Chapter Text
***
Trazyn the Infinite, Overlord of Solemnace, Archaeovist of Prismatic Galleries and witness of a thousand epochs, considered himself to be a patient person. Patience came naturally to his kind, after all. It mostly required time, and that currency they had in abundance. Such was their curse and their blessing - clad in their bodies of eternal, ageless necrodermis they could - and did - wait out rises and falls of stellar empires, births and deaths of planets and constellations…
‘By the flaying sun, why is this taking so long?’ Trazyn raised his arms in frustration. ‘It’s just a door. How complicated can it be?'
‘It is as I warned, my lord - the technology was tampered with,’ answered Sannet, referencing something from his data-tablet. ‘I assure you that I would not have bothered you with all those propositions, if this was something I could simply deal with by myself.’
‘You should have made your point clearer, then. I thought that we would be able to at least get inside the facility proper, before being so utterly humiliated.’
‘My deepest apologies, lord,’ Sannet bowed his head without turning away from the scry-glyph he was assembling. Over the millenia he too had come to consider himself a patient person. ‘But I am obliged to remind you that I also stated, on numerous occasions, how complicated this kind of interference is to even estimate - especially for someone not specialized in cryptomancy. Which I, regrettably, am not.’
‘That much is obvious,’ Trazyn grumbled as his metallic fingers traced a path along one of the conduit grooves in the door’s blackstone surface. Its smooth line was interrupted, time and again, by regular curved protrusions of strange, porous white material. Sannet had some technical name for it, but Trazyn did not care to remember it, as it in no way conveyed how torturously inconvenient it was.
‘If you are feeling frustrated with our current progress,’ Sannet suddenly spoke again, ‘I maintain that it is not too late to seek…’
‘Just open the cursed door, Sannet,’ Trazyn cut him off, his desire to engage in that argument again gone more thoroughly than his flesh.
The cryptek projected a sigil of compliance and turned back to his work, leaving Trazyn little choice but to once again scan the chamber for something to alleviate his boredom.
It was a predictably fruitless effort. Part of the reason he was so fascinated by histories and cultures of alien species that inhabited the galaxy was that his own people had very little of both. As they were now, that is. If anyone dared to suggest the same about the people they once were, the mighty Overlord of Solemnace would have (and, in all honesty, had, more than once) destroyed them were they stood.
But the chamber was clearly of Necron, not Necrontyr design. A broad, mostly open rectangular space under a pyramidal ceiling, where corridors from three of its sides converged, seemingly so that any who traveled by them could get bored to death sitting before the door that refused to open. Billions of identical chambers could be found within tomb complexes all over the galaxy. The growths - as he decided to label them - were its only distinguishing feature.
Despite their organic appearance, these irregular bulbs and spurs were of an entirely synthetic material. According to Sannet, his field equipment turned out to be inadequate for fully discerning the material’s nature, the depth of the mystery highlighted by the fact that this was how Trazyn learned that there even were grades of power to the cryptek tools.
These mysterious growths could be found all over the chamber and even a little beyond it, but clearly clustered around the energy conduits leading up to the damned door. In all other regards their placement, form and size seemed completely random or, at least, beyond his immediate ability to find a pattern.
To say that Trazyn the Infinite found such a state of affairs to be frustrating would be an understatement.
He was just about to find a new way to convey this fact to Sannet, when the stale air shifted behind him with the opening of a hyperspace oubliette.
‘I am sorry to distract you, my lord,’ the Huntmaster bowed as he stepped out. ‘But you should move behind your retinue - the beast approaches.’
‘Oh,’ said Trazyn, a modicum of good mood restored to him. ‘Right on cue.’
‘Places, everyone.’
***
‘...ah, but you see, dear Freidisch, the greatest gift of science lies in circumvention of the laws of nature, not breaking of them!’ As he went on, Cawl’s gestures grew so enthusiastic that it looked like he was conducting some invisible orchestra. About four of them, perhaps. ‘That would be the domain of magic and other such nonsense. No, no - we operate within the realm of the possible here. Observation, not interaction! That is the key, I tell you.’
‘Two counterpoints. First is that what you speak of is pure theory. And with virtually no data to support it, it might as well be magic. The second is that I am not Freidisch,’ Qvo-88 shook his head.
