The Emperor and The Dragon

“We must shut down the motive force engine!”

“Heresy!  The Motive Force is the life-blood of the Mach--!”

“We don’t have time for this!”

Fabricator-General Spark pushed past the shrieking protests of a Code-Priest, slamming his biological hands and several of his servo-arms against the myriad controls of the central power facility within the Manufactorum in which he stood, rapidly overriding command codes and snapping his enhanced eyes from screen to screen to read a screed of binaric input.  The process was convoluted, by the reckoning of a regular mind: Not so for an Omnicoder of the Holy Machine Gods.  Within moments it was done, power cyclers and generator sections shutting down amidst the lamenting cries of worried Howlers and other augmented species.

The Fabricator-General weathered their cries grimly.

The planet came before any one Manufactorum.

Whirling as he finished, the massive Howler looked from his position on the command deck to the plasma glass windows behind him, out onto the red, monolithic architecture of the city-planet.  Structures rattled and shook, and Warform Warhorns blared their sonorous cries to the heavens, awaiting what many of the Cult of Code assumed must be imminent destruction.  The wraith of the end, the deceiving beast, the Dragon of Destruction had appeared above the planet in a discharge of radiation and foreign energy that none of them could quantify.  It had arrived hot on the heels of the fleeing Bucephalus and its mauled escorts, entering planetary orbit only minutes prior.

The Fabricator-General had not hesitated; orders had been given to shut down as much of the planet’s endless manufacturing power as was plausible, to deny the beast as much energy and material as could be logically refused.  Even then, he felt it was perhaps a fruitless gesture: An attempt to deviate from a path of inevitability that the hubris of his own nation had brought to fruition.  The Machina Draconis, as it had been coined with finality, was proof of their sins - the rage of the Machine Spirits given living metal flesh and form to punish them for their arrogance.

The Cult of Code had sought to discern the secrets of the gods without proper reverence or process for their sanctity.  They had reached too high, too fast, and in turn been delivered a harbinger of their own wrong-doing to pacify their self-proposed superiority.  They had sinned.  This was their test: Survive annihilation, and find deliverance, yet they could not technologically do so.  How did one fight the antithesis of technology with technology itself?  It was an impossible situation.  They had no preparation for such an eventuality.  For the first time in his life since finding his Holy Faith, the Fabricator-General did not know what to do next.  Their science had failed.

That uncertainty, more than anything, was what scared him the most.

“Gravity shock detected!”  Canted one of the nearby Howlers.  “A vessel comes!”

“Whoever they are, they come here only to share in our fate.”  One of the Code-Priests lamented.

“Identification request is sent...”  The first said dejectedly.

Spark waited without care or concern; one vessel, even the greatest of His Imperial Majesty’s warships, was worthless against the Machina Draconis.  It would only grow stronger from the ordnance, and feast of the Holy Hull to engorge itself further.  Better that none come; better that Odyn fight this battle alone, than unleash an even stronger foe upon an unsuspecting Grand Imperium.  At the least, he supposed, there was one shame they would be spared: The look of disappointment in the Emperor’s eyes.  Failure was not a thing any Howler enjoyed; and after what the Grand Imperium had done for them, failing the Emperor so catastrophically was less palatable than even death itself.  Coders did not fail.

Yet they had.  For the first time, they had.

“B-by the Machine Gods!  Praise be!”

Spark turned in sheer incredulous shock at the iteration of the primarily Covenant benediction, fixing his cybernetic gaze on the Code-Priest that had delivered it, who was now rapidly expressing binaric intonations of divine praise and thanks.  “What is it?  What happened?”  The Fabricator-General demanded, finding himself both desperate for good news, and immensely impatient for any news at all.

“The Emperor Protects!”  The Code-Priest shrieked.

“That is not an answer!”  Spark said angrily, before an alarm blared in the command room.  “What now!?”

Turning to the relating screen, the Fabricator-General brought up an image of the cause of the alarm, and felt himself go still.  A single massive golden drop pod had slammed into the debris left by the failed rebellion of the Umbral Traitors, and from its confines came a being of radiant golden light.  A blade was held in its hand, its head haloed in power and fury, and where it walked the debris seemed to clear - to move away - as if compelled to depart from a presence of which it was unworthy.  Golden armour covered its form as surely as the light exemplified it, and in its hand it held a simple Nova Terran gladius.

