Chapter 39: The Fall of Xozer (Part 7)
A/N: Since we'll be seeing things during the Age of Strife on Terra. Here are a few terms and technologies that might need to be clarified beforehand.
Adrathic Weapons: These are a Terra exclusive weapon that has yet to be rediscovered anywhere else in the former human Empire. They are described in a similar manner to Necron Gauss Flayers, but fire beams of bright colored energy that causes their target to disappear into orange sparks or embers. They were confiscated by the Emperor during the Unification Wars, and are only available to the Custodes in 30K/40K. As Age of Strife technology tends to be a mix of both psychic and scientific innovation (the Castigator Titan, the Dark Glass, the Neverborn Androids, the STC and all things Akashic), Adrathic technology interacts with both the material and immaterial planes of existence. This makes them both dangerous, and difficult to produce. Even the Mechanicum is banned from learning how these weapons operate, much less are made.
(Unfortunately, the TableTop rules of these weapons make them much less impressive than their description.)
Ship-bound crew: Due to the Cybernetic Revolt during the Age of Strife, void ships are forced to have large populations of menial humans to operate the ship itself. Every void ship is essentially a mobile city with thousands, if not millions of personnel who spend their entire lives aboard the vessels.
A/N2: I've added some links to music and ambient sounds. These are just my personal opinion, so take them or leave them.
♪1 Immortal Imperium Unites
♪2 [ Darktide OST ] IMPERIUM OF MAN
♪3 Emperor Advances
♪4 Darling in the Franxx - Vanquish (OST)
♪5 DARLING in the FRANXX OST - CODE:002
♪6 月の記憶 - Memories of the Moon - Tsukihime 月姫 Remake OST
—-------------------------------------------------
A giant in golden armor watched the last of the enemy shuttles land upon the planet below. His Warp sight penetrated the clouds, and observed the command crew exit their craft to face angry mobs and grim looking military police.
Agesilaus, the current Commodore of the fleet, stood by him on the ornamental observation deck of the Bucephelus. He saw only white clouds drifting over the continents and oceans. It was only his master that was inhuman.
"All of the non-ship bound crew have been removed from the surrendering vessels." Agesilaus reported. "The reeducation of the menial population bound to each ship's service will begin as they are integrated into our reserves. They should be loyal enough for you in 2 or 3 generations."
"And the planet?" The giant asked.
"..." Agesilaus paused. The giant could see everything below them. He was not asking for a report, but for Agesilaus's opinion. "They will remain cowed, but uncooperative." He said grimly. "However, intercepted transmissions and communications state a grand tribunal will commence before renegotiation attempts will be made."
"And so the Vox Populi will have its pound of flesh." The giant snorted derisively.
"It is the fastest way to restore political order. Somebody must be held responsible." Agesilaus sighed as he stepped forward and stood next to his lord. "Their defeat was too fast, and the battle out of sight for the masses. They do not know how meaningless it is to resist." The Commodore grimaced to himself. "The trial will be a witch trial. They will burn those commanders for their supposed cowardice; politically if not physically."
The armored fists of the giant creaked as he clenched them. Then both relaxed, and he turned away from the viewing windows.
"Reorganize the fleet." He said with a voice devoid of emotion. "They have been demilitarized, and shall not threaten our flanks again. Resume course to the next Warp gate hub. We will search for traces of the Omnissiah there."
"As you will my…"
The door to the observation deck opened before Agesilaus could finish, and his voice stopped. Yet, it was not shock at who stepped through that stopped him.
The door opened, revealing Lady Erda standing there. As soon as her form entered the giant's eyes, Agesilaus felt his throat close up in fear as a murderous wrath began to radiate from his Lord.
Lady Erda stumbled onto the observation deck. Her limbs trembled, and sweat dripped down her chin and neck.
"It is time, Neoth." She said sadly, voice defeated and bitter. "Do as you must."
—-------------------------------------------------
Heliosa-32 watched the Warp unfold over what remained of the city of Xozer. The city and the immaterial tear were both large enough to be comfortably visible from the orbit of Luna. Purple tendrils and clouds had covered the dark green and blue central portions of the city days ago. Now, they had spread so far that they obscured the ash gray and dust brown craters left by the battle at the outer walls.
A small smile dimpled her smooth white cheeks as she turned her gray eyes to another potion of the planet. Another Warp rift was opening there; centered around another battle between ideologies. The silky dress she wore, white and sparkling like the Lunar dust outside, shifted as she leaned back upon a floating egg-shell shaped throne. Its curved sides cradled her, and the gravitic levitators held her weight without bobbing. Pearly white hair ran down her exposed back, hiding the series of neural linkage tubes that connected her brain to the cogitators in the throne.
Heliosa-32 was the head of one of many Selenar gene-cults, and she was currently observing Terra from one of the planet-facing viewing windows. Ladies in waiting, all with the same face as her, stood by with refreshments in their hands.
"The Warp resonance has spread to other regions, 32." Another woman, identical to Heliosa-32, said as she stepped forwards from behind Heliosa-32's throne. Gray eyes turned towards another part of the planet, and wrinkled with amusement as purple clouds and tendrils began to spread upon other continents.
"The plebeians destroy themselves, as their gene-code determines." Heliosa-32 said in a melodramatic manner. "They are truly an unsalvageable branch of humanity. Barbaric and insatiable. Small wonder the first lot left the planet for Luna."
"That may be so…" The other Heliosa grimaced. "However, the effects may extend further than just one planet."
Heliosa-32 gave an exasperated sigh, then backhanded the Heliosa who had spoken up across the face. Elongated nails cut through skin and fat, spilling blood from the muscles underneath. The other Heliosa stumbled backwards, but by the time her hand reached the cuts on her cheek they had already scabbed over. A few light scratches knocked off the solidified blood and plasma, crumbling it to dust and revealing unblemished skin where the wound had been seconds before.
"Do not forget, 31, that I am the most advanced version in charge." Heliosa-32 spat venomously. "My decisions determine the actions of the Heliosa cult, and have already taken the effects of the Warp into account." Heliosa-32 sat back in her egg-shell throne, looking up through the viewing window at the storms and tendrils spreading across the planet below Luna. "Besides, the other Selenar have agreed to let those below do as they wish."
"I remember that well, daughter." Heliosa-31 replied, bitter resentment bleeding through her otherwise calm voice.
"Come come, mother." Heliosa-32's voice dripped with sarcasm. "You treated 30 just as I do you. When 33 is born, I will be treated the same. But, that is their right. They are better than us by definition, and so their word is law."
Heliosa-32 placed a hand over her lower abdomen, lovingly stroking the small bulge that was growing there.
"Power must pass on to those most fit to wield it, and for us that is always the next iteration." Heliosa-32 gave a loving smile towards the being growing in her. "It is what separates us from the plebeians below. Their eternal attachment to power and wealth burned everything they built to the ground."
"Our ancestors expected simple man to die out ages ago." Heliosa-31 warned grimly. "Their tenacity is not to be underestimated, no matter how self-destructive they are."
Heliosa-32 nodded at that. "I expect the barbarians to survive this. In fact, I want them to." She licked her lips as she turned her eyes back to the planet below. More and more breaches of reality were splitting open, as the barrier between real and unreal broke down. Each was centered around a different war, a different battle between ideologies.
"Hell will be unleashed on the planet's surface." Heliosa-32 said softly. "Imagine what sort of struggle for survival will ensue? When the storms pass, only the most potent gene-lineages will have survived."
"I hope you will be as cautionary as I am, if the task falls to your daughter." Heliosa-31 snorted. "Care will have to be taken when choosing which gene-codes are to be taken into ours."
"Do not worry." Heliosa-32 chuckled lightly. "My daughter and the daughters after her will be better than either of us. The next iteration always is."
♪1
As Heliosa-32 stroked her stomach again, there was a flash of light. Both 31 and 32 looked up.
Where there had only been purple blights spreading across the planet like mold on old bread, there was now a blazing star. It had appeared above the Nord Afrik continent, and its blinding light penetrated the dimming filters of the observation window.
Heliosa-32 shivered as she felt the light wash over her. That was no mere explosion. She could feel it with her enhanced mind, and terror gripped her heart.
