Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 181 Beneath the Throne (Part 1)

Deep within the sludge of Nurgle Garden, a crack silently opened.

Aisha raised her head. She was the Eldar's Goddess of Life, imprisoned in Nurgle's Garden for ten thousand years. She saw the Cursed One, the being the Eldar called the Emperor of Man, the Pseudo-Emperor, who was pressing a massive psionic disturbance into the surface of the Chaos Sea, crushing the boiling sludge and drawing the attention of the entire sea towards the direction where Aisha was.

This was an opportunity. She didn't know what it was—but she knew it was an opportunity. The Eldar's connection to the Web was etched into her very being; even after being imprisoned for millennia, she could still sense something being touched beneath the disturbance. At this moment, it loosened slightly, and she might be the only one: a forgotten path, a passage sealed since the failure of the Great Crusade, was being reopened. She also sensed more of those who were trying to reopen it, now traveling across the Chaos Sea in a mortal artifact, repeatedly pushed back from their course, yet still moving forward.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Before they touched the rotting mud, she used her last shred of free will to push them toward the closing crack.

The tear slipped through the edge and was cast into the void. It was incomplete, but it was the only thing she could give.

The rift closed. Nurgle's Garden resumed its eternal hum. Elsa closed her eyes.

That teardrop carried her warning, like a seed cast into the void. She didn't know where it would land—she only knew it had to reach some ark. Only in the ashes could there be hope for rebirth.

The Black Pearl had never experienced such turbulence in subspace.

It struggled for weeks in the chaotic sea, like a wreck repeatedly tossed about by giant waves. After a third of the voyage, the pressure readings of the Geller force field began to deviate steadily from the green zone, and by the middle of the journey, the pointer on the dial was almost fixed at the boundary between yellow and red.

Sera screamed.

A short, sharp scream came from the navigation cabin. When Cohen emerged from the private workshop, he saw her curled up on the navigation pedestal, the light in her third eye flashing violently, fine beads of blood seeping from the edge of the metal disc on her forehead. She had trained for twenty years in the spires of the navigator family and had never encountered anything like this. The light of the star flickered in the warp turbulence, sometimes clear, sometimes blurry, like a candle nearly extinguished by a gale. But even more terrifying was the feeling that something was watching the Black Pearl from the depths of that chaos, not just once, but continuously and patiently.

Hera Voss maintained the psionic link with the three Imperial Guard warships in the communications bay. Her voice, coming through the communication channel, was hoarser and deeper than usual, each word sounding like it had been ground off sandpaper: "Imperial Guard lead ship maintaining formation spacing—following the Black Pearl's path—repeating. Following the Black Pearl's path." Every word she uttered was laced with the exhaustion squeezed out by psionic overload.

Throughout the voyage, Cohen spent most of his time in his private workshop. The field maintained the decomposition of subspace matter around the Black Pearl, preserving the thin, clean passage around the ship. But this time, he felt the pressure on the field far exceeding any previous subspace voyage.

Then, Terra arrived.

As the Black Pearl launched from Mandeville, the light of the solar system flooded the portholes. The starlight was dimmer and colder than that of Garros, like a layer of gold leaf worn thin by time spread across the armor plating.

The first thing to come in was the signal. Within seconds of the communication panel appearing, a data stream began to pour in. Military dispatch commands,

Merchant ship berthing permits, Star Language Court relay broadcasts, private encrypted communications, and various unidentifiable channel noises all flooded the Black Pearl's communication array at the same time. Hera's finger paused on the control panel, then she cut off access to non-critical channels.

From Mandeville point onward, the shipping lanes were crammed with ships. They formed multiple parallel channels, like arteries that had been compressed for thousands of years, each layer packed with vessels of different sizes and types. This situation persisted for a long time. Cohen stood by the porthole, watching the density of ships outside gradually increase, until he realized: this was not an accidental congestion, but the normal traffic flow of the solar system.

Between them, the outline of the Star Fortress gradually emerged—a colossal fortress guarded by various legions of the Imperial Guard, each surrounded by layers of ancillary facilities: supply depots, communication relays, servant depots, and temporary living quarters. Metal buoys in the minefield were arranged at loose intervals, and Imperial Navy patrol ships moved between them.

Three dark gold Imperial Guard warships maintained precise escort positions, one leading the way and the other two flanking it. Their very presence served as a kind of pass—whenever the Black Pearl approached a checkpoint, the leading Imperial Guard warship would simply emit a short identification pulse, and the queues that would normally require waiting would automatically part.

