Chapter 9

(Malcador POV)

He lived for millennia and saw a lot. The end of the golden age, the countless horrors of Old Night, but honestly he has not seen this yet.

He wandered the halls of Hollow Mountain. The mountain consisted of huge chunks of Mt. Everest and the surrounding Himalayas was hollowed out to provide a location for the start of the next phase of their plan.

Ancient vaults were hewn from the deepest rock to contain the most horrific artifacts of the Old Night. The ruins of the Psy-War were rediscovered and rebuilt as a massive Psyker training and housing center. A vast swath of Eurasia was being prepared for the construction of one of the largest land structures in human history.

His friend had launched thousands of plans and experiments since the attack of the four. Many new genetic and other technologies were very quickly recreated and put to work.

He is worried about all the upheavals that are happening, the imperial truth is often directly mixed with religion.

The emperor's cult had already become extremely widespread on Luna and was already spreading throughout Terra at an extreme rate, and it was an open secret that a huge number of the emperor's closest subjects already considered him a god.

Still, the main project on Terra's highest peak worried him more than any other. A huge psychic device was carefully constructed inside Mount Everest. Vast amounts of manpower, arcane knowledge, and priceless relics from before the fall of the Federation were used in the construction of the titanic machine.

When Malcador's potential future was revealed he was both horrified and strangely relieved. The future that was shown to him and how close they came to it made him truly afraid, but it confirmed something he had long suspected and hoped for. Underneath the emperor's millennia of trauma, stress and fear was a real human heart and a good one with a willingness to protect humanity.

Certain built-in weaknesses of the primarchs were discarded, countless genetic defects were corrected, and newborn babies were psychically bonded in an amazing display of warpcraft. Yet despite what seemed like great leaps and bounds, worries crept into his mind.

Despite the many theories he created over the years, he was nowhere near discovering the past of his closest friend.

The theory that the emperor is a creature of the federation in the last days, created for the protection of humanity, he quickly rejected, his friend was older than that, cave drawings hundreds of thousands of years old in which he helps humanity and defends them from Aeldar attacks made that theory extremely wrong.

Some legends he heard about the emperor being the reincarnation of ancient shamans have been dispelled, the emperor is much older and much more powerful.

Theories that the Emperor is the ancient World Spirit of Terra have been rejected, Terra already has its own World Spirit, although it is very weakened.

He rejected claims and speculations that the Emperor was his psychic projection that had come to life for obvious reasons.

The visions shown to him by the Emperor greatly troubled him, his claims of divinity and the actual evidence of it leaving him in extreme confusion.

The emperor's words "A god that requires worship does not deserve worship" left him even more confused.

The emperor is God, but he does not ask for worship, doesn't that make him worthy of worship by the common people.

He looks perfect in every form, good at everything he does, his experiments and technology are completely incomprehensible to anyone but himself, he has a literal angel as his servant and claims he will create more, he has a golden halo around his head, a flaming sword, he is good and kind even to the lowest of his subjects and wears golden armor and he himself is unnaturally beautiful and nearly 5 meters tall. Don't these facts make him worthy of worship for a normal person.

As for the humanization of the primarchs, the Last Priest was obviously supposed to be involved in this effort to humanize the Primarchs, along with the Assa-Matrari. Another thing that the Emperor crafted to hopefully ensure the functionality of the Primarch. Mother figures who help raise Primarchs into healthy, functional humans. Psychological profiles were written on ideal mothers for each Primarch based and the quest was to find these women.

The second project worried him even more, as there seemed to be too few contingencies regarding the machine inside Everest. Last minute design changes baffled even the greatest minds of the Terrawatt Clan and Malcador had to use the full brunt of his considerable intellect and knowledge base to understand only a small fraction.

Now he couldn't understand anything, the Emperor took care of it because he was currently on the machine installing huge amounts of new parts and functions.

Countless pieces of unknown technology and specimens of warptech have been or are still being added to the machine by the Emperor himself.

