I said, not quite glaring but not far off, my black cloak billowing menacingly around me. We were standing within the noosphere in the head office of the Academic Collegia, the organisation that initially trains the initiates before they are put to work as acolytes.
The academy was one of thousands on the planet.
The Magister Primus said, bowing carefully to me.
I said, before vanishing from his office
Ever since the success of Kellen and Lysa, and I considered them both great successes, I'd been on the lookout for others. I thought about trying the menials but quickly realised that was a shot in the dark. There was a reason they were inducted, and I had just struck gold when I found Lysa and Kellen.
While there were sure to be some, most menials with a spec of talent were whisked away to the schools.
So it was the academy's I started to look through.
It turned out to be pretty easy in the end. I searched for certain traits within the children and then investigated and tested them. First and most importantly was loyalty. I could teach the rest later, but betrayal… yeah, I wasn’t going to allow that within my faction.
That had been as simple as changing some of the tests to see if the children would betray their allies to get ahead. Those that did, a depressingly but perfectly understandable large number, they were taught logic was king after all, were discounted then and there.
Then it was the common traits, discipline, grit, intelligence, curiosity and so on.
Those I liked and didn’t have any problematic connections were put on the short list. If they dropped out before completing and had a reasonable reason for it, they were whisked away to start getting on-the-job training. I had to call in a few favours, but by this point, I seemed to have an endless number of them.
All of this was done through my cloaked identity, so it had no ties to Aleric. An identity that had started to be called the White Shade ever since the fortresses rose to prominence. Well there were other names, but they were painfully long so I ignored them. The fortress had worked far better than I could have hoped and had become an unofficial information broker for the forge. It had been attacked more times than I could count by this point.
Well, that wasn’t true. My sub-processors counted it at 1,320,872 and still growing.
It was ineffectual and had only strengthened the fortress as I'd learned what did and did not work.
Anyway, with the information and fame around the avatar, it was easy to throw my weight around a bit to get my way.
I had almost 214 carefully selected children by this point. Most were learning across the forge with access to my material to help them along. The most promising were brought close and put under Lysa and Kellen.
I had no interest in managing them myself, so I wanted Kellen and Lysa to get experience early on.
At 13 and 11, they were more than old enough to take the responsibility. Their abilities were never in question. I had raised them to full junior adepts by now, and were, in my not-so-humble opinion, far above that in skill.
They even had some critical thinking skills and best of all common sense. The hardest to train of all skills and a rarity within the forge world.
So they each had five kids to train. Once they learned and proved themselves competent, that number would increase. Which wouldn’t be long now. They had both taken to the roles with surprising gusto.
The kids still had other teachers, with on the job leaning under adepts across the forges, so it wasn’t all down to Lysa and Kellen.
They both had very different styles, but I couldn’t fault their work ethic.
A buzz from one of my sub cogitators jerked my attention away from my planning.
I felt a ripple of pride and excitement wash through me. At last. The code was cracked! With the metadata, I now had the location of the next adept on the web. I had no idea how many more tiers there were, but there couldn’t be many.
The priest I had been investigating recently were magi, and not just any magi, old, respected ones.
I made sure I was ready and then dived into the data flow heading for the coordinates. Slipping into the secure data vaults or areas was almost second nature to me now. I still moved carefully, the defences weren't something I could scoff at any more.
At a heavily secured sanctum, at least a Magi going by the defences, although I moved in without trouble, slipping through one of the many backdoors I now had into most systems.
I systematically searched the large solar system of data one orb at a time. Off, near a cluster of fabricators, was the priest. His avatar burned brightly, brighter than many of the surrounding stars.
My heart stuttered when I quickly determined that the sanctum belongs to an archmagos. A relatively newly raised one, which still meant centuries ago. I had not yet tested myself against one yet.
I didn’t find what I was looking for and had started searching deeper when I came across a hidden cache, carefully disguised. I felt an alarm trigger as soon as I approached. A pulse of red light flashed through the system before I could fully snuff it out.
Fuck. Not fast enough.
Now on the clock, I smashed through the cache's defences, skimmed the data within. Good. It had what I needed. Time to leave. Before I could reach the exit, I felt the Archmagos' attention snap to me. His avatar flaring even brighter as more attention was assigned to the noosphere.
