The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

Like walking through the marrow of something’s bones, thought the Protector, finding the notion disturbingly organic. Who had they been, those that ruled here before the interloping eldar colonists had even dreamed of setting down foundations? Had the original creators of this realm used the bodies of their immense, fallen god-foes as material for its construction? Nothing would surprise Alpha-Rho-25 about those long-dead entities’ intentions or methods. He had seen too much in the last five years to cling to surety about anything here.

En route he passed Mechanicum Unifier priests and their battle-servitor defenders in droves, returning to Calastar. The mist swirled with the passage of bulk conveyors and tracked lab-platforms, yet it never dissipated.

Even the vastest tunnels, their sides invisible to visual or echo­locating perception, had a clinging oppressiveness that sat ill within the Protector’s mechanical guts. As honoured as he was to have been activated and deployed within the labyrinth of the Great Work, he would not miss the eerily human pressures it placed upon his thoughts. Discomforts he’d believed himself long past pulled at his perceptions every time he left the web’s Mechanicum-engineered sections.

Troubling reports crackled across the vox of warden servitors in other outward tunnels committing sacred prayers of violence and failing to destroy their target. Something – a single entity – was testing their defences, then drawing back each time. Tunnels that had long since been repaired and which had seen no battles in years were reporting the expenditure of horrendous amounts of ammunition. Many then ceased reporting at all. Other Protectors were being released to cover the webwide retreat, but Alpha-Rho-25 was the first, already close to his destination by the time the Godspire unleashed more of his kindred.

With his back-jointed legs propelling him into a ragged sprint capable of outrunning a Triaros conveyor, he reached the outward tunnel barricade swiftly after setting out from the Godspire. A series of Mechanicum-constructed barriers and gunnery platforms faced away into the tunnel’s mist, the empty cannons tracking on unoiled mechanics, panning left and right over a vista of eldar rubble. Perhaps it had once been a smaller outpost far from Calastar, in the age of eldar supremacy. There was no way of knowing. There would never be a way.

He found AL-141-0-CVI-55-(0023) first, which was fitting. She had been the lead servitor of the boundary team. Her torso lay across a low broken wall of eldar architecture – wraithbone, they called the material, with their species’ pathetic sense of melodrama – with her skull cracked open and leaking into the ground mist. The mist possessed some kind of preservative properties for the destruction had occurred hours ago, yet the cranial residue was still wet. Another reality deviation that wasn’t the Protector’s duty or place to analyse and codify.

Alpha-Rho-25 crouched by the remains, the claws in place of his feet finding easy purchase on the rubble and his piston-legs hissing as he lowered himself. His cloaked robe rippled briefly in a sourceless breeze. Another anomaly. He ignored it, drumming his taloned metal fingers on his sphere-jointed knees as he mused.

The nearby passageway leading deeper into the webway was ringed with what seemed to be eldar bone plating and their ridiculous gemstone circuitry. Alpha-Rho-25 had seen the Mechanicum’s ana­lyses describing the extent of eldar colonisation within the web. The original creators of this realm had constructed the webway from psychically resistant materials that defied corporeal understanding, but evidence of eldar habitation and restructuring was evident throughout the web. The sprawling necropolis of Calastar was only one of its kind, albeit the largest yet found, and eldar ruins lay throughout many dozens of outward tunnels.

The bodies of the other battle-servitors were in similar states, as were the Thallaxi robots several dozen metres to the north. Intriguingly their lightning guns’ chainblade attachments, fallen from slack hands into the mist, still sniggered in idle activation.

The servitors were dismembered but undefiled by further punishment. The Thallaxi’s body-shells were broken, their cranial domes shattered, and the organic cognitive slurry within now ran out, congealing greasily in the golden fog.