‘Yes, yes, I know. But don’t be so dismissive of a good theory, my friend. It is the very bedrock upon which…’
Alpha Primus was barely paying attention to the conversation. His creator was like gas - taking up all the space available to him, especially when it came to talking. And once they had time to come into their own, his Qvos turned into terrible enablers which resonated with him on some unfathomable frequency, creating an endless loop of pointless prattling.
He checked his auspex. He found it frustrating to rely on such a crude tool in any measure, but this place dulled and confounded his witch-sight in ways which were different from the usual effects of noctilith. Cawl, he noticed, was in no hurry to try and explain that .
The crude tool seemed to be doing its job at least. It showed that their descent down the eerily lit angled corridor was soon to end in a broad and empty chamber. Primus had little trust in the second qualifier. He randomly singled out a ruststalker from the nearest pack and sent it orders to scout ahead. Its princeps emitted a low noospheric rumble at being so unceremoniously bypassed, but Primus didn’t care. The half-human creature detached from its group and loped ahead to a rhythmic hum of servos.
Its signum blipped out immediately as it entered the chamber below.
The maniple froze up at his command.
‘And here comes the trouble,’ Cawl gleefully pitched in, as if he was waiting for this the whole time. Primus hated it when he did that.
‘I get absolutely no readings from down there,’ Qvo said, consulting an unwieldy apparatus strapped to a servitor’s back.
‘And that, as we all know, is a reading in itself!’ the archmagos responded, while rubbing his two upper sets of arms together. ‘Primus, will you do the honors?’
With a sigh that he did not bother to hide, Primus stepped forward, squads of elite skitarii perking up with an influx of power as he passed them.
Incursion pattern Theta-0-3-0 , he commanded them wordlessly. Despite his name, Primus disliked taking on the role of the alpha for these clockwork soldiers, or interfacing with the noosphere in general. But unfortunately, like with so many things, he was good at it.
Squads shifted positions, some hugging the walls for cover, some dispersing through the corridor in suppression fire teams. The eerie green glow from the walls got mixed with the red of upcycling volkites and blue of charging plasma. The soft hum of ruststalkers’ blades filled the space.
Primus approached the edge of the killzone - the part of the corridor visible from the chamber below, its border helpfully marked by brighter green light that spilled forth from there. He pulled a thick cocoon of psychic force around himself. Such powers, at least, remained reliable in this unpleasant place. With a thought he pulled forth a dispersed squad of sicarians, aiming to give the awaiting enemy a wide selection of targets, adjusted his grip on the chainsword, and stepped into the light.
Illusions, in his experience, were all the same, no matter their origin. So he knew what to look and listen for at the entrance into the seemingly empty chamber. It was there, he knew it. With no warning that anyone would be able to read off his body, he threw himself into a sprint and, in just two steps, was not surprised to hear the slight buzz of xenos technology as he passed whatever veil it projected. He also wasn’t particularly surprised to see neither the unlucky ruststalker, frozen mid air, in the middle of a long, loping step, nor the wall of metal bodies and the crackling glow of gauss weaponry pointed straight at him.
What followed was another matter.
‘No sudden movements, please!’ The words in pure Gothic came from a tall necron, waving an elaborate staff from behind the closed ranks of his phalanx. ‘It would be such a waste to reduce your unique forms to rather common piles of ash quite yet.’
The speaker was distinguished from his ilk by significantly greater stature, almost rivaling the grey-armoured space marine for height, and a metal cowl around his head, not entirely unlike those worn by Primus’ lesser siblings in the Astartes Librarium.
More confused than actually heeding the warning, Primus hesitated briefly, which was all the necron needed to flood the air with even more chatter.
‘What commendable restraint!’ he threw up his arms briefly. The creatures’ faceplate was static, forever shaped into the scornful expression of its kind, so its voice was pulling double and triple duty to convey the sheer amount of smugness the creature put into its words. ‘But I should have expected nothing less from the finest creation of the finest mind of humanity.’
‘You flatter me, lord Trazyn,’ Cawl responded as he scuttled into the chamber along the vanguard of the skitarii, which immediately formed their own wall of steel bodies. ‘I could live your lifetime twice over and still not even approach that generous title.’ Primus threw a side glance at him, trying to discern whether his creator was taking all this in stride because it was something that he expected, or because pretending that he knew more than he actually did was one of his key survival strategies.
As always, it was impossible to tell.
‘Ever so humble,’ Trazyn shook his head. ‘But now that the pleasantries are out of the way - care to enlighten me why I shouldn’t take this opportunity to expand my martian exhibition?’