Now aware of me, he activated the defences, the passive and active ones both crashed and skittered across my formidable shields. Weak that they were, they had scattered the last of the programmes cloaking my shadowy avatar.
I brushed them away with ease, but it slowed me enough for the Archmagos to reach me. His chants washed over me as powerful electronic attacks slammed into my firewalls.
The magos seemed almost amused, furious but in a more intellectual way. At least until he caught sight of his pillaged data cache. Then he was almost frothing at the mouth.
Not holding back, he released attack after attack.
Instinctively, I brushed many of them away, countering them or dismantling them before they reached me. My assault on him started to ramp up, my probing attacks increasing my understanding of his defences each time.
Each of my attacks customised that bit better for him, and with each assault that much more effective.
I was just about to activate one of my more powerful scripts, now that I had determined the defences the Archmagos used, when he pulsed a line of code that was vastly different from the others.
I had just enough time to realise what it was before it slammed into me and started to burrow into my defences.
Scrap code.
That said some worrying things about him. Scrap code was almost exclusively used by the Dark Mechanicus or those that had strayed far from the path of the Cult Mechanicus, which made them much more dangerous.
It looked like a malevolent spirit, twisting and changing in impossible ways at seemingly random intervals.
Grunting, I felt a spike of pain flash through my head. I was distantly aware as several of my servo skulls sparked and collapsed. They did their job and took the brunt of the assault. No longer needing to hide, my more overt defences activated, and the solar system of data started to be shrouded by a creeping shadow.
Code like smoke and mist swirled around me, thickening by the second as more and more scripts activated.
The magos still attacked, but they were inconsequential compared to the scrap code. It shifted rapidly, skirting and overpowering my defences. Even as I activated script after script, I studied the code. It was masterfully built, and I itched to study how it worked.
It was fucking effective, that was for sure.
The scrap code mutated and adapted each time it ran into a new defence. Some had a harder time breaking through, but they always made progress. I could feel my bionics start to heat, and some of the servo skulls I was leaning on for power strain under the heavy load.
I had no choice.
I was about to activate another script, one of my 'oh fuck' ones, escalating the battle. The sanctum would be fried, but so should the scrap code when I felt an itch in the back of my skull. For a split second, I thought it was just pain, and maybe the code had slipped through.
But it wasn’t pain, it was an itch. One I hadn't felt in a long time.
The Great Ocean.
Of course, the code was enhanced in some way by warp energy.
Pulling my attention away from the battle for a moment, I felt for the shield around my soul. They were still there as strong as ever. Stroger even. Just because I was in a new environment didn’t mean I had stopped diligently practising my techniques.
I pulled from that pool of energy and guided it towards the digital shields.
Nothing happened at first.
It was like I was pulling it in a dimension that didn’t exist. I tugged harder. Both on that energy, but also the shields themselves. Trying to shift them to cover my digital identity as well. I didn’t even know if it was possible; none of the information I had in the fragment mentioned it. None of the rituals touched on it either.
But I wanted to try.
The scrap code was making headway, and I was running out of time. Just before I was forced to activate my attack, the shield around my soul shuddered, then shifted.
Slow at first, almost reluctantly, then all at once.
A new power filled my avatar. It grew several times larger, growing more solid as it did. Not just detailed but as if it had actual weight. Like everything was fake except it.
The avatar itself shifted and changed. The cloak grew darker, my scripts obscuring my identity shifted and mutating, but strengthening. The defensive scripts too shifted, hardening. The scrap code slammed headfirst into these new walls and stopped.
Just completely stopped in its tracks.
I could almost see the confusion in the malicious code.
It pressed against them, twisting faster and faster as it tried to find a way through. It was rebuffed, not just with ease but each better than the last, as if the shield was learning as it went.
My priorities changed.
First, I needed to kill the magos. Turning my attention back to him, I unleashed a renewed assault.
A beam of sustained white fire flashed between us, burning through the magos defences. Peeling through each layer like an onion. With a small prod, I tried to push some Will into the attack. The beam instantly intensified.
The data that was still swirling around us, physically started to burn, destroyed and corrupted as it neared the beam.
It made no sense. But when had the Immaterium made sense? Another thing to investigate. But later.
