had remaining around him, pulling her foe from the lava that surrounded them. She burst forth from the glowing, molten rock in a radiant golden beacon of light that shot into the sky, golden wings shining brightly against the gathering clouds above. The hands reached out to seize her, to drag her down into the depths below once more. They would drown her. They would destroy her. But she soared above them, and they recoiled, evaporating in the intense golden light that radiated from her. Like a miniature sun she hovered there, half conscious, knowing that the battle was over. None of her armor remained, and she hung silhouetted in the sky.

She saw the Emperor and his sons and daughters, arrayed before her. She bowed low to Him. The Primarchs - her brothers and sisters - remained immobile, impassive. Kaldun held no love, only contempt. Wolfram stared at her, weighing her in his imperial apparatus and finding her wanting. Daena watched her with those empty eyes, judging her, condemning her. She called out to her - to any of them - in despair to save her, to show mercy. But there was none. She had deserved this. They would not spare her. They would not save her. She would burn before them now. Weak. Pathetic. Superstitious fool. Abomination. Witch. Failure..

The Emperor looked upon her, his gaze serene as she stared at him with hope and begged his forgiveness, his mercy. His eyes burned into her now, as he lifted his hand to point his thumb down. All light vanished from the world, save that of the Emperor’s iridescent glow and her own golden aura. She was alone within the void, accompanied only by the judge - and the executioner. Emaciated, skeletal arms wrapped around her once more. She struggled and fought as she was pulled, screaming, to her Foe who would be her doom. Held immobile, by countless emaciated claws and hands she stared into oblivion, and wept as the axe fell upon her.

She scarcely noticed anything about the world, transfixed as she. Noticed nothing as the battered, barely alive Twelfth Primarch directed his last remaining reserves of strength left upon her. The now forge-hot graviton cannon, glowing with a molten light raised to the ready position, taking aim. Eiohsa scarcely heard the weapon as it fired, pieces of her body being torn to shreds in its vortex. She was barely conscious and felt nothing as it ripped her body to pieces. The weapon hurled the battered, mutilated Primarchs away from each other, dozens of meters apart. They landed upon the hard ground unceremoniously more than thirty meters down, lying in crippled, helpless heaps splattered over with oozing rivulets of still-molten-hot lava, the air shimmering around both of them. Augor lay surrounded in the red glow of the forge, the mechadendrites Eiosha had thrown away finally sidewinding their way back to his motionless form, surrounding him like a wreath of fire serpents. Eiohsa lay ensconced in the dim, golden light of psychic wings and golden tears illuminating her battered, mutilated form.

Angels of gleaming silver daubed with streaks of black descended from upon high as the divine forms crashed to the earth, the Apothecaries of the Doomsayers reversing the color scheme of their Legion. Eiosha and Augor both were examined and stabilized by the heavenly host, Astartes granted narthecium and jetpacks rapidly seeing to the Emperor’s children. The ruined arena was filled with the roars and whines of engines arcing powered armored forms into the air and then slowing them upon their descents, the expected black and silver garbed women filling the battlespace.

Some reverently recovered what could be salvaged of the wrecked wargear and tattered flesh left in the wake of the encounter, the Doomsayers showing equal favor in the operation. The same egalitarian treatment was at play for the majority of the host, the Astartes forming perimeters around both demigods to separate one from the other. At last, she came, Daena descending upon true wings formed from neither artifice nor psychic might, gazing dispassionately at the destruction wrought. Augor had conspired against her and the fairness of the trial, that much had become obvious, but she could not bring herself to care. His perfidy would simply be taken from his sum of the verdict. Her doom had not yet been pronounced.

When the Warmaster spoke, her voice reverberated across the shattered crater and beyond, the words filled with a strength beyond what mere lungs could provide. To those who had arrived to watch the conflict in person, she sounded as if she were standing before them, the recordings carrying her will with a perfection beyond petty technical specifications. “Augor Astren. With the Emperor as your witness, you swore that Eiohsa izva Bronakavh and her daughters would suffer for their offense. That they would be made to know the consequence of your contempt, and bear your wrath, raw and unfettered. You would do all of this, and more, you promised, without violating the oaths you have sworn to our Father. Her very world shall come unraveled about her, and the cosmos shall behold it, and know that her upbraiding was preordained,” she repeated, announcing to one and all the terrible vow that had been made.

“So solemn a vow may not be abrogated by any power, save perhaps death, and I again hold it kinder than deserved. I deem it fulfilled in part, but not in full. Has your wrath abided such that you will now hear my will?” If she cared for the ruin her siblings had brought each other to, Daena’s face did not show it; the Angel may as well have been made of stone for all she revealed. Of Eiosha, even less concern was shown. Her sister would need to be tended to for wounds far worse than her body had suffered, but not now.

When Augor opened his mouth to speak, no words came out - molten iron had set inside and sealed his throat. Frowning, the Twelfth Primarch instead raised a bionic talon to the side of his head. His movements were slow, stiff, and halting. After several moments, a servo-skull whirred down by his side and began to speak in a heavily distorted, voxcoded voice.

’My wrath-click-has not govern-chck-ed my design-click-s here. I shall hear your will.’

“Be that as it may, you have shown a greater fury this day fit for our father’s greatest foes. You know well that were she crafted by any other than our Father’s mind she would have perished to a fraction of your furor. It is by his will and his design that she still lives despite the powers of primordial destruction you have unleashed. I hold your oath of wrath fulfilled, and shall hear no more of it,” Daena decreed, before her gaze turned pitilessly upon Eiosha.

“Let us speak now of contempt. Our sister rules seven hundred and seventy seven worlds, an empire in its own right, the pride of her works. There is nothing she takes more joy out of than the peace and prosperity of its citizens, for though she loves all mankind, she feels the most responsibility for those under her direct rule. Seven hundred and seventy seven worlds.”

”From these our sister shall levy seven hundred and seventy seven souls, one from each, to join your service. Their lives shall be yours to use as you see fit, save that you may not punish them for the crimes of their former masters. You shall treat them as you would any with similar skills and experiences who entered your service from Last Light. But even this price is too low. I am vexed that such discord was sewn between the two siblings who were most in agreement on the argument at hand, but I take some relief in knowing that the transition our Father decreed shall be brief. As such, your Techmarines need not spend their valuable time teaching Eiosha’s how to perform the proper procedures. Instead, they will spend their one year impressing upon the Daughters of Iron the proper contempt to be shown towards Abominable Intelligence, and correcting any errors that may have led to this unfortunate state of affairs.”

“Do you both accept this doom?”

Augor appeared to hesitate for a moment, as if uncertain - but his keen mind had evidently started working properly again and so rather than begin to formulate a protest or argument, he simply turned his blind gaze to Eiosha. His previously hollow eyes, now filled with cooling spheres of molten iron, gave him a dark and leaden stare as he gauged her own reaction.

There came no audible reply from the battered, maimed figure lying insensate upon the crater floor. Eiohsa stared into oblivion, into nothingness, into the void of space before which she lay atop a field of blood and bone. Over her stood the Angel, her sister, her spear poised at her throat, irisless eyes staring down at her without emotion or care. She was to be her doom after all, Eiohsa realized. The Emperor had ordered her removal, and he watched the proceedings from above, radiant golden light burning away whatever meager defenses she could have mustered against her sister. A part of her, however small, was grateful. If she were to die, it would be by the hand of one of the few who had seen her for more than a living weapon, piteous fool, treasonous heretic, abominable witch, loathsome aberration.

The words she spoke were heard only in the mind of her target, hovering in the air above those she had judged. She spoke to the phantasm before her and thus to Daena herself above her. She felt the tip of her spear against her bare flesh and smiled. “Am I to join the Lost, then?” She asked, her smile wavering. “I am glad it was you. It was only a matter of time. Father would never permit otherwise, not when I have failed his design. It was foolish of me to hope otherwise. But I am glad the last sight I see will be the sister I loved.” A single golden tear trailed down her cheek as she stared up at what was to be her end. “Please.” She said, her breath catching in her throat as she felt herself begin to sink into the rivers of bone and blood below. “Was I only to live, as a weapon, until our goal was within reach? Was it worth it? Will it be worth it? Everything we have done?” The spear began to sink into her, as the grasping, skeletal hands reached out for her once more, pulling her into the morass below. She reached out, her hands stained in the blood of trillions.

Brief flashes of the phantasmal, nightmare scene flashed briefly within the Angel’s mind as the Sixteenth spoke. An apocalyptic expanse of bone and blood reached unto the horizon, where burned the spires of the world of Arretius in the searing light of orbital bombardment. It pulsed, it breathed with an eerie malevolence that defied all rationale - and it hated. It pulled with hungry fangs and the skeletal hands of the dead at the Sixteenth, intent on swallowing her up, bent on destroying its creator. Above it all was the Emperor who watched in silent judgement, beside his Primarchs who would mold the Imperium in their shape.