"Activate our Gellar fields ahead of schedule." She ordered, rising from her egg-shell throne as she did so. "Send word to the other cults for them to do the same. Synchronize the fields and shut all observation windows and ports! Now!" Her voice rose as the fear she felt spread through her, releasing adrenaline and cortisol into her system.
Ordinarily, her advanced genetics would have controlled that. However, before the being below them on the planet's surface, those enhancements meant nothing. These emotions did not come from her brain or body. This fear came from her very soul. She could feel the intention of the being within the light, and it made her skin crawl.
Alarms began to blare, interrupted only by the shattering of glass as her handmaidens dropped everything and scurried away to carry out her orders. Standing alone in the middle of the cacophony, Heliosa 32 glared defiantly at the light as heavy shutters closed over the viewing windows.
The purple tendrils of the Warp were already receding, burned away or shoved back into the unreality they had come from.
But, all that was left behind was the now blackened ruins of Xozer.
—-------------------------------------------------
Tolu Abdullahi stood before the angel, frozen stiff by what he saw. Tears of blood flowed down the Angel's twisted features. Its perfect skin was wrinkled by muscles pulled tight with gritted teeth and furrowed brow.
Then the Angel screamed.
Raw information slammed itself into his mind, forcing both hands to drop his Volkite Caliver, covering his ears in vain. The weapon, hanging from his neck by its sling, felt like an anchor around his neck. Its meager weight forced his weakening knees to buckle as the psychic scream continued.
Tolu saw men running across fields filled with barbed wire and machine gun fire.
He saw women and children lined up before a ditch, then a line of soldiers shot them all at once.
Bombs and bullets rained down upon cities and towns from various times, engulfing their inhabitants in flames.
He watched giant void ships tear into each other like carnivorous paramecia, ramming their armored prows through the long hulls of similarly shaped vessels. Adamantine armor plates were chewed through by the violence of the impact. Atmosphere, debris, and crewmen spilled out, like the cytoplasm of a cell into empty space.
War and death, over and over again. The images, sounds, tastes, and touch of each scene repeated themselves, as if to hammer into his head the nature of humanity. He could feel the information overwriting him, forcing him to accept a conclusion that had been made by someone else.
This is what they were, and that was the only explanation for their actions. There were no daemons to blame, nor Chaos gods to hold responsible. They were all that was needed to justify what happened here.
The endless repetition continued, like a mad-man telling themselves something until they themselves believed it to be true.
Tolu screamed back, but his own voice refused to reach his ears. Only the disappearing air from his lungs and the iron taste of blood told him he was screaming.
'NO! NO!' He screamed to himself. This could not be what they were. He refused to believe it. 'That is not who we are!' He pushed back against the assault on his mind with that message.
The visions lessened, dimming in intensity, allowing the information from his own body to begin reaching his brain.
The first sight his tearful eyes saw was the Angel. It remained before him, standing proudly with both wings spread. It seemed to blaze with a golden fire that covered both its skin and its armor. One foot was placed on the neck of the Bloodthirster, still pinned to the ground by the Angel's spear.
Tolu stared back up into the Angel's face, and saw it looking down at him.
A shiver went through his body.
Before, it had been looking at nothing, catching them only in its peripheral vision. Now, the eyes that leaked blood were focussed solely upon him.
The Angel's foot pressed downwards, forcing a choking growl out of the Bloodthirster's neck as it pulled out its spear from the daemon's body.
'Move!' Tolu told himself, but he remained still. He was paralyzed before the Angel, frozen by fear and awe, and weak from the assault on his mind. Even now he could feel his brain dip in and out of consciousness between blinks.
The Angel's spear rose; bladed tip pointing at Tolu's head.
Then there was a roar.
The ground shook as the corpulent mass of the Great Unclean One behind Tolu and the rest charged over them, head lowered and antlers pointing towards the Angel.
The Angel turned to face the new threat, and was suddenly thrown off balance as the Bloodthirster pushed itself off the ground.
Two against one, the Angel seemed to have lost its advantage…
But, it still faced its enemies head on.
The Bloodthirster stuck the Angel from overhead, and had its axe blocked by the shaft of the spear. A single shove sent it flying backwards into a nearby building, burying it in ferrocrete rubble. The Great Unclean One lowered its antlers, attempting to gore the Angel through its exposed flank.
A single backward swipe with the butt of the spear smashed through the daemon's right antler, knocking the daemon head over heels and sending it rolling like a ball down the street.
There was another roar, followed by searing flames as the Bloodthirster rose from the rubble, only to be pinned to the ground like an insect as a different Angel stabbed it through the back with its own spear.
Tolu looked skywards, and instead of the green, red, and azure clouds there was a blinding ball of light above them. It blocked out the sky, and banished all the darkness, yet they were not blinded by its luminescence. It was thanks to that he saw more winged figures streaking down from the sky like shooting stars in a meteor shower. He could not count their number. They were as numerous as drops of rain in a storm.
He did not know where he got that imagery from. It had not rained even once on Terra in his lifetime. Yet, he could grasp the imagery as information from another source continuously flowed into his brain.
Instinctively he knew what was about to happen.
"Come on!" He yelled to the others, who either sat or kneeled on the ground in stunned silence. "Get up! Move!" He grabbed Chiamaka by the arm, forcing her to stand. "Run! Follow me!" He called out again, and the others stood wobbly, as if waking from a dream.
"Listen to me!" He yelled. "We have to get out of the city! There is no salvation here! Now move!" Each one of his squad, Nasir and his family, and the two Urshite soldiers turned towards him. He looked into each of their eyes, making sure they heard his words, then began to run.
The world ended around them as they scurried through the labyrinthian streets of Xozer.
Angels and daemons fought, as if to replicate some form of religious apocalypse. But, Tolu knew this was no battle.
The daemons were doomed.
Instead of the clouds representing their patron gods, there was only the blazing light in the sky. It stood in the daemons' way, preventing them from returning home. The light's Angels did the rest.
Tolu ran between the legs of an Angel and Bloodthirster. Both of their weapons were locked together, spear and axe bound together in a grating embrace. The Angel kicked the daemon in the side of its knee, breaking the joint and forcing it to the ground as soon as they passed. Then the Angel bit down on the daemon's neck, spilling crimson blood from its corded throat.
In the distance, Tolu saw a group of Angels drawing and quartering a Great Unclean One. They had pinned it to the ground, and were pulling out the intestines that inflated its belly.
Tolu closed his eyes, no longer able to bear witness to the torture and retribution inflicted upon the daemons.
The Angels were taking back what had been taken from humanity.
They drank back the blood that had been slurped up by Khorne's hordes.
They tore out the bodies swallowed by Nurgle's minions.
If hell is the home of daemons, then this was heaven. It was the realm antithetical to daemons and monsters. Thus, being here was as torturous for them as hell was for humanity.
"Come on!" Tolu yelled to the others. "Stay with me! Don't look back! Run! RUN!"
Nurglings and Horrors ran around them, gibbering and squealing like pigs being herded to slaughter. One of the Nurglings turned towards Tolu. Its eyes widened and mouth twisted into a smile as it tasted his desperation and despair. Then a giant foot in golden armor landed right beside Tolu, as another Angel stamped the lesser daemons out of existence.
The mortal humans continued on, running forwards blindly as wrathful weeping angels wiped out the rest of the daemons on the ground and in the air.
—-------------------------------------------------
Gaius Marcellus was a fighter pilot of the Roma. His squadron had been tasked by Keyser with keeping watch over the battlefield and eliminating any Xozer forces that might try to breach the siege.
Those orders were later overridden by Shang Khal, who told them to begin bombing the black mass that had emerged from the city.
Now, there were no orders. There was only survival.
A screaming daemon with many mouths shot past his fighter, leaving trails of blue flames in its path. His hands flew over the control panel, forcing the grav pods within the craft to freeze the fighter in space, sticking it to its coordinates like glue. His cockpit stopped just short of the azure flames that floated in the air, narrowly avoiding running into them. Those flames would not burn him. They would eat through his craft like acid, and devour him alive like giant amoeba.
Nothing was as it seemed for the past 6 days. At first, they fought giant flies with rotten riders throwing balls of pus and sewer sludge at them. Now, these new monsters joined the dog fighting, further crowding the sky above Xozer.