With his attention turned to frantically raising new chants of defence and calling for support, I turned my attention to his surroundings. A favourite tactic of mine.
I needed to finish this. I could already feel dozens of priests rushing towards us.
I took control of several servitors and sent them charging at him.
He was far more aware than any I had killed so far. Smoothly diving out of their path in the real world, all the while fighting me off in the noosphere.
But his attention was shifted, and I was through his defences. I locked up several of his augments. His right arm and leg fell limp. His left bionic eye frizzed and fried itself.
But he was quick.
He repelled me, breaking my connection and raising new defences. His voice frantic as he chanted defensive liturgies as fast as he could.
Before he could dislodge me from the servitors and various other technology from the room, I activated another script. One I rarely used.
Within the archmagos sanctum, a stratified scream blared from every speaker. Loud enough to deafen biological ears.
Underneath this screaming was a code. All technology that felt the sound was attacked simultaneously. My virus taking control of them. Defences activated, servitors lunged, all trying to kill their previous master. Again, the magi lived, jumping impossible high over on his one working leg.
Behind him, his mechadendrite ripped the closest servitors in two. At the peak of his jump, his mechadendrite snapped out its clawed tipped spike, punching through the turret with ease.
His skill was impressive, but again, he was distracted.
My beam shut off, and in its place, another round of scripts activated. My algorithms unfolded, like a flower. Hundreds of thousands of scripts activated in seconds, and a wave of attacks crossed towards him. Some, blunt and powerful, others subtle. Each one building upon the other.
Using the knowledge I had to change and match the weaknesses of the defences.
The large, loud ones hid the more malicious ones from view.
This time, he wasn’t fast enough, and I was through. His cognition bionics boiled what remained of his biological brain.
I stopped his heart moments later. No second chances.
His avatar slumped and started fading rapidly. His data scattering to the winds.
Before it could spread too far, I collected a copy of what I could. It might contain more information.
Part of my mind was seeing to the clean-up, removing all traces of me; anything that could be used to identify me was shredded. The rest of it was focused on the scrap code still trying to destroy me. I couldn’t leave it here, but I was loath to destroy it.
I started to build a down-and-dirty programme to hold it. But I needed more time.
Like I had with my beam attack, I pushed my Will into one of my defences.
Smoke and mist bellowed out, filling the solar system and then continued, rushing past the charging priests, enveloping them in an impenetrable data-derived fog. Immediately they lost their bearings. All charging off in different directions.
Underneath this fog was a creeping blackness, consuming data as it did. Any traces that might have been left of me were consumed with its passing.
With some time bought, I focused on the scrap code.
Already, the more adept priests had realised they were going the wrong way and were heading in my direction once more.
But it was too late.
The command activated, and a guided cage snapped around the scrap code. It started thrashing immediately, tearing chunks off the cage, but it regenerated each time. It was still a losing battle.
At least until I infused my Will within it.
The scrap code contained and any trace of me purged, it was time to leave. I flashed past the reinforcements and was zipping through the noosphere.
---
At home, I didn’t have time to rest or take stock. I ignored the acrid taste in the air and the smoke wafting up from the fried servo skull and servitors littering my sanctum. They hadn't been able to survive the strain I put them under.
But they did their jobs.
I skimmed through the information. The encrypted parts I left for now. I didn’t know how long I had or what the enemy might do.
I hadn't been quiet, and I knew the Archmagos hadn't been the leader of the group.
First, I pinged a warning to Kellen, Lysa and Snuffles.
I also made sure to activate all my defences, putting everything on high alert. I sighed with relief when I felt the kids and Snuffles in the sanctum with me.
Then I sent a warning to my allies. To Solvexa and Tyr of course, but others as well. I had many dealings over the last year, and while I wouldn’t call them friends, they were allies, so I warned all those I could.
Warnings still being sent, I collated all my information over my investigation and sent several data bursts out to the Locum's and Fabricator General, as well as the Dominus in overall charge of the forge forces. He was a small risk, but if he was the traitor, we were pretty fucked anyway.
I made sure to include Theta and Ferrix as well.
I wasn’t quick enough. 1 minute and 17 seconds since I sent out the first warning, all hell broke loose.
A signal blared across the solar system, aloud and through the noosphere. The traitors responded as one. Adepts, Magi, and even Archmagos revolted; tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Skitarii turned on their fellow soldiers.
