‘To You, My Friend Across Time,

  If you are reading this, events have unfolded according to my most bleak predictions. Or at least, very near to it. For this letter to make it into the hands of one who can read it, the threads of Fate dictate a rather specific sequence of events. One, I am in some way indisposed. Two, humanity remains but is much diminished and once more consumed by its self-defeating internal conflicts. Three, the Eye of Terror has expanded to stretch across the gaxy. Four, I managed to bait a fool into making use of a ritual I designed, summoning a higher-dimensional soul into a suitable vessel. Five, it succeeded and summoned you, My Friend.

  My condolences. I imagine anyone with half a brain would be rather displeased about ending up in some of the less pleasant futures I’ve foreseen.

  There is little else that needs to or can be said. Millennia upon millennia separate us, and the future is ever-shifting. As much as my preparations have filtered out the majority of possible futures that may come to pass, leaving only the ones in which all of my conditions are fulfilled, a sliver of infinity is still infinite.

  I know only that I must tell you two things:

  One. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to resurrect me by force if I can in any way be considered ‘dead’. When the time comes, I will facilitate it myself. Contingencies have been made for all eventualities I could foresee.

  Two. I highly recommend avoiding reaching for Divinity. It is a poisoned apple, and never worth it. It comes with more shackles than it is worth the trouble. Damn the Eldar and their idiocy.

  Unfortunately, if you do not take my advice on either of those, I’m afraid this will be our st point of contact. If it is, then farewell. If it isn’t, then good luck. You will need it.

  P.S.: If I’ve made no contingencies for my resurrection in the specific future you’ve ended up in, then you have my sincerest apologies for dragging you into a gaxy on the cusp of utter ruin.

  With Regards,

  Revetion — 309.M20’

  “Huh,” I said. Because what else could I say to that? The Emperor — from before he ever was the Emperor — wrote me a letter in which he cimed to have been behind facilitating my rebirth. Or rather, summoning.

  Though I was still pretty sure that twit Tzeentch also had something to do with it, somehow, someway. Then again, no plot or scheme could ever be entirely free of the Architect of Fate’s influence.

  But M20. The 20th millennium, as in: the year 20,309. That was … I’d been closer to that date back when I was alive during the 21st century than I was at the moment. This letter had survived more than twenty thousand years untouched since the Em- Revetion penned it.

  That somewhat expined the letter’s levity. It didn’t suit the image of the Emperor I knew from reading some of the Horus Heresy books. Then again, maybe he never really thought anyone would read it. The fact that he’d never updated the letter ter on spoke volumes. Considering how the currents of fate and destiny always shifted as time passed — according to Val — the further ahead a predicted event was, the more likely it was to be prevented from ever coming to pass by sheer happenstance.

  I ran my gaze across the length of the parchment once more. Above the portion written in English, the same message was repeated in what I’d managed to identify as French, and above that in Japanese and Sanskrit above that. Why? Fuck me if I knew. Maybe there was a possibility a French, Japanese or Indian dude/dudette ended up in my pce instead of, well, me. That was a weird thought. I’d always considered my existence to be a bit of an out-of-context problem for everyone involved, but apparently, it really wasn’t. I was still grappling with that fact and its many, many implications.

  If they managed to yank my ‘higher-dimensional soul’ down into this gactic cesspit once, was there anything preventing them from doing it again? Hell, had they been doing it before? What if I were just the st, and luckiest, of the reincarnated souls, as everyone before me ended up in a subpar vessel and was railroaded into becoming a Daemon snack?

  If all of their souls had the same quality and density as mine, then the Chaos Gods were … well fed. Aaaaaaand, I was way more fucked than I’d expected. Neat.

  I clung onto the hope that it wasn’t so, and my greatest beacon of hope supporting that theory was the fact that my summoning had coincided with the opening of the Great Rift. I wasn't a ritualist, but I knew that the opening of a gactic tear in reality and between dimensions likely had something to do with making the ritual that summoned me possible. Hopefully. Perhaps it’d only have made it easier, which would have meant they could have done it anyway, given they were prepared to pay the much greater price.

  “You can understand it too, can’t you?” I asked, giving the golden giant looming over my shoulder a gnce.

  “Parts, yes,” he said. “Not all of it.”

  I waved a hand, and an illusion covered the parchment, transting the message to Low Gothic. Octavian stood still as a statue, looking like he wasn’t sure how to process what he was reading.

  “Would you be against me sending this letter back to Terra for my Brothers and Captain-General to study?” He asked.

  “Not particurly,” I said. “But you do understand what this means. Right?”

  “We have suspected that the Lord Emperor is himself thwarting all attempts to resurrect him thus far,” Octavian said. “We believed he wouldn’t do so if it was done correctly, which is why we’ve waited for so long to make our own attempt. Every time thus far when we’ve tried, we’ve been haunted by dreams of ruination, and so we held off on putting any pns into motion."