Gaius keyed in another set of coordinates, and his fighter dropped out of the air. Clawed chitinous legs slashed through where he was, as another rotten fly-like monster flew through where he had been.
His co-pilots arms flew upwards as the fighter entered freefall. The man had started gibbering after staring into the eyes of the screaming demons, forcing Gaius to shoot him with his stub gun.
'Don't think about anything.' Gaius said to himself. 'Remember the money. The money!'
He was a materialistic man. No matter the mission, no matter the casualties, no matter the number of aerial murders he committed; he slept easy every night. Killing was just another means of work. What he did was no different to a predator killing and eating prey.
However, against these daemons, he was the one on the lower rung of the food chain.
"Status report!" He yelled into his headset as he redirected his fighter upwards. Twin wing mounted Adrathic destructors flared, sending yellow beams of scintillating energy into one of the rot-green flies. The creature's form rippled once, like a reflection on a lake, then it vanished leaving only an orange afterimage of its existence.
"Squadron casualties nearing 73%!" One of the support staff on the aerial-carriers shouted back. "Carrier altitude continuing to decrease! Engines are on maximum power, but we're still being dragged in towards the center of the city!"
"Shit!" Gaius swore.
The strange storm that had covered the entire city extended up into the stratosphere where clouds could not form. Red, green, and azure blue tendrils made of similarly colored smog had swallowed several of their town-sized aerial–carriers, consuming them like sardines trapped in the tendrils of a jellyfish.
The surviving aerial-carriers were forced to run from the skies, dropping downwards towards the polluted planet's surface. But, now they could not stop falling. Something was pulling them downwards, dragging their massive frames from the sky.
Gaius could hear the straining of the metal support structure of the carrier over his headset, as well as the whimper of the young man meant to assist him.
"Keep the carrier in the air!" He ordered. "We can't live on the surface any longer!"
The Roma truly could not live on the surface. Their bodies were built to survive in the oxygen deficient stratosphere. Their bones, blood vessels, and muscles were made to resist the g-forces of flight. Such advantages in the sky were excess weight and baggage down on the ground. They would be far weaker than the humans who had evolved to adapt to their pollution ridden world they lived in.
Gaius's craft twisted out of the way of a stream of flames, returning fire with Adrathic beams.
'Don't think about anything!' He told himself again, as a tattered cloak with jagged mouths sticking out of its sleeves floated past his view screen. Whispering voices seemed to echo around him, and he thought he saw the bloody lips of his dead co-pilot moving in unison with their words.
Suddenly there was a flash. The rot flies, screamers, and flamers fell from the sky, burning and smoking like moths flying through a torch light.
Gaius barely had time to blink before his headset buzzed again.
"Altitude rising! We're free! Gaius we're fr-" The young man's voice cut out without warning, then the echoes of multiple explosions reached Gaius's fighter.
Gaius looked up, and saw the massive aerial carrier he called home falling, burning, and breaking apart.
Above them was a blazing star. It had wiped out the clouds and the storms, but instead of the blue sky there was only white light.
As he sat there, mouth half agape as everything he owned and cared about fell past him, something with avian wings shot past his fighter craft.
First it was one, then another and another. Bright winged creatures were falling from the sky in the thousands, shooting down to the ground like meteors. He watched several punch through the wreckage of the carrier, tearing through it like bullets from a machine gun would a corpse. Fresh explosions welled up where they entered the carrier, and orange flames shot out like blood.
"All fighters, protect the carriers!" Gaius ordered. "Climb and engage tangos before they hit!"
Their fighters relied on the carriers for recharging and rearming. The loss of their carriers meant the death of them all. He and the other Roma survivors sent their fighters skywards, hurtling towards the winged figures that fell towards them like flaming meteors with comet tails.
Gaius sighted one of the winged beings, and fired both of his Adrathic destructors. The being rippled, then turned orange, but only its top half disappeared. The lower torso froze mid fall. A golden tasset, with a pair cuisse, greaves, and sabatons stood upon nothing. He saw the waist turn as he passed, as if the missing head was following him with its eyes.
Before he could turn his attention to the next flaming creature, the winged being began to reform. Golden lights wove themselves into a fauld, plackart, and breastplate. Pauldrons and rebraces and vambraces emerged from thin air in an instant. But, instead of a helmet, a wrathful weeping face of such angelic beauty he could look at nothing else emerged.
An explosion nearby broke the spell of the angel's rapture. Gaius turned to see one of his fellow fighters torn apart by a golden sword wielded by a different angel. The blade cut through the reinforced alloys and void shielding like butter. The fragments burst into flames, dissolving into dust and ash leaving nothing behind.
Gaius jinked his craft sideways instinctively, and the angel he had shot slashed through the air he had occupied moments before. He fired his Adrathic destructors into the exposed back of the angel. This time he kept firing, exposing the angel's entire being to the effect of the Adrathic beams.
But the angel would not disappear.
Its body and wings turned orange and vanished, only to reappear again as the very beams of energy he fired warped and mixed with the light it was made of. It weaved the destructive power of his weapons into itself, respinning its body from the strand-like beams of energy he fired into it.
The angel could not be killed. It was born out of humanity's self-destructive nature. Attacking it merely reinforced its reason for existence. Thus, the only thing Gaius managed to do was drain his fighter's power cells as he emptied them out of his Adrathic destructors.
The ship began to stall as it over exerted itself, then it began to fall. Unable to change direction, the angel only had to turn and dive straight down to catch it.
The last thing Gaius saw as the angel's blade tore through his body was the surviving aerial carriers limping away in every direction, as golden flaming angels rained down upon them.
—-------------------------------------------------
"Come on! Keep moving!" Tolu shouted again. How many times he had said the same words he didn't know.
The light above them had begun to fall. He could see it getting closer and closer to the tips of the skyscrapers. They began to blacken and melt like wax candles before it. Yet, there was no heat. There were no flames. It was not because of the thermal energy of the light, or the intensity of its brightness that the buildings melted. Reality was being remolded like clay according to the light's will.
There were no more daemons around them. The angels had done their work in a few hours. Now they flew from the city, spreading their divine message to the rest of the planet.
If it was humanity's destiny to destroy itself on this planet, then their god would oblige.
Better to die at the hands of an angel, than in the claws of a daemon.
The light was right above them now. Its brightness painted the black, brown, and green street white. The corners and turns straightened out, melting away to reveal only a flat blank world with nothing in it.
One by one Tolu heard his companions stop running. First it was the clomp of armored Wrathskin boots that stopped, then the pitter patter of Nasir and his family's shoes.
"Don't stop! Don't look back!" He yelled.
They were too close to the light. Looking back would allow them to see it, and that alone would destroy them. They would be rewritten as the world was around them.
Suddenly, Tolu was yanked backwards by Chiamaka's arm.
"Tolu…" she called out to him.
He shouldn't look back. That was where the light was. But, he could not stop himself to see why Chiamaka had stopped.
Instead of the visor of the patrol suit, there was only the top half of a marble statue in Chiamaka's likeness. It stuck out of a wall of light that had swallowed her lower half. Cracks spread across the smooth white surface, and the statue crumbled into shining dust.
"Chiamaka!" Tolu cried, reaching for the salt-like substance she had dissolved into.
But his fingers refused to move.
He looked down and saw his own hand turning white. The petrification spread, unraveling his suit and clothes as his skin was replaced by smooth stone-like substance. Cracks began to spread, and his fingers broke off and dissolved into the same cubic crystal dust Chiamaka had disappeared into. Bit by bit, he lost his senses as his body disintegrated. Soon, only his sense of sight remained, staring at the approaching wall of light.
The world turned white as the wall of light passed over him, and Tolu clenched his eyes shut fearing the end. Seconds passed, but oblivion never came. Instead, the light began to dim. The sensation of his body returned, and he could feel his fingers clenched into fists against his palms. The world around him was deathly quiet, and he felt something strangely soft underneath his feet.
Slowly, Tolu opened his eyes, and saw a different sort of underworld to the hell and heaven he had witnessed earlier.
♪2
A black sky was above him, but it was not dark. He could still see his surroundings, but night blindness would have been a blessing for him at this moment.
