Chương 203: Chapter Two Hundred and Three

Fial says, "Well, Alpia has been awake, fighting and solving runic puzzles for nine days straight. Of course she is asleep."

"We don't know much more than that," says Dareaca.

"Besides, it is her story to tell and she will be annoyed if we take away her chance to show off."

"At least she actually deserves her praise for once," says Luan.

"Boys," says Brigid.

"That's enough." I stand and hug Luan, "Alpia would not have done so well if you weren't around to back her up. She had faith in you all and you delivered. It is unlike you to wash away the pride you have earned with petty jealousy. Is there something upsetting you, or was this just a slip of the tongue?" Luan scratches his arm and purses his lips, he opens his mouth a couple of times, then looks at me.

"If what you need to say takes time for you to gather your wits, then do so. There is little point in speaking in a jumble and accidentally implying the opposite of your intent." Luan nods and closes his eyes, swaying on his feet slighting as he grips the pole holding his nutrient drip. Everyone sits quietly, their breaths slow and steady. Finally, Luan speaks up, his voice quiet and uncertain.

"I keep startling at small sounds and I'm having trouble sleeping. I know that's not unusual, but the difference between lessons and experience is even more stark than I expected."

"I will visit you all every day for a couple of hours and you can just speak whatever comes to mind, even if it's the same thing over and over again, until you feel better. The same goes for everyone else," I sigh.

"It would do me some good as well. I am not feeling myself after such a spectacular disaster."

"That would be most welcome," says Brigid. Luan says, "I suppose. I'd rather be left alone really."

"Then how about a quiet meditation, or just reading our favourite poems and other texts to each other?" says Fial.

"Not everyone likes to talk about their emotions like you do, Dad."

"Yeah, I'd like that," says Luan. Dareca also nods.

"Alright, we can try that. However, if talk and time prove inadequate," I say, "I'll sit with you while you undergo meditative drug therapy. It is exceptionally effective at disassociating memories from emotions. There is no shame in needing help and there's going to be a lot of mandatory rituals and prayers after fighting warp entities. These, too, should help settle our minds. I'm sorry our treasure hunt turned out this way."

"It's not your fault, Dad," says Luan. I sigh, "Not entirely, no, but there are many things I could have done better, but now is not the time to discuss it." Luan dismisses my words, too caught up in his emotions to really listen.

"It's just, I was super fucking scared and I never want to fight again, but we don't live in a galaxy where that's possible. This time it was demons. I'm dreading what might come next."

"Then we will work on that together, until you are ready, even if I must delay my departure a little. The same goes for Dareaca and Fial. Brigid too, even though she is coming with me."

"Thanks, Dad. That would be appreciated," says Luan, "even if I know you're going to be stuck here a while anyway." I chuckle, "Back to bed with you, I am going to double check Alpia, then I will leave you all to rest."

"What are you going to do?" says Brigid.

"Sweep Dying Light for any further tricks before we tow it back to the Fleet for salvage and scrapping."

"You aren't going to rest yourself?" says Fial.

"Seeing you all is all the break I need and I will return every twenty-four hours as promised for some family time. Now give me a moment, I need to concentrate to examine Alpia's mind and body. I don't want any corruption taking hold while she is exhausted." Brigid and the kids back off. Luan and Brigid return to their beds while Fial and Dareaca go back to their seats. I place one hand on Alpia's forehead and the other over her heart, then concentrate, examining her with my more esoteric senses.

In my mind's eye, I detect the thin string of energy connecting us, our soul bond. I learned how to soul bond others from Ylien. It is a handy, yet invasive act that aids me in shielding Alpia and the other psykers in my Fleet from corruption, using a combination of my navigator heritage, Warp Tap, oversized soul, and extensive arcanotech protections.

Because of its invasive nature, I had put off actually creating soul bonds for years, as sheltering within the shadow of my soul is enough to hide all the psykers in my fleet. It's like trying to hide a candle next to a bonfire. Most demons just aren't going to notice them. However, with Raphael having joined Fleet Command as my Master of Whispers, I have changed my stance; I bound all of the Fleet's psykers to me during the voyage to SR-651.