Even so, the fleet remained in formation. Thousands upon thousands of ships filled every shipping lane in the inner solar system, from merchant ships to transport vessels, from patrol boats to battleships, layered upon each other like a steel city suspended in mid-air. When the Black Pearl and three Imperial Guard warships passed through the lane, the previously dense formation experienced a brief commotion. The ships' identification systems picked up the Imperial Guard's signature signals, followed by a brief hesitation. Then, the entire lane of ships began to move to the sides, like a red-hot knife cutting through frozen grease, clearing a straight passage.

Cohen stood at the porthole on the bridge, watching the ships slowly recede on either side. Thousands upon thousands of ships swept past the porthole. He only knew that this passage had been cleared for him, which meant that his arrival had been known to some extent.

Then there's the moon. Gray. Cratered. Silent.

Its surface is riddled with military installations and entrances to underground cities, and billions of people live beneath its surface. Cohen watched the moon slowly glide past the edge of the porthole. He had read somewhere that Guilliman had returned to Terra through the Web Gate on the moon. The moon has a Web. The solar system itself has Web nodes. This meant that the fissure beneath the throne was doomed from the start—it wasn't breached; it had been waiting to collapse since day one.

Terra appeared outside the porthole at the same time.

This cradle of humanity is unrecognizable. Its grayish-brown atmosphere is the accumulation of millennia of industrial waste. From orbit, it resembles the slowly cooling remnants of a star. Billions of points of light illuminate the night hemisphere, each a nest, a palace, a residential area. Trillions of people live within those points of light. All breathing, labor, sleep, and death occur within them. Despite being enveloped by such a dense population, Terra still possesses a sense of emptiness; all matter is compressed to its limit, leaving only pure weight.

No one spoke on the bridge. Kara stood half a step behind Cohen, while Marcus stood behind the tactical console, his right hand resting on the table. Neither of them had ever been to Terra. They watched the gray-brown planet slowly rotate outside the porthole, watched the points of light—the points of light inhabited by trillions upon trillions of humans—and then fell silent.

Guided by the Imperial Guard's lead ship, the Black Pearl passed through the outer berth layer of Lions Gate Spaceport. Six towers extended from the ground to the upper atmosphere, culminating in a twelve-kilometer-wide landing platform around which thousands of ships were maneuvering. The Black Pearl berthed on the highest platform. Docking supports extended from the side of the hull, engaging the ship's interface.

The three Imperial Guard warships did not dock; they remained in a standby position along the tracks outside the Lions Gate.

Cohen stepped down the gangway. There were no port staff, no berth attendants, and no routine berthing procedures on the berth platform.

Only the dark golden light at the end of the corridor and a row of figures standing there—Trajan at the very front, with hundreds of guards behind him.

The Silent Sisters were scattered among the gaps in the Imperial Guard's ranks. Dressed in silver-grey armor, they stood there silently, like a row of stone statues forgotten by time.

Cohen descended the last step of the gangway alone, his boots landing on the metal platform of Lionsgate Spaceport. Trajan stepped aside to make way, then followed Cohen, slightly behind.

Hundreds of Imperial Guards closed in around him, forming a moving square. The Silent Sisters spread out on the perimeter, their presence acting like an invisible filter, stripping away the surrounding spiritual energy layer by layer.

The corridor was so long that Cohen gave up trying to estimate its length. The walls transitioned from metal to stone—stones that had stood silent for tens of thousands of years. At intervals along the corridor, people stood on both sides. There were imperial officials in dark blue uniforms, mechanical sages in crimson robes, elders of the state church draped in magnificent holy robes, soldiers in various uniforms, and many more whose identities Cohen couldn't recognize. They occupied both sides of the path, silent, without a sound, simply standing there, watching quietly.

They watched the foreman from the border world of the Forge, the man who had supposedly been personally greeted by Trajan. Some recognized the gear and skull insignia on his chest, some saw the silent Custodians behind him, and some noticed the silver-grey nuns of Silence at the edge of the procession. They didn't know what this meant, but they knew it had never happened before. A foreman being personally greeted by the Custodian commander, guarded by hundreds of Custodians, and surrounded by nuns of Silence, passing through the Lionsgate Spaceport—

This has never happened before in Terra's ten-thousand-year history.