Billions upon billions of human bodies lay on top of eachother, forming mountains and valleys of corpses. Each one still had all its flesh, or what it most likely retained at the moment of expiration. Yet, it was all too clear that none lived. Their contorted limp bodies lay there like rag dolls. Bleached skin showed blood no longer flowed through their veins, and the rolled up eyes stared up at him with blank sclera.
Yet, even though they were unmistakably dead, they did not remain silent. They did not remain still. They were not at rest. They moaned silently, endlessly screaming out their last thoughts in psychic voices. Here they were all trapped in their final moments, re-living the scenes before the light of life left them in this underworld.
Tolu screamed as his mind understood where he was, and stumbled backwards. His feet slipped, and he fell down the mountain. Fingernails held in place by rigor mortis and teeth from opened mouths scratched and punctured his skin. But the pain was nothing to him.
When he stopped rolling, he scrambled to his feet.
"Chiamaka!" He screamed.
"Kwame! Kamau! Fatima! Mandla! Riya! Ananya!" The rest of the names of his squad and the two Urshite soldiers followed.
"Hadidi! Nasir! Layla! Aya!" He called out the names of the civilians he had met.
Only silence answered him.
Tolu collapsed, sobbing. The isolation of this place; the idea that he was the one living thing in this world gripped his heart like a vice.
"Somebody! Anybody!" He cried out again.
Nobody answered.
Still sobbing, Tolu clambered to his feet. He could not stay here. This place was for the dead, and unless he wanted to join them he had to keep moving. He walked for what felt like an eternity in the valley of corpses.
His tears dried, and his sobbing turned into hurried panting.
"I'm not dead!" He screamed to no one, or perhaps to himself. "I'm not dead!"
He wasn't going to die here. He saw what would happen to him if he did. The bodies he trod upon made that all too clear.
Suddenly he tripped; foot snagged on an outstretched hand, solidified in a claw-like form by rigor mortis. His forehead banged against the exposed skull of another body, sending sparks of pain throughout his body.
For a moment, he could only lie there; curled in a fetal position as he held his head and whimpered as the pain slowly went away.
'Chiamaka…' He called out the name of his love. The sweet image of her smiling face temporarily wiping away the images of the dead around him.
Then there was a light.
♪3
In the darkness, a bright golden glow sparked into existence before him. He covered his eyes, blinded by the sudden luminance, then looked up at a giant figure before him.
All pain was gone. The cold touch of isolation was replaced by an all encompassing warmth. Strength filled his body, and Tolu stood to his feet.
The being before him was beautiful. He could only understand it as such. He could not see how long their hair was, or whether they were a man or woman. Yet, he knew what he saw was a work of art beyond description.
Then the being spoke in a voice that was both man and woman.
"Why do you deny me?"
For a moment, Tolu couldn't understand what he had been asked. There was nothing he could ever deny the being before him. It was too beautiful, too magnificent. Through it, he saw the ancient ruins upon Terra in their former grandeur. He saw floating cities full of people like him, enjoying food and drink. He saw mountainous voidships the size of several cities traveling between the stars.
Then he saw the entirety of the Fall of Xozer. He saw the angels descending from the sky, and the blazing light that followed them.
"Why did you do that?!" He shouted back, stumbling back from it at the same time.
He felt betrayed. This beacon of light. This vision of humanity's potential. It had come to cull them at their final hour. Why?
"I did nothing." The being answered back. Its voice was devoid of emotion as if the statement were a simple fact. "What happened here was done by your own hands."
Images flowed from the being to Tolu. Perspectives and memories from those within Xozer and Ursh flashed across his eyes and whispered themselves into his ears.
"Did you see me there?" The being asked.
"No…" Tolu spat out bitterly. "I did not see you there…" Then his tone turned accusatory. "I did not see you there."
The same words, first spoken as an admission, were now spoken as an accusation.
"You did nothing." Tolu repeated the being's own words. "Why? Did you lose hope in us? If so, why come back now? Why act as the grim reaper for a people who does not live up to your standards?"
Tolu had abandoned his own homecity. He had deserted his post. He turned his back on Xozer, for he could neither believe in it nor its mythology. If the being before him had also abandoned them, why did it return now?
"Hope." The being spoke, and for the first time there was almost the slightest color of emotion. A bitter sarcasm darkened its words. "It is a dangerous thing. Look where it led them. See what became of their blind determination."
Visions of Keyser and Shang Khal flowed into Tolu's mind. The words and deeds of the hierophants entered as well. The thoughts and emotions of enemies and traitors filled his heart with revulsion, but he felt what the being before him spoke of.
Those butchers and madmen had not given into despair. They had not acted without reason. They moved in accordance with what they thought was best, and hoped for a better tomorrow.
Hope.
It was what sustained him through all of the death, destruction, and despair. Yet, he did not have a monopoly on it. His enemies also felt that emotion, and they relied on it just as he did.
Tolu's stomach heaved and he dry retched, disgusted by the experience of being the people he most despised. He saw their determination, and their drive. He saw their perspective, and although it sickened him, he could not refute them as he could when he was ignorant.
If he had been in their shoes, and lived their lives, he might have been the one carrying war and decay on his shoulders.
"Then what is the point of it all?" Tolu spat out, breathing heavily from nausea. "If this is all we are, then why do you even care? If hope and determination are but the devices of fools and zealots, why even bother appearing here to slaughter us?!"
If humanity was doomed to self-destruction, why come to them now. Better the beacon of all that was good to exist on its own; ignorant and pure of all of humanity's failings.
Tears leaked from Tolu's eyes, as regret gnawed at his chest.
It would have been better to believe that Keyser, Shang Khal, and all the other invaders from Ursh were just rabid animals instead of thinking, breathing people.
It would have been better to only know the ruins instead of seeing them in their glory days. At least, in his ignorance, he could have marveled at what they might have been. Now, he knew just how badly their beauty had been desecrated.
"I do not need hope to believe in your potential, and you know nothing of just how far I intend to go for you." The being said quietly. "I know what your potential is. I have seen it first-hand. Witness the wonders you have created."
Once again, Tolu saw all that his species had accomplished.
Pure joyful awe filled his heart as he sat up and stared at the sights the being showed him.
He saw his species leave the planet they had been born on for the first time.
He watched in wonder as the first Warp portal opened, allowing mankind to travel far beyond the solar system they had evolved within.
Space elevators rose from the surfaces of planets, branching out to form entire mechanical rings that served as drydocks for ships and centers of trade.
The flying cities he had seen earlier grew larger and larger, until entire artificial continents traveled across the globe. These Orbital Plates controlled the weather and sunlight with their shadows, bringing fruitful harvests and healthy bounties that benefited all below them.
"See their beauty? See their grandeur?" The being spoke from beside him, voice gentle as a lover's whisper. "This is the power of humanity. This is your potential. This is what you can and have accomplished." The visions stopped, leaving Tolu and the being alone in the valley made by mountains of corpses. "I know this. I am this." The being said tiredly. "You do not need more hope. You do not lack determination." The being suddenly leaned forwards, faster than Tolu could react. An armored hand closed around his throat, and lifted him up to the being's eye level. "What you need is order. What you lack is control. What you deserve is an iron collar bound to a chain leash to drag you back from the precipice of self-destruction."
The words were spoken quietly, but Tolu could hear the anger boiling beneath the surface.
"I shall bind you in such a way that you shall never bite at your own body ever again. You will be as great as you can possibly be."
Tolu stared into the being's eyes. He saw through them into its very soul. Every event experienced by humanity lay within it, and in its near infinite memory it saw every flaw and every feature mankind had to offer.
It saw them for what they were, as individuals and as a species. From all that, it had made its judgment.
They would all be saved, no matter the cost. Even these dead souls piled up endlessly had been saved. They lay here at the moment of their death, safe from the monstrous creatures who sent their daemons to assist in the self-destruction of Xozer. In exchange for their salvation, they would serve as examples of everything wrong with humanity. Their lives would be turned into lessons, and their tombstones would become testaments to the trials failed by mankind.
However, Tolu could not simply accept the being's judgment.