Now, when I am asked if my psykers are soul bound, I can say yes, without lying. I am wary of lying around Inquisitors, even with my perfect body control, as they are experts in weaselling out truths with the most innocuous of questions and I have never been trained or actively practised the opposite. Proving that my psykers are sanctioned was a little trickier as that requires a certificate, but Ylien knew how to forge those too, and therefore, so do I.

It was a little disconcerting, though no surprise, that the Eldar have a way of forging Imperial documents so that they can run around pretending to be sanctioned psykers as they please. Soul bonding requires placing a small piece of my soul within the souls of those I wish to bind to mine. Through this link I can attack any demon that attempts to possess them. I can also purge chaotic influence, read their minds as I please, influence their thoughts, and impart any information that I want them to know.

Some of these acts the Emperor occasionally does to me, taking advantage of the soul bond he has with me, the one created during my Navigator Conversion. I absolutely hate my bond, no matter how useful it is, and I find having a bond with others incredibly distasteful, even more so for Alpia. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Not only is the link a horrible violation of privacy, but it is also a bond of servitude.

They are naturally inclined to work towards tasks that benefit me and refusing a direct order requires stern mental discipline. The link is also unequal in other ways. For example, I am aware when a psyker bound to me wishes to speak with me, but unless they have the skills to contact me regardless of the bond, I am the one who must open up the connection to initiate the conversation.

Neither does the bonded individual have any way of breaking the bond as my soul is far too strong for them to evict mine from theirs, and thanks to its constant and rapid growth, it always will be. Unlike the Emperor's bonding process, my soul is significantly weaker, so the soulbond does not run the risk of burning out a person's eyes, nor does the bond work across the whole galaxy. At best, I can cover a single system.

I have also discovered I can use the bond to extend the range of my Warp Tap around a psyker, which will potentially save me many Crown Kills from having to extend my own range, and massively increase my efficiency in gathering souls. This discovery has reinforced my theory that the Emperor hijacked the E-SIM project to gather souls for him and that, no matter what he said to others, he always intended to become a god.

It's possible that gathering faith was a back up plan, especially as belief shapes reality and can force a powerful Warp entity to act in the manner it is expected to, rather than their original personality. I suspect that slaughtering xenos and demons with E-SIM users nearby was plan A, perhaps one of many, but this is a total guess on my part. Becoming a Warp entity is one of the few ways one can reasonably defeat the Ruinous Powers, so I can understand why the Emperor might intend to become one.

I struggle to see the Emperor's campaign against faith as anything other than wiping out the competition. I cannot imagine someone as intelligent as the Emperor ever presenting himself as a figure of immense power, wreathed in gold and held aloft by white wings, dispensing miracles, then expecting himself not to be venerated and worshipped. All his iconography, architecture, and armour screams his understanding of image.

He's also seen enough history to know that suppressing faith never works and that telling people not to do something is often the number one way to send them running towards it. Humanity's propensity to seek the forbidden is one of the major arguments why they should be kept ignorant of the beings inhabiting the Warp, as one does not think to seek that which they have no knowledge to imagine.

As for why I'm thinking about soul bonds and the scheming nature of the Emperor while examining Alpia, it's because she has picked up two, potentially three new bonds. When I tossed an offering of souls to the Emperor to bless Alpia with the wit and fortitude to complete her task, he clearly took a liberal interpretation of my request, as she is now properly soul bound to him with a particularly odd bond. A bond that he could have used to guide her understanding and resist corruption.

I am quite furious about it, as while he is protecting my daughter, he's also enslaved her, much like he has done to me. It is another chain around my neck, for while I might be willing to sacrifice myself for my family, I am not willing to sacrifice my family to help myself. That bond could be used to harm Alpia if I become powerful enough to contest my own bond and stop being so cooperative, no matter how uncertain it is if I will ever be able to remove the soul bond either of us has.

The bond is particularly odd and gives the interpression that it is two-faced. I brush my senses against the bond to gain a better understanding. One half radiates pure kindness. Not the self-sacrificing type, but one of empathy, understanding, and healthy self-interest. If anything, this half of the bond feels a little mercenary. At the other end I catch a glimpse of a child upon a throne in the same bone white realm I visited before. I suspect this is the Star Child.