His free hand shifted, producing something from his hip - Primus could not make out what it was, seeing only the shimmer of air where an object was supposed to be. But judging by how Cawl immediately tensed up next to him - it was nothing good.
‘Besides our already standing deal, you mean?’ Cawl responded, his voice conveying nothing but amusement. ‘I was under the impression that we had achieved a certain degree of mutual understanding back in the caves of late Cadia.’
‘That we did. Oh how easy it is to remain cordial when there is a common enemy at the gates and nothing to fight over.’
‘And you believe the current situation to be different?’
‘Come now,’ Trazyn panned around the chamber and the opposing lines of skitarii and necrons with the glowing head of his staff. ‘Surely we both know what tomb raiding looks like. We clearly are in competition here.’
‘Ah, assumptions. They are the mortal enemy of our kind,’ Cawl wagged a finger at him in response. Primus suppressed a deep sigh. He would have really preferred it if they started shooting at each other instead. ‘I believe that not only are our interests here not exclusive, but we are, in fact, in a position to help each other. For are you not here, lord Trazyn, in such a remote tomb of your own people, in search of something made by them?’
The two of them stared at each other over the back of their warriors, the mask of necrodermis and the mask of withered flesh both impenetrable.
‘And you claim that you are not?’ Trazyn finally spoke, his doubt apparent.
‘Not at all! I am, in fact, here for the exact same reason that you are - to retrieve something made by my people.’
The necron lord produced a low hum that Primus could only interpret as that of realization.
‘I should have guessed,’ he said while looking around the chamber. ‘Humans are good at nothing if not at creating things that are… frustrating.’
Cawl took a half-bow. ‘That we are. A species-wide compulsion, nothing to be done about it, I am afraid. But I assume this means you have already encountered the traces of my ancestors’ presence in these halls?’
‘One could say that,’ Trazyn said, thoughtfully tapping his staff on the ground. ‘You know how to deal with these things, then?’
‘Well, they are a byproduct of an extremely sophisticated process which…’
‘Yes or no, Cawl - not everything about me is infinite.’
The techpriest actually pouted. ‘Then yes, if you insist on being so crude.’
‘And so you hope to exchange this little know-how for my non-interference and even aid in getting further inside the tomb? ’
‘I hope for little in this galaxy, save for Omnissiah’s benevolence and forgiveness,’ Cawl put up his palms defensively, the very picture of martian piety. ‘For everything else - I plan and I calculate. But to answer your question - yes, that is more or less my intention.’
‘And what is it that you are looking for here, exactly?’ Though he perceived no movement, Primus was sure that the necron’s glowing eyes grew narrower.
‘Just a piece of equipment that my ancestors left behind in their own attempt to raid this place. Nothing of historic or cultural value, I assure you.’
The necron lord appeared to be considering something for a moment.
‘Very well, I am convinced’ he said after a short pause, sounding less convinced than anyone had ever been. ‘You shall have your truce until both our businesses here are complete.’
‘Upon which…?’
‘Upon which we shall go back to our standing arrangement,’ Trazyn spread his arms magnanimously, the scowl of his mask somehow appearing a mischievous smile. ‘I am no slave to compulsion, Belisarius Cawl, whatever the rumors might say. Besides, I have enjoyed observing the effects and consequences of your actions over the past twenty years at large. I am not opposed to continuing to do so.’
There was a dry snap as the slight shimmer of air around the frozen ruststalker broke, allowing it to finish its leap. As its feet clanked on the stone floor, it immediately froze again, now trying to process all the battlesphere data that caught up with it. Primus pulled on its mind impatiently, recalling it back towards the pack.
‘Wonderful!’ Cawl clapped his hands together after observing the scene. ‘Let’s not waste any more time then. Friedisch, dear, care to help out the noble cryptek?’
The skitarii line parted and Qvo-88 cautiously came through, accompanied by trudging tracked servitor loaded with various bulky equipment. He shot Cawl a nervous glance, which was returned with a smiling nod and gesture towards the massive door at the other end of the chamber. Qvo muttered something under his breath and, with a slightly dejected look, stepped towards the necron phalanx. As he approached, the metal warriors shifted in a single synchronous snap that sent echoes running down the connected corridors, opening the way for him.
‘If I may…’ he began as he approached the glassy black surface, beside which one of Trazyn’s cryptek servants was hunched over, performing some arcane ritual. As soon as Qvo spoke up, it almost jumped, turned around and hissed at him.
