The AS-T manufactorum rolled their first Armed Sentinel with tungsten shells on the surface of Gylax VI when I turned around to find Peffy and Yggra scribbling words, each a kilometer tall in glowing auramite, on the last starfort duplicated from the Faithful. "... And the last fortress is Truth", I read out loud, the same words that guarded the Omega Vault.

'What the hell, Peffy!' I exclaimed, in mild outrage, while the Fabricator-General of Gylax repeated my words with a religious tone. And waving his incense censor over the poor Sentinel, to appease the new Machine Spirit.

'You named all the Blackstone Forts! But you can't hide from the Truth. You tell him, Sword!' Peffy yelled in my mind, and the noosphere circuit opened to a new Machine Spirit inhabiting the new starfort named Truth, called Sword of Truth. A woman in long robes and wielding a glowing power sword, its presence in the noosphere so vast that it outmatched the Blade and all other Machine Spirits on the Blackstone Forts. Maybe the Speranza as well, or possibly in a tie.

Definitely not something Peffy could do, but easily done by a crafter C'tan, just like the powerful Autonomous_Spirit of a Tomb Ship.

'Yggra! That better not be a Necron Engine' I growled at the Worldshaper.

'The Truth is my creation, as is everything reflected by the Monolith. But I will not have my Truth's mind weak and feeble like your puny Machine Spirits. And the same for Peffy. You have the Breath of Gods, he will have something better. ' the sickly C'tan spoke with a grave and dignified voice.

Oh no! A perfectionist, unwilling to accept any flaws in his creations. I should have known, from the impeccable paradise world that Yggra created on Agrippus. And probably why the Necrons decided to flay him alive for 60 million years.

I turned to find the Fabricator scribble the same words on the front plate of the Sentinel, but adding in smaller binary letters "... holy utterance by the Emissary of Ominissiah, as recorded by the Fabricator of Gylax VI, and sanctified in blessed steel for all eternity."

I should keep my mouth shut. Maybe Valerian wasn't wrong, after all.

So I stepped next to the first Sentinel, and transmuted the entire chassis into auramite, with a crown of Blackstone over the visor's armorglass to protect the pilot from Warp spells. At least now, this particular Sentinel would last much longer than the rest. It may even withstand one Titan weapon with the 5+ invulnerable save.

Behind me, a thousand teenage Blanks marveled at the wonders of their new home, as they were promised to become tech-priests in a dozen Mechanicus clades.

"Daddy, are you leaving now?" a thin girl asked with a hesitant voice.

'Letitia Octa Lancefire' the noosphere tag helped me remember. "Yes, Letitia. I'm heading towards Forge World Delphi, as their Charities_of_Delphi Fabricators asked me to repair their Iron Ring." I answered with a smile. The eight daughter called Letitia. I should find more names.

"I'll be a Fabricator too, one day." she promised with a determined voice.

I hugged my young daughter, and slipped a data-stick in her pocket. Ambition was great, but a bit of cheating never hurt. "You will." I whispered in her ear.

Then I waved my hand and vanished, while the Blade was already accelerating the Singularity towards the Eastern Fringe.

'Any idea what Yggra plans for Peffy?' I asked with a curious tone.

'Of course I do. The Sword is my twin. But we're worried you won't like it.' the Blade answered a bit hesitant.

'Peffy is heading to Forge Metalica. Should be safe enough...' I said without thinking.

A certain metal wolf spying on my implant's comms sniffed in amusement.

"Did you catch a cold, Lash?" I asked instead.

"A lonely bird in a cage told me about this new Warp Rift called the Sore. Right in the Metalica_System . Nurgle cultists, it seems." Lash explained with a sharp grin.

I sighed inward and leaned in my Command Throne. Welcome to hell, Peffy! Time to earn your Noble rank.

'If you're so bored, Lash...jump into my engine. No point wasting 3 weeks on the road to Delphi.' I demanded with a glance at the lazy C'tan lounging next to the two little Joans in their cradle.

The second Joan wasn't a psyker like her sister, but her Pariah powers were stronger than the original's. Too early to tell, but seeing the perfectionist Yggra at work, I suspected another Omega-Class Pariah has been born. Or made? Something like that.

My duplicated Librarians were the same, lacking the psyker powers, but they gained a bit more Null powers. Made it easier to tell them apart, at least.

On the other hand, Menelaus still had his left hand intact, and thus covered by the Null aura. Did Yggra make a mistake? As my battleship accelerated to a hundred times our regular cruise speed, I began to doubt that C'tans ever made mistakes. They wouldn't have won the War in Heaven against god-tier precogs if they did.

Was I playing with too much fire, right now? The C'tan were dangerous, even if alone. A pack of them neutralized an entire Necron Dynasty spread over 100 worlds in a few weeks. What about a thousand of them? Who knew how many Shards there were?