“May all your sins be forgiven, O murderer mine.”

The world exploded.

Eiohsa lay upon the soil of an impact crater, staring into the sky. She was alive. Frantically, she felt for the prying hands - and found none. The world of Nikea greeted her not with silence, but a deluge of sound. Around her were Astartes - not of her own blood, but those of her sister, Daena. She forced herself upright, eyes wide as she stared, transfixed, at the form of the Fourteenth in the sky. Her eyes glowed with a golden light, empty sockets burned in her struggle filled with those born of her mind. Those of the Doomsayers around her who tried to tend to her were pushed aside without heed. Her words rang in her mind now, her true words.

Seven hundred and seventy seven souls.

She wanted to cry out in denial, to refuse this transgression upon herself and her people, but she could not. She could not bring herself to look upon her opponent who had driven her to this. She could not even bring herself to look upon her own Daughters who looked upon the scene in dismay from afar. It was her charge to defend humanity - and moreso, to defend her own people. To acquiesce to this decree was anathema, the very thought boiled within her with a toxic malevolence. Against near any other she would have resisted. And yet, as she emerged from the depths of madness, it became more and more evident that to comply was the only way.

“Yes.” She said, the word a bitter acid upon her tongue as it forced its way from her. “I accept.”

Eiohsa collapsed onto the surface once more, her strength extinguished by her true defeat. A thought drifted to the forefront amidst a churning maelstrom. “My spear.” She murmured, only half conscious, to those who attended to her. “Bring it up, I beg of you.”

“I also click must accept, chck then.’ Augor stated via the servo-skull after several severe moments of thought. ’If my oath chck has not yet been ful-click-filled in its entire-chck-ty, I shall have to en-click-sure it is through this click Doom I am offer-click-ed whilst adhering to chck your terms...warmaster.’

“Are you yet discontent, brother? Speak now, or be at peace,” Daena said flatly.

Augor turned his head faintly to leer at Daena with his new uneven, leaden eyes. ’It is as click you yourself said, click Warmaster. My curse can-chck-not be abrogat-click-ed by any power click save death - and in your next chck breath you deemed my click vow in-click-complete.’ Augor conveyed, his face finally starting to crawl over with visible irritation - though whether with Daena or the limited faculties of his mouthpiece was uncertain. ’Then you offer me chck a pittance of chck scraps by which to ful-click-fill the remain-chck-der of my word. chckI am dis-click-content beyond measure, chck yet I shall click accede to your will click to the extent my click oath of vengeance chck permits me to. click Great-chck-er work has been wrought click with less. If my chck oath can be ful-chck-filled with-click-in the bounds of your click pronouncement, it shall be.’

A voice rose from the Sixteenth as she looked across to the Twelfth, her eyes narrowed. The medicae of the Doomsayers busied around her, but she ignored their requests, pushing herself into a sitting position once more. "Would you then have her end me, 'brother', to slake your bloodthirst?"

’That would be chck in defiance of the click spirit of my oath.’ Augor stated flatly without averting his molten gaze from Daena.

Daena’s furor was a rare thing, and when it did show itself she kept it under her iron will. The implications of Augor’s statements were clear enough to rile it from the depths of her enchained heart, but predictable to the point that she did not risk losing control. She did, however, let it fuel her response.

Do you wish, then, for a day in which our Father pronounces Eiosha’s death? And for you to wield the spear which lances her heart? she thought, the words hammering into Augor’s mind as she returned his stare. Such is the only way your oath may be fulfilled without violating Father’s will. You know this, Augor Astren. You knew this when you made your vow.

Augor’s steaming-hot, bionic talons curled into fists where he sat as the servo-skull slowly ground out his response. ‘I swore that she click and her daughters would chck suffer, that they would chck bear my wrath, that chck their world would come undone clickand that all would behold this chck and know it was preordained. I did click not speak to chck nor demand death, for I knew even click then that such would contravene the will of the click Omnissiah, Warmaster. That is the difference click between reckless aspersion and chck calculated avowal. Even in the throes of rage unlike click what I have known before, I remained click cognizant of my loyalty to our father. Even in chck pronouncing my curse, I held him and his click wishes to be paramount and pre-chck-dominant. It is true - to execute the Sixteenth at the click Omnissiah’s order would fulfill the chck curse, but it was not the end I fore-chck-saw to my vow. I promised to break chck Eiohsha izva Bronakavh and her daughters click and that the galaxy would know of their click castigation at my hands. You recited my curse in full, chck Warmaster, you should know its implications full chck and well.’

Then, Augor Astren reached out across the air and grasped the servo-skull in one bionic hand, crushing it into pieces. Hunching over with the visceral sound of tearing flesh, the Primarch gagged, and then his whole body coursed over with streams of red and golden warp-lightning. With a mute cry of anguish, one of the Twelfth Primarch’s mechadendrites darted into his mouth and pulled, and after several moments the freshly remolten metal that had been filling his esophagus was pulled free and ejected from his body, scattering across the ground before Daena as though it were brilliant ichor. The hunched-over Primarch then turned his now-leaden gaze back to the Warmaster, his molten eyes now visibly crackling and aglow with the brilliant empyreal energies he had summoned. He spoke then, blood trickling from his lips as he did.

“How dare you think so lightly of me. How dare you even suspect my word is any less than I have claimed. Mark it well, Warmaster, I have said it before and I say it again: My sons and I are the truest servants of the Omnissiah in existence. You dishonor me with your tremulous doubt.”

Daena fluttered down to earth, her face placid at Augor’s reproach. “You are correct, of course. You are the most loyal to our Father’s will. Never shall you disobey any oath made to him. Do as thou will then, with but one request. I have given you scraps in exchange for the full measure of your oath, compensation woeful in comparison. Let it now be a gift for your restraint. I will bind you to no Doom, for I know you shall do nothing to jeopardize our Father’s work. That is all that matters.”

And should such a day come where that terrible order is given, Daena thought to her brother and he alone, I shall ensure yours is the honor of swinging the blade.

Augor bowed his head to her, and raised his bionic hands in a pose of veneration, palms upright and fingers splayed.

“Warmaster…” He whispered.

Delirious, scarcely comprehending the words that were being spoken, Eiohsa said nothing.

A roar filled the air as the Doomsayers left the field, the Angel and her daughters departing the carnage with judgement proclaimed and accepted. The needs of the Crusade weighed heavily upon the Warmaster’s heart, and as her wings sped her away from the field her mind already shifted to the more comfortable contemplation of conquest. It served better, at least, than the worry that though a verdict had been rendered, justice was far from done.

Augor rose and walked away without another word, raising one bionic talon to the side of his head. Minutes later, he and his retinue vanished, their forms seeming to unravel in lines of scintillating blue light.

888888888888

The vox and holofeeds that wound up being disseminated afterwards proved to be heavily edited and touched-up by the Twelfth Legion and its sympathizers. Augor had evidently not been bluffing aboard the Redemption - even surveillance equipment aboard the Warmaster’s ship had abruptly seemed to malfunction as they were bombarded by neurostatic signals the moment anybody said anything that had not comported with the Twelfth Primarch’s preferred narrative.

Although several different versions of the holovid were ultimately released, the one which passed through the greatest number of hands wound up being the one with the least amount of editing. It was a straightforward (if misleading) record of the council session and of the Sixteenth Primarch directing her insult to the Twelfth Primarch and his retinue of Stargazers and Tech-Priests, followed by Augor Astren’s invocation of his curse. The initial meeting between the Twelfth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Primarchs was then shown - Augor’s greeting of the Warmaster, Daena’s deliberately practiced rise and sweep of her wings, and the Twelfth Primarch’s condemnation of Eiosha. The scene then cut dramatically to a slowly rotating overhead view of the crater where the two had dueled, both Primarchs slowly approaching the other before they had begun to unleash their weapons.

The fight was inevitably interrupted the final time Eiosha rushed in to clash with Augor - when his mindscrambler grenades both detonated, the holofeed went stark white, and moments later cut to the two Primarchs, both now heavily damaged, suspended in the air right before Augor Astren blasted Eiosha to pieces with his Graviton Cannon. The last shot depicted was of Augor Astren walking away from the scene, leaving Eiosha and her ragged body behind while the Warmaster’s final proclamation was played as a voice-over.

Rampant speculation and theories over the various different versions and releases of the holovid bloomed overnight, compared with the different commentaries of the Remembrancers that Augor had brought with him alongside the remarks of ‘weapons specialists’ and ‘tacticians’ of the High Lords’ staffs who deigned to add commentary to certain aspects of the videos, all naturally invited to do so by the Twelfth Primarch. From the moment the Twelfth Primarch had left the council building he had intended to control and manipulate the narrative of the incident to his benefit - which he had.

