Imperium Ascendant

Chapter Two: Message in a Bottle

The sealed doors to the Laboratory exploded inwards in a shower of smoke and sparks. Soldiers of the nascent Imperium along with frantic gene-smith's rushed into the chamber searching for the source of the alarm and source of the bolter fire. The soldiers noticed the fallen Word Bearers positions around them, looking warily at the strange warriors and preparing to fill the corpses with rounds if any these trespassers were still alive.

The gene-smiths in turn frantically scrambled to the various data-readouts and monitors attached to the gestation capsules. The Great Work could not be damaged. Too much had been done to ensure the Primarchs' birth. If they had been damaged or contaminated… trillions would die begging for saviors stolen from them.

A third party soon entered the Chamber, A old man cloaked in ragged robes flanked by golden armored giants. The soldiers and gene-wrights instantly snapped to attention at the sight of The Sigillite and the Custodes Guard. Malcador's wizened eyes scanned the chamber while his mind's eye did the same. These corpses stunk of the Great Enemy, no denying that. Worse still, a chaotic portal had been opened in this most secret and protected chamber. Malcador quickly used his formidable psychic powers to cleanse the chamber of Neverborns corruption.

Yet something else hung in the chamber. Another aura that was much fainter than the chaotic taint had been obscured until Malcador purified the chamber and he could tell that it was radically different from the seeping Chaotic cancer that clung to the Primordial Annihilators' minions and tools. This aura mystified Malcador, it was equal parts familiar and horrifically alien. Moving through the chamber with speed that a man of his age and bearing should not possess, the Sigillite followed the strange psychic signal through the rows of infant Primarchs.

The source was quickly identified. It was a point where reality and the warp had once intersected. Malcador was no stranger to warp rifts, both open and shut, but this particular rip in the Materium was new. Unlike the ugly wounds rent open by the Neverborn and their minions, this rift had been both carefully cut open and then sealed, akin to a surgical cut that had been sutured. The place where the rift once had been did not weep corruption, but instead soft golden energy slowly emanated from it. Reaching out to the rift, Malcador touched the metaphysical suture with his mind. The Sigillite was suddenly cast backward in an explosion of psychic power that threw the ancient Psyker a dozen feet or more.

Even as the old man was thrown back from the rift, the Custodes reacted faster than unaugmented eyes could detect and moved to Malcador, attempting to assist him. Quickly moving to his feet before the Custodes could help him, Malcador telekinetically summoned his staff that lay on the ground next to him. Calmly as if nothing had happened, he quickly left the chamber, giving orders for the tainted corpses to be sealed away in one of the warded cells meant for the most tainted and twisted artifacts of the Old Night, and for a permanent detachment of Custodes to be placed in the Chamber of the Primarchs.

Despite his calm demeanor, Malcador was worried. He had felt an incredible psychic presence from the sutured portal, far beyond anything he had ever witnessed in his incredibly long lifetime. Yet the power was not what disturbed him, it was what the power resembled. It felt like a twisted, magnified version of his Liege's power. When he touched the rift, his mind had been bombarded with a massive amount of information and psychic power. In his long life, Malcador had encountered similar things, psychic beacons created to transfer information directly into the brain of a worthy recipient. The beacon had even seemed to consider Malcador worthy to open it, seeing as it didn't try to detonate his brain and that of everyone's within a mile radius. Yet it seemed that Malcador simply lacked the power to tap into the beacon's knowledge.

The nature of the anomaly was bizarre even for the already strange phenomena it was. It was weaved into the rift itself, and then sealed into the veil between reality and the Warp. This form of metaphysical psychic surgery was something beyond Malcador's capabilities, or virtually anyone or anything else's for that matter. The amount of psychic control and power this must have taken was possible to only one being in the known universe. This Message had come from The Anathema. Yet Malcador's liege and friend was busy negotiating with the new leadership of the Yndonesic Bloc, and would have no need to send such a cryptic and inaccessible message, or at least would have informed Malcador of this.