  “We need to wait for a sign,” I said. “From him. Even I can’t forcefully heal his body if he actively resists it. Not that I’d ever get that far. He’d probably arrange for one of the Primarchs to prevent me from ever getting close enough to try it.”

  “You think he foresaw this?” Octavian asked, his voice carefully void of all emotion. Even more so than it usually was.

  “Yes. From what I know, he was the type to make yers upon yers of contingencies for every possibility he foresaw.” I shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t foresee this exact future, but this letter proves he made contingencies all the same.”

  He turned pensive at that, and the silence lingered, so I shoved the parchment into his hand and shooed him out of the room. He held it with much more care than I had, then lumbered out of the room, visibly lost in thought, which was saying something for one with a mind as advanced as a Custodian’s.

  Since I had already sent the Lord Inquisitor and Mordigael away, and Amberley had taken the first opportunity to make herself scarce after seeing the thunderous mood Octavian was in, that left me alone in the conference room. With Selene, of course, who finally decided to stop her cospying as an ornamental statue.

  Her armour melted away, leaving her in the comfy sweatpants and tee combo she’d come to love after I’d introduced her to 21st-century fashion. It was a hit or miss. She loathed jeans for some reason and thought shorts looked stupid, but you win some, you lose some.

  I scooted back a bit, pushing my chair away from the table just enough so my girlfriend could comfortably plop herself down in my p. I smiled at her indulgently as she leaned her head on my shoulder, and I started pying with her hair.

  “It’s ridiculous,” she eventually said, sighing wearily. “Just a year ago, the God-Emperor was a distant, omniscient God, the immortal Master of Mankind. Little more than a myth, as much as the priests would have loved to flog me for saying that, that was all he was to most of humanity. And now my girlfriend is getting letters from him, it’s … absurd.”

  I hummed, beginning to gently rub her head, my fingers massaging her scalp just how she liked it. Her eyelids drooped, and she huddled closer.

  “It’s fine,” I whispered. “It’ll be fine. These are just … growing pains.”

  “Only you could call my entire worldview shattering ‘growing pains’.” She snorted, giving me an affectionate swat on the shoulder.

  “Like it wasn’t in pieces already,” I scoffed pyfully. “It’s my mission in life to shatter as many people’s world views as I can!”

  “It was fractured at best, but the foundation remained solid,” Selene murmured. “Now the cracks are spreading.”

  I stayed silent, humming as Selene continued speaking, though it was mostly just compints and rambling. It felt like I’d just accidentally revealed to a kid that Santa wasn’t real. I listened, made the appropriate noises, holding her close through it all until she exhausted herself and slumped against me.

  “Feel better?” I eventually asked, and it was her turn to reply, only with a noise of agreement. I squeezed her into a hug because, ohmygod, that little grumble was absolutely adorable. When she looked up at me curiously, I gave her a kiss on the forehead and smiled. “I love you, you know that, right?”

  “I do,” she said softly, then smiled. “Love you too, you silly girl. Even if you chase me onto the edge of a mental breakdown sometimes.”

  “Do I?” I asked innocently. She hummed in agreement. “Well, then I suppose I should make it up to you somehow, shouldn’t I?”

  “That would be appropriate, yes.” She was grinning by then, pying along. “Do you have something in mind?”

  “I’m sure we could think of something if we put our minds to it.”

  *****

  “Mhhhmmmm,” Selene moaned theatrically, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.

  “You like that?” Echidna asked, grinning down at her.

  “Yes,” Selene said in a dreamy voice. “What did you say this one was called?”

  “It’s an apple pie,” her girlfriend said proudly, hands on her hips as she puffed out her chest. “You are luckily safe from putting on any fat, so we can indulge a bit more. I’ve also made some brownies, ice cream and a strawberry cheesecake. Those used to be my favourite desserts back- er, you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Selene said, her gaze shamelessly wandering across her girlfriend’s body. For some reason, she had decided that she’d be cooking her food, and that the most appropriate apparel for that would be an apron. Only an apron. Not that Selene was compining. “I’m not going to refuse to taste more of your cooking.”

  “Great!” Echidna said with a smile, then spun around and left to probably get the next pte of dessert.

  Selene watched her go with a smile and wondered for a moment whether she’d ever felt so content in her life before meeting this silly woman. The answer was a resounding no, which was a bit sad, but it only meant she had to make sure this worked and kept on working.

  Luckily, it wasn’t hard. Echidna was an exceptionally accommodating partner. She wasn’t perfect, no one was, but she had everything Selene had ever wanted in a lover, and more. She’d never thought she’d meet someone who could make her leave behind her title and duties as a Rogue Trader and Noble of the Imperium.

