Upon my arrival at Lord Caliman’s private medicae, I found his room to be more densely populated than I had expected. It was not crowded, per se, but there were a number of people in it, most of which were of Caliman’s retinue and core staff. Lord Halloid van der Skar was also present in the room, as were a collection of servitors maintaining necessary equipment around and attached to Caliman. He appeared very sorely wounded, a rebreather affixed to his face while the rest of his body was otherwise hidden beneath gentle fabrics. He had the strength to nod to me as I entered, and then again to van der Skar.
“Blackgar,” van der Skar greeted me, extending a hand for me to shake. I took it and greeted him in kind. “Is he stable?” van der Skar asked the medicae attendants.
“Enough so, for now,” one noted. I did not know any of their names, nor did I much care to begin identifying them at the time.
“Good. Vacate the room. Everyone. Servitors included,” van der Skar ordered. The servitors obeyed at once, but Caliman’s sentient retinue turned to him. He nodded in silent assent, and from that his staff began to depart. As they left, van der Skar turned to me and asked, “Are you well, Blackgar?”
“Well enough, my Lord,” I sighed and shrugged. “We are likewise not without our casualties.”
“They say a torpedo struck your bridge,” Caliman suggested, voice raspy and without much heft behind it.
“And that you and this…Carmichael individual exterminated its contents. Quite the tale,” van der Skar added.
“They had poor timing, catching me after I had lost one of my own,” I explained. “I cannot imagine such a feat warrants a private chat.”
“Indeed not,” van der Skar confirmed, then stood before me, ahead of my view of Caliman. “Callant Blackgar, to whom are you most loyal?”
“The God Emperor of Mankind,” I answered at once.
“And what is your charge?”
“The eradication of all His enemies.”
“Who are His enemies?”
“The Xenos, the Mutant, the Heretic, and the Weak.”
“Why are the Weak His foe?”
“It is the Weak that fall to temptation; it is they that may bow out from His Light. Better to scorch a thousand feeble fools dead than allow one to kneel before the Archenemy,” I recited. I had been through this once before, when I was first made Inquisitor. I did not now know why I was being given the same line of questioning, but I questioned it not.
“And what is the Archenemy?”
“The Daemon.”
“And will you face that foe wherever it can be found?”
“Yes; I do not fear the Daemon, for I am what the Daemon fears.”
“And with what armament will you lay it low?”
“My contempt as my armor, my disgust as my shield, and my hatred as my sword. With these, and with my faith as my cause, no enemy of man may break me.”
With that, Lord van der Skar at last paused in the recital of our creed. His eyes looked me up and down while his body remained otherwise stiff. After a moment of tense silence, he broke the scene and turned to Caliman. The pair nodded to each other, after which van der Skar turned back to me. “And what does that make you?”
“Inquisitor of the Holy Ordos, now and forever,” I answered.
Lord van der Skar looked me over again, and then stepped past me, moving across the room to lean against one of its walls. As he passed me, he called out, “Good. Show him.” He then gestured to Lord Caliman, provoking my gaze to follow. Caliman rummaged about beneath his sheets, slowly and with some apparent effort, but eventually lifted a sizable hunk of adamantium out into open view. It was of a necklace, presently wrapped around his own neck, though the object of that necklace was in the shape of the Imperial cross, an adamantium skull in the fold and four crimson gems at its diagonals, all affixed to a blackened sigil.
I recognized it at once. “A Rosarius!” I declared, a touch of amazement poking through my voice at the sight of the soularmor. “Why show it to me? What for?”
“For you. If you find and kill Mortoc. You will need it in battles ahead. I, soon, will not,” Caliman answered.
“You’re dying,” I inferred, any last glimmers of amazement on my face fading to a grimace.
“And that is far from the most troubling news we have for you today, Blackgar,” van der Skar warned me, sighing. “Which is why we had to be sure of your integrity. Or, as sure as we could be, anyway.”
“Is it in doubt?” I scoffed.
“Now? Perhaps not. But there is a dark future ahead. And in that era, if you break…well, a terrible gambit will have been lost,” van der Skar answered. “We have…hmph. There is no good way to tell you this story. Yet you must know of it, at least in part. It concerns you too greatly for you to go in blind,” he confessed, shaking his head in obvious disagreement and debate with himself. “The stack of lies must begin to peel away, for all our sakes.”
“Lies?” I asked.
“May I?” Caliman asked in a grunt. van der Skar shrugged and gestured for him to speak up. “I prefer a blunt approach. You know this well, Blackgar. So here, the raw reality: You did not kill the 8th Pyrran Honeblades.”
“What?” I asked, scoffing again. “Don’t insult my men, Caliman, I won’t react kindly to that even in your state.”
“You did lead your men against the greenskin Xenos, yes, as Commissar Blackgar. You were gravely wounded, yes. And there was a…psychic event that emitted from you. But it was not yours,” Caliman furthered.
“What in the Blasted Hells are you saying? My psykana revealed itself with explosive ferocity, and I reduced every living thing on that battlefield—” I began to object, but was interrupted.