‘My lord, what is this?!’ the cryptek called out indignantly in the necron tongue. Cawl’s insistence that Primus spend time learning xenos languages had always been an irritant for him. Cawl assured him that one day he would see the point of the exercise, but so far it seemed like it only allowed him to comprehend yet more bickering, so he remained unconvinced.
‘Be calm, Sannet. These are our guests, who happen to be able to help us with this irritating little obstacle.’
‘You would take the efforts of these…’ the cryptek spent a couple seconds looking for an appropriately scalding descriptor, ‘ technobarbarians over the knowledge of my order?’
‘The knowledge of your order had almost a week to open the damn door, Sannet,’ Trazyn said in a tone which sounded pleasant, but was anything but.
Sannet kept up his protestations, though not as passionately, while Qvo set to work drilling holes in the white growths that covered the door and inserting into them probes connected by wire to the machine that took up most of the servitor’s torso.
‘So what are they, these pesky little growths?’ Trazyn asked as he watched Qvo work, his tone so disinterested that it sounded like he barely made it through the sentence. ‘And how is it that you know how to counteract it?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Cawl responded, clearly savouring the opportunity. ‘They are the footsteps of our ancestors - the means by which they once entered this very tomb.’
‘Bah!’ Sannet was just as clearly unimpressed. ‘Such a feat is far beyond your primitive capabilities.’
‘Why is that? Even the current members of my order find their way into dormant - and sometimes even waking - necron tombs quite often.’
‘Your kind’s… pervasiveness is well known. But this is no ordinary…’ the cryptek suddenly fell silent, having caught a heavy look from Trazyn and an encouraging one from Cawl. ‘I know for a fact that such a feat is beyond human capabilities,’ he scoffed instead.
‘You are being so cruelly dismissive, master Sannet,’ Primus never met anyone who could shake their head quite so patronizingly as Cawl did. ‘I am quite sure that you are aware that once upon a time we were the masters of many lost arts - nanotechnology very much included.’
‘Might as well brag about mastering the wheel. The ancestors your little cult obsesses over were nearly as barbaric as you.’
‘Well, those barbarians did manage to tailor a self-replicating nanomachine network to infiltrate the power systems of this… tomb, didn’t they?’ archmagos asked joyfully, making the cryptek produce a barely audible sound of metal scraping against metal.
‘You would do well to…’
‘It is done,’ Qvo declared loudly, as he stepped away from the door and flipped a switch on the servitor’s chest. ‘The interference should cease in this segment.’
All four of them exchanged expectant looks. Sannet marked something down in his tablet, and stepped towards the door, scanning it with a broad sweep of a hand. He then produced a very unsatisfied hum.
‘The interference… appears to be gone, my lord. The system should respond to a standard protocol now.’
‘Excellent’ Trazyn nodded and raised his hand in an imperious gesture.
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ Qvo called out hurriedly. ‘Are you just going to open it? I must note that now that the interference is gone, local defence systems and alarms should be back online!’
Trazyn laughed.
‘I know you are used to sneaking into such places like thieves,’ his patronizing head shaking was also quite well-performed, Primus had to admit. Though, in his opinion, it lacked a certain fluidity that allowed the speaker’s disappointment in the listener’s ignorance to properly come through. ‘But we are here by right. This place is lawfully under Nihilakh dominion. It shall obey me, as I am an overlord of this dynasty. ’
‘But not a phaeron,’ Cawl pitched in, ever incapable of keeping his mouth shut.
‘And what difference do you imagine it makes?’
‘Well, it was my understanding that while the title of overlord is an esteemed one, there are multiple bearers of it within the same dynasty. And that, it being a title of a territorial ruler, their authority does not extend over the entirety of dynastic holdings…’
‘A very human outlook. The hierarchy of the dynasties is structured very differently from your primitive feudal society. The right to command is written into our very essence…’
‘You mean code.’
‘Oh, do shut up and watch.’
With an obvious dramatic flare, Trazyn completed the gesture. A low hum that seemed to travel more through one’s bones than through the air filled the chamber, along with bright green light of waking power conduits. The door’s surface shifted slightly, shaking off alien growths and Qvo’s cables. It then split into three pieces which gracefully retracted into the walls, revealing a mirroring chamber on its other side.
Cawl gave a polite applause. ‘Well, I must admit…’
‘What is this signal?’ Qvo unceremoniously interrupted, his head quizzically turned, as if he was listening in for something.
