Warhammer: Striving to Be a Grinding Man

Chapter 183 Beneath the Throne (Part 2)

Below the throne room, Cohen had already advanced to the end of the passageway.

Behind him, a golden-lined passageway stretching for tens of kilometers extended from beneath the Golden Throne all the way here. Those once-broken sections, those voids devoured by chaotic energy—had been re-laid up with sacred bones. The boundary membrane shimmered with a uniform, pale golden light on the outer walls of the passageway. The Emperor's artificial network of passageways had once again been forcibly connected to the real network.

The boundary of a dimension wavers here. Psychic energy deflects here, like two parallel lines that will never intersect being bent under pressure.

The Emperor's initial goal was to possess the Old Ones' Web. Cohen's approach was more pragmatic—to add a lid to the dimensional rift, allowing the Emperor's psionic energy only to maintain the Web's structural existence. The Web's primary function was to suppress warp rifts; its secondary function was to connect to the Old Ones' Web.

He connected the seal at the end of the passage to the wall of the Ancient Sacred Web. But this passage remained eternally independent on the psionic level. It was an appendix, one end connected to the Golden Throne, the other to the edge of the Ancient Sacred Web. Psionic energy circulated from the Emperor into the passage, then dissipated at its end. The Ancient Sacred Web did not receive it. The Emperor had to continue maintaining the psionic supply to this passage.

The ion jets from his power armor propelled him forward. The ancient nexus nodes, the true network hubs, unfolded before his field of vision array.

The tunnel exit is on the edge of Karata—the incredible city.

Karasta's structure defies all physical intuition. It extends simultaneously in all directions, ranging lasers fire without returning, and the city's spatial structure severs measurement at any scale. Broken spires float in every direction, and collapsed domes spread out simultaneously from above, below, left, and right. Demons have entrenched themselves here for millennia, transforming this colossal node into their lair.

The Emperor's psychic power surged through Cohen's consciousness—sometimes as complete commands, sometimes as repeated fragments, sometimes as snippets of a name from ten thousand years ago. This was His domain: on the level of consciousness, He was both God and a prisoner trapped in fragmented memories.

Suddenly, Cohen realized a crucial issue—the struggle between the Emperor's humanity and divinity, not just a struggle, but potentially a suppression of divinity. The unleashing of more of the Emperor's psychic power likely meant that the suppression of divinity by the Emperor's humanity had become possible.

"Kalasta. Beginning and end. The city of beginning and end—we were there. No, not us. It was me. Only me."

Cohen gazed at the endless Eldar ruins stretching into the darkness. Karasta far surpassed any Weblink hub he had ever seen before—Galos Weblink Port was insignificant compared to it, and transit points in shattered star systems were utterly worthless. The city itself was one of the core nodes of the Weblink, connecting several colossal tunnels leading in different directions of the galaxy. These tunnels, measured in light-hours, were large enough for a star to pass through.

Dark purple chaotic energy surged in every corner of the city. Millions of demons arrayed themselves deep within the city, while more were crawling in through the cracks in the broken ancient sacred network. They sensed something amiss. The eyes of the Four Gods peered at the city through the breach deep within the network's core.

Cohen felt he was being watched. The disintegration of the field never ceased, and the Emperor's psychic energy enveloped him, yet he felt no fear.

"The repair work is far from complete," Cohen said. His voice did not travel in the vacuum, but the Emperor's will received it. "The tunnels are connected, but the network structure of Karasta requires extensive repairs. Numerous psionic conduits have broken, and the boundary membrane has partially collapsed under the continued erosion of the demons."

The Emperor's psychic energy surged in once more, more fragmented than before, as if churned from a deeper abyss: "Cleanse. Advance. The front lines—they need to be pushed out. I tried. Back then—I can't see clearly now."

Cohen was silent for a moment. "This passage is completely insufficient. The efficiency of supply and reinforcement is too low. One of the reasons for the failure of the Network Wars ten thousand years ago was that the passage was too narrow, troops could not be deployed quickly, and the rear could not support the front line."

"That door. Pluto. You know that door—the Dark Ages. They built it, and then—and then I used it. They used it. Now it's our turn."