---
The first few weeks were fucking chaos.
I liked to think my effort reduced the impact considerably. Many of the vital locations held, at least at first. Then tens of millions of Skitarii, hundreds of millions of servitors and thousands of adepts across the forge world attacked.
Taking entire forge temples under their control.
From which they pumped more war supplies to continue their assault.
The navy fared the worst. In the first few seconds of the conflict, many of them self-destructed or were targeted by traitor vessels. The few that survived managed to limp to the space docks orbiting the planet.
But they were pinned down behind its powerful void shields. So there was little hope of them reclaiming space superiority in the short term. But my commands did work. Once the allied fleet was repaired up and ships that were laid fellow were brought back into operation, they would be able to reclaim the solar system.
That would be months, if not years from now. But the traitors' win wasn’t so complete that they could split up across the system. So they were fairly limited in what they could do.
The Fabricator Lords, to give them their due, reacted swiftly and decisively. Even so, large swaths of the forge world were lost. It was carnage; millions upon millions were fed into the meat grinder, fighting for every inch.
At first, there were huge shifts in territory as one section was broken only to be reclaimed, but with the second week starting, it came to a stalemate. Progress costly and slow in both directions. Still, vast numbers of troops and servitors were poured into the war front, which in some cases stretched hundreds of miles long.
As time passed, more and more of the forge world's resources was turned to the internal war. Systems and shipments were cannibalised for the metal and then recast as guns and bionics. All to keep fuelling the war effort.
The enemy were better off in this regard. At least at first. With control of space, they could bring in new minerals to help them keep producing. Where they gained them from, I didn’t know, but I had some idea. None of them good.
The loyalists made up for this by controlling many more of the stockpiles that littered throughout the planet.
By the end of the first month, the enemy had shown their true colours. If it was already clear they were Dark Mechanicus, the monstrous twisted mockeries of machines that they used, would have.
From the few I fought, I could clearly feel their warp taint.
Rather than stay in my quarters, I moved to Solvexa's new sanctum. Her quick reactions and success at the start of the war had been noticed, and she was now an important part of the guards that covered many of the strategic locations.
With these new responsibilities and promotion came a much larger home. More than enough room for all of us. Even with her massive increase in Skitarii numbers, which now stood at 583. It should be at 600, but losses were hard to replace right now.
Either there were none, or they were needed elsewhere. She wasn’t the only one struggling to replace her losses.
With my connection to her, I didn’t hesitate to move. It was far safer than anywhere else. My old sanctum was in a warzone. Viel's fortifications had held and became a battlefield. It was on the front lines and was now a major defensive fortress.
Without the fortification, the large enemy force would have overwhelmed them and been able to push deeper into the city.
So in a way, his paranoia had saved the day.
I couldn’t see them ever breaking it, but it wasn’t fucking safe, so I didn’t want Kellen or Lysa, or any of my burgeoning faction, anywhere near it.
My preparation did pay off, and I only lost thirty-one kids at the start. Now the line were drawn, I had managed to get them away from the front lines. They were all under Kellen and Lysa now. I didn’t have time to manage them.
Once we had moved in, I of course hardened it. She didn’t need my help in the physical world; she knew far better than me. But I fortified the sanctum in the noosphere, as well as cleared all the rooms of bugs, of which there had been a few.
My position kept me away from the front lines, thank the Emperor. I was working in a team on Solvexa's servitors, of which she now had thousands, and her Skitarii. Or I was in the noosphere.
Both as Aleric, but mostly as the Shade?
With things now hot, I had been mostly forgotten and had little to no contact with Viel or any of his Collegex. They had far bigger fish to fry. Which suited me just fine; it gave me free rein to stalk the noosphere.
In there, I was king.
I hovered in space, a piece of stillness in the major data pathway, data flashing past me. Looking down, I saw my target, a cluster of lights. Swimming closer, the orbs solidified into avatars. Hundreds of enemy Skitarii and thousands of servitors, and in the centre a magi.
His avatar in the noosphere was twisted, with strange growths and body parts fused together with arcane machines. I didn’t know if they hid their identities or the data was partitioned so it wasn’t part of their avatars, but now the secrecy had dropped, the enemy adepts had stopped hiding.
With horrifying results.
