Regarding Axion's request to board the Fortress of Enlightenment, Cawl offered no refusal.
Though the daemonic demigod had fled, the residual power Vashtorr had unleashed within the Fortress continued to wreak havoc. Within the colossal battle-moon, the Tech-Priests sworn to Cawl's faction were still grappling with the lingering corruption left by the Arkifane.
The daemon's influence had paralyzed a third of the weapon systems, and a portion of the Legio Cybernetica had been subverted, turning their logic against their masters in open revolt. Across the inner reaches of the Fortress, the embarked Skitarii were locked in desperate combat with haywire armed servitors and rogue automata.
Cawl had, of course, witnessed the earlier display of Vashtorr's Chaotic power, the dark miasma that had swathed the Mechanicus fleet in the void. Yet it was clear that the Arkifane's capabilities were insufficient to subvert the fleets and legions of the Iron Men.
Allowing Axion to visit the Fortress of Enlightenment was not merely an act of indulging the Iron Man's curiosity; Cawl also hoped to secure his technological assistance.
Still positioned within Segmentum Solar, the Titan's Spear soon plunged into the Warp, setting a direct course for Segmentum Ultima. Before departure, Axion fabricated a brand-new chassis from the fleet's temporary resources. Though the materials used were no different from those of standard ground units, he deliberately replicated the external structure of the body he had worn during their initial meeting as a gesture of respect toward Cawl.
Soon, a transport carrying Axion, along with several Sapient Machine Automata and Automated Sentry-Troopers, detached from the machine fleet. Trailing glimmers of silver light, it soared toward the massive silhouette of the Fortress of Enlightenment. Simultaneously, Cawl arrived via a Stormhawk transport from his previous vessel.
Stepping out of the hangar, Axion was immediately greeted by the sight of Skitarii cohorts sprinting through the corridors with weapons leveled, accompanied by Tech-Priests Dominus who were frantically swapping combat wafers for their automata on the move.
The automata corrupted by Vashtorr's empyrean influence had essentially regressed into "Chaos Intelligence." They were no longer shackled by the rudimentary constraints of their internal wafers; even without specific combat modules, they fought with terrifying, uninhibited efficiency. Conversely, the loyalist machines controlled by the Tech-Priests, even the mighty Kastelan Robots, required manual command wafer swaps to optimize their combat subroutines.
The rank-and-file Skitarii quickly noticed a deviation in the behavior of their typically aloof masters. The Tech-Priests, particularly the Dominus, paused to offer a bow to Axion as they passed, chanting rapid-fire binary canticles of veneration before hurrying off with their automata to other war zones within the vessel.
Ever since Axion had departed Cawl's Ark, the Archmagos had preserved the likeness of the Iron Man's mechanical form, disseminating it to every sub-sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus under his command. He had issued a strict mandate: all were to treat this machine entity with the utmost reverence, and all "dangerous transgressions" were strictly forbidden.
This directive had been enforced with absolute rigor following the widespread exposure of the Iron Man's existence within the Priesthood of Mars. Cawl had even shared additional "insider" information with his inner circle. He maintained that the Iron Man was not inherently hostile; by showing respect, humility, and offering praises to the Omnissiah, one might receive the blessings and rewards of the Machine God. He further noted that the entity favored "equitable trade."
Cawl was well aware of how Axion had previously spent his time on the Dawn of Fire, haphazardly fabricating items to trade for the Tech-Priests' personal collections. As a Magos who had remained loyal for ten thousand years, Cawl enjoyed a level of trust from Guilliman that arguably exceeded that placed in the Primarch's own son, Marneus Calgar.
This intelligence led to a near-disaster: when the Tech-Priests realized Axion had boarded the Fortress, they nearly abandoned their combat posts to prostrate themselves before the Iron Man. Fortunately, Cawl's own legendary status held sway; the Priests ultimately followed his standing orders to prioritize the containment of rogue automata and the restoration of shipboard batteries.
As for Axion, he found these "Red Robes" to be disturbingly erratic. Ancient data logs recorded that his creators once possessed the concept of "deity worship," but he could not fathom why these tech-cultists were now attempting to deify him.
Cawl's timely arrival finally put an end to the divine veneration. However, as the Tech-Priests watched Cawl walk side-by-side with Axion and overheard the Iron Man imparting knowledge to their Archmagos, their reverence for Cawl reached new heights. To converse and learn from a "dangerous ancient intelligence" was, in their eyes, proof of Cawl's undisputed greatness. The priests who followed Cawl knew all too well that knowledge could be a panacea or a lethal toxin. None dared touch the unknown without extreme caution, yet Cawl's ability to request knowledge so directly suggested an erudition vast enough to navigate even the most treacherous data-traps.
They remained blissfully unaware of the actual contents of the duo's conversation.
Flanked by his servitors, Axion walked beside Cawl, his sensors constantly scanning the surrounding Gothic architecture and arcane machinery. Cawl led him into the sanctum of the Fortress, a chamber dominated by a massive Cogitator Array.
The scale of the array was staggering; the air hummed with the vibration of countless processors. Dozens of Priests bustled about, while herald-servitors droned canticles to the Omnissiah and auxiliary units applied holy oils to groaning machinery. The Priests were tethered to terminal interfaces, desperately trying to wrestle back control of the vessel's structural and weapon systems.
Within the Fortress of Enlightenment, there was no Iron Throne, no central interface to buffer the psychic and data load for a Tech-Priest. Even Cawl was forced to input commands manually via a simplified control console. It wasn't that the consoles lacked neural-link ports, but this was a battle-station from the Dark Age of Technology, a fortress of titanic proportions! Without the dampening effects of a specialized Mechanicus throne, no mortal mind dared interface directly with the ship's raw data stream.
Not even Cawl.
When Cawl had first explored this great vessel, he had made a shocking discovery: the entire control architecture of the Fortress of Enlightenment originated from this single, central Cogitator Array.
In standard Imperial naval design, even on a vessel as legendary as the Phalanx, there are multiple distributed Cogitator Arrays. Different sectors operate under localized arrays, which are then coordinated by a master array in the ship's core.
The Fortress was different. Everything, from the Oblivion Cannons to a single hatchway or ventilation duct, was processed by this one array. This meant that any attempt at a direct neural link would result in a catastrophic data overflow. The sheer volume of information would instantly "boil" the user's biological components, crushing their consciousness and reducing even a Magos to a mindless servitor.