The general consensus that thus emerged, though it had its detractors, was that Augor Astren had ‘won’ the duel, and that the Sixteenth Legion was now cursed, and that the Warmaster had blessed the Twelfth Primarch’s goal and acknowledged his status as the most loyal Primarch to the Emperor’s will.

Amongst the Legions themselves, most saw through the surface-layer of duplicity - many of them had been at the council and the ensuing fight who knew better what had truly transpired, although they retained their own diversity of opinions regardless. Amongst the Imperial Army and amongst the High Lords and much of the Administratum, it entered their subconscious as fact, and from them down into the general malaise of the public’s collective unconscious. The greater Mechanicum, almost paradoxically, remained the most skeptical of the holovids and their presented outcome - not only due to their recognition of the altered nature of the documents, but due to the unseen and nebulous affinities of their doctrinal allegiances. Nonetheless, even amongst them, the Warmaster’s final proclamation still left a mark, and it became known amongst the Mechanicum that Augor Astren of the Ordo Astranoma had been acknowledged as the Omnissiah’s most loyal servant.

The ensuing sentimentality, perceptions, and rumors that developed would later serve as tinder for the flame that would engulf the entire Imperium.

---

[...End Log.]
[...Terminating.]
[Imperial Thought for the Day: And weep, ye children, and reap the fruits of blind wrath.]

The Grim Crusade - A Warhammer 30000 RP

Aboard the Ultima Ratio

Year: 001.M31

---

---

The private quarters of the Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion aboard the Ultima Ratio resembled a strange hybrid of machine shop and administrative center more than they did a place of residence. Her quarters were located deep within the vessel, well protected by numerous layers of armor and redundant bulkheads to ensure that its occupant was as safe as possible within. There was no bed or ornamentation within the room, nor even a place to properly rest. All luxury or comforts had been stripped from the room long ago, and in its place remained nothing but rows upon rows of tools, banks of cogitators humming quietly as they processed data streams, numerous pieces of technology in various states of assembly laying strewn across numerous surfaces. A curious chair sat before a large desk, wires hanging from it at roughly neck height.

Within this chair sat Eiohsa, her face a stony, unreadable mask. She was not reclined within it as she would be whilst connected to it. No information flashed through augmetic data ports through her mind. She sat in silence, staring at seemingly nothing, as she silently raged at her own weakness.

She had failed in everything. This she knew. She had failed the Imperium during the Rangdan xenocides. She had failed the Emperor, who had extended her such trust and concessions to her faith. She had failed her daughters once more now, sending them to their deaths against the Ninth Legion. And even now - she had failed her daughter who had undergone such trials, such horrors, to warn her and the Imperium of the crimes of the Abyssal Lurkers. She had been unable to give her the mercy of a swift death as she had desired, paralyzed by her own guilt and heartbreak. Only the action of her sister Nelchitl had preserved what little dignity Anastasia had retained.

What use had humanity, had the Emperor, had anyone for such a failu-

The door to her chambers flung open with a crash as the heavy doors slammed against the walls behind them, countless miscellaneous pieces falling to the floor from the tables on which they had been perched. Eiohsa looked up only halfheartedly, knowing that it could be no threat - though she almost welcomed the idea.

Through the doors strode Ayushmatki, her expression dour and harsh. Around her floated a curious collection of objects. Bottles of wine and other alcohol, finely crafted chairs adorned with plush cushions, platters of food that Eiohsa dimly recognized as hailing from Hive Bronakavh and Hive Kuznekhtinsk. She fixed Eiohsa with a glare that burned through her like the heat of a laser, the array of items she had brought with her gently settling to the ground as she closed the distance between them.

“What has become of you?” She demanded, staring at her leader. Eiohsa looked up at her, eyes meeting those of her closest friend. She had shrunk her form, intentionally or not, to equal that of the people of Kayaamat. “What became of the woman I befriended centuries ago? I don’t see her now. I just see a dried up, empty husk sitting in this chair.”

Ayushmatki’s eyes narrowed before her leader could speak. “Trying to work? Is that going to be your excuse to me? Look at you, Eiohsa. I loved you as a sister. I fought alongside you for years - decades, even. We joined this Imperium together. I still remember how you spoke of your dreams for it and for humanity. They were beautiful, and I surrendered what power I had upon Kayaamat to you knowing you could bring them to fruition.” She sighed, and only now could Eiohsa see that tears glistened in her eyes.

Eiohsa could not bring herself to reply, only remaining silent as she accepted her friend’s berating. “Much like the woman it belongs to, this room was once a beautiful sight to behold, you know.” Came Ayushmatki’s voice once more, as she cast her hand around at the nonexistent accommodations and scattered hardware. “This room was once a display of humanity’s prowess. Art of your own make and from the best artists upon Kayaamat hung upon these walls. Upon these shelves there once sat cities, Eiohsa - dreams for the future. Your dreams for the future. There were no weapons of war within this room, only the groundwork for the dreams for which we have fought for so long. And yet what do I see now?”

“And what good have those dreams done humanity, my friend?” Eiohsa replied, her voice dead and hollow. “What good were they when came the Rangdan? I indulged in those dreams before I heard the news. Perhaps, Ayushmatki, had I not followed such foolishness I could have saved the people of Arretius, and we would not have lost the strategic initiative. Had I onl-”

She was cut off as her friend slapped her across the face, the sound of the impact ringing through the room. “You would not have, you fool, and you well know it.” Snapped Ayushmatki, her eyes blazing with fury and sadness. “I do not know what disease has afflicted you since those dark days, my friend. I know of your empathic abilities - and I now share many of them myself as I share your blood. I know of your pain, Eiohsa - and yet when I have tried to aid you, you push me away. You see yourself as nothing but a tool, and I know you will not believe me when I tell you otherwise. So I am not going to try. Perhaps one of your siblings can do that some day - perhaps I can, when you allow me through that ego of yours.”

Forcefully, she pulled her friend up from her position, almost dragging her over to a clear space within the room. The items she had brought with her floated through the air to arrange themselves neatly within the space, and with a psychic push, Ayushmatki forced Eiohsa to sit upon one of the chairs.

“Instead, we are going to enjoy yourselves.” She declared, with an air of forced frivolity. “It has been far, far too long since we had a nice talk like this, you know. If memory serves, it was the year 861 when last we simply talked. You have avoided it since then.” Ayushmatki’s eyes never left Eiohsa’s as she poured a glass of wine. “I learned of this chemical from one of your siblings.” She said, “Drink.”

Eiohsa held the glass, watching her friend. She had made no effort to resist as she had moved her. “You know you cannot stop me returning to my duties? You caught me in a moment of weakness. I must return to work, there is no time for this.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Came the reply, “I dare you to try it. I, however, will enjoy this vintage. From one of our worlds, in fact.” She sipped the drink, savoring the flavor. “Oh, yes, we are not alone.” She said, almost as afterthought.

The doors to her chambers were thrown open with a loud crash once again as Kaldun kicked open the doors to the chamber. Under each arm was a massive casket with the symbol of Baalros stamped on it.

“Sister! Mighty Human! I have come to answer your call for celebration! We have won a victory this day!” He sat the casks down and glanced dismissively at the wine. “That is for idle chatter! This is a celebration! I have brought the finest casks of ale from my home planet!” He surveyed the rest of the room, an eyebrow raised in surprise. “You have made some changes since I was last here I see! Going for uncomfortability and frugality! We may need more ale to make this comfortable! But enough about your decor choices!” He set the casks down and embraced Eiohsa in greeting. “It is good to see you outside of the debate chambers sister!”

He cracked open a cask and brought forth three mugs, filling them and handing them to his companions. “Drink! We have stopped the senseless slaughter of useful Xenos, and we have brought the full might of the Emperor’s gaze upon the foul Lurkers! To the honored dead Anastasia! To the continued usefulness of the Xenos!” He knocked back his ale with several large gulps, smacking it back onto the cask that was not broken with a wide grin.

Eiohsa stared in absolute bewilderment as the radiant golden form of her brother burst through the doors. “Y-you brought him?” She asked, turning to Ayushmatki. No reply came to her however, as she seemed to have developed a sudden and inexplicable deafness and a fascination for the artful designs painted with silver ink upon the exterior of the bottle.

She took the mug as it was forced into her hands, her eyes wide and her expression that of a woman who was completely and utterly lost. “What are you two doing?” She demanded, suddenly serious. “Do you mean to celebrate this? It is a great tragedy we have brought to light, in hopes of bringing justice. This is not… this is no occasion for celebration! There is work to be done yet!”

“I invited your sister, Daena, as well. I figured you ought know that.” Came the voice of Ayushmatki once more, completely oblivious to her protestations. “And do drink that wine - or the ale your brother has brought with him. Either will do - I ensured all of them were treated with that herb Sekhmetara told me of.”