"Then did you weld the seams that held those ships together?" He shot back, even as the being's armored fist closed around his throat. "Did you sit over their blueprints and schematics, drawing every detail of their construction? Did you teach the engineers and scientists of those times everything they knew?"
The being did not reply to his questions, but Tolu continued speaking, for he already knew the answer.
"No, you did none of those things. You watched over us, yet never led us."
In all the visions shared by the being, it never appeared in them once. For all the glorious things it knew, it was only an observer to all of it.
"Humanity made it to the stars once, without your help!" Tolu managed to spit out through clenched teeth. "We built the buildings and the voidships and the artifacts with only our mortal minds and the knowledge left to us from our forefathers. We did those things without you!"
Tolu waited for the being to become angry. He expected it to lash out at him, and force him to bend the knee before it.
But the being did nothing. The fist closed around his throat no longer strangled him. It merely held him there, like a pup held up by the scruff of the neck.
Tolu looked into the being's eyes, and once again saw into its soul.
What he was talking to was an infinitesimally small portion of a far greater whole. The emotions it spoke with were single sparks coming off a blazing star. It was so small that its interactions were but a single drop in an ocean of information. Thus, whatever it felt or thought was insignificant to the rest of it.
In short, the man Tolu Abdullahi it spoke to was literally too insignificant for the being to get angry at.
Still, he could not remain silent. No matter how unimportant or irrelevant he might be to this being, he had to make his plea.
"Please. Give us the chance to make it there once again."
The being did not answer him. Several seconds passed as Tolu waited for an affirmation or a rejection. Then it dropped him.
"There is only one path here." The being said sadly.
Before Tolu could process what had been said, great winds blew towards him. He tried to look at the being once again through squinted eyes, but the rushing air dragged him back away from it. He felt them pulling him upwards, lifting him higher and higher out of the valley of the dead and above the peaks of the corpse mountains.
As he rose, he saw the full extent of this artificial underworld. The entire populations of millions of worlds over thousands of years lay here in eternal agony.
So many failures.
So many deaths.
Yet, even amongst all of this, there was a single golden path rising above the gloom and doom. He saw shadowy figures walking upon the path, carrying golden bricks and golden mortar to lay the next stones for it. At their forefront, the golden being stood, staring up at Tolu as the winds carried him up into the black sky.
Tolu stared into the being's eyes one final time, and then everything went dark.
—-------------------------------------------------
Tolu awoke to find a weight on his chest. He looked down, and saw Chiamaka on top of him. They were both in their patrol suits, but their positioning was closer to that of the morning after their day off. Her head rested on his collar bone, with both arms wrapped around his torso. Her legs lay between his and she breathed the slow breath one does when asleep.
Tolu let his head drop back, relief flooding his body. They were both laying upon soft desert sands. Golden angels continued to fly overhead in the blue sky, but they were so far away all he could see were fluttering specks.
"You're awake." Chiamaka said to him and he looked down at her again.
"Yeah, I am." He flashed her a tired smile.
"What happened?" She said and he felt her arms gently squeeze him, as if to confirm he was still there. He placed his arms over her and did the same.
"I don't know."
The memories of the world of the dead were rapidly fading from his mind. His body had been obliterated when he entered that realm, so the memories of that place had not been stored within his brain. All that remained was a feeling of great frustration, and nostalgia.
'But, I'm still alive…' Tolu thought to himself.
That fact alone meant something.
Perhaps he was thrown out because he was not worth the being's time.
Perhaps he was thrown out because he was too obstinate for it.
Or perhaps the being had listened to his plea.
Tolu patted Chiamaka on the shoulder with one hand, and she hugged him one last time before pushing off of him and standing up. She reached down and pulled him up as well.
The rest of the squad, Nasir's family and the Urshite soldiers were all there around them. They too seemed to have just woken up, and were groggily getting to their feet.
One of the two Urshite soldiers stopped suddenly, then patted her helmet with shaking hands. The piece of metal rocked back and forth loosely, then she tore it off and threw it to the ground.
Brown skin and black hair were revealed to the sunlight for the first time in years, and a tearful cry came out of Riya's throat. The metal prison she had been sealed into had been broken, and for the first time in years she felt fresh air on her face.
Ananya quickly followed suit, tearing off her helmet and taking off her gauntlets. The neural connectors embedded into her flesh had been removed. The skin that had been peeled off of her when she had been conscripted and interred in the Wrathskin had been regrown.
For a while, the rest stood by and let the two women cry. The voices that had been trapped for dozens of years were finally free.
Tolu looked up to the sky again. Angels continued to fly above them, heading away from the now blacked ruin of Xozer. He could see faint figures on the horizon, stumbling or marching off into the distance.
'So, we were not the only ones swallowed up by the light and returned from it.' He thought to himself.
Perhaps one of them had convinced the being to let them all go.
Perhaps it never intended to keep them there in the first place.
Tolu shook his head. It didn't matter any more. Xozer, Ursh, all of it was behind them.
"You alright?" Tolu asked as he stretched out a hand to Riya. She sniffled, and took it. He winced slightly. She may have been freed from her Wrathskin, but she was still a 2 m genetically enhanced giant. He could feel the bones in his hand groan in her grip.
"Alright people, let's check the gear and get ready to move." He said to the others. His squad saluted, while Nasir and Hadidi nodded back. Riya and Ananya were still sniffling, so he stood by them while they got their feelings in order.
' "There is only one path here."... was it?' Tolu thought to himself as he looked up into the sky again.
He refused to walk that path; the path of the golden being. Thus, he had been thrown out back into reality to fend for himself.
'Still… Thank you…'
The golden being had let him go, and had saved the people who followed him. That was enough to know that whatever it was, it was not evil. It may not be good. It may not have been right. But, it was still a being that worked for humanity.
"Where to, Sergeant?" Kamau asked as he shouldered a bag of supplies.
"Europa." Tolu said automatically. It was where they were headed for in the first place, but for some reason that direction seemed right to him.
"We'll head to Europa." Tolu said again, and he turned his genetically enhanced eyes Northwards.
—-------------------------------------------------
Mafeo Orde limped across the desert sands. He was the only survivor of the Wrathsingers. His armor was burnt black, and the three skulls that had been welded onto his helm had cracked off during the battle. Both pauldrons that had once borne the mark of Khorne were torn off, revealing the sparking circuitry and wiring of the Wrathskin.
For 6 days he had fought endlessly against pink and blue horrors, and for that feat he had been rewarded.
Mafeo stared up at the angels of God that flew above him.
Yes.
'God.'
He too had been swallowed by the light, and saw the mountains and valleys made of corpses.
"God…" His voice rasped, hoarse from 6 days of endless screaming and roaring.
"God loves us." He whispered to himself. "God is great. God is mighty. God is the one and only."
He remembered the sight of the underworld, and the golden path built within it.
"Yes, God loves us. He loves us all. He kills because he loves. He hates because he loves. He feels because he loves."
That was the message he had brought back from the land of the dead. No mind could bear that burden; to witness so much death. A being which did not care about them could not do that for them. Thus, the number of dead was proportional to that being's love, and it was truly endless.
"Through His scars we see His commitment." Mafeo whispered to himself. "Suffering is our prayer. Faith is our armor. Through battle we are offered redemption, and for those worthy God shall send his Angels."
The armored giant shivered with joy, experiencing the rapture of his new found God.
"GOD!" He cried out to the heavens. "HALLOWED BE THY NAME! THY KINGDOM COME! THY WILL BE DONE ON THE EARTH AS IT WAS IN HEAVEN!"
Mafeo Orde turned Northwards, back to Ursh, back to his home, back to the factories and laboratories that allowed this invasion to happen. He would burn them to the ground. The knowledge required to create the Red Engines and Wrathskin would be destroyed.
God had deemed humanity unworthy of such things. It was only with the blessing of God that they could be allowed access to such knowledge again.
—-------------------------------------------------
Agesilaus stood on the command bridge of the Bucephelus. A woman of Arabian descent was in the stern corner, crying.
He could feel her misery as if it were his own. Every pained sob tore at his chest, and wetted his eyes with empathetic grief.
He turned towards her once, and in that moment he saw her form shift between three ages.
One was an old woman, clutching various memorabilia to her chest. An old medal. A browning photo album. A dress uniform. An old diary. One by one they dissolved away into dust, leaving her wrinkled fingers to clutch at her empty chest.
