40 Thousand Reasons

Chapter 183: Upgrades

A giant hand patted my head. "Magos Cowl can increase your size with ease. The Primaris marines are all rather tall." Guilliam spoke with a friendly voice and nodded towards the inventive techpriest.

I sighed inward and outward in tandem. "I'm not really interested in heights, Lord Commander. Two major issues had brought me here, the Emperor and the status of Blanks."

Roboute Guilliam nodded slowly while considering my words carefully. "Your record for restoring dead people back to life is indeed the best in Imperium, Lord Lancefire. But, I doubt it would be as simple with my father. He was not preserved in stasis..." he spoke in warning.

I took out another hexagrammatic pendant from my inventory, covered with a bronze eagle cast, and held it up. "This artifact will repel the Chaos poison inflicted by Horus. Its pair worked well-enough for you, Primarch. We'll start with this. And after that...we'll need the sword." I explained with a knowing glance towards his hip, where the Emperor's Sword was sheathed.

Archmagos Cowl snatched the ancient relic and began studying it with a dozen instruments, ignoring everyone in his quest for knowledge.

Meanwhile, Sanguinius just shook his head and returned to his desk. "You want to turn Magnus and place him on the new Golden Throne." he declared in a flat voice while staring at me with his angelic blue eyes.

"That is his purpose, after all." I answered with a shrug and held my hand out to the Lady Inquisitor.

Rose took my hand with an amused smile. "You better not punch anyone, while on Terra." she told me in a warning tone, and held a finger up.

A psyker glow emanated from her free hand, and a pair of Adeptus Custodes left their posts at the side of the door and approached us at a fast walk. "The Lamenter wants to enter, through the Eternity Gate." one of them said in a surprised voice and measured me from head to toe for a long minute.

I held my tongue, while the Custodes transmitted the request higher up the chain. I could step right next to door right now, but crossing the threshold was a different thing. Less than a dozen outsiders had entered the Golden Throne room in a dozen millennia, and most of those had been women. Women which turned into silver-haired holy warriors during the visit, Janice the latest of them.

Finally, another Custodes arrived in the Regency room, golden armor decorated with a violet toga.

"Come with me, Pef Lancefire." the new Custodes demanded in a level voice.

I smiled in approval and held my hand out towards the inconsiderate techpriest, mimicking a psyker as I retrieved the hexagrammic pendant before Belisarius Cowl managed to dismantle the protective covering.

"The techpriest should come as well." I asked while displacing myself beside the new Custodes.

The man removed his helmet and stared into my eyes with his own glowing eyes. "You're too certain about your survival, Lamenter. Your small tricks will not help you at all, inside the throne room." the Custodes declared in a confident tone.

A second later, our party arrived at the foot of the giant stairs leading to the adamantium mountain which served as an entrance into the Golden Throne. No point walking two hundred kilometers of hallways and barricades under the Himalayas, when we could arrive in a second.

"...Dimensional displacement." I heard the techpriest mutter in surprise.

Well, Cowl was quite an expert on every kind of technology, both Imperial and not. I remembered him taking command over the old Necron defenses at Cadia, with few problems in fact.

But I ignored him right now, while studying the alien Eternity_Gate hidden behind the adamantium walls of the Imperial Palace. So, that's how he did it.

The Golden Throne itself was located in a different dimension, behind a dimensional portal. No wonder I couldn't find the Emperor anywhere on Terra. Because he wasn't actually here.

An impressive array of defenses and guardians were emplaced in and around the Eternity Gate, from small numbers of Grey Knights and Titans to thousands of Adeptus Custodes and even a squad of Silent Sisters.

Sisters that I haven't met yet, mind. I approached the Pariahs and smiled kindly at them. "Well met, Sisters. Boring job, guarding the door, right?" I asked with a faint smile.

Only cold eyes replied at my joke. Devout zealots then. Oh well, maybe they'll get more friendly later.

The Custodes signaled something, and the Titans stopped targeting our party with their primary weapons.

