Chapter 506: The Lessons of Imperial Grace: When the Father of Mankind Censured the Pantheon
"What is the meaning of this commotion?"
Arthur's interest was piqued by Ramesses' exuberant shouting.
He had intended to confer with Romulus regarding the next phase of the Imperium's logistical overhaul. Since the start of the Hive Fleet incursions, the Dawnstar's galaxy-wide deployment protocols had been subjected to a baptism of fire, yielding several gratifying metrics.
They needed to conduct an audit of the current arsenal. Once the fallout of the current campaign was contained, the Imperium's convoluted wargear hierarchy would require a final, total reform.
Take the Astra Militarum, for instance. A recurring grievance involved the Baneblade chassis and its bloated, multi-turreted geometry. The transmigrators held no love for the "Cult of the Multi-Turret." The excessive number of fixed firing arcs prevented these armored behemoths from achieving their true potential in massed armored maneuvers. Numerous Lord Generals had already filed reports citing the staggering waste of firepower inherent in the design.
In the eras past, the Departmento Munitorum's administrative capacity—coupled with the Adeptus Mechanicus' near-monopoly on super-heavy assets—made standardizing a heavy tank regiment an impossibility. A formation composed entirely of Baneblades or Shadowswords was a dream.
Because the Mechanicus maintained sole right of interpretation over the forging process, and because quotas were always over-subscribed while supplies were always scarce, the Munitorum simply salvaged what it could. Damaged hulls were sent to Industrial Worlds, repaired, and redistributed to the nearest front.
The result was a logistical nightmare: an armored regiment might consist of a dozen different variants. Some units, suffering heavy losses, would find themselves without tanks at all, effectively becoming infantry regiments overnight. They would fight as grunts for decades, through generations of personnel, until one day a supply fleet would dump a batch of fresh tanks onto their lap during a rest cycle on some forgotten world.
The crews accepted what they were given. They didn't have the luxury of critique.
But the Dawnstar era had changed the meta. Now, Valkyries were treated as mission-expendables; the craft were replaced while the pilots remained the constant. The Astartes used Stormbirds—sanctified relics of the 41st Millennium—as one-way drop pods without a second thought for the cost. The heavy tanks were next on the list for a "Rationalized Audit." Only specialized turrets, like the Volcano Cannon, would be salvaged post-battle for reconsolidation.
Of course, the Baneblade was not without its uses. Its array of fixed secondary weapons granted it immense independent combat capacity. In the labyrinthine hell of a Hive City, supported by small Guard squads, it was a terrifyingly effective urban predator. The design would be relegated to Hive Garrisons.
But in the grand maneuvers of the Legions? It was a relic destined for the scrap-heap of history.
Arthur moved toward his partners, his mind still integrating the reports from a thousand front-line commanders.
As for the Emperor and Ramesses, the two were currently in a state of perfect, idiosyncratic harmony.
They spent their days huddled over the mysteries of the Warp. Their focus was the replication of psionic techniques once mastered by the Master of Mankind, and the further development of the Empyrean "Blue Ocean" using the Dawnbreakers' unique traits.
It was whispered that the productivity of "The Park" had increased by several orders of magnitude during their transit. Enchanted wargear, once restricted to the Dawnstar's elite cadres, was now being mass-produced for the Astartes Chapters. The daemons were being squeezed for every drop of essence they possessed.
It was a gratifying outcome.
The sessions were often punctuated by staggering declarations—scathing critiques of the Traitor Primarchs and humorous deconstructions of Imperial myth to relieve the tension.
Inquisitor Aglaia Hesiod remained at their side, her power armor vibrating as she shook like a leaf in a gale. Her stylus moved with frantic, terrified precision across her ledger. She looked like a pre-Age of Strife schoolchild hiding under the covers with a data-slate, terrified that the next word she heard would cast her soul into eternal navigation-error.
But she recorded it all.
"Uhh—"
As Arthur approached, the entity inhabiting the "Apprentice" visibly regressed into a state of divine fugue, drooling slightly as He chewed on a piece of high-protein ration.
Truly, the galaxy's second greatest liability, Ramesses thought, taking a clinical pict-capture of the scene before re-establishing the Emperor's primary link.
It was fortunate the Custodes were not present; Romulus had assigned them to other administrative duties to keep them out of the way.
Arthur shook his head. In the past, the Emperor was wreathed in a golden filter of majesty. In person, He was disturbingly... grounded.
The Dawnstar didn't need the Ten Thousand for prestige anymore. As bodyguards, their utility was questionable; on the front lines, they were being "spun like tops" by named Chaos Champions. As a military unit, their cost-to-performance ratio had bottomed out.