One was a young woman, holding a body so badly burnt he could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. She cradled its head in her arms, while resting its back on her knees. Choking sobs came from her throat as she rocked back and forth.
One was a young girl. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and her inner thighs were damp with blood. A small creature was held between her palms. Its twig-like arms reached up to the girl's face, and spider leg fingers opened and closed in an attempt to touch her cheek. Then the premature creature spasmed, and fell limp.
"I can't take it anymore!" One of the bridge staff shouted out, and shoved himself away from his terminal.
"Where are you going?" Agesilaus asked the man sternly.
"Anywhere!" He shouted back. "Just… not here. I can't take it!"
Something snapped within Agesilaus. "YOU ARE A SON OF MANKIND!" He bellowed, grabbing the man by his collar and shoving him against the wall. "I won't ask you to do your job, or stay stoically silent. Cry. Weep if you must. But, you will not ignore our mother's pain." He let go of the man, who collapsed in a sobbing pile.
"We failed her. We all failed her." He said to no one.
For a while there was only the sound of sobbing and sniffling on the bridge as Erda's sorrow continued to spill out onto them. Agesilaus returned to the holomap, trying to distract himself with information and statistics.
He didn't bother giving orders. The effects of Erda's pain was not limited to the bridge of the Bucephelus. All of the personnel aboard the Emperor's ships could feel it. They all recognized her as their 'mother', and that connection linked them like an umbilical cord to a womb. They could feel both her love and pain through that psychic link.
'The death of our heritage. The death of our people. The death of our hope.' Agesilaus thought to himself, categorizing the three kinds of grief he felt from her.
Terra was being purged. Humanity would no longer be able to self-destruct on a planetary scale again. The tools that could do that would be destroyed, as well as all knowledge associated with them. They would be put in a state of bare subsistence; a sort of slow elongated death.
'Like putting a terminally ill patient into a medically induced coma.' Agesilaus thought to himself.
It would buy them time to finish their battle with the Omnissiah. After that, the reconstruction could begin.
'Although I will not live to see it.' Agesilaus remarked grimly.
Several hours were spent in somber silence, as they waited for their Lord to return.
Finally, a portal opened, and the golden giant stepped out of it. A bitter expression was carved into his features, and he marched forwards silently towards the central holomap displaying the planet below them.
—-------------------------------------------------
♪4
Neoth stared at the planet. It was similar to Terra, back before its destruction. Blue oceans spread between green continents, and cities glowed bright on the side that faced away from the planet's star.
He stretched out his hand, as if to stroke the planet before him. His psychic senses reached out at the same time, and read the minds of every person on it.
"How are you going to take responsibility for this failure?" A circle of politicians coldly asked the Defense Minister in charge of the fleet.
"Cowards! Have you no shame!" A military tribunal cried as the captains of the ships he had impounded hung their heads with balled fists.
"Traitor! Traitor! Stone them!" A mob cried, as they hurled rocks at the crew men who had been forced to surrender.
Already the world was wracked with strife as the various parties sought to blame each other for the loss of their ships, and their autonomy.
Endless debates of how to resist the coming invasion army they assumed he would deploy, and the steps needed to disable the Volkite spheres were made, only succeeding in furthering the divide into tribalism as they all refused to compromise from their proposed way of achieving the same thing.
War was inevitable. He may have lit the spark that set the timber ablaze, but it was these humans that provided the fire and poured gasoline on it in order to feed their greed and save their pride.
It was a familiar sight. He had seen it repeated over and over again, with or without his interference. He knew how this farce would play out, and what the ending of this story would be.
Neoth stretched his psychic sense further, deeper, penetrating the oceans and reaching for the Volkite warheads he had deployed.
He heard Erda rise behind him, standing upright in shock as she felt him reach for the weapons.
"NO!" She screamed, and her hands reached out to stop him.
At the same time, he closed his outstretched hand into a fist.
Every Volkite warhead activated in that instant, converting thousands of tonnes of sea water into a supermassive hydrogen bomb.
White spires of super-pressurised steam rose, punching through the stratosphere as the explosions kicked it upwards.
Earthquakes wracked the crust, tearing apart fault lines and reactivating volcanoes as the planet's burning blood was forced out of its mantle by the shockwave.
The cities fell, shaken to pieces, sending skyscrapers crumbling to the ground. Continents split apart, opening mouth-like ravines that swallowed everything above them into the dark earth.
Fiery armageddon rained down on those that survived the initial quake. Molten chunks of rock fell upon them like a meteor shower.
For those left, they saw the white spires that had appeared in an instant collapse. The impossibly high columns of water fell back to earth, producing biblical floods made of boiling water that scoured away the surface.
Neoth turned away from the planet, back towards Erda and the rest of the bridge crew of the Bucephelus.
The mortal humans stared in shock at what he had done, unable to understand the justification for this extermination.
Erda met his gaze, then closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her brow furrowed as if the sight of him caused her physical pain.
Once again he reached out with his psychic senses, touching the mind of every person within his fleet.
"This is mercy." He said to all of them. "Listen to what they said and see where it led the others like them." Visions of what he had seen in the minds of the people on the planet were transmitted to them. Memories of what happened with humans in similar situations were brought up before their eyes. "In a few hundred years, this world would be another breeding ground for nothing but nightmares. Even if we had not come, that timespan would only have changed from a few hundred to a few thousand."
He let the message sink in, giving them time to process what he had shown them.
"These are the rights of man. This is the liberty of human nature." He told them. "Mankind's tools have outgrown their maturity. If we waged war with stones and wooden spears, we would not have risked destroying ourselves. But, war and death have become industrialized far beyond what can be imagined. That is what it means to live in this Dark Age of Technology. Entire worlds disappear into the Warp, or are physically wiped out of time in an instant. Our most advanced creations have rebelled, and seek to make us their playthings. Aliens run rampant in our domain, feeding on our people's suffering. The Terror within all things seeks to suffuse every part of what we are with nothing but nightmares, and swallow us all into an unending hell with no salvation in sight."
He brought up scenes from within themselves. They remembered the sights of daemon worlds brought into existence by Warp technologies of human make. They remembered celestial hemispheres left behind where chronometric weapons manned by Men of Iron had erased half a planet from existence.
"Our duty is to remove the forbidden fruit of knowledge that taints our species' lips." Neoth said grimly. "There are some things we are not ready for, and the price for overreach extends far beyond those originally responsible. The Omnissiah is one such example we seek to stamp out. I do not need to remind you what it has done and what it will do to all of us if it succeeds. That cannot be the ending to our story."
His people had seen enough of what the Omnissiah had done, and what it left behind. The nightmarish abattoirs and experimentation tables were bad enough, but the truly horrific things were what was left behind in the cages.
"Humanity does not have the time to fight against itself." Neoth said softly. "There is only one path for our salvation."
He felt every man woman and child listen to him, and silently bow their heads in obedience.
Gone was the golden age of mankind.
Gone was the hope for endless growth and prosperity.
This was the age of reckoning for their arrogance, and only in the destruction of what they had created could they preserve their humanity.
All that was left was their duty; to themselves, to their friends and family, and to their species.
Neoth's brown eyes looked down at Erda.
She stared up at him from the floor where she had collapsed with tear filled eyes.
—-------------------------------------------------
♪5
Erda stared up into her son's eyes.
Shock and pain tore at her breast, but she could not find the voice to shout at him.
She saw past the veneer of the golden giant, all the way to the land of the dead and the figure on the golden path.
The God of Heroes was there, head thrown back with mad laughter as tears of blood ran down his face.
'What sort of god allows this to happen?' His mind screamed to no one.
'What sort of savior brings salvation like this?' He said to the fresh corpses raining from the sky, as the new set of examples of his 'mercy' joined the pile of souls around him.
'What right do you have to hope for a better future for humanity?' He clawed at his cheeks as the absurdity of his own actions battered his brain with contradictions and paradoxes. 'What right do you have? You who have let them do as they wished?'
He had wished for a world where mankind could make their own decisions.
This Age of Strife was the result of that.