Eiohsa stared, dumbfounded, as Ayushmatki raised an eyebrow at her. “Do I need to have Kaldun make you do it? I’m sure he’d be willing - he seemed very, very proud of the brewing skills of his people. You wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings by not drinking it, would you? And this wine - a fine reserve from the world of Velinuk. I had it shipped here intending to use it during festivities during the Council, but alas never had a chance to! I am glad it will be enjoyed by fitting palates nonetheless.”

She looked to Eiohsa, and her expression of mirth dropped for a second as she looked her Primarch in the eyes. “Drink.” She ordered. “I will not stand by any longer and watch you destroy yourself needlessly.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Eiohsa brought the wine to her lips. The sweet liquid trickled across her tongue, and she realized with some surprise the familiarity of the drink. “This was my favorite, back then.” She murmured, almost to herself. “I gave the producer a special charter to continue to produce it, too.”

Ayushmatki smiled, and nodded. “You’re damn right it is - you might have forgotten but I haven’t. Now finish it. We have plenty.” She nodded once again as Eiohsa did so, and then began to taste the ale her brother had brought. “As he says, tonight we will celebrate. It may not feel it to you, but this was a victory.”

“We have brought a great tragedy to light, yes! But it would be an even greater tragedy to have let it wallow in the dark waters of the Lurkers homeworld! Anastasia made her sacrifice to stop others from being turned into monsters, to shut down the Infestus project! That is a victory! Her life and sacrifice should be remembered, in a great celebration!” He looked around the room again, shrugging. “But since this isn’t a great celebration type of room we’ll just drink to her memory!” He emptied his mug again, to prove his point.

“I never knew why you liked such sweet things! By the way you went on about them you’d think that they could knock a Primarch off their feet in two sips!” He waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing like Baalrosi Golden Ale! This will get us well and truly drunk in a short amount of time!”

He waved the mug in the direction of Ayushmatki. “The Mighty Human is correct! There is no sense in destroying yourself! We are bringing the Lurkers to their knees! We are defending the subjects of the Imperium! We are one step closer to galactic peace! All of these are worth celebrating individually! But we are together and as you said there is much work left to be done! So we celebrate them all tonight and tomorrow we go back to work!” He emptied his ale for a third time.

“Such is the Baalrosi way!”

Eiohsa stared at Kaldun once more. Then, slowly, a smile broke across her lips. Even as she sat there - the eternal howling within her mind never abating, she could not help but smile at his enthusiasm. “I suppose you have a point, brother.” She murmured, nodding towards her drink. “And yet, I cannot shake this feeling as though I have failed. The Imperium, my daughters, humanity as a whole. It is my duty to protect them, is it not?” She sighed, shaking her head. “But you are right, I suppose.” She raised the mug to him before drinking deep from its contents, wincing at the bitter taste. “I have never understood ale, however.” She admitted.

“That’s because you drink to enjoy whatever you’re drinking!” Kaldun shook his head at the notion, draining his mug once more. “You don’t drink ale for the taste! Least of all Baalrosi Golden Ale! You drink it for the effects!” Kaldun’s already normally loud tone of voice was steadily rising the more ale he consumed, not that he noticed. “Of course it is our duty to protect our sons and daughters and the humans who cannot protect themselves!” He raised a mug to Ayushmakti, grinning at her. “Excluding you of course, Mighty Human!”

He focused his attention back on Eiohsa. “But our shields can only extend so far! And if we were to protect them completely from all harm they would never grow! They would stay stagnated and weak! Ripe for the picking should we ever leave them! You cannot protect everyone! Deciding success or failure by that judgement will only drive you mad! Protect those you can! Avenge the rest!”

“And yet.” She said, staring into the contents of the mug for a moment longer before draining the entire thing in one gulp. “I remain with these memories of all those who I failed to defend, brother. How am I to celebrate when I must live with their last moments upon my mind at all times? I have fought - as long as you have - to defend humanity. Yet during the wars against the Rangdan how many worlds were wiped clean by my hand to deny the enemy that which I could not defend? I live with their deaths within my mind every day, brother.”

“Ah! You speak of your Empathy! Simultaneously your greatest strength and your greatest weakness! I have a simple solution to dealing with that! It will be only brief but it will be quite effective!” He filled her mug again with ale, before refilling his own and draining it again. “Getting quite drunk! It is very effective!” He waved the mug, somewhat haphazardly now, in the air again. “If you want to use that logical reasoning that you so like to use, with its straight lines and orderly business, you can just think about how much worse it would’ve been if someone like Usriel had been there instead of you! The worlds would have been Exterminatused immediately! Or used as bait for the Rangdan! However many you managed to save would have died without being even given a chance! What you managed to do during the Rangdan is also a victory that we should drink too!” He emptied his ale once more, gesturing at Ayushmakti as he did so. “Mighty Human! Explain it to her in those logical words she likes!’’

Ayushmatki nodded, thus far unaffected by alcohol. “While I would not go as far as to call it a victory - Lord Kaldun is correct, Eiohsa. Without you, without your empathy and compassion, your determination to defend humanity… we all know of the fate of those under the ‘protection’ of the Abyssal Lurkers during those wars. How many owe you their lives? Many died under you, it is true - but they died for a purpose. Their deaths were not in vain. It is this you stress to your Legion, yet you seem not to believe it yourself.”

“I will say this plainly - you are a fool. The most brilliant, genius, wonderful fool I have ever known. You bring to humanity such wondrous gifts, you save so many countless lives, and your dreams for the future are enough to make one weep. Kaldun - have you heard all of her dreams? I must have her tell you, some day.” Ayushmatki closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “And yet despite this you are crueler to yourself than I can even put into words. For this time being if nothing else, I beg you - allow yourself to be who you once were.”

Eiohsa stared into the mug of ale, her expression blank. It seemed almost as if she had frozen in time, sat perfectly motionless. Ayushmatki was almost ready to speak again, to reprimand her - when she moved once more. Draining the entire mug in a single gulp, she looked to her brother - at eye level with him now. “Very well.” She said, forcing a smile - though hints of her eternal sorrow still tugged at her eyes. “I shall try.”

Kaldun blinked at the sudden height increase, before laughing. “I had forgotten you could do that! Excellent!” He filled her mug again. “We drink tonight! To victory! To justice! To trying!” He finished his ale once more, before turning his gaze to Ayushmakti. “No calling me Lord, Mighty Human! There are no Lords beneath the Emperor! I am simply his son and servant, Kaldun! And everyone drinks the ale! Mighty humans included!” He placed a primarch sized mug in her hand. “To drinking!”

Even if Daena did not know the way to her sister’s quarters, the sounds of her exuberant brother ensured that a guide was not required. Tracing her way through the voidship with feather light steps, her appearance in the doorway was unnoticed for some time as she stared inside with a soft smile. Kaldun’s joy was infectious, even to the point of making Eiohsa - the only Primarch save perhaps Usriel and Sarghaul more dour than Daena herself - smile.

“I’m afraid that I’ve brought no gifts,” she said as she passed the threshold, finally announcing herself. “They are right, sister. Now is not the time for sorrow.” The Angel had taken the time to change out of the battleplate she had worn to the Council’s close, now garbed in a simple silver raiment that gleamed in the presence of the golden son of Baalros. “We must take what victories we can, in a business such as ours.”

“Welcome, honored Primarch.” Came the voice of Ayushmatki, a smile on her face as she raised a glass to her. “I have conferred with your sister, and procured a wine she claims you enjoyed greatly! Please, sit! We must break this one of her melancholy for the time being, one way or another!”

Eiohsa raised an eyebrow at these words, but said nothing, merely shaking her head as a genuine smile once more graced her lips. “I concede, I concede.” She said, a hint of laughter tinting her words. “Welcome, Daena. My apologies to you and Kaldun both that my quarters are not suited for such company.” She poured herself another glass of wine, savoring its flavor for the first time in a century and a half.

Kaldun whirled around at the unexpected voice of Daena. A grin across his face as he saw her. He strode, slightly off balance, forward to give her a greeting hug as well.“Aha! Daena! Sister! Welcome to the celebration! The Mighty Human had forewarned me of your arrival and I brought a fourth mug for just this occasion!” He filled it and left it on the unbroken cask within her reach. “If you want something with more kick than your favorite wine! And nonsense Eiohsa! Any quarters are suitable quarters for a celebration!” He laughed and downed his own mug yet again, before pausing. “Do I have to call you Warmaster now?! Will I be in some form of trouble if I don’t!? We both know I am not going to do that! Congratulations on your promotion as well dear sister! To the promotion of our sister to Warmaster! May she lead the Imperium to great victory and honor!” The mug was tilted towards the ceiling once more.

With a swiftness that belied her grim reputation, Daena took the proffered mug in hand and clapped it against Kaldun’s. In a single fluid motion, she brought it down to her lips, drained it dry, and slammed it back upon the cask. “A drink worthy of a king, and I have known many,” she said approvingly, before far more gently taking a glass of wine in hand. It was a bad habit that Sekhmetara had instilled in her, but it seemed appropriate for the occasion. “For you, Kaldun, he who can make even Eiohsa smile, I shall permit you to ever call me Daena,” she announced in a grave voice, as if passing a most solemn judgement. Kaldun laughed again, raising his mug in salute.