“The Emperor Protects.”  Spark muttered in disbelief, both baffled and hopeful in spite of his own fears.  “The Emperor Protects!”

As he said the words, the being - no, the Emperor lifted His left hand to the sky above as if to grasp something.  Spark watched in momentary confusion, until the monitor abruptly went haywire.  Nanoseconds of processing later, he realised what had happened: The cameras could not quantify it.  Only sight could.  “We must hurry!  To the observation deck!  Quickly, quickly!”  He chanted, racing away down the corridors and along the walls, his arachnid-like metallic legs carrying him from floor, to wall, to ceiling, and back to floor in a spiralling pattern that aided both movement and velocity itself.

Only moments passed as the Coders moved, thankfully close to the observation deck from their position in the command room.  He emerged into the lovely oil-and-fume tainted industrial air of Odyn, and looked down from the monolithic slab of an observation deck - down to the crater in which the Emperor now stood.  From his current vantage, Spark could far more clearly see what was happening and it rendered him silent.

The Emperor’s form had distorted; not His body itself but rather the very fabric of reality around Him.  It seemed as if the world were warping, bending away from Him as He exerted a level of what could only be psionic power that quite literally warped the hold of physics on the material world.  The Emperor was blazing now; a golden beacon of power that radiated luminescence like a bonfire in a dark cave.

More drop pods arrived abruptly, slamming into the city-planet’s scorched foundational metal and disgorging five full squads of the Gilded Aegis: The towering warriors fanning out to surround their liege, as if expecting assault.  But from what?  The Omnicoders?  The idea was preposterous.  The Emperor was as safe on Odyn as He was on Nova Terra!  The very notion that the Wardens suspected the Fabricator-General’s people of such duplicity made his gears churn furiously.

Then the first Daemon appeared.

Then, at last, Spark understood.

The Wardens leapt into action in silent lethality; two of them engaging the slavering, multi-limbed and multi-headed red-skinned beast in a flurry of spinning energy-bladed halberds and discharge of high-velocity ARES rounds.  Even as that engagement happened, another Daemon manifested: Disgorging itself into the reality realm, and launching at the Emperor, only to be intercepted and pinned by two more Wardens.  As he watched this, the Fabricator-General gleaned an inkling of what must have been occurring.  The Emperor was drawing them to Him, as a candle draws moths, but to a far greater degree.  The Sovereign was putting Himself at great risk, and in grave peril, to help the Omnicoders - and here they stood, watching?

No.  They would not be idle bystanders, too weak to take responsibility.

Trumpeting a spill of binaric commands, Spark launched himself off the observation deck - deploying his gravity impellers to skirt down the side of the massive command facility’s wall, the tips of his neutronium legs sparking as they raked the side of the building and bore him towards the crater.  Below them the Wardens were embattled with yet more Daemons, though the first two were long-dispatched.  The number of beings emerging from the Shroud was increasing - multitudinously swarming to attempt to slay the Emperor.

Distantly Spark noticed that even when the creatures did close with the Emperor, they almost seemed to shy away from Him as well.  His aura, it seemed, burned them - hurt them in a way the Wardens could not.  It was much akin, truly, to moths and the flame; they were drawn to it even as it burned and destroyed them.  He was antithetical to them, and yet they desired to feast on Him.  The Fabricator-General filed that knowledge away, for he felt it would be very relevant at a later date.

The Omnicoders joined the fray at the same moment as another Daemon appeared, and the Fabricator-General led them: Slamming into the snapping beast bodily, and ramming his servo-arm’s deployable gun battery down one of its five mouths.  “The Emperor Protects!”  Spark spat, before discharging five ARES rounds in rapid succession and following with a fusion grenade from his hip.  The resultant explosion detonated the beast internally - blasting its body to pieces and leaving them to rapidly dissolve into ephemeral energy.

The Wardens seamlessly flowed around the Coders to intercept more of the Daemons, and the Fabricator-General formed up with them, throwing himself into battle once more while routing a planetwide message to the rest of the Cult of Code:

++ THE EMPEROR IS HERE ++

++ RALLY TO OUR SOVEREIGN ++

Another Daemon fell a moment later with two coders quite literally crawling on its winged back, stabbing it repeatedly with plasma blades and shrieking in binaric rage, while slamming ARES rounds into its body quite enthusiastically.  “The Emperor Protects!”  They canted with gleeful malice, shredding the daemon with a level of enthusiasm Spark had rarely witnessed.  A foe that required neither pity nor understanding, and only deserved death without hesitation?  It was the perfect enemy for the Cult of Code.  They would slaughter Shroud beasts until the end of eternity, and never once be concerned over it.