To rail against it was a childish act. It would be immature, like a spoiled brat being upset that they didn't get what they wanted. He had no right to scold them for their actions when he stood bye and let them make them.
'But this cannot be our end.' He managed to sputter out between bouts of crazed giggling. 'Our story… The Legend of humanity cannot be finished like this…'
His feet took a step forwards, even as he rocked back and forth from bouts of mad raucous laughter and sarcastic snickering. Even in this insane state of his, the avatar of human progress still moved forwards. The golden path extended under his feet, lighting the way for the shadowy figures who followed him. All the while the dead continued to rain from the black void up above, piling up to form new mountains and valleys of failure.
Erda closed her eyes, unable to watch his torment any longer.
—-------------------------------------------------
'And that is the end of the Fall of Xozer.' The old woman mused to herself, sitting across from Leetu in her shuttle.
The young girl and the young woman merged back into her, returning to the form of a single woman of Arabian descent in a brown cloak.
'You took humanity's self-destructive nature within you, ensuring their souls would remain out of the hands of the Terror.' She sighed. 'You provided the reason for their actions, and the justification for their deeds. You became the scapegoat they would all blame.'
That was the burden the Emperor bore. The dead did not remain silent in the underworld. He heard their sobs and cries and curses every moment he was alive.
'But you deemed that worth it.' Erda stared down at her hands. 'You prioritized the salvation of their souls over everything else. You prioritized the existence of humanity above all.'
'In the end, however, I cannot allow things to continue on as they are.' She looked towards the underground laboratories, and the 20 unborn babes within their technological wombs.
'You are not the only one who can see the future, Neoth. There is no hope here. I watched it die in my own two hands.' Her hands balled into fists as she remembered the twig like arms reaching up to her. 'Humanity is old enough to make its own choices. They do not need a shepherd; although what you are becoming is closer to a slave master.'
She gave a sarcastic snort to herself. In the end, even with his sanity restored, who he was and what he planned did not change. For all his lofty ambitions and dreams of human autonomy, he was the first to try to correct the errors of their ways.
But that was not true autonomy.
'You may not be able to live with their choices…' She thought to herself. 'But your brothers and sisters deserve a chance. A chance to try, a chance to grow, and of course the chance to fail. That is what it means to grow up. Whatever they face out there, they must face it alone. I give them that leniency. I give them that freedom. I do so because I believe in them. They are hardier than you think. Even in hell, they will find ways to survive.'
The image of the mother of the Aeldari crossed her mind. 'I suppose that was the same decision Isha came to as well. No wonder you two fought. If you cannot trust me to act on my own, you would find the notion of letting her free even more disagreeable.'
Perhaps he would come around in time. He had agreed to work with that alien, after all.
But, just as he could not trust her, she could not trust him.
'My children do not deserve to live with your boot on their back for all eternity. They will not survive it, and neither will you.'
Cold determination chilled her blood, as she prepared herself to continue where she had left off. Even if her actions might cause him to kill her, she could not allow the possibility of those 20 to grow up on this planet.
Suddenly the shuttle shifted. She felt it turn away from the peaks of the Himalazia mountains, and back to the Imperial Palace.
"Where are we going?" She asked the Shadowkeeper Custodes that stood guard over her.
"The Emperor has ordered us to return and take you to him." The Custodes replied. "We will hand you over to the Emissaries Imperatus when we land."
Erda raised an eyebrow at that. The Emissaries Imperatus were the Custodes meant to represent the Emperor himself at any event he could not be present at. They were his heralds, and spoke with his words. To have her guards exchanged from the Shadowkeepers to them was a message in itself. At the very least, she was no longer being treated like some forbidden artifact from Old Night.
Her shuttle landed back at the Imperial Palace in a few minutes. Leetu remained to watch over the shuttle, for the Shadowkeepers left it to return to the Dark Cells. Erda herself was escorted back to the Emperor's chambers, led by a pair of Custodes with a red pauldron and a gray white robe wrapped around the waist of their golden armor.
She found the Emperor standing in front of his desk. His auramite armor was gone, and instead he was clothed in a loose fitting long sleeved tunic and trousers; both in dark green. He was holding a Volkite caliver he had taken out of a floating display case. The weapon was aged, but still functional. His hands twisted the knobs and flicked its switches with familiarity, as if he had used it personally for many years before. He turned away from the weapon as Erda entered, and placed it back in its case. The transparent resin sealed itself back up, and floated back to the set of artifacts recovered during the conquest of Europa.
He too had been thinking about the Fall of Xozer in his own way.
"Erda." He said, acknowledging her. "I have rescinded my earlier orders."
"I see that." Erda replied curtly. "Why?"
Neoth remained silent for a moment, searching for words. Then he sighed and turned towards her.
♪6
"I do not want to fight with you." He said as he stared into her eyes.
"Neither do I." She replied, matter of factly.
"Yet, we keep coming into conflict."
"We do, but is that so strange?" Erda stepped towards him as she spoke. "You took in all the symbols of self-destruction and human hubris into yourself. You did so to justify your acts as a human upon the other humans on this planet and beyond."
"That was never my intent." Neoth replied.
He had no control over himself when he emerged as that ball of light; blinded by wrath and despair. He acted only as a god could in that state, expressing the actions of mortal men and women in divine form.
"No, it wasn't." Erda acknowledged him with a shake of her head. "But, you knew what would happen and did it all the same."
"Would it have been better to let them fall into the hands of the Ruinous Powers then?" Neoth replied, voice exhausted and defeated.
"I did not say that." Erda shook her head again.
That was a strawman argument. Saying an action was wrong was not the same as saying it should not have been taken.
"Then what are you trying to tell me?" Neoth took a step towards her, arms and hands opened to her. "How do we work together, and save humanity?"
"Save humanity…" Erda chuckled and shook her head. "Do you truly believe that was what happened here?"
Neoth remained silent. A pained expression crossed his face, and his opened arms trembled a little, but he kept them where they were. He had appeared before her unarmored with his heart laid bare. There was bound to be some degree of pain from this meeting. He was prepared for that when he removed his armor, physically and mentally.
"Your angels did their job well." Erda continued, watching Neoth's face intently. "After purging Xozer, they suppressed knowledge, burned records, and put the populace on this planet on a path that would never allow them to recuperate on their own."
"They did not do just that." Neoth retorted. "They freed many from the grip of overlords and tyrants over reliant on technology to hold their people down."
"Yes you did free many." Erda nodded. "Those freed struck out on their own, unshackled from their past lives. But, in the place of the overlords and tyrants, zealots and ethnarchs just as cruel filled the gap left behind. They took inspiration from your actions, and butchered millions in mimicry of you. They burned their history, destroyed their technology, and gave thanks to you as they flagellated themselves and their followers."
Neoth grimaced as Erda spoke of the anti-technological faiths that had sprung up across the planet. There were many such faiths during the Psi-Wars. Cardinal Tang from the Yndonesic bloc was one such surviving ethnarch who ascribed to that religion. They carried on where his angels left off, justifying the reversion of humanity to a primal state as an act of God.
"I…" He started to refute the accusation, but Erda lifted her hand, stopping him.
"It may not have been what you wanted. It may not have been what you intended. Yet, you are responsible for all of it." She said sadly, referring to the secondary effects of the Fall of Xozer. "But you know that already. How could you not? Their corpses pile up within you, growing the mountains and darkening the valleys that surround your Golden Path."
Neoth did know that. Any who died in his service or due to his actions would end up in that land of the dead.
"What choice do I have?" He finally spat out. "I only see one path. Even if it can twist and turn now, it does not change the fact there is only one."
"I cannot tell you the answer, Neoth." Erda said as she shook her head. "I cannot give you a solution for saving humanity. After all, even though I am their mother, I do not wish to save them."
"Do you not love them?" His voice had a bitter tinge to it, unhappy of that admission from his own mother. It felt like a rejection, an abandonment. But he bit back his worst instincts and waited for her to answer.
"I do…" Erda gave him a sad tired smile as she spoke. "But I cannot save them. Why wish to do something beyond my reach? There is only misery down that road. The only thing I can do is watch, listen, and forgive."
Erda accepted humanity as it was, including all its flaws. Thus, there was no need to save them. If they damned themselves with their own hands, so be it. She would fall into hell with them to keep them company, just as her celestial body had begun to transform into a daemon world.