Turning to Ayushmatki, the Primarch inclined her head ever so slightly with an apologetic shrug. “I am typically not the sort called to break melancholies, but I shall do what I may,” she said as she finally sat herself down, irisless eyes finally fixed upon Eiohsa. “Our brother continues to speak truthfully. It is not the chamber that makes itself fit for celebration, but the company.”

A glass and a mug joined the toast, Ayushmatki and Eiohsa raising their drinks as Kaldun had. “To Warmaster Daena.” They said in unison.

Ayushmatki smiled to herself, sipping mildly from her glass. “Alas that I no longer possess a liver to experience the effects as you do. But I can enjoy the taste all the same. And another thing you ought enjoy the taste of, honored Primarchs - delicacies from her home. Lord Kaldun I am sure you have heard of at least some of these? If she never even spoke of them while you trained with her upon Terra I would call it madness.” She gestured to plates of food arrayed before them. Steaming bowls of spicy sauces and seasoned rice, potatoes, and ground meats filled the air with a heady aroma. “More elaborate takes on them, of course. Many of these were not easily acquired within the underhives before her arrival. After her revolution and destruction of the old order however - I will swear before all, one has not had what is best in life before eating from a mysterious cart by the side of a factorum selling these dishes. I will take those mystery meal carts before the finest chefs on Terra.”

A genuine smile appeared on Eiohsa’s face at long last, alongside a growing red tinge to her cheeks as she shook her head in exasperation. “You praise me too much, Ayu.” She said in mock protest, but a hint of pride could be heard in her speech. “It has been too long since I disguised myself to eat from those carts, though. Perhaps when this crusade is finished, I may compile a list of the best of them.”

After a moment, she turned to Daena. “Tell me, sister.” she said. “Exactly how do you think she persuaded Sekhmetara to provide her wine from her own stores? And how did she persuade you to join us here? There are many things about her that remain a mystery to me - and this is one of them.”

She frowned, the effects of the alcohol stronger now, and a mischievous tone crept into her words. “Almost as great a mystery as how she once favored mechadendrites like those of the Mechanicum without ever having heard of their ilk. For entirely nonutilitarian purposes, no less.”

At these words, a flush crept into Ayushmatki’s cheeks, and she busied herself once more with studying the design upon the wine bottle.

“Oh ho! Was the mighty human not always so humanoid in her shape?! That is a mysterious thought! What uses could the mechadendrites have that a humanoid shape could not!? You’d think that with the lack of opposable thumbs, holding things would be difficult, no?!” He opened and closed his hand to demonstrate.

“Daena! Have I or our sister shown you the spear she crafted for me years and years ago!?” Without waiting for an answer, he activated the teleportation beacon in his armor and summoned the Thunder of Labrys to his hand. The force spear appeared in a golden flash of light in its default short state. “The Thunder of Labrys she calls it! It is a mighty and fine weapon! And it has an equally mighty name! Not as eloquent as your Heavenly Raiment, but a powerful weapon and name indeed!”

“I am not yet drunk enough to compare our spears, brother,” Daena said in a soft voice, swirling the glass of wine in her hand as she appraised Eiohsa and Ayushmatki. She seemed not precisely immune to Kaldun’s presence, his sheer force of personality, but rather inured to it. Time spent with Sekhmetara had ensured it. “You would be surprised, Kaldun, how useful a dendrite can be. All manner of tools can be mounted upon them, to say nothing of their ability to reach into the most cramped of spaces.”

Kaldun looked briefly disappointed before setting down his spear and picking up his mug once more, his grin returning. “I am sure we will fix that before the night is over!” He drained it again as Daena spoke, confusion crossing his face. “But I can mount things upon my hands! Eiohsa has done so with the claws on this very armor!” He waved his free hand to prove the point. “And fingers can reach into plenty of cramped spaces, just as easily! I remain unconvinced of the superiority of mechandrites, sister!” With his announcement made, he gulped down his mug again.

“You only have two hands, brother,” Daena said dryly as she took a sip of her wine.

A burst of high pitched laughter interrupted the two as Eiohsa, struggling to contain herself, hurriedly forced down the remainder of the contents of her glass. She held one hand over her mouth, tears of laughter glistening in her eyes as she slapped her thigh with the other. Ayushmatki, seated next to her, had flushed a dark scarlet color in her cheeks despite their wholly synthetic make.

“Oh yes, sister! She told me in detail how dextrous and versatile they could be! She suggested, earnestly and on multiple occasions, that I obtain my own!” Another burst of laughter, and she wiped the tears from her eye, a drunken hiccup following in its wake. “I was content not to - but you ought have seen her back then. Oh before she destroyed that body - it was a sight.” With a grin towards Daena, she nodded enthusiastically, “Hands that might be needed for all sorts of tasks too, I was told. I was the one who made that body for her, no less. Much as this one - thankfully, after her duel with the witch-queen of Yuzhantiy she permitted me greater influence over the design!”

Ayushmatki, for her part, cleared her throat, desperately trying to change the topic - and failed. “Yes this body is excellent, I can taste things quite we- I mean… this curry. It is delicious. We ought try some I think.”

Kaldun looked back and forth between the three women, baffled. Consigning it to the pile of things he’ll never figure out with a shrug, he focused on Ayushmatki. “What is this?! A duel I have never heard of!? For shame Mighty Human! If there is a greater story of you violently murdering a witch-queen it is to be shared at every available opportunity! Not hidden and only brought up in passing!” He scooted forward in his chair, eyes wide with excitement and anticipation. “What happened!? And how! To who! And why!”

Eiohsa beamed, swaying slightly in her seat as she refilled her glass once again. “She will not tell you, I’m afraid! Much too embarrassed of it! The Witch-Queen of Yuzhantiy - for one, the only queen she ever encountered who could not be brought low by servo-tentacles alone! For another - Ayushmatki is perhaps the greatest psyker from Kayaamat in the six centuries she has lived thus far! But before her there was another, kept alive by… truthfully I never recovered enough of her to determine it, but what I must assume was advanced augmetics and her own psychic prowess.”

The chair creaked slightly as she reclined in it, the tinge of alcohol on her cheeks growing stronger as she launched into her retelling of the story. For a time, at least, the memory of horrors past seemed dimmed by good company and drink.

“Ah it was during our wars of unification! Before the great betrayal! Ayushmatki and I met shortly after I conquered Hive Bronakavh from within, you see - she had subjugated her own home much as I had. Like sisters we were - and are!” She grinned widely, recalling fond memories of that time, “We formed our armies into one single unstoppable juggernaut. For every enemy army we defeated, millions of their soldiers threw down their insignia to join our cause! But there was one exception. The armies of Hive Yuzhantiy, controlled by some psychic enthrallment of great power from atop its spire. We tried bombarding it for over a week to no avail. The heaviest ordnance imaginable - even that great plasma weapon that I have recently learned she transferred to the nineteenth! Nothing could make a dent! We fought our way to its base for weeks after that, and it was horrible, to tell you the truth. I was devastated to see the destruction we wrought - but I could feel, as I do now, the suffering of the people under its ruler.”

She paused for dramatic effect before extending a hand towards Ayushmatki. “When we finally arrived, however - she stood in my way and demanded my sword! Never before or since has she acted in such a manner, more like you, brother, than her normal demeanor. ‘This is my duty’ she told me before ascending the spire. It was fortunate too that I stayed behind - a vast counterattack by the enemy fell upon us. Outnumbered ten to one we were, and it seemed as though the greatest stores of enemy super heavy weapons bore down upon us. We were ragged, tired, and low on ammunition. That battle was one of the greatest of my life before the Emperor found us.” She smirked, “But it pales in comparison to what our ‘Mighty Human’ was up to, I assure you.”

“You see,” She began, leaning forward in her seat. Her previous gloomy, somber demeanor entirely gone, replaced at last by something similar to her prior persona.