Primus immediately allowed his witch-sight to spill in all directions. Even mangled as it was, he could sense them - simplistic machine minds, waking deep within the corridors behind them.
He revved up his chainsword, and took a step towards the middle of the chamber, quickly estimating firing positions and chokepoint viability. The air shifted and split beside Trazyn, as half a figure of a necron deathmark leaned out of its pocket dimension.
‘The hounds wake, my lord. They do not know you from a poacher. I urge you to seek cover while I lead your party in bringing them to heel.’
‘What the…’ Trazyn swore, as he stepped back and shifted his staff, which immediately flared with baleful energy, into a guard position. ‘Cawl, damn you! What did you do?’
‘Me? Qvo literally just warned you!’
‘The guardian constructs aren’t sentient! They are bound by protocol, which clearly lists me as their master!’
‘Well, it is evident that at least one part of this statement is false!’
As the two argued and flailed their metallic limbs around, the warriors filling the chamber shifted. The necron phalanx - warriors, immortals and lychguards, arranged in an intricate formation marched out in lockstep towards one of the side entrances into the chamber, with about a third of them splitting off to cover the middle one. Primus turned around to find the deathmark, now fully out of its oubliette, looking at him. The expectation was clear. They exchanged a nod, and Primus commanded the skitarii into a similar maneuver. A wave of noospheric whispers, some confused and some indignant, ran through the maniple, but he would hear none of it. Using the myriad implants in their brains, he excised all doubt and forced the cyborgs to obey. Several squads headed off to join the silent necrons at the central corridor, while others, visibly relieved, began setting up defences at the last entrance.
‘... you tamper! It’s what you do! You must have broken it somehow!’
‘Master Sannet, exonerate me!’
‘What?!’
‘You yourself confirmed that…’
Probably aware, but nevertheless completely heedless of the approaching danger, two priests and two necrons have all huddled together at the mouth of the open door, filling every possible channel of data transfer with arguments and mutual accusations. Primus took another stock of the situation. He did not like how visible Cawl was from the entrances. His explorator carapace and conversion field were both works of artifice, but, in Primus’ experience, few things in the known galaxy were quite as penetrating as a stray shot.
And the tomb’s guardians were coming.
The scarabs, these tireless keepers and builders, so deceptively benign when carrying out their duties in twos and threes, came first. They turned into a true nightmare when rallied to the defence of their creations, forming grey waves of thousands upon thousands skittering metallic bodies, their ability to perform small-scale matter deconstruction turned into an extremely potent weapon. They used to be a bane of mechanicus forces delving into necron tombs and perhaps still were - to the servants of lesser magi.
Designated gunners brought up their arc rifles, while the rest of their squads unhooked purpose-built grenades from their belts. Whatever else his faults, Belisarius Cawl always planned ahead.
The dead air of the tomb tore itself apart in the crackle of massed lightning strikes. Arcs of searing light struck into the rolling grey waves, frying the internal systems of dozens of scarabs at a time, while the grenades - or, more accurately, specialized emitter devices - thudded into their mass. Some were almost immediately disassembled in flashes of green light, but many more managed to activate, letting out a signal that froze scarabs into large, uneven clumps of motionless interlocked bodies. It was as if the wave hit an invisible barrier, its progress stopped completely a dozen meters away from the skitarii firing line. Like with all enemies whose strength lay in how unusual was the threat they presented, the key to dealing with scarabs was simple - adaptation.
But that is why necron tombs were defended by more than just them.
The green glow of heavy gauss weaponry deep within the corridor was the first thing that alerted him to the presence of spyders - parent constructs to the scarabs’ teeming swarms, capable of both replenishing and providing them with considerable fire support. A far more conventional threat than their progeny, they could also be dealt with by far more conventional methods. Primus marked them as priority targets for the neo-volkites of the elite skitarii conquerors… And slowly backed away into the chamber.
Experience taught him to expect at least one more member of the insectoid canoptek family to show itself.
He directed his every available sense, be it organic, psychic or machine, into the internal space of the chamber, pushing past the rising crescendo of gunfire and explosions and trying to catch the enemy performing their usual effective, but predictable tactic.
His unnaturally enhanced perception practically slowing time down for him, Primus tried to breathe in every detail within the chamber in search for the smallest hint that would give away his enemy. The troops were holding at each entrance. The fully necron group did not fare quite as well at holding back the scarabs as specifically prepared skitarii did, but also, to Primus’ annoyance, they clearly did not need to, as the small creatures were far less effective against their fully metal, constantly self-repairing bodies. The skitarii were taking some casualties from the spyders’ fire, but seemed to be managing quite well overall. And, quite surprisingly, the mixed group at the central entrance seemed to be faring the best of them all - though, perhaps, it could simply be explained by the presence of Trazyn’s deathmark in their midst.
