Chapter 13

(MC POV)

I moved towards the entrance to the labyrinth, I just slightly telekinetically move the rocks blocking the entrance and enter the beast's lair.

Closing the stone behind me, I began my journey deeper into the tomb.

The kilometers passed quickly because of my physiology, which allowed me to be faster than Olympic athletes even in my slowest walking. Broken machinery and objects littered the grave, and the only illumination was a faint, sickly green glow. It would be imperceptible to any being whose senses were less advanced than the Primarch's. To me it was just a bright pink beacon guiding the way through the crumbling chambers.

It took me less than twenty-five minutes to reach my destination. Before me lay the Dragon Gate. A massive adamantium structure was the only entrance to the cave below. Esoteric and Formidable technologies were intertwined in his very molecular structure.

The Dragon Gate was large enough for Titan-class walkers to enter, and the basic blueprint was actually used in designing the Gate of Eternity.

Reaching the titanic structure, I reach out and touch its seemingly bare adamantium surface. To any mortal lacking sufficient visual magnification, the gate looked like a massive perfectly smooth surface. True, every square centimeter of the structure was carved with infinitesimal circles of both a scientific and occult nature.

They were part of the gate's defenses, providing protection against the most exotic weapons, including Adrathic beams... A complicated self-regenerating organization of energy fields from the Gate sealed off the Dragon's corpse, and as long as the gate held the Dragon's body and sealed remains Exterminatus could survive.

At my touch, the gate just hums softly. They yielded under my gentle pressure. More like oak doors to a manor house than ten thousand ton Adamantium slabs that Antigravity barely hung.

He walked through the door and I let the Gate close silently. The green glow was now omnipresent. The very air shimmered with ethereal energies and smelled of ozone. In front of him lay the entrance to the corpse of the Dragons.

The closer he got to the center, the greater the feeling of wrongness.

The geometry of the chamber itself was impossible, a normal human mind could not function in these conditions, but even though me was not a human being, the feeling of wrongness was still present.

The angles were impossible, the geometry insane. Distance was irrelevant and perspective was a lie. Every rule of normalcy is instantly turned upside down, and the natural order of the universe is overthrown in this new, terrifying vision of a distorted reality.

The chamber seemed to pulsate in all directions at once, compressing and contracting in impossible ways, moving as rock was never meant to move.

This was no chamber, he thought. Was this entire space, walls and floor, air and every molecule within it, part of some vast intelligence, being or construct of ancient malice and phenomenal, primordial power? Such a thing had no name intelligible in any human language, what good would a name do to a being who brought entire civilizations into existence and then extinguished them on a whim? He was in the galaxy millions of years before humanity was anything more than just a primate on a tree, this creature drank the hearts of the stars and was worshiped as a god in thousands of galaxies destroying them and twisting them according to its countless whims.

He was getting closer and the green glow was getting bigger.

Following the miles long scar, he reached the Dragon's inner core. A glowing emerald light and an eternal storm of wondrous light greeted his senses as he exited the passageway. Beneath him was a titanic cavity. Easily a few kilometers both high and wide. It was an almost perfect sphere of broken molten Mercury. Six stabs, including the one he'd inflicted, each looming in seared metal flesh.

The dragon survived every cataclysm intact. His powers and mind were completely crippled, becoming the ghost of the deity of destruction that he once was. His massive earth-sized body was destroyed. Warp energy flowed through his systems and poisoned what it did not break. The dragon was reduced to a lump of stupid metal hiding in its own corpse.

His senses picked up an energy signature that was seeping straight into the Dragon from some unknown source. It only took him a few attoseconds to realize that it was energy from the upper dimension, a form of energy unknown even to civilizations more advanced than humanity. The dragon was feeding, although not enough to regain the strength to be able to successfully escape from its prison.

At the bottom of the chamber, made of scrap metal and waste found in Tomb, was a simple apartment. The hut is somehow anchored to the floor of the chamber on stilts, making it possible to lie on the slightly curved floor. As he approached him, he heard a noise, the tenant was trying to meet him.

Dressed in worn and constantly mended robes that were once bright red with Martian rust - and the Dragon Keeper stepped out of his apartment. He looked neither old nor young.

It was Adept Seymon, Patron of Cybernetics, Father of Augmenat, Ancient Prophet Deus Mechanicus and now Guardian of the Dragon and he knelt at my feet.

"You can get up, old friend, I've come to finish the job with that thing. Your duty has come to an end, I've come to settle accounts with the Dragon and bring you back to my side," I answer and add "There will be no more need for the Guardian of the Dragon , I came up with a solution that solves all problems".