The other half of the bond radiates heavy, negative emotions: desperation, pain, obsession, regret, and death. It is a bond of tyranny and unshakable pride, fueled by faith and sacrifice. Slumped upon a throne of burning souls is an ancient, withered man with a crown of gilded thorns upon his brow. A rusty sword pierces his chest and pins him to the throne. An Eldar soulstone is wrapped in a silver chain around the blade and hilt, binding the decaying weapon, its purpose unclear.

His hands are cupped in his lap, as if he is meditating. Cradled in his palms is a mechanical heart with four flexible plasteel tubes attached to his body. Two tubes are stuffed into the sword wound on his chest, another leads to his abdomen, and the last is plugged into his inner thigh. The heart's beat is uneven, stopping and starting with repeated electric arcs that jolt between the man's fingers and the failing heart. Golden blood drips from the man's brow and chest, and pools around the dais of his throne.

Twelve, white skinned ghouls, augmented with tarnished machines fight around the pool of golden blood, continuously ripping into each other, denying any combatant from taking a sip of the crowned individual's sacred vitae and uplifting themselves to something greater and more noble of heart and mind. While the crowned man, no doubt another aspect of the Emperor, does not move, or even blink, I feel the weight of his attention upon me. It is implacable and crushing.

Such is the weight of his attention, I feel like the mythical Atlas, holding the world upon his shoulders, as I bear a tiny glimpse at the smallest fraction of the weight the Emperor endures. His thoughts are muddled and scattered, the fading remains of his focus on building a prison, one that will contain a C'Tan and power a device of immense importance. I pull back from the two-faced bond, before I am completely overwhelmed, and step away from Alpia.

With a groan, I grab the chair Brigid was previously using and gingerly lower myself into it. I'm not actually sore, as you can't get sore muscles if you don't have any, but I still feel like I should be and feel compelled to act as if I were still flesh and blood.

"Dad! What's wrong?" says Dareca. I take a deep breath, "Nothing that is an immediate threat, I was just taken by surprise. I'm not quite finished yet either. I am going to sit quietly for a moment then continue."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" says Fial. I say, "Just be extra nice to Alpia when she wakes up. She is going to be rather upset. Alpia hasn't been harmed. There are a few complications, however, and I want to let her decide how much she wants to talk about it."

"We can do that," says Brigid.

"Though I would much prefer to know. She is my daughter."

"Alpia doesn't get many freedoms," I say, "I won't take away more than I absolutely must." Brigid sighs, "Very well, but it is psyker business I take it?"

"It is," I say.

"Not classified, just private." I feel like a total hypocrite given that I am the one who has an invasive bond with my own daughter, yet also a little lost and frustrated. There were other options and this was the least shitty one. Fial and Dareaca shrug. Luan has already fallen asleep. When the Emperor grabbed the C'Tan at Kinbrair, I had thought he intended to consume it to boost his power. Having thought about this further, this obviously makes no sense as a C'Tan is a Materium deity, not an Immaterium deity.

Therefore, the Emperor could potentially use a C'Tan as an energy source, but not assimilate one. Now, I suspect he intends to use the C'Tan shard to seal the webway gate on Terra, or maybe fuel the Astronomicon. The Eldar soulstone, I think, is being used to suppress the corrosive wound he took from Horus, during the final battle of the Horus Heresy, when much of the Imperium fell to corruption.

Many worlds were misled during the Heresy, hoping to escape the oppressive rule of the Emperor, or seeking revenge for their brutal subjugation, unaware they were opening themselves up to a far worse fate beneath the spiked heel of the Ruinous Powers. It was a brutal civil war, and even ten thousand years later, the Imperium has not recovered from it, the new age of enlightenment snuffed out before it could even begin.

Steeling my will, I carefully place my hands on Alpia's head and heart again and examine the other link. I have no idea who else could or would form a soul bond with Alpia and while the bond with the Emperor has angered me, this additional link fills me with dread.