Even if this beacon was a contingency that the Sigillite was not privy to, the Chaotic incursion raised more questions. How had their portal been opened? How did they know where the project was? What were the things they sent through the portal? They were obviously gene-crafted monsters, but the designs of their armor and what little of their biology Malcador had seen disturbingly reminded him of the Thunder Warriors and the Custodes themselves. Something worrying was occurring, and Malcador had theories but no concrete evidence about what all of this was.

The First Lord of Terra knew one thing for certain: The Emperor of Mankind must be made aware of this. The Sigillite knew He could decipher the beacon's message and learn the secrets locked away with the infant Primarchs. Malcador moved quickly through the passages and chambers of the Lunar Labs as he journeyed to the shuttle port. He needed to return to Terra and speak with the Emperor immediately.

Location- Hive Jakar: Capital of the Yndonesic Bloc

The Inner Sanctum of Yndonesa was a massive ornate chamber, the very walls were encrusted in gems and covered with colossal religious murals that were being removed even as the future of the nation was being decided below. A grand oaken table was the centerpiece of the chamber where once countless demagogues and tyrants had bickered and argued over their fiefdom. Now, half of it was occupied by the provisional government that had formed after the fall of Cardinal Tang. All of them were in various states of fear and stress directed towards the being occupying the other half the table, the figure who was both their conqueror and their judge. He alone would decide their fate. Would they be cast down and broken like so many other warlords of Terra, or would they be spared to serve this new conqueror?

A palpable silence filled the chamber as the Emperor of Mankind watched his quarry through golden eyes that shone like miniature stars. He had met countless of their ilk throughout his impossibly long lives. Not monsters or butchers, but the servants of such. More often than not, they never directly killed, but were obedient little cogs in great machines of death and destruction. As much as he would have preferred to kill these spineless fools who had allowed millions, if not billions to die and now could only offer "I was just following orders" as a defense, they had kept the wheels of twisted evil governments running and he needed these little cogs in his infant Imperium.

Slowly rising to his feet, the Emperor began to slowly pace the chamber, dictating his terms of surrender. They would serve and submit, or be destroyed like so many others. The cogs gave it half a second's thought before bowing before their new Master. After giving the most capable of them new roles in the governance of this territory, he left the chamber letting the new elite of Hive Jakar collapse in relief with the knowledge they would not face the same fate as their previous masters.

Flanked by Custodes, the Emperor walked briskly to his waiting shuttle. Most of Terra was now under his rule, and construction of the various buildings in the Himalayas was on schedule. The Shining Path was still open to him, and with every day that passed, he allowed himself just the smallest amount of hope that the Darkest most horrific futures he had seen would not come to pass.

Valdor quickly approached him and bowed to his creator and king. Giving the signal to his friend and closest bodyguard to rise, the Captain-General quickly gave a sealed datapad to the Emperor.

"It's from the Lord-Sigillite, there has been an incident on Luna." and with that, the Master of Mankind-to be became lost in dark thoughts. Had the Four come to collect? Had he lost his greatest allies and generals before they were even born? The Emperor knew that Chaos would attempt to steal his creations at some point, but the barriers in and around the laboratories were some of the finest crafted in galactic history, something massive had gone wrong. Entering his shuttle with the Custodes, he left the Hive preparing to journey to Luna.

Unsealing the datapad, the Emperor used his beyond superhuman intellect to absorb pages of information in milliseconds. Constantine Valdor watched his Lord scan the documents as the shuttle rocketed into orbit. A strange noise left the Emperor's throat and Valdor looked up in concern, fearing some pathogen or poison had slipped through security. It took Valdor's heavily modified and trained mind a solid second to recognize the noise the Emperor was making. It was a chuckle. The Emperor of Mankind was laughing as he read the message his closest advisor had sent. He could feel the future shifting, he could feel the Shining Path widen and humanity's survival becoming a little more likely.

(edited by Klickator)

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