The amount, and especially, the variance of the energy outputs this battle produced did not make Primus’ task easier in any way.
The nature of the argument at the door seemed to have shifted slightly - albeit in the most absurd way possible. The door that apparently was worth all this headache began to close, which led to Qvo and the cryptek rushing to it in an attempt to physically hold it open, while Cawl and Trazyn continued their dramatic argument.
The amount of comm-data they were vomiting into the noosphere was not helping either.
But then - a slight spike in the electromagnetic spectrum, coupled with a shift in tachyonic readings - the briefest alignment, virtually undetectable by anyone other than him - and he had the coordinates of the first wraith’s materialisation. Primus lunged towards it, faster than even the thing’s ability to shift between dimensions, and swung his whirring chainsword just as it finished translation. The weapon, usually ineffective against such targets, took on an entirely new profile when wielded with such monstrous strength, and ripped the construct apart in a thunderous collision.
He immediately turned and rammed the sword into the gleaming thorax of a second wraith, but as its teeth were eating through the machine’s insides, a third one slipped past him. He growled, and reached out his hand towards it, gathering a change of raw psychic energy, when the fourth construct began to materialize between them. In his frustration, Primus grabbed it by the half formed metallic spine and guided the warp-charge directly into its internal systems by touch, immediately frying the machinery famously vulnerable to such unnatural energies.
But, as he did so, two more wraiths wormed their way into existence within the chamber right beside him, and yet another began to form further away. And none of them, he realized, were targeting either skitarii or necron firing lines as he expected them to. Instead, each was set on the door or, more likely - the group of babbling fools in front of it.
He was fast, pouncing on the nearest machine and ripping it apart before it moved so much as a few feet towards Cawl. But even as he did so, he was able to count at least six fully materialized wraiths all across the chamber, all moving inexorably towards the same goal. Cawl and Trazyn seemed to finally notice them, and were both turning, the massive omnissian axe and the arcane alien scepter crackling with powerful energies. Both could clearly defend themselves to a certain extent (not that Primus particularly cared about the fate of the necron), but at least two of the wraiths were approaching from beyond the either’s field of vision… and yet more were materializing.
Primus swore silently. This whole mess would be so much easier to deal with if…
If just…
A short message muscled its way onto his retinal display, rather unceremoniously overlaying itself over all other readings.
‘Hm,’ Primus thought, experiencing something suspiciously similar to joy. Even he was not immune to the simple pleasure of everything suddenly falling into place.
He arrested the momentum that was carrying him over to the next wraith, and reached for the warp again. The energy rushed to him, its lone conduit within this psychically numb realm. He gathered it in his chest, shaping it into the desired form with blows of a mental hammer. As he focused and aimed it, he saw Cawl turn his attention to him, noticed the glimmer of recognition on his hooded face… and the extremely subtle nod.
Primus released a powerful blast of concussive energy from the carefully selected point between the two of them. It expanded with a hoarse hiss on the very edge of the audible spectrum and threw the approaching wraiths away from Cawl and towards Primus. But, more importantly - it ripped the archmagos off his many clawed feet, throwing him, along with Trazyn, into their unfortunate attendants, and crashing all four of them into the relative safety of the chamber on the other side of the door.
Freed at last, the door began to close rapidly. He saw Qvo scramble to his feet on the other side and rush towards it, but he was too late. To an accompaniment of all manner of indignant shouts, the massive blackstone panels pressed together, completely separating the two rooms.
Primus breathed out, satisfied. Now, he could do his best work.
He even spun his chainsword in a little flourish as he stepped towards the next wraith.
***
‘No!’ Qvo cried out as he slammed his metallic fists on the door with a loud clang.
‘Have you not the decency to wait even five full minutes before turning to treachery?’ Trazyn scoffed as he got up and tried to untangle his foot from the mess of Cawl’s mechadendrites.
‘I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I am just as much of a victim here as you are,’ Cawl too regained his footing and began to fussily fix his robe, which seemed to shift and snag on multiple parts of his body.
Sannet, the indignity of the whole ordeal seemingly too much for him, said nothing as he simply stood up and stared into the wall in what could possibly have been the loudest silent scream ever produced.