"There are protocols for entering the Eternity Gate, Pef Lancefire. Stop trying to get yourself killed, before you meet the Emperor." the golden armored custodian warned me in a rather annoyed voice.

I nodded wisely. "Of course, Custodian. Which is why we arrived here and not directly inside." I replied with fake confidence.

I don't think he really bought my lie, but he didn't say anything else.

Another pair of Custodians, both rather beaten up and burned, descended the stairs and examined me and my party. "Archmagos Cowl is not cleared for entry. Nor is the Inquisitor." one of them proclaimed in a stern voice, and pointed at an alcove to side.

Surprisingly, my Rose didn't object and just walked inside the alcove to wait. The techpriest measured the gigantic door with a yearning look in his last human eye, before nodding and joining Rose in the same alcove.

A long hour of climbing steps later, I arrived at the slowly opening gate. It only opened minutely, but it was already some 10 meters wide portal leading into the next dimension. I might have gulped some saliva, just to clear my voice.

Oh well. Time to meet the Emperor.

I took one last step and vanished from this universe, and arrived into the next one.

More Adeptus Custodes, the Companions received me with suspicious faces and weapons at ready.

Behind them, wide stairs led upwards towards an exotic and certainly not Imperial giant device, made of alien machinery and more familiar tubes and pipes leaking oil and greasing fluids.

Hundreds of techpriests were chanting holy repair canticles and sanctification rituals at various defective parts, with little effect.

The entire cavern smelled of death and decay, and you couldn't be sure if the smell originated from the nearly dead Custodians guarding the last steps in burned armors or the skeleton on the Throne itself.

I was gigantically disappointed in this sad display, and sighed inward.

'Come closer, my son.' a voice spoke in my head, and I nearly lost my balance.

It felt almost like a Greater Demon, but a thousand times stronger and unmistakably of Warp origin.

The defending Custodians drew aside like puppets on strings, at some unheard command.

I shrugged and moved myself beside the decaying corpse on the Golden Throne, and patted the skeletal hand clenched on the armrest. "I am here, Adam. Hold still for a moment, while I dispel the poison. Be warned though, it might hurt a little."

I explained in my best doctor voice, while placing the pendant on his cyborg chest.

Nutrition tubes and burbling fluids flowed under the pendant once again, while a small stream of black ichor seeped away, trying to flee from the anti-chaos pendant, and corroding the machinery while dripping on metal with acid-like drops.

Nasty poison indeed.

With a flick of my left hand, I collected the corrosive liquid and stored it away in my labyrinth, before it ruined what was left of the life-support machinery.

'Much better' the Emperor muttered in my mind, seemingly ignoring the pain.

Well, I wasn't done yet.

The Halo tuning fork appeared in my left hand and I stabbed him in the neck with it, for extra effectiveness.

"Don't connect to the other side, Adam. The Halo Devices are not actually healing ports, but memetic conversion devices." I advised the Emperor as his eyes began glowing once more to life.

A sputter of outraged techno-lingua curses resounded from the maintenance techpriests, but I wasn't in the mood to care about their objections.

A slow blink in the once again living eyes told me the Emperor had received my warning.

"It hurts, quite a bit more than a little." a clearer voice sounded in my head.

I shrugged and patted his hand again. Medicine usually hurts, true fact.

I waited for an hour, while the Emperor's body slowly rebuilt itself, draining the nutrition tubes at an accelerated pace.

Meanwhile, a golden giant appeared at my side, observing the transformation with discerning eyes.

"A decent effort, Lord Lancefire. But it is not enough." Trajann_Valoris said in a sad voice. The Emperor was still dead, even if his corpse was in a better state now.

I nodded in agreement. "Not yet. We'll have to unplug him from the Throne. Have the Astra Telepathica bring a dozen sanctioned Beta psykers, to maintain the seal."

The Captain-General turned towards me and measured me with a long stare. "They would last ten minutes at most. Even an Alpha-level psyker would barely last an hour."

"They can be upgraded, Custodian. Unlike others before me, I came prepared for this task." I explained while pointing with my chin at the ignorant techpriests at the base of the throne.

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