The Custodes were polymaths. They were wasted on guard duty. Those with technical skills were sent to the Science Department under Cawl. The administrators went to the Executive Branch. The teachers went to the Schola Progenium and the Dawnstar Universities. Combat was the last thing they should be doing.
If this was the Emperor's vision for the future of Mankind, then it had to be driven by the "Spirit of the Golden Throne"—putting the collective interests of the species above all else, clinging to the belief that the cause was just, and having the courage to labor in the harshest environments to ensure victory.
What? You don't want to work?
Traitor to the Father's vision.
What? You just want to stand in the Palace and look at the Throne?
Privileged elitism!
What? You think you should be prioritized for a return to the Emperor's side?
Opportunistic factionalism!
Several Custodes had attempted to slack off, but before the Emperor could even intervene, Ramesses had "labeled" them with so many bureaucratic stigmas they were forced back to their desks in shame.
And the Custodes were surprisingly obedient once they realized the work was rewarded—Arthur had mandated regular "Welfare Sessions" where the Emperor would personally manifest to offer a few words of encouragement to His guard and the Grey Knights.
To the warriors of the 41st Millennium, a God-King who actually talked to them and asked how their day was went was infinitely cooler than a rotting corpse on a chair.
"The 'Transcendental' doesn't cross the threshold well," the Emperor said, wiping drool from the girl's chin as He responded to Arthur's silent judgment.
His current state was a reactive manifestation. Depending on how the Dawnbreakers—specifically Arthur—perceived Him, His personality shifted to match. They saw the "Best of Him," and so He was.
In reality, the Emperor was a heavyweight champion of pragmatism. He remembered the four unfortunates who had landed in the Warp decades ago; had it not been for a cadre of human elite saving the day, He might have broken those four out of sheer, callous efficiency.
He had been the ultimate practitioner of "Depleting the Source."
But now, it was a good thing. He had no idea how to relate to these people otherwise. Reality was a set of hard facts, and intelligence was functionally transparent. Historically, His interpersonal skills had been a catastrophe.
Now He had a "Personality Adjustment Device" in the form of the Dawnbreakers' expectations. He was locked into their system.
One minute I'm conducting a three-way mental war with my own godhood to save Guilliman's soul, the Emperor mused.
The next, I'm being told: 'Don't go yet, I have some paperwork for You.' 'Oh, You're the Emperor? Great, You're working overtime.'
"What was Ramesses shouting about earlier?" Arthur asked, accepting the situation.
"Warp-based wild history. Rumors among the Neverborn. Do not take it as canon," the Emperor said, waving a hand dismissively.
"He's referring to the legend that when the Golden Geezer duelled Horus on the Vengeful Spirit, he didn't just 'delete' Horus. He delivered a Metaphysical Strike—an Elbow-Strike, if you will—that was so powerful it actually harmed the Immaterium itself. The moment Horus died, it triggered an unprecedented Warp-nova."
"The explosion scattered the consciousness of the Four Gods and the Emperor's own subjective will. It forced them into the deep Warp, unable to manifest or interfere with reality for over a thousand years. They were stuck in a loop of self-repair, blind to the galaxy."
Ramesses explained, lifting a palm.
"That silence lasted until the War of the Beast, when Gork and Mork started kicking the Orks back into gear. Roughly thirteen hundred years of peace."
Numerology applied to the Heresy?
Arthur looked at Ramesses' hand.
A flame flickered in the sorcerer's palm, coiling like a captive sun.
Deep within the fire, a silhouette was writhing. It looked like a curled infant, yet its skin was etched with sulfurous cracks and its eyes were voids of absolute black.
It opened its mouth, letting out a shriek that only the soul could perceive—a silent wail of agony as it battered against the walls of the fire-cage.
"I confess! I confess everything! Let me go, I beg of you!"
As Arthur's silhouette entered its perception, the trapped daemon screamed at the knight who carried the aura of absolute authority.
Between the Emperor who was currently devouring the Eternal Crusader's snack reserves and the "Formless Lord" who held its life in his hand—an entity that had become a taboo within the Warp—the daemon knew it was in a pit from which there was no escape.
It had thought it could skip across the veil, snatch a soul, and retreat to the safety of Chaos, just as the Dark Apostle Atrahasis had done ten millennia ago.
It had underestimated the modern era. The prey was no longer ignorant. It had walked into a meticulously crafted trap—a suite of "Wicked Arts" capable of binding, flaying, and interrogating the very essence of a Neverborn.