Trazyn, finally free, shook his finger at Cawl in an accusatory manner.
‘That you apparently have no control over the actions of your servants is not as good a defence as you think it is.’
‘Come now,’ Cawl spread out his arms in apologetic gesture, but his tone remained as infuriatingly jovial as ever, ‘the boy had the best of intentions. There were an awful lot of those constructs approaching.’
‘Mere canopteks! I could have handled them by myself if need be.’
‘In the same manner that you could have commanded them, I assume?’
‘If not for your tampering!’
‘Damn it!’ Qvo swore, his head pressed to the cold surface of the door in exasperation.
‘There isn’t even any real harm done! We wanted to get past the door, and here we are.’
‘Yes, having triggered the security protocols and separated from all aid. If this is how your successes look like, Cawl, then I would loathe to see the failures.’
A rare shadow dashed across the techpriest’s face, expelled quickly by a curt sigh.
‘Well, you’ve survived one of the greatest,’ he said, moving past Trazyn and patting him on the massive shoulder plate with brazen familiarity. ‘I am sure you will manage just fine going forward.’
In spite of himself, the Archaeovist chuckled. There was something to be said for being in company of those obsessed with something other than dynastic glory and million year old rivalries for a change.
‘... an utter buffoon,’ Qvo concluded, anger in his voice giving way to dejection.
‘Now what ails you so, dear Friedisch?’ Cawl scuttled up to him. ‘You of all people must be glad to not be out there, in the middle of a battle.’
Qvo-88 sighed deeply.
‘Firstly - not Friedisch,’ he turned around and, leaning against the door, slowly slid down to sit on the floor. ‘Secondly - it would normally be true, but that trigger-happy oaf has thrown us here without my tools,’ he gestured apathetically at bits and pieces of his technical servitor which made it through the door.
‘And I do not think that we can deal with that without them.’
Cawl and Trazyn both turned around to follow his pointing finger, and almost simultaneously produced utterly mechanical hisses of frustration.
Almost the entire ceiling of the chamber was covered with the same white growths as they encountered outside, but in magnitudes higher volume and placement density. From there they spread out along every single power conduit, clustering on them so tightly that their green glow was barely visible, and following them out of the chamber into the murky darkness of the single outgoing corridor.
An uncomfortable silence had settled in, so dead and thick that it was hard to believe that there was a battle still raging just a few meters away.
‘And can the aforementioned “trigger-happy oaf” use that incredibly inelegant tool of yours to help me open this door again?’ Trazyn asked in a tone which implied that he already knew the answer.
‘I am afraid mysteries of the Cult are not among dear Primus’ many talents,’ Cawl replied ruefully. ‘And beside him there are only skitarii down here. Very enthusiastic about technology, bless their heart replacements, but not really meant to handle anything more complex than a transphasic resonator. Anyone in your retinue?’
‘Only if you need that damn thing hunted.’
‘Communications?’ It was the techpriest’s turn to voice an entirely doomed question.
Qvo just made a face, while Trazyn pulsed a quick negative.
‘Really? What about the channels by which…’
‘The Recall Protocol is working fine, thank you very much. I am just not letting you cave my head in to escape the mess which, as far as I am concerned, you have created.’
‘I would never!’ Cawl protested, redirecting the energy back away from the solar atomiser.
‘And so - stuck in a necron tomb yet again,’ Qvo declared to no one in particular.
‘No, we are not.’
All three immediately turned to Sannet, who was methodically noting something in his glowing tablet, without even looking up at any of them.
‘Oh?’ Cawl said in hope of eliciting further explanation.
‘If what you are saying is true, and this interference is nanomechanical in nature and has spread by infecting the… tomb’s existing systems, then I should be able to disable it from the central control cortex. Which should be this way,’ the cryptek somewhat redundantly pointed one of his long, many jointed metallic fingers at the only path available to them.
Cawl produced a mirthful laugh.
‘You see, lord Trazyn?’ He said, lightly probing the overlord’s metallic ribcage with his closest elbow. ‘Just as I said - ‘tis all for the best! We go in, get what we came for, and master Sannet opens the door for us to get out. We may be done before our people outside are.’
To his surprise, Trazyn the Infinite found that he couldn’t really argue with such logic.
‘Very well,’ he assented. ‘If your vessel of luck is truly so bottomless, then let us exploit it.’