The crowd gradually thinned out behind him. Multiple portals slid open and closed in front of Cohen, each one increasing in thickness until the final portal's metal was thicker than Cohen's arm.

The Gate of Eternity appeared at the end of the corridor. Trajan stopped before it and turned aside. "The Emperor's will allows only you to enter. I must wait outside."

Cohen stood before the door. After only a few breaths, the door slid open. Dark golden light seeped through the cracks, falling on the floor before the threshold. The door slid open further, the light spreading. Cohen didn't turn back. He took a step forward, stepping over the threshold.

The door closed behind him.

The throne room was larger than he had imagined. The dome was covered with sculptures and murals beyond description, and cold light poured down from above, reflecting off the gold coating on the walls. The floor was dark stone, polished smooth as a mirror.

In the center of the throne room, the emperor's remains sat atop that enormous mechanical device.

Cohen's energy field activated automatically the moment he crossed the threshold. He sensed psychic energy emanating from the direction of the throne, a natural, continuous psychic radiation emanating from the Emperor's remains. The energy field began to disintegrate the instant it came into contact with it, like water flowing into a dried-up riverbed—automatic, continuous, and unstoppable. The intensity of the disintegration gradually increased.

Cohen walked forward. He didn't walk fast, but with each step he shortened the distance between himself and the throne. As the distance decreased, the intensity of the field's decomposition increased. Then he saw the Emperor clearly.

It is completely different from the image described by Relano.

Rellano saw a majestic figure clad in golden armor. But Cohen saw only a skeleton—a remnant of bones covered only by skin. The skin clung to the bones like a dried membrane applied to metal. Countless pipes and cables extended from the throne, piercing the spine, skull, and ribcage. The head was nearly flattened into a skull, the eye sockets sunken, with only a faint light flickering in their depths. One of Sleeve's hands gripped the armrest, the knuckles yellowed; the other was clenched into a fist.

Cohen continued forward. The intensity of the field decomposition continued to rise, like someone knocking on a door. At first, it was gentle, with a steady rhythm, like some kind of probing. Then it turned into screams—waves of psionic energy crashed against the boundaries of Cohen's field, one after another, with increasing frequency and intensity.

He stopped a few steps from the throne. His consciousness sensed the rift. Beneath the golden throne, beneath the massive gate that had once been the entrance to the Eldar network. There were no holy relics, no Eldar network structure, only a metallic material enveloped in psionic energy—something identical to the material of the Imperial Guard armor. It was a passage, a passage forcibly connected by the golden throne, an artificial network dug with his own psionic energy and human hands. It wasn't large, at most only large enough for a Marauder Titan to pass through. But its size was astonishing—a tunnel stretching for kilometers, which even Cohen's perception, extending to its limit, did not reach its end. The warp energy sensed by the extremities of his consciousness was countless times the normal concentration within the warp; this was clearly the pressure the Four Gods had been continuously exerting on the Emperor.

The Emperor's psychic shockwaves continued to batter the boundaries of Cohen's field. He was probing, knocking on the door, like someone who had been in darkness for too long, frantically howling and begging for the door to open, seeking a glimmer of light.

Cohen made a decision. He left a tiny gap at the boundary of the field—a very small gap, like pushing open a crack in a tightly closed door.

The Emperor's golden psionic energy surged in.

Golden light streamed across the surface of his retina, illuminating his entire senses. The throne was no longer occupied by a skeleton—

A valiant man clad in golden armor sat there, his face resolute, his gaze steady. His body was intact, without any tubes or wounds. He spoke, his voice appearing directly in Cohen's consciousness: "Finally, someone has arrived who can withstand my minimum level of psionic energy injection—without losing their mind."

Cohen looked at Him. The disintegration of the field did not stop—it continued, intensely disintegrating the psionic pressure pouring down from the direction of the throne. He had only left a crack in the door, allowing the Emperor's voice to enter. A fragment of cognition surfaced from the depths of his memory, something he had seen in reading in another world—a name, a nearly forgotten memory.

"The Emperor," Cohen tentatively asked again. "Nyos?"

The emperor's lips twitched slightly, a response that had been smoothed by time, almost habitual. His clenched fist tightened its knuckles for a fleeting moment on the armrest. "Yes. I used to use that name."

His gaze fell upon Cohen. Cohen could feel the weight of that gaze, like a space compressed for millennia slowly unfolding, enveloping his entire being. But he stopped, not daring to delve deeper.