Within the Jericho Reach, there was a system that actively thwarted attempts at being found. A system of mystery and dread, centred around an angry, crumpled white dwarf orbited by seven rocky pnets. Each pnet was just a little rger than Holy Terra, and each pnet’s orbit was perfectly circur, equidistant from each other. None of which support life, or even had an atmosphere.

  All seven were covered in lifeless grey wastends made of fine dust, undisturbed by wind, cosmic debris or meteorites. A few human bootprints were the only signs that life had ever touched this desote star system.

  The sole standout within this system, that might as well have been made by a cosmic artisan aeons ago, was the titanic void station orbiting the sixth pnet: Watch Fortress Erioch.

  The watch commander of the station, a veteran member of the Deathwatch, was an Astartes by the name Mordigael, originally of the Blood Angels Chapter.

  He stood in the cavernous hall in which he had sworn his Oath of Vigil, a dozen of his most veteran Deathwatch Brothers standing around him while Lord Inquisitor Avarax of the Ordo Xenos stood to the side with his retinue.

  “What does this mean?” The Inquisitor Lord, perhaps the highest-ranking member of the entire Inquisition within the Jericho Reach sector, asked with undisguised discomfort.

  “It means,” Mordigael said, slowly chewing through the words while he stared at the singur open door halfway up the wall. “That the hour of reckoning is upon us. The Omega Vault is fully open for the first time in recorded history. Pns and schemes that were dreamt up eons ago are finally coming to fruition. Someone, or something, whoever originally built this Vault, predicted that this day would come and prepared accordingly. All that’s left to do is see what they’ve left behind for these most dire of circumstances.”

  Everybody knew what he spoke of. The Achilus Crusade was at an end, having met a foe it couldn’t beat and then crumbled. The Crusade had cshed with an unstoppable force head on and got torn apart, then trampled on. Watch Forts lost contact one after the other near the Canis Salient, and everyone knew it would only be a matter of time until only Erioch was left.

  Perhaps the Erioch system’s mysterious Warp phenomena would defend this location from invaders as it had done for millennia, or perhaps not. All it would take for the foe to find this pce was to delve into the mind of a Navigator to whom the method of finding the Eiroch system had been taught.

  “The hour of reckoning,” Inquisitor Abraxas repeated with a displeased frown on his half-mechanical features. “You think the Omega Vault is reacting to her actions.”

  “Perhaps,” Watch Commander Mordigael said, though he could tell from the Inquisitor’s tone that it wasn’t a question. “It reacts to the happenings around the Jericho Reach, it is known. I firmly believe that the Vault’s actions are based entirely on a pre-ordained sequence. Someone foresaw this, or perhaps they left a final contingency behind for if the Achilus Crusade crumbled.”

  The Omega Vault predated the appearance of the Tyranids, and despite reacting to events of great import happening all around the Reach by opening a sub-vault, it has never reacted to anything the Tyranids have done. Thus, it wasn’t a rge leap of logic to say it had a pre-determined list of conditions upon which it based its actions.

  And now, for the first time in as far back in time as the records went, the deepest vault was open. Mordigael couldn’t help but feel both expectant and wary of what he would find inside. Perhaps a cataclysmic weapon of st resort to grant them a pyrrhic victory? It wouldn’t have been out of pce; the Vault had given them an Exterminatus ordinance before.

  However, he feared the possibility that it would be the exact opposite of that much more: a gift to curry favour with the Xenos menace that erased centuries of sacrifices and valiant effort.

  She had a member of the Adeptus Custodes with her, and the Lord Inquisitor had confirmed the golden giant’s authentication codes through his own channels. It was real. One of the God-Emperor’s own Custodes stood with someone who appeared to be, for all purposes, an enemy of Mankind.

  Which was impossible. Thus, the only possible answer was that she wasn’t an enemy by nature, but one that’s been made into one needlessly. It was a possibility which Mordigael was most displeased with, yet became more certain was the truth with each passing day that brought with it new reports.