Ayushmatki interrupted her, raising a hand as she spoke. “The Witch-Queen of Yuzhantiy was an extremely powerful psyker, moreso even than myself, who had amassed significant power within the ruling class of Kayaamat. What Eiohsa does not consider important to mention is that I, much like herself, am a mutant from the lowest dregs of the underhives of the world. The Witch-Queen, whose name I ordered stricken from history, was born into the upper tier of society upon this world. I would not have survived past my fortieth year were it not for the replacement of my body with augmetics over time - and I am fortunate I met Eiohsa, for her skill with such gave me new lease on life. The Witch-Queen, however - I heard her call to me as we drew near. She had known of me since my birth, somehow, and had issued a challenge for this duel. And so, I went to meet he-”

“She undersells it!” Insisted Eiohsa, in turn raising a hand to silence her friend. “Oh she’ll tell you what the historical record written by some dry Remembrancer might say - but I have never seen such drama from her! And to ask for my sword! Not armor, not some miraculous piece of archeotech, no no, merely my sword! She ascended the elevator to the Witch-Queen’s chambers and in there she dueled her to the death! The battle lasted for two days. Lighting, fire, and more destroyed huge swaths of the spire. Sections of plascrete the size of a baneblade fell upon the witch-queen’s own forces! She scarcely used the sword at all, for a time! It was nothing short of an exchange of psychic prowess the likes of which the galaxy is rarely fortunate enough to witness! Brother - you would have wept to see it I am sure. The name Mighty Human is apt - for I know of few others who could single handedly destroy a great hive spire and bring it crashing to the ground. But it is not merely that! As they exhausted their energies against each other, Ayushmatki knew she could not best her in the powers of the Warp alone - and so she herself brought down the tower with an enormous burst of warpfire and lightning the likes of which I am sure could gut a battleship!”

Eiohsa paused mid-story, her face lighting up. “I believe I still have that blade within this room, a moment.” She stood from her chair, walking with the swiftness and purpose of a Primarch despite the minute wobble in her step. Within a minute she had returned, bearing with her an ornate single edged force sword inlaid with swirling golden filigree upon its blade. “It was this!” She declared, “I insisted upon it being hers after the fact, but she would not take it, even for ceremonial purposes.”

A glint lit up her eye now, and her words came in an excited rush. “As she brought down the spire, their duel continued in freefall. Blasts of lighting, fire, and eldritch energies tore apart the falling structure into a million fractal pieces! As they neared the ground, Ayushmatki at last drew near to her and with the last vestiges of psychic power she could manifest, plunged the blade through the heart of the Witch-Queen of Yuzhantiy! Not ten seconds later, the rubble impacted the earth! With the witch-queen’s death, her armies awoke as if from daze and surrendered en-masse. I feared my friend dead, and searched for her within the rubble for days before I felt her. Most of the body I had created - servo-tentacles and all - had been annihilated in the impact. But her brain and spinal column were reinforced and survived mostly intact! I built her a new body - thankfully, this time, without servo tentacles. As Kaldun has so graciously put it, and I said so myself - hands will do just fine!”

“My primarch, please, you are being sidetracked once more.” Insisted Ayushmatki, clearing her throat as she desperately attempted to keep Eiohsa focused. “While her account may be… embellished, it is not inco-”

“Nonsense!” interjected Eiohsa once more. “I can show you embellishment if you so desire, but in this I am innocent, I promise.”

Ayushmatki nodded, clearly not wishing to risk the teasing once more. “Either way, yes, Honored Kaldun. That is… more or less the story.”

Kaldun followed the story with an excited glint in his eyes, nodding in excitement with Eiohsa’s words and shaking his head at Ayushmakti’s attempts to downplay the story. When it was finished he stood and slapped Ayushmakti on the back in approval. “I knew there was a reason you were so mighty for a human! What a story! What a battle! The poets would sing of such a duel on Baalros for centuries! Shame on you, Mighty Human, for never telling me this!” He looked down at her, wagging a finger. “And don’t think I did not notice you using ‘honored’ in place of Lord! It is just Kaldun! There is no need for such formalities with me! Much less in this time of celebration!”

“Once again,” Daena said slowly, staring at Eiosha over the rim of her glass, “you find it easier to praise others than yourself, dear sister.” Taking a sip, she turned her head to Ayushmatki and Kaldun before lazily waving a hand. “You two know what I mean. Her reports are always remarkably terse about herself. No matter what she accomplished.”

Eiohsa went motionless at these words, her expression once more becoming tense. “Sister,” She said, now staring once more into the mug in front of her. “There is a reason for such. I would have thought you of all would understand that.” She looked up, a heavy sigh escaping her. “I do not need honors or credit. I am merely performing the duty for which I was designed. It was made clear to me, during the wars against the Rangdan, that I am a tool for humanity. A tool does not need commendation for doing what it was created to do, and so neither do I. My daughters… it is upon their shoulders and those of mortal humanity that our successes are borne. It is a thankless task for which I was created, and as such I need none.” A thin smile reappeared once more as she looked down at the mug of ale in her hand, “This, however, is nevertheless a nice break from that.”

A sharp ring sounded throughout the room as Daena placed her wine glass down, staring Eiosha in the eyes with the most severe expression her sister had ever seen her wear outside of combat. “You self admonishing fool. You are as human as your daughters.”

Silence elapsed for a moment as Eiohsa stared into her mug, her expression hardening. She looked up to her sister. “Am I? Am I truly?” She asked, her words tense. “After everything I have seen and done, sister? When I must live with the final moments of trillions of humans at all times - most of them dead at my own hand? Certainly, something of me is human, or was.” She sighed, “You, sister, would best understand this I thought. We both see death - you see what has yet to come, and can work to avoid it. I only know what has already come to pass, and must endure the weight of hundreds of worlds destroyed by my hand.” She let out a deep sigh, draining the mug of ale. “I am the Lady of Iron, as decreed by our father himself. It is my duty to endure it. How many human beings could endure such? How could one still be called human after they have done what I have?”

As she spoke, a weight settled upon the room, much as it had within the council chambers upon Nikea. Phantasmal imagery - a ghost of sensation - settled upon the minds of those within the room. A vague impression of the experiences of which she spoke. The endless, howling chorus of a trillion dead souls trapped forever within their final moments.

“Do not think to claim that you can endure such,” Daena chastised, her gaze unmoving from her sister. “You are an artificer, a smith. You should know that iron must be wrought so that it may bend, lest it instead break. You are permitted to be human. As much as you and some of our brothers seem to think otherwise.”

“And yet how many now lie dead because of it? When I received news of the Rangda invasion, I was building a city, Daena. It was beautiful. A work of art.” She shook her head, “And it did nothing to save the lives of those who I had been charged to defend. Humanity is imperfect, sister - and those imperfections lead to death and destruction.” She cast her hand to the room around them, brimming with schematics, weapons in various states of creation, diagrams of fortresses, and more. “If I must purge myself of my own humanity to protect humanity, I will do so. Do not claim to me that you do otherwise. I have sensed it as clear as day.”

“Were your daughters combat capable? Had they been trained and made ready? Was your wargear prepared? The answer to all of these are yes. Enough of your flagellation, I will not tolerate it. We must think of things other than war - both for humanity and our own sanity,” Daena replied in a firm voice, like that of a parent scolding a particularly recalcitrant child.

“As if I retain any of either.” Eiohsa muttered darkly to herself.

“Very well, sister. It was childish of me to bring things to such dark places to begin with.” She said, feigning concession. “Tell me, then, what would you speak of? Have you plans, now that the council is adjourned?”

“There is a mystery that needs unraveling, you may have seen the hints of it from my reports,” she said, picking her glass back up and taking a sip. “There is a power in the Obscurus. Advanced, and unknown to us. They have been providing arms to forces across the Segmentum. Their identity and goals must be uncovered.”

“I understand, too, that these arms they have provided are a mark above many of our own if I am not mistaken, yes?” She said, leaning forward with interest. “I have longed to acquire some of these advanced technologies they display before the Mechanicum can hoard them away from the Imperium proper. I was to deploy back Segmentum Ultima, to continue the expansion of the Imperium eastward. I intend to speak to father, and request I be allowed to accompany his Custodians to their investigation of Carcinus. Should that fall through…” she trailed off, smiling once more. “I suppose I must follow orders, should my sister request my presence within Obscurus, musn’t I? I will gladly accept.”

“Perhaps time with Sekhmetara will do as much for your mood as it has mine,” she replied coyly.

Eiohsa laughed, “I have heard of our sister and her reputation. It is a shame she was not discovered earlier, it was lonely before Rangdan, having only one sibling who seemed to understand the concept of fun.” She nodded, sipping at her wine. “It will be good to speak to Sekhmetara. I have yet to meet her properly. Tell me - what other wines does she carry?”

Kaldun looked between Daena and Eiohsa as they had their minor argument, finishing two more mugs of the ale in the process. He had to open the second cask he had brought, watching the two women. When there was an opening in the conversation, he leapt in. “Your empath powers! They are psychic are they not?! Why not just turn them off! Like with biolightning!” Small bolts of golden lightning leapt from his fingertips and stopped suddenly. He waggled his fingers, repeating the process a few times, to accentuate his point.

Eiohsa stared at him for a moment, silently. “Impossible.” She declared, shaking her head. “Utterly impossible, I am sure of it.”

“Nonsense! It is a psychic power! We are two of the most powerful Psykers in existence! The idea that you cannot turn off your own powers is preposterous!” He turned to Daena. “Sister! You know that I am right! Even your own prodigious powers can be stopped, no?!”