He personally admits that he doesn't know anything about what the Emperor does, he can't recognize even the smallest device, all this only strengthens the fear he feels, what if the machine explodes on ignition or something worse happens.

The Warp-Beacon aspect of the machine had its projection elements modified to allow massive amounts of psychic energy to envelop the galaxy. The emperor seemed to have modified the power and range the machine covered as well as the cleansing effect.

Somewhat more understandably, the Astra-Telepath connection has received upgrades to make a much larger and focused psychic connection. Theorized that these psi-uplinks were to enable the creation of secondary beacons or allow other beings to power or influence them. Finally and perhaps strangest of all the Deep-Warp connections now allowed excess psychic energy coming from or focused on the beacon to be injected into the Warp in strange patterned bursts that would inevitably lead to some form of God-Forging.

These changes worried him, especially the fact that the Terrawatt Warp-Sages were changing their estimates of how much power the so-called Astronomicon would need to operate. The original design would have already been intensely draining for the operator, but the changes significantly increased the required mental strength. A truly massive amount of the Emperor's power will be devoted to just keeping the lights on, and that drain will only increase once the Emperor leaves Terra.

The machine was already a dangerous gamble for the Emperor that required a solid portion of his psychic power, but he was confused, many stages of construction required the Emperor to directly inject huge amounts of psychic energy into parts of the machine and hundreds of times since his arrival he injected energy directly and he didn't seem weakened at all or his power diminished from so much energy loss.

All this left him wondering what his friend really was, what kind of freak of nature he was and how he came to be, who he created.

He entered the chamber where the main part of the machine was and he saw the emperor installing unknown parts into the machine and then he saw them.

Besides a few Custodes in the room there were twenty one baby demigods sleeping in their capsules near the emperor.

It took him a few seconds to understand what the emperor was planning. The lighting of the Astronomicon would mark the beginning of a new age, the Age of Imperium. The Primarchs will bond with him forever binding them in the mythic forms of the Warp as champions of humanity and guardians of the Shining Path. This would dissolve any real or imagined claim the Ruinal Powers had on the Primarchs and break the countless chains of fate bound around the infants and their destinies.

He knelt before the emperor and asked "Lord, what are you planning"

At his words, the emperor just turned to him and smiled, "Stand up, old friend, you don't have to kneel before me."

He stood up.

"What I plan is simple, because of my upgrades, the Astronomicon will be able to illuminate 80,000 light years, the cause burning, permanent death, and purifying the forces of chaos. The second function is very simple, with the work of the Astronomicon, my Warp empire will be born, using its power, force I will add a huge amount of Warp and add to my domain, along with merging with human belief will allow me to create a huge amount of mythical creatures, items and other things of myth and legend,giving us a huge amount of soldiers and resources as and real afterlife for humanity.

The shock hit him, the Emperor intended to not only light up the Astronomicon with its full power, but extend it to its full range even . The galaxy would be covered in an aura of intense radiant power, an aura that would weaken Chaos. The second part was even more difficult, throughout history, mankind has created countless myths and legends, the Emperor will make them all real within his empire.

"If they didn't treat you as a god before, after this even the most stubborn will declare you as the supreme god" he answered with shock on his face.

"I know, I expect that. The last priest convinced me of that. Who am I to deny people faith, anyway, I am immune to the bad sides of worship and faith will not change anything about me.

"And our plans for the High Lords?" he asked.

"I give it up, you always claimed human would always need me. You supported my worship when the siege of Terra began, directly creating the Imperial Faith as a weapon against our enemies.

'Be very careful what you wish for, you might just get it' the old adage was the first to form in his head.

But contrary to what one might think, he did not feel fear, he only felt calmness and happiness.

The emperor replied quietly, "We will need every possible advantage to survive the coming storm. The Fall of the Aeldari has cursed the galaxy and the Warp has reached levels of horror never seen before, except perhaps during the height of the First War." ... "Chaos will try everything to stop us from achieving our goals and we will preempt them".

"Do you know why I conquered Terra as the Golden Emperor instead of being the power behind the throne?". The emperor asked him.