  Mordigael kicked off the ground, reaching the door with a jump-pack-enhanced leap and entering it on his own. As was tradition. The ranking Deathwatch commander of the station had to enter alone, most of the time.

  He passed through the barely illuminated hallway, under low arches and passed by thick vault doors. Some were open, most weren’t. The architecture was simple, almost brutalist in style, were it not for the distinctly gothic arches decorating the passageways. Still, compared to even the bndest of Imperial architecture, it was simplistic. Function over form.

  The Watch Commander’s twin hearts skipped a beat when the grand vault door at the end of the corridor came into view. It was a massive thing, a monstrosity of metal and arcane technology held in pce by a hundred bolts thicker than an Astartes in Terminator Armour. Those bolts had been retracting one by one over the st few centuries, but the st time anyone had ventured this deep, they had noted there being more than twenty still in pce.

  Now there were none. A torturous creak of metal rang out in the hall, making the bones in Mordigael’s body vibrate painfully, but he merely watched on, unfazed, as the massive vault door shuddered. It was slow, but it moved, sliding across the deckptes almost ponderously.

  Mordigael waited until it was fully open, until the shriek of metal dimmed, leaving behind only blessed silence. He stepped forward, his steps measured and careful, his guard raised to the utmost. No man has entered the hall he stepped foot in for millennia, and it showed. Dust covered everything, the grand arches, the massive dome hanging overhead, high above and even the half-circle of granite statues lining the walls.

  At the centre of the room stood twin lecterns atop a raised dais. One of them held a piece of parchment suspended within a stasis field. The other, a dataste of some kind connected to a massive cogitator pressed against the back wall, the two linked together by a mass of cables stretched across the floor.

  Mordigael approached it, and the moment he set foot onto the dais, the stasis field flickered and faded. The parchment fluttered through the air, nding at the bottom of the lectern just as the veteran Astartes reached it, poised perfectly to be read by a man of his stature.

  He skimmed the contents quickly, noting that a sizable chunk of the text written on it was unintelligible to him. There were words, sentence structures that were vaguely familiar, but might as well have been scribbles.

  He focused on the parts that were not.

  ‘To Watch Commander Mordigael-‘

  He froze, gauntlet-cd fingers curling around the edges of the lectern, and despite the immense strength in them, not even managing to dent it.

  He kept on reading, his blood freezing cold in his veins, and his hackles appropriately raised the further he read. It was a list of instructions on how to approach ‘the saviour wreathed in the argent light of restored bance’. How to ask — beg — for their aid. It named the being a possible solution to many possible problems and troubles, among them the ones spoken of in the Derleth Lexicon. The same problem which had been haunting the Deathwatch and the Ordo Xenos in the Jericho Reach for centuries.

  The Dark Pattern. The awakening of the “crippled-king”, whoever that was. Some suspected it was a Necron Phareon, others thought it was some new Cosmic Horror from beyond the known stars. All they knew for certain was that its awakening had already begun, and that it would be heralded by an apocalyptic phenomenon that might wipe the Sector clean of life.

  Preventing that had been a primary objective for both the Death Watch and the Ordo Xenos in the Sector, but now it seemed both would be neutered. Without support from the Imperium at rge, their task would remain incomplete, their duties unfulfilled.

  Perhaps the Jericho Reach’s fate should no longer worry him. It had essentially been passed over to a burgeoning Xeno empire. And yet, just leaving left a bad taste in his mouth. Worse, it would mean leaving behind Watch Fortress Erioch and ignoring the final purpose of the Omega Vault.

  The scroll, specifically named Mordigael, was a letter addressed to him. He didn’t know of any witches with foresight potent enough to prepare such a thing millennia in advance, and that worried him.

  His eyes lingered on the rge, flowery signature at the bottom. He didn’t know the nguage the supposed name, or title, was written in, but the moment his gaze nded on it, a single concept crystallised in his mind — Revetion.