‘It is not luck, but…’
‘I enjoy your company, Cawl, but I swear by the void and the stars - if you invoke your god one more time, I will stuff you into a tesseract.’
Cawl made an offended sound, and scuttled off towards Qvo, while Trazyn headed on to the corridor and opened a personal line to Sannet.
‘My lord, do you really trust these…’ The cryptek immediately began what seemed to be yet another impassioned complaint.
‘This is a secure channel, Sannet. You can lay it off for now.’
The shift in the cryptek’s cadence was instant. Few necrons truly shared Trazyn’s passion for theater.
‘I still believe it would have been better to turn to my order for aid in this endeavor,’ Sannet said in his usual manner, appending a glyph of caution to the message. ‘These humans are exactly like their technology - unpredictable.’
‘And I maintain that going to the conclaves would have invited too much attention. You are not the only cryptek to juggle split loyalties. The word would have inevitably gotten out - can you imagine the scramble? Courts upon courts of fools obsessed with reliving past glories… It would have been worse than the damn Astrarium. Luring Cawl here was a much safer bet.’
‘Supplying him with relevant intel in a manner which was both timely and believably accidental was already harder than it would have been to ensure secrecy in a deal with a single cryptomancer,’ Sannet marked the message with an accusatory glyph as potent as he dared to make it. ‘And we have already suffered the consequences of his involvement. And things are still posed to go even more awry. By his very presence, this Cawl character introduces a lot of variables which make my calculations… more complex than necessary.’
‘Well, maybe you ought to take a clue from him then. Relax a little, treat this like an adventure! You’ve been cooped up in the galleries since Cadia - this is a good opportunity to unwind.’
‘With all due respect, my lord - I do not believe that, beside you, there is anyone among our people who is capable of approaching this situation in such a manner.’
‘All the more reason to keep that fellow around!’ declared Trazyn, finding himself in ever rising spirits. Truly, this was such a splendid idea.
***
‘Well, I would say that young Primus has done his part quite well,’ Cawl chirped optimistically as he reached down to offer Qvo a hand. ‘Now we must simply do ours.’
‘What..?!’ Qvo's eyes flew open, his indignation getting to his mouth slightly faster than his self-control. It arrived only half a second later, making him swallow the rest of the sentence and throw a worried glance at the necrons who were, while getting further away, still very much within even a common human’s hearing range.
‘Oh, come now,’ Cawl read his face like a book. ‘The privacy field is active. And besides - those two are no doubt busy discussing schemes of their own.’
‘You mean to tell me that you locked us in here on purpose ?!’
‘Well, “purpose” is such a loaded word…’
‘Cawl, I swear by the Three-In-One…!’
‘An opportunity presented itself! I merely took it. It's much safer to deal with those two alone, without all that firepower at their back.’
‘And without ours at… ours!’
‘A very acceptable trade!’
‘And I do not believe for a second that you had any idea that the cryptek would know a way out!’
‘I had… some.’
Qvo suppressed the urge to howl. This was what he was cursed to deal with - smartest man in the Imperium, with the attitude of a juvenile canine.
‘Oh, quit your pouting,’ Cawl said cheerfully, slowly waving his still extended hand up and down. ‘It is all very much in the process of working out. And with the two of us on the case? It has no choice but to finish doing so!’
Qvo sighed, and took up the offered hand.
‘You will be the death of me, Belisarius,’ he said, rising to his feet to a hiss of a whole chorus of servos.
A sad smile touched the Prime Conduit’s wrinkled face.
‘I always am, am I not?’
The two of them stood in silence for a moment, ten millennia of unspoken truths shifting uneasily between them.
Cawl turned to scuttle towards the corridor and Qvo hurried to follow.
‘So you do realize that they are plotting against us?’ He nodded towards the necrons as he caught up.
‘Undoubtedly,’ Cawl shrugged, his three pairs of shoulder joints performing the motion in a wave. ‘But I say we should take this as a sign that we are on the right track. I will confess that until I saw Trazyn, I was not entirely convinced that we are not wasting time here. But that scoundrel is like a one-abomination explorator fleet - if he is here and wants something badly enough to suffer cooperation with us?’
He paused to theatrically look around, and leaned in to Qvo, his voice taking on a conspiratorial whisper.
‘Then The Fulcrum Chronalis is definitely here.’
Qvo only shook his head, meeting the waves of excitement that Cawl radiated with the usual sense of trepidation. Instinctively, he checked the neo-volkite pistol on his belt. Truly, this was such a terrible idea.