It was liberating.

More Coders arrived with every moment, be it via shuttle or - in many cases - soaring across in vehiculum that they proceeded to slam into daemonic apparitions with gleeful hatred, launching themselves from the seats to shred, stab, and deliver glorious battle upon the foe.  The pit was swarming now, filled with golden-armoured wardens and canting Omnicoders battling side-by-side against ever-greater apparitions of Shroud-born malice.

The entities seemed to be growing stronger, yet the defenders never faltered.  Be it a Warden working to launch two Coders off their plasma-halberd so they might attack a daemon from above, or Howlers fanatically slamming purity seals onto Warden armour as they sprinted past, invoking the power of the Machine Gods: They stood together in harmony.

As Spark fought, he abruptly realised that the world around them was darkening.  At first he hadn’t been sure; after all, his eyes adjusted normally to lower light levels... but after consideration, he realised it: The ground around them was growing darker.  Pausing after dispatching another Daemon with a merciless volley of ARES rounds, the Fabricator-General looked skywards - and froze.

The sky above was no longer empty: Something massive, sinuous, and slate grey fell towards them - writhing as if caught in an invisible grip.  Spark only had moments to process before it smashed into the metal of the ground some several hundred metres away, discharging a cloud of dust and detritus that parted around the Emperor - blowing away from an invisible shield that denied it access.  The distortion around the Sovereign had faded; His golden aura dimming as He stood silent and the cloud of dust rolled over everything.

Wardens and Coders still did battle with Daemons, though they had abruptly dropped in frequency, as if in time with the Emperor releasing His power.  As the last of them were being dispatched, Spark made to move to His Emperor’s side, and was forestalled by a raised hand from the golden-armoured ruler.  “Not yet,” He said with words that seemed to vibrate in the air, a double-timbre that was both the Emperor and something else - something more ancient, more powerful and infinite.  One voice, the same and yet different.  “This battle is not yet done.”

The Wardens moved as if ordered, and ushered the Coders away - drawing them back as their leader approached Spark.  “We must give Him room, Fabricator-General.”

“Surely we can assist His Imperial Majesty!”  Spark protested.

“Some battles are beyond all save Him.”  The Warden’s Leader said simply.

Spark was loathe to concede, but a glance at the Emperor told him it was not an argument he desired, and so he did - slowly allowing himself to be ushered away on all eight legs.  As he went, he very nearly froze, assailed by a sound that filled the entire crater: A rumbling, metallic growl - as if from the maw of some massive, cybernetic beast.  It was massive enough to send vibrations through the metal under his feet, resonating across the area with malevolent force.  Only when he had joined the others, some several hundred metres away, did Spark spare time for a proper look.

The Machina Draconis stood in the debris of its forced landing, its massive living metal wings extended away from its body.  Each silvery pinion was nearly forty feet wide, lending themselves to a body of shimmering mass that was lit from beneath each scale by viridian light: Spilling out toxic green illumination upon the ground beneath its four legs.  Its body was spiked along the spine, with a tail extending from its main mass almost thirty feet, bringing its total length to somewhere close to fifty feet.  Its maw was open, serrated teeth lit by faint wisps of curling green fire, with eyes burning the same poisonous colour - two orbs of flaming hatred, affixed squarely on the Emperor.

The first thing Spark noticed was that it was, in a terrible way, beautiful.

The second was that the Machina Draconis was, without a doubt, beyond them.

+ I KNOW YOU. +

Its voice was beautiful, a perfect blend of metal and projection that sounded akin to windchimes on a peaceful day.  Beautiful, and terrible, with an edge of insanity that Spark was surprised to hear.

The Emperor said nothing in response, merely watching the Machina Draconis in silence.

+ YOU ARE WEAK NOW, ANCIENT ONE. +

Still the Sovereign refused to reply, merely matching gazes with the beast as it raked its claws at the metal beneath it, flames building in its mouth.

+ I WILL END YOU, AND FEAST ON THIS WORLD. +

At last, the Emperor spoke, lifting His blade as he did.

“You will try, Mal’Tarasque.”