, 7

Cohen remained silent. The power armor's thrusters turned, veering back along the passageway towards the throne room.

The Grey Knights and the Imperial Guard began entering the Eldar ruins through the tunnels. The Imperial army once again marched into this place; they would establish bridgeheads within the ruins. Three hundred Grey Knights were the first to cross the tunnels, deploying a skirmish line at the edge of Karasta. Their psionic senses spread across the fragmented spatial structure, probing the distribution of demons and the direction of the rifts. The Imperial Guard Terminator squads followed closely behind, establishing fixed firing positions behind the Grey Knights' line. Silent Sisters were silently distributed among them, using their ethereal fields to erase the entire area from the warp's perception. The first bridgeheads were completed within hours.

The High Grandmaster stood atop a broken spire on the edge of Karatha, gazing upon the Eldar ruins ravaged by chaos for millennia, and spoke into the communication channel: "We are back."

But as the bridgehead defenses advanced, Terra's navigators were the first to sense the change.

Those ancient nobles, with their eyes closed in the Navigator's Spire, sensing the subspace tides with their third eye, simultaneously sensed something gathering at the edge of the solar system. Storms have precursors, gradual processes, measurable waveforms. This time, none of that was present. Space itself was changing, like a calm surface of water being pushed up from below, forming a slow,...

Irreversible bulge.

A subspace storm is forming in the outer solar system.

The message traveled from the Navigator's Spire to the Star Court, from the Star Court to the Commander-in-Chief's Office, from the Commander-in-Chief's Office to the High Lord Council, and from the Council to every military unit still waiting in the inner solar system.

"The storm will seal off the solar system," Trajan said.

"Yes." The communications officer's voice was steady. "The navigator's assessment is at maximum intensity. The outer perimeter will be gradually closed."

"Then get the ships that have already entered the inner perimeter into position as soon as possible. Those that are blocking the way, wait at the edge of the storm."

The storm did not disrupt the deployments below the throne room. The Grey Knights and the Imperial Guard had secured their bridgehead at the edge of Karasta, and the second wave of reinforcements was gradually entering through the narrow passageway. Each wave took time. Trajan stood on the palace walls, silently calculating the rate of deployment as he watched the rows of grey and gleaming gold ships at the Lionsgate spaceport berths. Too slow. At the current rate of reinforcements, it would take the Empire at least several weeks to send enough troops to Karasta to establish a solid defensive line. Reinforcements from the entire Solar System to Terra were also ongoing, and the window of opportunity left by the storm was rapidly closing.

Then Trajan saw the Emperor again.

This time it wasn't a psionic projection. When he passed through the Gate of Eternity and entered the throne room, he didn't see a skeleton. He saw a living, breathing human body. He sat there, the veins beneath his skin pulsating, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. The thick tubes that had pierced his spine and skull had loosened at their joints and been replaced by thinner cables.

Trajan knelt on one knee on the inside of the threshold, his gaze fixed on the throne's base. He paused for a moment in the light, confirming his judgment that the Emperor's body had not been repaired. Cohen had repaired the "bottleneck" in the throne, the network, and his psionic pathways, not the Emperor's physical body. But the throne's efficiency had increased from near collapse to ninety percent, and the massive psionic backflow allowed His body to regain even the bare minimum of physiological activity—the blood vessels beneath His skin began to pulsate again, and His withered chest began to rise and fall. He was still seated on the throne, but this millennia-old mutilated body was no longer a dried-up corpse.

He saw Trajan enter, nodded slightly, and then closed his eyes.

The surface of the Golden Throne, that ancient relic scorched by millennia of psionic energy and revered by countless mechanocracy yet never fully comprehended, now gleamed with a new luster, as if it had just risen from the abyss of its creation. The pulsation of the energy conduits no longer resembled the gasps of a dying man, and the hum of the psionic focusing array sank from its unchanging shriek to a steady whisper. Cohen did not dismantle or reshape this creation, far older than the human empire; it could not cease operation even for a moment. He merely repaired, point by point, the critical nodes exposed to the scorching heat of the warp at the edge of the rift suppressed for millennia by the Emperor at the cost of himself. This increased the Throne's operational efficiency to ninety percent of its design specifications. This was the first time since the Horus Rebellion. Without a complete original blueprint, without a true understanding of that ancient alien technology, it was impossible to reach the core hidden beneath the adamantite and gold. But ninety percent was enough.