  The vast majority of mankind likely thought her a traitor, a heretic, and crazy besides. Not that she cared. If Grandma Abigail’s harsh lessons and training had been good for anything, it was to teach Selene that very few people’s opinions mattered. Namely, those of people who could get her killed or her family ruined for thinking her a heretic or a traitor. High Lords, Inquisitors, high-ranking Astartes and such.

  Echidna had neatly shaved down that small group of people she had to care about even more, leaving only a handful in total all across the gaxy. Better yet, the majority of those remaining people wanted to be on her girlfriend’s good side. Like the Custodians, the two Primarchs and … that was it. No one else in the Imperium mattered. No one.

  It was so incredibly freeing. Still, it made her feel a bit like a … what was that word Echidna had used? Oh, yes. A ‘Gold Digger’. She’d never thought that she would be the party tching onto someone else in a retionship, having always thought that if she ever got into anything long-term with someone, then it would be the inverse.

  She shook the thought of. Echidna had repeatedly made it clear that she didn’t care and that she was perfectly happy with the retionship as it was. If so, Selene wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. She’d enjoy it for all it was worth, and make sure it was mutual … more than mutual.

  That was how retionships worked, wasn’t it? With both sides competing to put in more effort into making it work than the other.

  Selene leaned forward, pcing her chin on one hand, and watched as her girlfriend strutted back into the room with a bowl of ice cream and those strange brown cookies in the other. Apparently, both were made entirely from ingredients Echidna had gotten from the gene library. Cocoa beans, wheat flour, vanil, milk, and so on. These were the tastes of ancient Terra, Echidna’s home, and it was so heartwarming to see how happy she was just to finally be able to share them.

  Echidna was a bit of a foodie, it turned out, even though she didn’t need to eat anymore. Maybe I’ll take her on a tour if we ever visit home. I think she would like experiencing actual noble cuisine … or maybe we could just travel to a pleasure world. That sounds fun, too.

  “Watcha thinking about?” Echidna asked curiously, slightly pouting, and Selene realised she’d been lost in thought. Or, as it looked to the outside: ignoring her girlfriend.

  “Taking you on a cruise,” Selene answered honestly, smirking at the silly look that came over her girlfriend’s face. “Maybe to a Pleasure World, or to … home. I thought that it was only fair that I introduce you to the cuisine I grew up on after you’d cooked for me.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Echidna said, huffing. “Especially not return home if you don’t want to. A Pleasure World, though … that could be fun, when I get another Avatar.”

  Selene hummed in response. “I think my dearest Uncle is in for a rough talking to, and I do have some family that I actually like. Somewhat. Most of them are still uppity noble twats that Grandma left for their parents to raise with a silver spoon up their asses since they weren’t in line to inherit her Rogue Trader title.”

  “I see,” Echidna said thoughtfully. “We could relocate them here, the ones you like anyway. It’s not the safest, but nowhere is, and the st thing I’d want for you is a moronic Inquisitor going after your family just because you are with me.”

  Selene nodded slowly, finding herself agreeing with her girlfriend. Most Inquisitors would probably be smart enough not to do it, considering Echidna had a Custodian in her corner and had a somewhat amicable retionship with two Primarchs, but some Inquisitors were, to put it mildly, batshit insane.

  Amberley Veil was one of the sanest ones Selene had ever met, though that number wasn’t all that high. Thankfully. Knowing a lot of Inquisitors was usually rather unhealthy; sooner or ter, you’d meet one that thought you were a heretic for holding your fork ‘wrong’ and then it’s a whole mess.

  Or so Grandmother had said, not that Selene was ready to take the old woman at her word when she liked to twist the facts in her stories to get her point across.

  Not that she had much right to call anyone insane, considering her present circumstances. Selene knew she probably wasn’t improving on the popur rumours that the Emperor selected those to be his Rogue Traders who had one too many screws loose and possessed a concerning ck of self-preservation instincts.

  “You’re probably right,” Selene said, frowning. “But that’s for the future. For now, I doubt the news of my … Well, entanglement with the Big Bad Evil Xeno warlord has reached home. No one who is going back through the Warp Gate saw or knows of me, and I doubt Lord Octavian wants to annoy you by causing rumours to spread.”

  “Inquisitors should have better things to do than to go on petty witch-hunts,” Echidna noted. “The Great Rift has caused a whole lot of mess, and I doubt there is enough of them to put out all the fires.”

  Selene nodded in agreement, then gnced down at her pte and the brown cookie, half-melted ice cream on top. Whoops. She quickly grabbed a spoon and got to eating; it wouldn’t do to let Echidna’s cooking go to waste. The happy smile on the woman’s face as Selene shovelled the sweet, fudgy goodness into her mouth made the otherwise simple dessert at least a hundred times better.