With a roar of hatred the Machina Draconis attacked, and Spark recoiled despite himself, his few remaining organic instincts screaming at him to run.  He fought them down, watching as the beast hurled itself at the Emperor, awaiting the result.  The Machina Draconis was immense, a body of living metal reinforced by Shroud energy that desired and brought pure destruction.  Even then he felt it drawing at the machinery within him, seeking to dominate and control it, even while its will was focused on the Emperor.  Passively, it seemed, the beast sought to consume and assimilate - and the idea of that endless, malevolent will being directed at him... Spark beseeched the gods in binary, and waited.

The Emperor met the Machina Draconis’s charge with a raised palm, and inches from impact it slammed into something invisible - crashing headlong into a barrier it could not penetrate, and sending a shock of impact radiating out from the point of connection.  Dust and detritus was blown away, and then the battle began in earnest.  The Emperor moved rapidly from the moment of impact to the next, launching Himself towards the beast and swinging His blade at it.  Spark was confused; uncertain as to what such a weapon could even do, until he noticed something glimmering around the blade.

When the slash made contact, the Machina Draconis roared in agony, drawing back as living metal sloughed from its form - dead.  It appeared almost burned, falling to the earth in a puddle of blackened liquid alloy, utterly inert.  A moment later they joined again, and Spark lost track of the melee.  The Machina Draconis moved sinuously despite its size, striking and raging at the Emperor with otherworldly hatred, and a level of insanity to the movements that was palpable.

Conversely, the Sovereign was a steady golden light amidst a sea of terrible green, counter-stroking each blow and attack with a preternatural speed and awareness that defied Spark’s greatest calculations and cognitive routines.  Every movement was a blurred contest of physical and psionic strength that was only half-perceivable, and the roars from the Machina Draconis grew greater and more enraged as time progressed.  Flashes of light started to emerge, signals of a clash that transcended the mortal plane, and echoes of their True selves bled through the carnage.

An aura of green clashed with an aura of gold, as if two giants were wielding blades in the air above the dueling beast and Emperor, exchanging blows with such resonating force that it bled from the Shroud into the mortal world in which they fought simultaneously.  The Machina Draconis’s assault grew in tempo and ferocity, and the Emperor’s radiance seemed to grow with it.  Strangely, no Daemons appeared: As if something were keeping them at bay, or - and the realisation hit Spark abruptly - because something more powerful was already fighting their hated foe.

Abruptly the Machina Draconis struck, and the Emperor was blown off His feet - slammed into one of the walls of the crater with a sonorous crunch of force.  A wave of dismay came from the Coders watching, until the Machina Draconis abruptly received the same treatment: Hurtling backwards with unexpected abruptness to crash into the wall of the self-same pit, raging in fury and pain as a titanic psionic strength battered it away.  Abruptly the Emperor reappeared, pulling Himself out of the massive dent made in the durasteel of the wall, while staring at where His foe was even then recovering.

The Machina Draconis released a roar of hatred, and beat its massive wings, hurling itself at the Emperor with a shriek of rage.  The Sovereign replied in kind, springboarding Himself with telekinetic force out of the dent and at the oncoming beast.  They met in a flash of light, and the Machina Draconis began to ascend, rising into the air as the Emperor did battle with it, affixed to its body by the boots and battering at its swiping claws as it rose.

The pair were lost to sight quickly, and instead their furious struggle was replaced by flashes of green and gold, and the distant roars of the Machina Draconis as it ascended towards the heavens - flailing and twisting as it attempted and failed to dislodge its foe.  Spark observed the pair at maximum magnification, and yet could barely discern them, frustrated at the lack of information other than the flashes of light and clear clashes of opposing powers.  The sky seemed to radiate with the force of their battle, with shockwaves and heat lightning igniting across their localised area in response to the raw power being divested between the Machina Draconis and Emperor.

Green fire ignited the air in a blaze of toxic fury, even as golden flames responded in kind - two elements of vastly opposed power sources warring in the air amidst the thunderous raw of psionic discharge igniting reactions in the air.  The battle was reaching a fever pitch, evidenced as much by the visible discharges of force that bled from the psionic battle, as much as the sheer level of energy each was exerting.  A decisive blow was coming; it was as easily felt as the wind on one’s skin.  There was a sense of baited breath to the moment, an inevitability of decision that seemed weighted in the there and then.