Daena nodded at her brother, attempting to catch up to his score by finishing a glass of wine before replying. “It’s true. Admittedly, sometimes visions can surprise me, but with enough focus they can be suppressed.” Usually. She saw no reason to bring up morose talk by discussing what she saw when she looked at the Emperor.

Blinking in disbelief, Eiohsa looked between the two of them. She opened her mouth to protest, before closing it, before opening it once more, and then finally draining yet another glass of wine. She said nothing, merely closed her eyes and focused.

She focused inwards. Feeling the writhing mass that weighed upon her mind. Feeling the currents of the Warp that flowed and eddied through her. She waded through it for hours. Perhaps days. Perhaps years. Exploring and poking and prodding until she was satisfied. She took the threads of the warp in her hand and manipulated them, feeling the change as she did so. She wondered what would happen if she tried to pull them to her, away from the myriad different directions they seemed to wish to drift.

It was a strange feeling - or absence of such - that slowly enveloped her. The world felt emptier now. She opened her eyes, realizing that no longer could she feel the ship’s crew around her. No more did she sense their signatures in the warp. It was silence, pure silence in a way she had never before experienced in her life. She stared at the two of them, before bursting into hysterical, uncontrollable laughter. Bent double in the chair, she let the mug fall from her hand, clattering to the floor as she was seized by this fit of nearly mad cackling.

“I think it worked!” Kaldun announced to Daena, finishing another mug in celebration.

“Is this what it is like?” She wheezed, forcing the words out through a monumental effort. “Was it needless?” She looked to Ayushmatki, desperate for some sort of assurance that she was in fact dreaming. “What a fool I have been!” She exclaimed, before laughter consumed her once more.

Her laughter caught in her throat and tears ran in her eyes now, laughter fully giving way to heaving sobs. “It was needless.” She gasped, “It was all needless?! Everything? All of it? This horror within me?” She looked to the two of them once more. “Are you telling me that for the past century and a half I have lived with the greatest torture imaginable all on the basis of my own ignorance?”

Daena saw her tactless brother’s mouth begin to open and physically intervened, walking across the room to drape one arm around Eiosha’s shoulder. “Oh my poor sister,” she whispered, her gaze panning across the room as she thought how to most delicately deliver her hypothesis. “Something tells me that you felt as if you deserved this. That you never thought to try.”

It was Ayushmatki that spoke next, “I can almost guarantee that such is the case.” She stood, walking over to her Primarch, “You have always tried to be perfect. And you have always refused the idea that you might not be. Perhaps it was built into you, like so much else. Perhaps you developed it on your own.” She sighed, “And yet all the same, even back during the wars upon Kayaamat, you would take personal responsibility for everything. It was a concern then, and it only grew from there. Perhaps i-”

She was cut off as Eiohsa raised a hand, not looking up from the ground. “Ayu, please.” She murmured, “You speak the truth, but please. A moment. This is… I…” she trailed off, looking up to them. “This has defined who I am since the moment I met another. Since I crawled from the lake of fire as an infant. It has shaped the person I am. Perhaps I do deserve it, or perhaps the Emperor saw fit for its use for… whatever purpose I was to serve within his Imperium.” She drew breath, shaky and uncertain. “I do not even know what to do now. I have thought this a blessing and a curse I must bear until my final day - and now…?” She looked between the three of them, beseeching their advice.

“Now!? Now you wield it, rather than letting it wield you!” Kaldun spoke, finally unable to contain himself despite Daena’s pointed look. “You turn it on only when it would benefit you! During negotiations or interrogations?! Nothing better than being able to know what those opposite you are feeling! During battle, when you must be as strong as the iron of our armor and as cold as the northern peaks of Baalros? Turn it off! There is no benefit in feeling what you have already felt too many times before! You get used to the lack of emotions rushing into you, so that when you do have it off it does not affect you at all! Training! That is what you do now! Train to wield your power properly!” With a satisfied nod, Kaldun finished another mug.

“Our brother is correct. To do anything less would be a true failure of your duty,” Daena said, not so subtly insisting that Eiosha stop needlessly torturing herself.

Silence elapsed once more as Eiohsa looked between them. Slowly, she sat back upright, pulling both of her siblings into a tight embrace, and Ayushmatki into a much gentler one. “Thank you.” She murmured, her expression once more a genuine smile. “I… I have been a fool. Thank you.”

She turned her eye to Ayushmatki, “I know you brought stronger than wine and ale to this, dear Ayu - stop holding out on us. I have true reason to celebrate now. And the food! Yes! We mustn’t let it go to waste either!” She leaned down, bringing one of the now slightly cooled dishes to her nose. “I have not eaten this in…” She trailed off, “some time. Come, sister, brother! Let me share the delicacies of my home! As my thanks! Ayushmatki, where is it?”

Lazily, Ayushmatki gestured to one of the crates she had brought with her, from which a bottle of clear liquid marked in strange letters floated up. “You had but to ask, old friend.” She said, smiling.

---

[...End Log.]
[...Terminating.]
[Imperial Thought for the Day: Life is temporary. Duty is eternal. Use thyself well, for self destruction aids the Malevolent.]

---

Later...

Fear gnawed at her belly as Eiohsa stood before the Emperor of Mankind. Fear, and hope.

The ordeal of Carcinus sickened her. Filled her with disgust, and horror, and fury, and with purpose. Deep within Carcinus lay her daughters, many of them known to her - others, terrified and unknowing of what had been forced upon them. She would return to them. She had to return to them. Who knew how many of them still lived in those dark, horrific catacombs? How many were suffering even now under the knives of the Lurkers?

The Emperor was her one chance. Who knew if the Custodes’ arrival might result in their deaths? Would they be cast out to rot in some abyssal pit, covered up and scrubbed away to hide their existence from the Emperor’s ten thousand? The Emperor could grant her what she wanted, allow her to accompany them to Carcinus, to infiltrate that dreaded world again and ensure their safety from the Ninth Legion.

“Father.” She said, eyes downcast as she stood across from him. “I beg of you, grant me this boon. You have sent your Ten Thousand to investigate Carcinus, to determine once and for all the guilt of the Ninth. I thank you for this, and apologize for my transgression upon the Council in such a manner.” She looked up to him, “But, if you would permit it, I wish to accompany them. To infiltrate the world once more and rescue my Daughters and the others the Ninth have imprisoned from that horrific place. I do not fully know what else lies in wait, and I fear they may try to destroy my Daughters to hide evidence of their crimes.”

Silence reigned for a time as the Emperor watched her. She felt herself burning in his presence. There was nothing to be done but place herself at his mercy and beg for it. This was the final thread by which she held on to sanity. The duel with Augor yet lay in wait. But after everything she had seen. Everything she had felt… she had propelled herself onwards through the Crusade through sheer force of will. There was always a goal. A task she had to accomplish to further the Crusade. Every step she took through dirt soaked in the blood of those she had sworn to protect was to ensure that never again would such sacrifices be needed.

And for what? There were tasks ahead - but for the first time she found herself wondering if they were truly worth it. Here. Now. Rescuing her daughters from the Ninth - that was something she KNEW was good. Something she KNEW would be worthwhile. He had to allow her.

“I cannot permit such a thing, my daughter.”

Eiohsa could not speak. She bit her tongue, staring at him. Pathetic. Weak. Rusted iron. A broken tool.

“If your involvement were discovered, it would cast a shadow of doubt upon the investigation that cannot be afforded.” He continued. The heat radiating from him changed, now. It no longer burned her, but seemed to soften. It was warm. It enveloped her. Comforting her. “If you were known to have entered the world before my Ten Thousand, it would plant the seed of doubt in the hearts of many. They would say the Custodes were deceived by you. That you planted false evidence. Be still, my Daughter, and have patience.”

“I believe you.” He said, speaking again before she could. “I know you would not bring such falsehoods before me. The Custodians will determine for me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where the blame lies, and upon whom the executioner’s sword will fall. And when it falls, my daughter, you will have the honor of holding the blade.”

Eiohsa stared at him wordlessly for what seemed hours. This… no, this couldn’t be it. This could not be it. She couldn’t simply be… denied. Her Daughters were there. Suffering. She could still feel every iota of horror and misery in that forsaken hole. The miasma of death and decay and violation. It clung to her soul, even as she stood before the Emperor. The thought of leaving them to suffer in that mire for a second longer grated against the very core of her being. The thought of leaving anyone in that nightmarish abyss.

“But…” she grasped for words. Something. Anything. Anything to convince him. “I can disguise myself. You know that! None would ever have cause to be suspicious. To them I would be just one more Custodian. Indistinguishable from all the rest.” She looked at him, pain in her eyes. The weight of her memories crushed her as she grasped for anything, any lifeline at all. “I can’t just… I can’t just leave them there.” She half-whispered. “That place it… it isn’t human. It’s… perhaps they were once human, the Fleshweavers, but…” she stood before him. Pathetic. Foolish. Unable to even come up with the words to describe what she had seen.