Throne, in the old days, mortals had to beg for a favor! They'd offer a hundred souls just to get me to breathe in their direction! I could act like a god and they couldn't do a thing!
Now, there was no one to hear its prayers. It was forced to reveal its secrets while its own Warp-essence was being burned away as fuel for its own interrogation.
Under the relentless heat of the fire, pleas and regrets flowed from the cracks in its form like boiling pus.
It knew the Warp was dangerous now. It knew realspace was a minefield. But why couldn't it resist the gamble? Why did it think it could win?
If you don't gamble, you don't lose. How did it end up like this?
"What is it saying?" Arthur asked.
"Just venting," Ramesses replied. He showed no mercy to the creature.
The damned thing actually tried to disguise itself as a child.
"I see."
Arthur, who could read the atmospheric pressure of the Dark Angels' silence, didn't believe Ramesses for a second.
But it didn't matter. Daemons had no human rights.
"It's not as dramatic as the legends say. Do not trust the source. The whispers of daemons are not data," the Emperor corrected, pointing at the fire-cage. He was terrified that if He admitted to being that powerful, the Dawnbreakers would assign Him even more tasks.
Transcendent annihilation isn't a parlor trick. It requires the right alignment of stars and souls.
"I AM SPEAKING THE TRUTH! IT IS ALL TRUE!" the daemon shrieked, slamming its head against the bars of the fire-cage. It had never hated Tzeentchian daemons more, and it had never hated market-disruptors like Ramesses more.
The Blue Bird's spawn made the contract environment toxic enough, but the Dawnstar is a catastrophe! They've established the 'Empyrean Trade Act'! They use Eldar and Human spirits as workers with a competitive advantage!
Who invented 'Credit' and 'Installment Plans' for souls?! Who replaced blood-contracts with employment agreements?!
They voluntarily lowered the 'Wages of Sin'! No one disappears when a deal is struck anymore! They just take a 'subscription fee' of emotion and report to the Formless Manse!
You absolute scabs! You Warp-scabs!
Apart from the daemons serving the Four, who still had channels to cause trouble, the Unaligned were being driven out of business.
Even this daemon—an entity that had once scryed the secrets of the Gods—was reduced to this. It was starving, it took a gamble, and it got "Sting-Operated" by the Emperor and the Formless Lord.
Now you can't even get a xenos or a cultist to summon you without running into a Grey Knight waiting for his shift in the Formless Manse!
Watching the Primarchs joke and ignore its testimony—without a single thought for its "survival"—the daemon felt a wave of profound sorrow.
Our Warp... what will it become... (sob)... in the end?
SNAP.
"That's enough. So the Golden Geezer really is that tough," Ramesses said. He clenched his fist, crushing the noisy daemon into data-shards.
The fragments of information and emotion it yielded coalesced, sketching a picture that was, for this daemon, the absolute truth.
The "Long Silence" between the end of the Heresy and 31.5.M41—that 1,500-year golden age of Imperial expansion—had been bought by the Emperor's "Elbow Strike." The transmigrators had assumed the Imperium had just gotten lucky. They had wondered why the Emperor was in such a rush during the Crusade if things were that stable.
"My apologies, Emperor. We overstepped."
"So You actually can trigger a 'Mutual Annihilation' protocol and buy the species fifteen centuries of breathing room."
Previously, they thought the Four Gods were the ultimate puppet-masters, high and mighty, and that Horus's failure was a minor variable to them. They thought the Gods stayed away from realspace post-30k because they were bored.
Now, they realized the truth: the Four had played with fire and gotten burned. The Emperor's final counter-stroke had left them paralyzed, unable to act for a millennium.
While they always planned for the worst, the pressure of fighting the Four had been a constant weight on the Dawnbreakers' souls. Even the "Great Revolution" was just a theory. They were still worrying about tank-refits.
Now, they knew they had a "Big Daddy" standing with them who could force the Four Gods into an offline state for a thousand years.
"Want to try for a second round? You've been prayed to for ten thousand years; the charge must be higher than it was back then," Ramesses said, his eyes gleaming as he gripped the Emperor's shoulder.
"Give us another thirteen hundred years of silence. We won't just take the Milky Way. We'll bring You the Andromeda Galaxy on a platter."
"Uhh—"
The Emperor was shaken by the shoulders. His head tilted to the side, and drool began to leak from his lip again.
"?"
☆☆☆
-> SUPPORT ME WITH POWER STONE
-> FOR EVERY 200 PS = BOUNS CHAPTER
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you