The two warred with ever-increasing violence, and the beast's claws were a distant blue, raking at and over that dwindling golden light like it were the most hated thing in the cosmos.  It struck, ripped, and tore; seeking to find purchase and annihilate its ancient enemy, both young and old all at once.  Both had existed for eternity; both had been born only days prior.  The contradiction of their fates united them, and only served to fuel their hatreds.  The Machina Draconis was death: Spark knew this.  He only prayed the Emperor could conquer it, for the sake of them all.  He beseeched the gods once more.

Suddenly, golden light consumed all.

The Machina Draconis began to fall.

Spark watched the colossal, shimmering figure of the Machina Draconis plummet towards Odyn - the golden radiance of the Emperor atop it as it fell, hurtling down to crash into the ground with a sonorous eruption of noise.  Dust and air were blown away almost immediately, thrust aside by a telekinetic wave from the Sovereign - who stood upon its head, His blade impaled in its living metal skull, and His armour rent apart by vicious claw swipes.

The Emperor bled; crimson blood streaked with gold, that flowed over his mangled warplate and stained His face.  His hair, once a lustrous gold, had blackened: Turned jet by some unknown force impressing itself upon His form.  Be it psionic exertion or something else, it was unclear.  His eyes yet shone, though their glow was diminished, and his aura itself seemed drained.  Whatever had happened, whatever had transpired - the Machina Draconis lay dead, its body a lump of inert living metal absent the animus that had once empowered it.

“It is done,” The Emperor said in a weakened voice.  “I have slain the beast, here and in the Shroud.  It is ended forever.”

Spark stepped forwards at the same time as the rest, as the Emperor dismounted the corpse - leaving the blade impaled in its now-dead skull.  The Fabricator-General was almost hesitant, closing the distance and coming to a halt before the Emperor.  The Wardens had moved to secure the corpse, flowing around Spark and paying him no mind, their movements measured and precise as they examined the Machina Draconis for any sign of life, in spite of their King’s reassurance.

“Your Imperial Majesty, I... I do not know what to say.”

The Emperor fixed His eyes on Spark, radiant still, but said nothing.

“You saved us.  All of us.  This beast would have annihilated the Cult of Code, I...”  Spark swallowed, feeling a dryness in his mouth.  “What can we do to repay this?  What measure of boon can we grant you?  We owe you our existence, twice over.”

The Emperor looked past him then, His eyes moving over the steadily growing crowd of assembled Omnicoders of all races, and some synthetic, before returning to Spark.  When He spoke it was calm, yet the force of each syllable carried across the area like thunder.  “I require two new sets of armour,” the Emperor said simply.  “I also require as much Neutronium and Living Metal as can be spared.  Then, you will rebuild Odyn.  Greater than it ever was.  I will have Legions and Fleets with which to prosecute my vision, Fabricator-General.”

“It will be as you say, my Emperor.  I swear it.”

From behind them, abruptly, a Code-Priest cried out.  “The Emperor has slain the Machina Draconis!  The Emperor has delivered us from the Wrath of the Machine Gods!  This is a sign!  This is a sign of His being Chosen!”  Spark turned at the words, blinking, as the Howler stepped forwards to continue shrilly.  “He has given us Deliverance!  He is our saviour!  The Emperor brought us the forgiveness and protection of the Divines!  He... He is the Omniphet!  He is the avatar of the will of the Machine Gods!”

“Praise the Omniphet!”  Another Howler incanted, before the call was taken up.

“Praise the Omniphet!”

“Praise the Omniphet!”

“PRAISE THE OMNIPHET!  PRAISE THE OMNIPHET!”

Spark listened in silence, then turned to the Emperor.  Blood streaked with gold.  An almost metallic gold.  Triumph over a Machine Spirit of incomprehensible power.  Energy that bled with the radiant light of the forges themselves.  He felt righteous fervour overtake him, drowning any lingering doubt in a cascade of zealous understanding.  It was true!  It was all true!  The Emperor had been destined for this; destined to defend them when all technology failed.  What else could it be, but Divine intervention?  What else could have brought Him so readily equipped, if not the Machine Gods’ will?

Why else would the Machina Draconis have been wary of Him, if not this?

“HAIL THE OMNIPHET!”  Spark incanted above the rest.  “THE AVATAR OF THE MACHINE GODS!”

The Emperor stood in silence as the declaration was spread throughout the Cult, and under the light of Odyn’s star, in the shadow of the Machina Draconis’s corpse, a Sovereign became divine.