How the Emperor had first conceived this inconceivable project was a similar mystery, but the Mechanicum’s greatest minds had followed the many hundreds of pages in each exacting schemata nevertheless. In reverence of his vision, a new caste of tech-priest had risen unseen by Terran and Martian eyes alike: the Adnector Concillium, the Unifiers.
And they had done it. They had bound Terran steel and Martian iron to avenues of senseless, unnatural materials previously shaped by long-dead, long-forgotten alien overlords. They had unified physical machinery with the psychically resonant matter of another dimension, and rebuilt the heart of an alien city.
The Impossible City was a gateway to the webway beyond. At its borders, the web began: thousands of capillary tunnels and great thoroughfares worming through the ancient alien network, leading to other worlds and regions in the galaxy. Every junction, every tunnel, every bridge, every passage leading out of the city – whether too small for anything but a lone human or vast enough for a Battle Titan – was held secure by entrenched Mechanicum thrall-warriors, Oblivion Knights of the Sisters of Silence and the Emperor’s own Custodians.
Calastar was not made up of roads and sectors as the human mind would contextualise urban order, but was formed into winding pathways across plateaus and rises, all leading to apex structures of presumably great import. Each bridge spanned a stretch of infinite abyss. The Mechanicum’s seers had reported that anyone falling from the bridges of Calastar would die of old age before reaching the bottom. Looking down into the nothingness, one could easily believe it.
A great spire rose highest of all in this district, the long promenades on the rising approach to it lined with eroded statues of what were initially believed to be eldar heroes.
‘Gods,’ Diocletian had said half a decade before, bluntly correcting the Mechanicum overseer responsible for the initial scouting probes. A hololithic map had cast flickering half-light across his features at the time. ‘I have studied their profane and foolish lore. These are not merely statues of heroes. Many of them are depictions of the aliens’ false gods.’
And so it was named the Godspire. Tribune Endymion and the Soulless Queen now used it as a command centre.
The approach was once a scene of stunning, if alien, beauty. An eldar traveller in the time of that star-spanning empire’s glory would have made a long, sloping ascent through gardens of luminescent singing crystals, across arcing bridges that curved over the bottomless void between tier platforms, before standing at the gates that led into the tower at the city’s heart. Now the crystal formations were melted remains on their floating pedestals, many supporting the weight of automated Tarantula gun batteries. Most of the bridges were broken, their spans long since fallen into the nothingness below the Impossible City. The courtyard’s once-open expanses housed a bustling hive of Mechanicum arming stations, supply depots, prefab barracks and landing pads.
In the cathedral, Ra levelled his gaze at the statue of the alien goddess-maiden once more. A filthy creature, forever staring with her slanted eyes. Who was she to judge the species that fought this new war in the ruins of her city? Her time, and the time of her people, was over. The eldar had been weighed by the implacable whims of the universe, and they had been found wanting.
His spear began its singing spin – the first blow shattered her reaching hand, sending sundered wraithbone clattering against the floor; the second cleaved through the goddess’ neck, toppling her hooded head to the floor with an echoing ring. A great crack lightning-bolted across her pale features from forehead to throat. Her severed neck steamed from the vicious kiss of the spear’s power field.
‘A fit of temper?’ came a gentle voice from the temple’s entrance.
Ra turned slowly, irritated that he’d not sensed his visitors’ approach. Truly, his humours were more unbalanced than he had realised if it was so easy to enter his presence undetected.
A woman and a girl. He hadn’t expected them so soon.
‘Not quite,’ he admitted. ‘I disliked how the alien stared at me.’ He braced himself as they took the last few steps, resisting a hissed intake of breath at the pressure squeezing its cold fingers inside his skull. ‘Commander,’ Ra greeted the first figure, and ‘Melpomanei,’ he greeted the second.
The commander of the Silent Sisterhood had come accompanied by her aide – a girl-child of nine or ten years, her head shaved bare and marked with aquila tattoos, clad in a simple adept’s robe of white, and beribboned with trailing parchments listing observances and rites that Ra had no desire to know of.
He immediately looked away from the soulless child. The Sister-Commander was bad enough alone, but these two together threatened to steal all hope of concentration. Breaking eye contact helped. Barely.
Krole’s presence was even harder to tolerate, yet impossible to dismiss. She was a tall figure, clad in contoured silver plate and cloaked in the grey-brown fur of some great off-world beast; it was a struggle for Ra to fix his attention on her, yet difficult to concentrate on anything else. She ate at his thoughts the way the night eats light, dulling and dimming everything else around her. The sensation was far from pleasant – she pulled at the Custodian’s focus not because she outshone everything else, but because she drowned and eclipsed it. To stand near her was to be near something hollow, something starving, something that sucked at the inside of Ra’s skull.
She was empty. Nothing in the form of Something. A void masquerading as a presence.
Jenetia Krole greeted Ra with a nod, her eyes gently closing for the gesture. Her mouth remained hidden behind a great silver mouthpiece, surgically bound to her jaw and cheekbones. As she dipped her head, her high crest of red-dyed hair swayed gently. Ra knew of that ritual; the Sisters of Silence never cut their hair from the moment they took the Oath of Tranquillity. Krole’s mane, even bound at the roots into a topknot, was long enough to reach the base of her spine.
If anyone could ever be in doubt as to her authority – were the evidence of their senses somehow not enough – all lingering misunderstandings would be banished by the Zweihander sword Veracity sheathed along her cloak, its hilt and grip showing over her shoulder. The lord of an entire species had once wielded that blade, before making a gift of it to the maiden who now bore it on her back.
‘Greetings, Ra Endymion,’ said the child at the Sister-Commander’s side. Her voice was a delicate lilt at odds with the armoured warrior-maiden towering above her. Jenetia kept her sharp, dark eyes on the Custodian’s. She lifted one hand, performing an artful series of gestures with her gauntleted fingers in the air before her chestplate.
The girl-child spoke for her mistress, staring just as brazenly as the older woman. ‘You have received word from the Emperor.’
There was no accusation in Melpomanei’s tone, nor in Jenetia’s stare. An accusation would imply the possibility of doubt.
‘I have,’ admitted Ra. He didn’t bother to ask how Jenetia knew.
Jenetia signed her reply, her dark eyes fierce but her gloved hand moving patiently and slowly. Many of the Ten Thousand no longer required their Silent Sister allies to employ the signs and gestures of thoughtmark at all, having fought at their sides for years and learnt to interpret their moods and meanings from even the slightest movements or facial changes. However, no one could claim that degree of familiarity with Commander Krole. Necessity demanded that Melpomanei remain a constant presence at her side. Something in Krole’s appearance slid greasily from the senses, refusing to remain in his mind. He would be looking directly at her, watching her hands move in patterns he knew as well as any spoken language, yet sense and meaning came in fragments, as though he were hearing the barest scraps of any conversation.