Several mechanical sages were summoned into the throne room. They worked around the golden throne for hours, connecting data cables to every diagnostic interface, and leaving calibration marks on every critical node with consecrated soldering irons.

Trajan knelt on one knee before the throne, his forehead touching the adamantite floor.

The Emperor's psychic energy surged into his consciousness, the oppression gone, replaced by a broken, weary affirmation: "I cannot stand. Ten thousand years—I need someone to sit here. Magnus—if he were here—"

No, that's impossible. Then burn them. Thirty thousand. A quarter of an hour. Uphold the imperial truth.

Tula's forehead never left the ground.

"The Star Torch—it has been burning for so many years. You have been burning for so many years. Stop it. Stop it. My light. My light is enough. I am not a god."

"Those things—they've been waiting. For too long. Go prepare. Prepare—for war. There is no God. There is no warp."

.

As Trajan left the throne room, the massive golden doors closed behind him. He stood in the corridor outside for a moment before straightening up.

The solar system is under martial law. Every ship entering the inner perimeter must undergo identity verification and course confirmation. The Ministry of Justice's patrol boats shuttle along the inner perimeter track, guiding ships that have deviated from their course back to the designated route.

Cohen emerged from the throne room and was guided by Trajan toward Lionsgate Spaceport.

"Pluto's orbit has been cleared," Trajan said, his voice low. "There's nothing around that door now, and a shielding array has been erected. As instructed by the Emperor, you need someone to reach that door."

Cohen's gaze pierced through the fleet at Lionsgate Spaceport, landing on the distant depths of space. There, on the far outer edge of the solar system, lay the location of the Hessonic Gate—referred to in the Imperial archives as the Gate of the Underworld. A warp gate built by humanity during the Dark Ages. It was once one of the Imperium's most prized strategic assets, and the gateway through which rebel forces stormed the solar system during the Horus Rebellion.

It now floats silently in Pluto's orbit, its structure intact, but the activation protocol has long been lost.

"The Hessonic Gate will be converted into the Webgate," he said. "It will be wide enough for most capital ships to pass through."

Trajan turned his head. "We have already assembled a fleet in Pluto's orbit. Once you open that door—an Imperial fleet can enter Karata directly from there."

Cohen was silent for a moment. "Can the Grey Knights and the Imperial Guard hold out in Karata until the fleet arrives?"

"Ten thousand years ago, they were able to hold out for five years using that small passage. Now they can still wait for the fleet to break in and give those things in the warp a surprise. They're waiting for you to open that door."

"I need to get there first," Cohen said. "The Black Pearl is already on standby."

Trajan nodded.

Cohen turned and walked off the observation platform, through the palace corridor, and onto the shuttle. The Black Pearl was already waiting at the outer berth of Lionsgate Spaceport. As he climbed the gangway, the low-frequency hum of the engines warming up traveled through the hull to his feet.

The Black Pearl slid out of its berth, the Second Elite Regiment of the Faith Guard already lined up on the cargo deck, and the Stormstrike Forces were conducting final weapons calibrations in the hangar. The ship entered the channel from the outer berth of Lionsgate Spaceport, the greyish-brown sphere of Terra slowly rotating outside the portholes. Starlight fell on the ship's armor plating, filtered by industrial exhaust fumes into a dim, cold white glow.

Heading: Pluto.

The Black Pearl traversed the inner orbit of the solar system. Mars flashed past the porthole, followed by the asteroid belt, and then the orbit of Jupiter. The light outside the porthole gradually dimmed, and the sun shrank from a blazing sphere of light into a dim point of starlight.

Cohen was ready when the dark gray sphere of Pluto appeared on the sensor screen.

"Slow down to cruising speed." Cohen stood at the bridge window, looking at the planet shrouded in eternal shadow. "Maintain distance. Stormbirds, prepare."

Marcus stood behind the tactical console. "Three hundred kilometers away."