I might not fully agree with the Imperium of Man. It was a horrible place of depression and gloom, but in their hatred of chaos, I was fully with them,
Not all the enemy adepts were corrupted, just those a part of the secret organisation, or as I now knew, inducted into the Dark Mechanicus. Many more had joined them at the start of the battle. Mostly adepts that were heretikal, exploring forbidden knowledge or worse, experimenting and learning.
I actually agreed with many of them and had a fair amount of contact over the years. But I wasn’t stupid enough to join them, especially now that the Dark Mechanicus were revealed. For all the Mechanicus was bad, it didn’t come close to their dark reflection in the Dark Mechanicus.
I stopped again. I was close enough.
They had no way to detect me. My already potent programmes had only grown further. As soon as I had the chance, I tested everything I could think of on the strange phenomena of infusing my Will in the noosphere.
It wasn’t instant, but the more my will I infused the more the programme changed, mutated. The changes were unpredictable at first, but as I learned, I got better control over them. Helped by my understanding of machine spirits. The best way I could describe it was that everything my Will infused became more real.
So it was harder for anything in the noosphere to break, be that defences or cloaks. It was still quite draining to infuse them, and it needed to be done constantly, but I was slowly becoming more efficient with it.
If anything, it helped me train it further, pushing it in new ways.
Still hidden, I released my new attack. I hesitated to call it scrap code. It wasn’t powered by the warp, but it was more than my other scripts. It was infused by my Will. It drained it chronically to make them, but a few days was all I needed to recover.
Creating it was similar to machine spirits, although it wasn’t one of course.
I coded the virus as normal, creating the seed and direction, then had it grow from there, as per my tier 4 software knowledge. From there, I pruned and trimmed it, making sure it grew true and then, when it neared completion, I infused it with my Will.
The bigger the code, the more Will was required; it also had the unfortunate effect of being one-time use. Once used, I needed to make another, but that was a small price to pay for its effectiveness.
My scrap code, which I was calling Runescript, unfurled from its storage in my skull and floated in front of me. The sword then spun to point at the adept. Target acquired, it shot forward slowly spinning, like rifling on a gun.
Halfway to the target, the programme fully awoke. The blade burst into brilliant white flame.
I could feel the danger of it from where I was. The data around it burned as it came into contact with it.
The adept twisted, her face morphing as she raised defences.
They were all for nothing. My Runescript punched straight through, embedding into her chest. Nothing seemed to happen for a second; she just looked confused. Then her eyes widened in terror.
Her avatar burst into the same white flame, the flame dancing and crackling as it burned her from the inside out. I knew if I looked in the physical realm, the same white flames would have ignited around her, melting flesh, bone and metal.
Even as she burned, the flames trailed along unseen pathways, like candle wicks. The tethers to her Skitarii and servitors.
The flame followed it back, and then they, too, were on fire. Their avatars burned to dust and their data was scattered to the aether. All that was left of them were smoking corpses.
As the last connection to the still burning adept was consumed by fire, the sword in her chest pulsed and died, its job done.
I turned, leaving the adept to finish burning. She was already dead, her physical form just didn’t know it yet.
Drifting home, I turned over the Runescript in my mind, thinking of ways I could improve it. Because of the time it took to make them, I didn’t have many, only keeping a handful as protection. The rest I used as I made them.
Each time slaughtering enemy adepts from all ranks, I'd even caught an Archmagos unaware. That had got me a milestone.
One for ‘Killing the head of a Snake’, and killing tens of thousands of their subordinates in one go. I didn’t see it, but I saw the recordings. An entire advancing army, killed, burned by a cold, unfeeling white flame. While the corpses melted, they weren't hot; there was even frost around the bodies when investigated.
The orb was bright but not the brightest I had ever seen. I wasn’t sure what aspect the spark was tilted towards at first. Starting out, I thought it was tilted towards the warp, so almost put it into my Self fragment.
But when I started, I realised it was closer to my technology ones, but not perfect for them either.
After a lot of testing, I realised it was actually for the fusing of energy into technology. If that didn’t scream a perfect fit for my Crafting Spark, I didn't know what was.
So a few days after I got it, I created my Crafting Spark.
---ANHere we are, the shit has hit the fan once more. Hope you enjoy.
---
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