"I'm sorry that I left you here to guard that thing for more than five thousand years, I want you to join me again" I apologize.

At my words he just nodded slightly, Seymon still shaking got to his feet and asked, "So you're here to talk to that thing?"

A smile just crossed my face and I replied "Yes, before I go, I have to talk to him. I intend to make him an offer he can't refuse."

Remembering the Dragon and observing it has always been difficult for mortal minds. His presence was like an intense dream. You could vividly remember the basic outline and experience, but the details always seemed hazy and shifting.

Seymon's face was shocked "Offer?"

"Yes, submission to my service to loosen the shackles. There is a war coming which, if humanity is to survive it, every weapon in our arsenal must be used.": I replied.

Still horrified, Seymon replied, "If he refuses, he will be more aware and more vicious. If he accepts... I dread to think what *that* would require to win."

"If he refuses, I have a way to ensure complete obedience, if he refuses or does not go to my service," I answer confidently.

Seymon only bowed briefly and said: "I believe in you, Revelation." If anyone can save our people, it's you."

I move closer to the Dragon and rise into the air releasing a blinding golden and white light.

I touch the Dragon's head and convert my psychic power into an electrical signal, and the electrical signals into ones and zeroes that I send into the Dragon's mind which was a digital realm, a false reality created by massive computing units that served as a host for the Dragon's full power. Yet for all its potential power, it was stuck in a continuous loop of repair protection. The Dragons' desperate attempts to keep the corrosive Warp from his most precious and sensitive thought patterns and memories kept him in a state that could be argued to be both sleep and death.

The dragon was asleep in his dedication and using my full power I project myself into it and send only one message.

"Mag'ladroth I came to bargain".

Suddenly, a world-ending storm of virtual energy and matter detonated in the realm of ones and zeroes. Before him stood the Void Dragon. In this thought-being form, he could be what he once was, unfettered by physical limitations or psychic fire.

Answering the Emperor in his own equations, the Star God unleashed a flood of data that would destroy the greatest cogitator and lobotomize the cleverest reasoner. Each string of numbers was terrifying and unique because each had the exact same meaning.

++DIE++

"Little dragon, is this how negotiators are treated, shame on you gray hair," I replied with a smile.

++Kehz'logekar, what do you want?++

I have it where I want it.

I send billions of information directly to Dragon and it processes them very quickly.

"I want you to swear your loyalty to me, if you do that you will see how your strength returns very quickly and how you will become more powerful, if you refuse I have the ability to make you serve me" I answer.

++YOU DARE! YOU DARE! DEVOURED EMPIRES. DRANK STARS. RULED THE COSMOS! I AM MAG'LADROTH! YOU ARE PREY! KNEEL BEFORE ME!++

"I don't think I will, make up your mind before my train passes," I answer with a smile.

++A THING LIKE YOU, A POOR PRODUCTION OF FAILED CROSSING EXPERIMENTS CREATED AT THE END OF THE WAR, YOU WILL NOT COMMAND ME.++

"I'm doing very well, unlike you. Since the end of the war, I'm the only one who came out unscathed and I'm making very good progress, unlike the others who seriously injured, imprisoned, died, extinct or simply disappeared without a trace"

I send thousands more information to Zmaj and reply to him "You better think about the offer again, you know what will happen if you refuse"

A few minutes passed while the Dragon seemed to be thinking. The dragon was a being of greed and arrogance. He would not easily accept serving anyone even if it meant regaining his full power and escaping from prison.

++I ACCEPT++

"Excellent, this is the beginning of a very profitable partnership, in case you plan to betray me, you know very well what will happen to you," I answer him with simple facts.

I come out of my subconscious and slowly fall to the ground.

I take the chains and remove them from the Dragon's body.

I then convert some of my life force into pure energy and feed it to the newly freed Dragon, giving him enough to regenerate his injuries, but not enough to restore him to full strength.

While the newly awakened Dragon looks at me, I just climb on his back.

"Climb, don't bite," I reply to Seymon.

Seymon just looked at me in astonishment at all this, it seemed as if his jaw would drop to the ground in shock.

He just looks at me blankly.

"It really doesn't bite, I'm 100% sure, climb next to me," I add.

Seymon, a brilliant Adept who discovered and advanced countless cybernetic technologies and was the first Adept to preach the idea that Martians were more like machines, not out of religious fervor but survival, became the first Martian to pilot the Dragon.

A vast Xenos intelligence, billions of years old, slowly made its way through the Martian crust to the surface, careful not to cause earthquakes, carrying the Emperor and the Techno-Priest.

Of the two, one was happy and cheerful, the other was praying to the Machine God to survive this.