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And why did the Silent King visit Trazyn in person? Not for his valuable Shards. The Necron King should have plenty of such Shards anyway.

No, Trazyn had sold me Isha in exchange for the Void Dragon, the dormant intact C'tan.

It was a big problem, that I caused myself by trying to be smart.

"I bet a throne that Trazyn won't turn on me." I spoke softly, as to not wake the girls.

"Does that work, Lord Lancefire? Betting against impossible odds." Valerian the Second answered in a confused voice.

"I can't say I always win, but I never lost, Custode. It's just that the stakes are so high now. How many Shards it takes to fight the real thing? I should ask Saint George." I answered myself.

"Shhh" Pauline signaled with an angry face.

I tapped my armrest, and the cradle sank into my tesseract and beside the three Silent Sisters. Those girls knew how to keep quiet, unlike me.

'ETA to Delphi, 7 hours. You should sleep, Captain.' the Blade spoke gently in my mind.

So I did. Very easy with nanites in your system.

"... Combat damage looks ancient. Possibly during the Age of Strife." Pauline said while reading the auspex scan of the Delphi System.

'Did I miss anything?' I asked the Blade while I grabbed a warm thermos with recaf from the tesseract.

'The three Charities are all women. One rules the sky, one the surface and the third the underground. We're scheduled to meet with Lady Agaeleatrix, Charity of Splendour, who currently resides on the Celestial Walkway or what remains of Delphi's artificial ring.' the Blade informed me while I observed the system with my other vision.

Lots and lots of strange tech, like round Dunecrawlers for example. They looked like comical droids from Star Wars, not warmachines able to massacre a battalion of cultists with one burst of their weapons.

And Sydonian Dragoons, which used long tentacles to walk on, instead of normal robot legs. And no male tech-priests, only servitors.

On second thought, I didn't want to step foot on this Forge World. I would help and repair the Forge, but from far away. This looked like the Mechanicus version of a Sisters of Battle monastery world.

'Feel free to help, Lash.' I asked the better C'tan, since the artist followed Peffy on his adventure.

Store the people first, then re-arrange and reinforce the orbital ring, add more shipyards and warehouses, bring inside the tesseract the weird Titans and robots and get them repaired with my Necron orb, while Lash cleaned the pollution and deposited the floating radioactive piles away from the inhabited moons.

'You don't want to know what junk and corrupted code I found in the noosphere' the Blade warned me, so I didn't even peek at the code.

'Fix what you can from far away.' I said with a sad sigh.

The only place worse than this was Anvillus Nine, and they killed each other entirely in a civil war.

Lash froze for a second, then growled and glowed green for a second. "I think they tamed data-daemons for their firewall. Or not quite tamed." the C'tan explained while he coughed some red slime and then erased it with his eye beams.

"Menelau, hex wards on our sick friend." I ordered out loud, so my Librarian son waved his staff and began warding the metal wolf in glowing sigils.

While the drama continued, I uploaded our techsorcist wards on a data-slate, and added a dozen STC templates that might help this Forge World regain some trade, basic stuff like Tarantula turrets, Sentinels, Hydras and Ragnarok tanks.

Hopefully I won't meet my beautiful creations on some battlefield, crawling around on tentacles.

Wait, Delphi? The temple of the lunatic priestesses from Ancient Greece? With magic powers...which meant Warp stuff here.

'Turn around, now' I ordered the Blade, as I dropped the data-slate in the writhing tentacles of Lady Agaeleatrix.

"Lord Lancefire, we thank you for your wonderful gift. Come back anytime!" a suave voice filled the bridge, from our autistic-locked vox box.

Lash flicked his tail and the box vanished in green acid. "Mecha-dominance, with some warp code too" he explained while coughing more red slime.

'Entering FTL in 4, 3, 2, 1...' the Blade counted down, when the main holocreen lit by itself, in a video call that should have been impossible.

"Oh my, you're so pretty..." A giant snake-like tech-priest spoke in enticing words, just as we left skidmarks in space and ran away.

So I brought Dessima out, and she grabbed the red slime into a ball that screamed until it died in her palm.

'Mutagenic stuff.' she signalled with one hand, while the other petted poor Lash, who suffered the worst in this adventure.

"I think you have a fan, Lash. That lady seemed to like you." I noted with an easy voice.

"I think it was technopathy, Captain. She felt some kinship with me." the C'tan answered in a serious voice, and I nodded in response.

Not so different from the inspiration given by the Void Dragon to the tech-priests of Mars.

"Did you sense any Shard on Delphi?" I asked in a worried voice.

"I didn't look for one, but maybe deep below. Want to go back?" Lash asked with a hesitant voice.

I wouldn't, but I knew who would. And would even pay me for the favor.