  For a moment, the world held its breath as Mordigael felt an immeasurable weight settle on his shoulders. He saw twin stars alight with golden fire stare at him without kindness or pity, and yet his twin hearts stuttered and his breast swelled with purpose. He knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was meant to follow the letter’s instructions.

  Now then, how did one get an audience with a conquering alien warlord?

  *****

  I kneeled in the grass, smiling in what I hoped was an approachable and soft manner as I stared at the skittish little girl before me, hugging a fluffy white rabbit to her chest like a shield against the world around her.

  “Hi, there,” I said, and to my relief, the girl didn’t bolt to hide behind the nearest bush like she’d done the first time I appeared in this peaceful little forest. “I’m Echidna. I kinda … live around these parts and saw you hanging around. I wanted to ask if you are alright?”

  She leaned away from me, and if that poor rabbit wasn’t made from nothing more than soul energy and a psychic imprint, it would have been crushed by now.

  “I-I’m I’m fine.” She stuttered, her gaze dancing around and entirely determined to never linger on me for more than a brief instant. “You feel … weird.”

  “Do I now?” I asked with an amused smile. “Weird how?”

  “Like, weirdly, uhm, familiar?” She said, her gaze lingering on me for a moment this time, weighed down by suspicion. “Who are you? What are you doing in my forest?”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Her forest, was it? Oh well, I did make it for her, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. “I usually stay up there and just watch.”

  Her gaze followed the way I was pointing, jumping up into the sky, and she squinted. “You can fly?”

  “I can do a lot of things,” I said with a grin. “Want to see a trick?”

  “What trick?” The little girl said, curiosity overwriting caution as she took a careful few steps closer to me. “Can you do magic?”

  “You tell me,” I said, closing a hand into a fist and then opening it again to reveal a small white kitten. It meowed theatrically, then gave a feline stretch atop my palm and hopped off, strutting over to the now excitedly squealing little girl. Yep. Nailed it.

  Mara’s little forest was basically a demi-pne in my Realm, so this form I was using to appear inside it wasn’t like my other Avatars; it was just an energy construct that I projected a sliver of my mind into. I could keep it up indefinitely.

  The poor rabbit she’d been strangling thus far ended up plopped down with some care, patted on the head, and then she was upon the kitten, petting it gently with a single finger.

  “You’re so cute!” She cooed, then gnced up at me, eyes wide and pleading. “Can I keep it?”

  “Sure,” I said with a smile. It was just another energy construct, not a real animal. She could treat it as a moving plushie as much as she wanted without having to deal with all the troublesome parts of owning a pet, like having to feed, clean, vaccinate, and house train it. “Be nice to him, he’s tiny. He isn’t as sturdy as your rabbit friend.”

  “Okay, I promise!” She said with utmost seriousness, and I rewarded her with a regal nod of my own, inwardly struggling to repress the urge to coo over her just like she was doing to the kitten. Mara was just a delight, absolutely adorable.

  I settled in, hugging my knees to my chest and watched the little girl py with her new kitten, all her previous worries and troubles forgotten as she giggled freely.

  Rebuilding the defences around the Iron Colr and getting everything set up was proving to be an utter chore, so this side-tangent was very welcome. This was important, Mara deserved to be happy and to have everything she could possibly dream about, but it was also … pleasant. I found myself smiling as I watched her py.

  After a handful of minutes, she suddenly turned back to me as if she only just remembered that I was still there. She blinked at me owlishly, then smiled and asked, “Wanna meet my other fluffy friends? I have lots, and they could use another friend?”

  “Oh, I’d love to meet them,” I said, letting myself be dragged to my feet and then down the small forest trail by the excitable little girl. It seemed like my littlest ward was recovering from her ordeal quite nicely. I think I’ll keep this avatar manifested here … it’s good practice, and this little angel is a balm to my soul. “Lead the way!”

  P3t1