"Because it affects your metaphysical claim on Terra and makes it strong enough to withstand even the direct attention of a Chaos God. It's not complete yet, but when it is, not even the weakest demon will be able to manifest on the surface of his world. That's why you conquered Terra as a shining golden king rather than the power behind the throne as you were once favored. Establishing Terra as your domain, your conquest, would give the planet stronger protection from the predators of Chaos than merely supporting a handsome puppet." he replied.

"For the same reason, I plan to take control of human worship because faith is a powerful thing and under my control it can be used better." The emperor answered him.

Suddenly, one of his agents ran up to him and informed him that one of the main tasks was done.

"My servant informed me that hundreds of hand-picked psykers have already been collected and sent to the amphitheater. The amphitheater is officially filled with our most important people from adepts to nobles, out of a million people only two thousand seats are filled with psykers, our first astropaths are ready". answered the emperor.

"The good news keeps coming, first the Antarctic city-state of Orioc finally fell under our control giving us control over all of Terra and now this" the Emperor replied with a smile.

The emperor lowered himself from the mechanisms of the throne and landed on the floor.

"It's time," the Emperor replied.

He looked around the room and finally saw that the primarchs were placed under the throne itself.

How had he missed, this earlier.

He turned to see the Custode feel a shiver run down his spine for just a nanosecond. The Custodes could not feel fear or existential dread and was practically immune to the madness inducing stimuli, yet that slight instinctive tremor still existed among the Golden Legion and was only an indication that he was experiencing something that would traumatize a mortal. The literal mechanical mountain was a place where the material universe was warped by things beyond human imagination and filled with the planet-shattering psychic energy of the Emperor of Mankind.

And then he saw.

The Emperor's form was semi-detached from the physical and he could barely peer through the wall of energy to see the form of the being constantly changing without any order or purpose.

True fear entered his mind, he felt that something terrible was about to happen.

He could barely move his body to the Emperor as his body instinctively tried to escape from the room.

Seeing him approaching, the Emperor turned to approach him.

The Emperor in all his golden glory soon stood before him, and the Custodians knelt in unison. He began to speak in a worried whisper: "Master, we have to delay, I feel something terrible is going to happen. What's the matter with you?" The Emperor placed his hand firmly on him and quietly replied, "Everything will be fine, old friend." ..."You are right, at the point of my ascension and creation of my Warp realm, the Warp is mixing too much with the Materium and causing people to behave fear. Everything is under control, don't worry".

"You can't do that, sir, it will break you," he replied desperately.

The emperor shook his head and said in a calm tone, "Everything will be fine, my old friends, everything will be fine. I am too strong to end up broken by such a trifle."

He wanted to panic, but he felt a sense of trust and calm fill him.

He decided to trust his master and best friend.

"I believe you," he replied.

"I knew that my faith and trust in you was not wrong," the Emperor replied cheerfully.

The emperor continued on his way towards the center of the machine. He felt his mind churn, the sheer power the emperor displayed was practically impossible. The only psychic phenomenon he had seen of that caliber was when the madness of the Eldar tore the galaxy apart. What he just felt was something very powerfully stronger than the energy of the Fall, something impossible to exist.

Only one question appeared in his mind 'What and who really is the Emperor'.

The emperor entered the center of the altar. As he did so, the machines turned on the light and thousands of Psykers began to chant meditative songs. Twenty infant Primarchs slept in those pods as the Emperor began to summon his power.

Slowly, golden light began to pour out of the Emperor, an aura of majesty filling the chamber as he slowly rose into the air and spread his arms. Raw psychic power coalesced around him in a sphere of golden light. It grew larger and larger as if focused and connected to the great machine below it.

How could something so powerful even exist, he wondered.

The air hummed and the mountain began to vibrate as the emperor's form began to blur and the golden light became brighter than Sol. As the cascade of energy reached its peak, one sentence could be heard across Terra, one psychic phrase that echoed through billions of minds.

"Let there be light"