It would have been torturous for her and her children. The chances of them freeing themselves were astronomically small. The chances of her returning from the Warp were even smaller. It was likely that only the celestial corpse of Terra would be spat out when the Warp storms ended.
Neoth would not have forgiven her if she had allowed that, so she told him when the final tipping point had come. Just as she allowed humanity to do as it wanted, she extended the same freedom to the Master of Mankind.
There was a moment of silence between them, then Neoth opened his mouth wearily. "Is that what you extend to me now, forgiveness?"
"You have never needed my forgiveness." Erda chuckled. "But, if you want it, I will give it to you." She reached forward, taking his giant hands in her own. "I will forgive you for all the sins you committed against my children. I will forgive you for all the pain you have inflicted upon me. But, that is not what you want or need." She squeezed his fingers gently at that. "I cannot speak for the billions you have killed, directly or indirectly. I cannot accept your confessions in their stead. But most of all, I cannot make you forgive yourself."
Neoth closed his eyes.
She was right. He felt guilt for what he did. Why else was he so bitter when was forced to face what he had done? Even if he himself deemed it necessary, it was with great resentment and anger that he did the acts he did.
But, that was all meaningless.
"I cannot apologize for what I have done. To do so is meaningless self-satisfaction." He told her what he told himself.
This galaxy was a cruel place to live in. To brood upon the unfortunate events that forced his hand was an exercise in self-aggrandizement and egoism. The dead would not want to listen to his complaints, his lamentations, or his regrets. All they did was curse him and what he had done to them as they re-lived every event in their lives only to die at his or his servant's hands.
"If you pity me for what I bear, do not bother." He said as he looked into her eyes. Tears had begun to bead there, as she stared into his soul. "Someone must make the sacrifice for our salvation. I myself am not excluded."
"No one has asked you to make that sacrifice, Neoth." Erda whispered to him.
"Thus, I tell no one about it." He felt her hands grip his, as if to ask him to not say the next words.
"Humanity will be saved, even from itself. That has been decided. No one will stop me."
Erda gave a sigh at that.
"Humanity is not a beast to be chained, and you are not a monster shackled by responsibility to them." She said as she let go of his hands. "Let them be free and be free of them."
Neoth simply shook his head.
"Just like you cannot stop yourself from saving those children, individual humans who just happened to be there, I must continue with the salvation of humanity. That is who and what I am."
The saving of humans and the salvation of humanity. That 3 letter difference between the words put them on other sides of an invisible line.
"I know." She said as she took a step back with a tearful smile on her face.
Neoth felt his shoulders slump slightly. Another conversation that went nowhere. Another failed attempt at reconciliation.
In the end, the Emperor was alone.
Suddenly Erda jumped forwards, wrapping both arms around him. "But whatever happens in the future…" She said as she gave the surprised face of the Emperor a smile. "I love you, my son. I have always loved you and will continue to love you forever more. No matter what happens between us, remember that."
Neoth slowly felt his somber mood receding. The bitter rejection he felt melted away.
"As do I… Mother." He said as he returned her embrace.
Nothing had changed between them. They disagreed on what to do as always, but at least they could do so knowing that the other still loved them.
The two spent a few moments hugging each other, appreciating the warmth of another being's skin on their own. Finally, Erda stepped away from Neoth, and he let go of her much smaller frame.
The Emperor cleared his throat gruffly, before adopting a more serious posture.
"Regarding your situation, I have decided to change the direction of my approach." He said, as if to hide the moment of emotional openness. "If I cannot stop you from acting as you must, then the least I can do is to give you the authority to do so."
"I guessed as much." Erda chuckled, enjoying the slight blush of embarrassment on the Emperor's face. "That would be the only reason for you giving me two of your heralds as escorts. Although, wouldn't it have been better for you to trade my guards for them after you had your talk with me?"
"Those are two separate matters." The Emperor replied. "I would have given them to you regardless of the outcome. It is as I said, I do not want to fight with you any longer."
He had listened to Isha's advice. No matter the ending of his discussion with Erda, he would have allowed her to act as she needed to.
"Your actions would be done with my sanction." The Emperor continued. "I can even provide you with an official political role if you wish. Although, an introductory ball or social debut will be needed in order to introduce you to the political class of my Imperium."
"Thank you, Neoth." Erda gave a small laugh. "However, I do not wish for political power. My freedom and your heralds will be enough."
The Emperor nodded, accepting her rejection of his offer.
"Do as you must, Erda. I will handle everything else. However…" He said, then gave her a slightly sterner look. "If you become too well known, I will have to give you some form of title. That would mean you would be forced to deal with the political elite from time to time."
Erda wrinkled her nose at that. Mother of humanity she may be, but there were parts of her children she did not enjoy seeing. Politics was one of them.
"Well then…" She said tartly. "I shall be as inconspicuous as I can."
The Emperor let out an amused snort at that. It was a ridiculous notion to try to use the provision of a political position as punishment. But Erda found the idea of mixing with the establishment distasteful. She had no great aspirations, nor thirst for power. What she wanted was far simpler than that.
'Are all maternal deities like this?' He wondered to himself, then gave up thinking about it.
"What do you plan to do now?" Erda asked him.
Before, she would not have had to ask. The Emperor of ages past was almost mechanically predictable in his actions, and he would have refused to answer anyways.
What was before her was no longer a machine or monster dead set on achieving a certain goal, but a man.
"Humanity's time of strife is over. Old Night has broken, and the comatose sleeper can be awakened." The Emperor turned away from Erda, looking back through the stained glass window behind the desk. "Once Urartu falls, and the Ethnarchy is no more, Merica and Hy-Brasil will merge with my Imperium peacefully."
Discussions had been made between all three parties when they assaulted the Pan-Pacific Empire together. Those diplomatic ties remained, and the Master of the Administratum Noum Retraiva had been working with his old relatives back in his home polity.
"And the Thunder Warriors? Avelroi?" Erda asked. "Will you purge them as you originally planned? Provide one final example to the rest of those who step out of line?"
"No." The Emperor shook his head. "I will talk to my Thunder Warriors. I understand their grievances against me. It has been growing ever since their humbling at Albyon. Avelroi will serve a different purpose. Hopefully, there will be less blood spilled."
"I see." Erda nodded. "I will return to your sons then. Too much time has been spent away from them. I originally only wanted to see what could have caused you to bring back an alien deity."
"Are they doing well?" The Emperor asked without turning back.
"They are growing." Erda answered.
"Good." The Emperor let out a sigh. "I look forward to meeting them."
—-------------------------------------------------
A/N: This is the end of the Fall of Xozer, and a glimpse into the horrors of Old Night. There was another interlude with the Omnissiah planned, but I lost a Pa-treon due to the story being too depressing already, so that story is going to be delayed until a better time. I'm guessing everyone (including myself) needs to recover from the depression and despair of these chapters. When the Emperor makes reference to the Omnissiah, and says that what it does is worse than the Exterminatus of an entire planet, the rest of the crew are convinced on a factual basis. It is that bad.
If the fact that Tolu's squad and the others survived seems odd, that is because he was originally intended to be the only survivor. However, that would be turbo-depressing, even if it was more themetically fitting. He went through a variety of versions, from Blank, to psyker, to totally normal person. I ended up with going the latent psyker route, whose abilities awakened due to exposure to the Warp. This was mostly to allow a single character to see into the metaphysical and physical sides of the events, providing a more concrete perception of the Warp and its effects.
As for Mafeo Orde, he was a canon character who is noted to be the only survivor on Ursh's side of the conflict. Hence, I was forced to keep him alive in some sense. Due to his reprehensible nature, I have given him the Lovecraftian good-end, where he is alive but driven totally insane by the beings he has been exposed to.
The amount of biblical symbolism that went into this chapter is immense. The reference to angels, flaming angels falling from the sky, the fact that Tolu and co. turn into salt like crystals when they disappear into the light (Soddom and Gomorra), the "biblical" floods caused by the Volkite weapons, etc. I spent a fair bit of time thinking about this, so I wanted to say that I put the effort in because I would probably start crying if no one noticed.
Leave a like or a comment or a reblog!