“Be that as it may, the risk is too great.” He looked at her solemnly. “I believe you, my daughter. But the risk, no matter how unlikely it may be, is too great. When we stand upon the precipice of truth, not even the smallest misstep can be permitted.”

Eiohsa stared at him silently before she collapsed into a nearby chair, cradling her head in her hands. Hollow and defeated.

She stared into nothingness for years. Time stretched on for eternity as she tried to shut out the sounds in her mind. The scenes of exterminatus. The screams of a dying world. The toxic, stifling miasma of Carcinus.

She looked up to see the Emperor sitting across from her, nary a trace of emotion upon his perfect features. He simply waited for her.

“Why did you make me this way?” She asked of him under her breath.

The words caught in her throat, and she seized on them.

“Why did you make me this way?” She asked again, louder now.

“Why!? Why did you?! Tell me now, damn you! What do you want?! Why do I wade through the blood of those I have sworn to protect?! I ask nothing. I seek no rewards or accolades. I merely wish to build a better Imperium, Father. I wish to build your better Imperium. Why can’t I?”

The Emperor looked at her impassively for a moment before speaking. “I named you Lady of Iron for this purpose. And I knew when I met you that you could be trusted with such thankless tasks. That you could, and would, break the darkness that threatens humanity beneath you to secure its future. I knew you fought not for honor, glory, or riches. And I knew you could be trusted not only to do what needed to be done in the dark, but to do so with mercy, and compassion. I knew you could bear upon your shoulder this burden.”

“Then why, as the infant who you would one day name the Lady of Iron, the Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion, sat upon the shore of the burning lake through which she crawled dream of enlightenment, equality, prosperity, and a united galaxy before she had ever glimpsed the stars or heard another human voice? Why must the blunt instrument of the Imperium’s wrath be cursed with dreams of a brighter future she will never see? Surrounded by naught but war and death, the endless screams of the dying echoing forever in her mind? Why is she cursed with hope for love and peace to reign, for art and poetry and philosophy to replace tanks and guns and battleships? Why is she fighting for a future that seems ever more distant with every battle? As her daughters fall dead around her fighting for their dream shared with the Emperor of Mankind, fat kings and petty despots of countless worlds reign over their subjects as though livestock. Why has her father made her this way? Why have you made me this way?”

The Emperor remained silent, watching her pensively.

“Why must I dream of these things, father? I am your creation, wrought by your hand. It is by your design I was gifted the skills I hold. But why? In every moment of my life endless dreams for the future spring forth. Utopia. A perfect society where none must ever fear for their safety, where none ever go hungry, where all have a roof over their heads and a place within an enlightened society? I see wondrous cities in my mind’s eye, father. And then I am asked not to create, but to destroy them. To raze them to the ground and kill, maim, destroy, and desecrate. Why, father, I beg you. Please, tell me why!?”

Tears ran from her eyes as she poured her heart out to the Emperor, to her father. Her form trembled within its seat, her hands shaking with emotion as she held her head in them. She could not bear to look him in the eye now, could not bear witness to that white hot inferno. In its presence she would surely be swept aside, burned alive as she was now, exposed, vulnerable. “If it is my fate to be executed, Emperor - Father. If it is my fate to not see the golden age of the Imperium, if I am to die for the good of the Imperium, if I am incompatible with your future, if I am to burn in the flame of the Imperium’s conquests - please.” She looked up, finally, meeting his imperious burning gaze with her own distraught, bloodshot one. “Please do not force me to suffer any more. I am done. If the Imperium is to live without me, I accept it. I have failed, certainly.” She drew breath, letting out another choked sob. “I have failed you, I have failed the Imperium, and I have failed humanity. If I must be slain - do it now. Please. I have fought for centuries for you and for humanity, carrying the burden of this Empathy and the sight of the warp upon my shoulders for all time - and I am done, Emperor. If you truly do love us, as your children, grant me this dignity and spare me the torture of this burden I must bear, spare me the agony of fighting for a future I will never see. Please.”

“Every waking moment, every day, of every year, I hear them.” She whispered, after silence had elapsed. She could not look the Emperor in the eyes. Not now. “This beautiful, wonderful gift of yours has become a curse, father. Every moment I live, as I look upon you now, begging for mercy, I hear them. The ones I couldn’t save. It was my duty to protect them.” She choked back a sob, her eyes clenched shut. “And I failed them.”

“Yet the Imperium stands strong, my daughter.” Spoke the Emperor, looking upon her with the same haughty, imperious gaze that burned with the fury of a thousand sons. “Their sacrifice, though tragic, was necessary for the bright future our endeavor stands for. And yet, you speak of hearing them? What troubles you, my child?”

“As if my own, father, I felt their deaths, their suffering, every iota of pain, horror, grief, despair, anger, and betrayal they felt when they fell prey to the grip of the Rangdan. The same abilities you gifted me - this Empathy - have ensured I can know nothing but this nightmare every day. I know their names. Every single one. I still know the feeling of their flesh burning in the phosphex we laid to destroy the bio-constructs of those unspeakable horrors. The horror, the terrible horror, of Exterminatus. My flesh, devoured by the life-eater virus, wiped from existence in the light of cyclonic torpedo, seared from the bone in the heat of a Mortalis missile. It was my duty, my purpose, to protect them - and I failed.”

She sat, silent, her eyes focused on some object far in the distance now, far from the Emperor, where those battlefields still raged within her mind. The deaths of how many millions of people around her. Entire planets consigned to oblivion by her hand when the enemy tide grew too strong. The sight of her own Daughters, corrupted and warped by the touch of the Rangdan, what remained of their minds begging her for death, for mercy, for their gene-mother to save them from this fate worse than any death. Empty, glassy eyes forced onward in war against their kin by the Rangdan monstrosities. Onward and onward they marched within her.

“What troubles me, father, is that my life has become a living hell.”

The Emperor looked upon her with a curious mix of emotion visible upon his face. Sorrow. Sympathy. Compassion. And… Pride?

“My daughter.” He said, looking upon her with those same burning eyes. “You have not failed.” He stood, looking upon her with that same curious expression. “It was never my intention you be saddled with such a burden. You were taken from me in your infancy and raised where I could not teach you how to control them. Upon Terra, you showed such mastery of so many things, and I was proud of you, my daughter. Had I known, I would have taught you.” He sighed, “But you have not failed.”

“How?” She asked, golden tears glistening upon her cheeks. “How many trillions have died under me? At my hand? On my word?” She stood in turn, “I, whose sole purpose is to serve humanity, have failed to protect them. Entire planets destroyed. Cultures burned to ash.”

“And in doing so, do you know how many you have saved?”

“What?”

“Do you know how many lives you have saved, my daughter?”

“I… I do not know.” She whispered, eyes wide.

“If the reports from your own hand are to be believed, it is many, many more than have died under you. Each death is a tragedy, my daughter, a tragedy necessary for the future of our Imperium. When I spoke to you, when we met, I named you the Lady of Iron, for I saw within you the determination and resolve to do what needed to be done when others could not. I am sorry, my daughter, that you have suffered so - truly, it was not my intent.” He smiled at her, “But by making those choices, hard as they were, you saved many more lives that would have been lost under others. I know I made my choice well. You concern yourself not with honor or glory, the praise of your peers - only the wellbeing of humanity. In this, if nothing else, you have made me proud.”

Eiohsa said nothing, merely stared at the Emperor for a time, lost in his words.

“You are the Lady of Iron. You do not break, but become something new, stronger, when fed through the fires of war. Some day, my daughter, you will build cities as you dream. The Imperium has need for minds of peace as well as minds of war.”

“That is all I have ever wanted, since the first moment I swore loyalty, father. To bring the beautiful things you have gifted to my mind into reality. To bring forth technology long forgotten, and see the worlds of the Imperium prosper anew with its fruit. To bring up every impoverished child in a loving home, to see them educated and fed and brought into a peaceful, enlightened Imperium. All of these things and more, father, is all I have ever wanted.” She said, tears once more welling in her eyes.

The Emperor watched her silently once more, his expression a serene facade of impartiality. At last, he spoke to her. “And you will, some day.”

Tears glistened on her cheeks as he stared at him. “Thank you, father.” She whispered.

---

[...End Log.]
[...Terminating.]
[Imperial Thought for the Day: Love thy Father, the Emperor, and be delivered.]

From Sick Man to Savior - An 1847 Nation Roleplay

@TheEvanCat
Well this complicates my plans lmao

From Sick Man to Savior - An 1847 Nation Roleplay

Tbh what I would have a harder time believing is the US seizing so much of Mexico, when they explicitly chose not to go further south in OTL because of the prevailing racist attitudes of the time. They didn't want more non-whites in the US lmao.

That the US in this has taken control of so much indicates some dark shit is probably going down.

What a cursed fucking timeline we have wrought.