The Black Pearl's thruster exhaust plumes subsided, and the ship transitioned from high-speed navigation to hovering cruising. The Stormbird slid out of the hangar, its thruster exhaust leaving a thin, blue trail in the vacuum. Cohen sat in the cockpit, watching the colossal silhouette, hundreds of kilometers in size, slowly enlarge.

Hersonic Gate.

Its structure was far more complex than any description in the Imperial archives. Built by engineers of the Dark Ages, it defied any known Imperial engineering paradigms—it was constructed from hundreds of thousands of gray metal plates of varying sizes, each seamd with long-extinguished energy conduits. The plates were arranged without any discernible pattern, like random puzzle pieces assembled by some incomprehensible logic, forming the outline of a colossal door folded countless times.

The Stormbird hovered near the stargate. The hatch opened, and Cohen, clad in power armor, floated out of the Stormbird and flew towards the silent behemoth.

He stood at the edge of this colossal structure, beneath which lay a metal plate tens of kilometers wide, covered with micro-meteorite impact craters and vacuum-deposited sedimentary layers. The field unfolded, and the decomposition command was issued.

The surface of the metal plate began to change, rearranging itself at the atomic level. Pale spiritual bones grew from the crystalline structure of the gray metal, like a slow metamorphosis unfolding in the darkness. Cohen moved slowly along the edge of the metal plate, transforming the metal into spiritual bones in the same process at each new cross-section.

It lasted for thirteen days.

For thirteen days, all that could be seen was the gray metallic surface of this colossal structure and the unchanging shadow of Pluto in the distance. There was no sound, no communication, only the microscopic tremors of the metallic lattice continuously transforming into the spiritual bone structure within the field.

By the end of the thirteenth day, the Gate of Hessonic had transformed into a colossal structure of spirit bones. Energy channels stretched along its surface, gleaming with a dim, cold, silvery-white light in the darkness. Its original shape remained symmetrical, like a geometric form created by stacking a thousand identical gates.

Further away from the stargate, the silhouette of the Mountain Array emerged from the darkness. This colossal fortress, nearly the size of the moon, slowly came to a stop on the side of the network portal, the exhaust plumes from its engine array gradually diminishing. Its mission was to guard the portal, ensuring that nothing could sever the passage from behind during the entire window of opportunity for the Imperial main fleet to pass through.

On the bridge of the Mountain Array, hundreds of psionicists were already seated. Cohen had transmitted the psionic key waveform to the Mountain Array via encrypted pulses before departure. These Terra's most elite psionicists, who had been training for some time at specialized psionic amplification arrays, now began to unleash their power simultaneously. Deep within the network, ripples of void spread in the darkness. Psionic energy surging from the gap between warp and the real universe poured into the newly constructed secondary gate—the Spirit Bone—transforming its cold white luster from dark silver to blazing white. The ripples of void condensed and took shape within the gate frame.

The door was open. Void ripples pulsed steadily within the doorway as Oracle Fortress passed through. This colossal fortress, second only to the Mountain Array in Terra's orbital defense system, had the insignia of the Emperor and the Royal Guard etched into its thick armor layers. Its bow plunged into the massive door ignited by psionic energy.

Cohen floated in the void, watching the gate, hundreds of kilometers high, ignite with psionic energy, and watching the silhouette of the star fortress gradually disappear into the ripples of space. The Emperor, there, intently observed the state of the Webgate. He realized once again that the Emperor could activate this gate himself. He was the most powerful psionic master in the galaxy; all he needed to do was know the key waveform. His own light falling upon the gate would open it.

Behind the Oracle Star Fortress, the war machine of the entire solar system began to move. The Ramirez-class star fortresses came into view one after another, each large enough to serve as a mobile base for an entire fleet. The Imperial Navy's battleship formations adjusted their course, their bows pointing towards the same colossal gate. The Martian fleet turned, the Solar Fleet turned. Countless bows traced parallel arcs in the void, all heading towards the same colossal gate ignited by psionic energy.

Cohen returns to the Black Pearl. After the main strike fleet passes, the Black Pearl will follow closely behind, sailing through that door where he will once again descend upon Carrasta.

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