“To dust,” van der Skar finished for me. “Yes. That happened. But you did not do it. It is a real memory—your memory—that glosses over the horrifying reality of the situation, programmed in to you on the Black Ships at our behest.”
“Oh, go on then, spin your tale further. What reality, then?” I asked, still in such thorough disbelief that I did not have the slightest bit of doubt in myself at the time. The conviction of an Inquisitor is damnably hard to break, even by his peers.
“Bluntly?” Caliman suggested, making me turn back to him. “There’s a daemon in your head. It killed your men and the Xenos to protect itself within you.”
“Well now I know you’re both full of voidshit,” I confirmed for myself. “If that were true and you knew it so, I wouldn’t be here. Both of you—and dozens of others in our ordo—would have killed me long ago. You wouldn’t be teasing me with gifts of material might like a carrot on a stick,” I explained, shaking my head and gesturing to Caliman's Rosarius.
“Gifts?” Caliman grunted. “Gifts like a Nemesis falchion to keep an unholy psykana at bay? And oh how you’ve grown, preferentially, to keep it by your side at all times, Blackgar. Gifts like a Rosarius, to hold back the profane? Gifts such as these?” he suggested.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Entertaining such a fallacy, why would either of you leave me alive then, hm? And why should I not just end myself now, were what you say to hold any veracity?” I objected further. “I am Inquisitor to Ordo Hereticus, and if I harbor the daemonic, I am better off dead.”
“That would be the logical approach, and the one I once advocated for. But it was not decided so,” Caliman sighed. It was then, finally, that doubt hit me, and only when I looked in his eyes. I saw in them terror. Of me. He had had a chance to see me dead, and had argued for it. But he was overruled, and now was in the process of fading away while I still drew breath. It was the same sort of misery I had encountered in realizing that I would not live to solve all the Imperium’s problems, nor see them solved by others.
“Decided by who?” I asked softly, the doubt in myself creeping in.
“There was a council,” van der Skar answered. I turned back to him. “Inquisitors. Lord-rank and above. Representatives from the Ordos Majoris, and many of the Ordos Minoris—excluding Sector-specific ordos. The council was convened at the request of the Ordo Chronos, and it was they that requested your continued…survival. It was they that insisted Thaddeus Scayn be the one to recover you.”
“And why would they want me alive?” I asked, voice quiet and without its prior rage against what had been absurd.
“We…much as we believe you should know some of this, they were adamant you cannot know that much,” van der Skar replied. “They, these keepers of chronology, they knew much. Too much. And we met their source and found them…convincing. Suffice to say that they have been dreadfully accurate of foretold events that have arisen thus far; those which they were allowed to share with even us, that is.”
“There’s a collaborator, then, within the Ordo Chronos,” I inferred. A highly secretive ordo of the Inquisition, I only barely knew of the Ordo Chronos’s existence. And what I knew, I did not fully know; in fact, it was better to say I had heard rumors that they existed, rumors that I may have just as soon assumed to be falsities. But the rumors spoke of Agents of the Emperor that pursued and eliminated anomalies in time, often as a consequence of Warp travel. I had inferred that their source was one such anomaly, one that knew of our present as being in their past.
“A good word for it,” Caliman admitted.
“This daemon, then, that you say resides within me—does it have a name?” I asked.
“It does. Or, rather, an alias it uses and is referenced by in the materium. Alas, we do not know its True Name,” van der Skar began. “It goes by Cronos. A different spelling from the Inquisitorial Ordo. It is unclear to us whether the two are inherently connected, but from what we have gathered, there is no implied relation.”
“Blast radius?”
“Come again?”
“He’s asking what the zone of impact would be were it to claw out of his head,” Caliman explained to van der Skar. “I would want to know too. But we don’t know. We only have guesswork. Sector-level, minimum. It could possibly threaten the whole of the Obscurus if unleashed. And yet the council reached an adamancy as to the necessity of your tolerated continuation. Time, and the breaking thereof, seems to be a more significant threat.”
I pulled away, pacing across the room. Caliman’s and van der Skar’s eyes trailed behind me. “This is all insane. Have they, the Ordo Chronos, known everything about my life? Did they know about this?” I asked, and held up my augmetic arm. van der Skar nodded solemnly. “So they knew Hestia Majoris. More important, they sent Thaddeus to me after my—Cronos’s—psychic outburst, which means they sent Thaddeus to his death in Abseradon. How many of my—Xavier, did they know Xavier would die?” I got no response save for an empty stare. ‘Yes’ was my interpretation of that. That stopped me in my tracks. “What am I supposed to do with any of this information?”
“You’re an Inquisitor. You took the creed,” van der Skar replied. “You live with it. You do your job and keep it secret. And should you find a means to address Cronos, you do so without hesitation no matter the cost.” My head was ringing, my world spinning. I looked around the room and spied a chair, with armrests, to sit in, and moved for it at once. As I sat down, van der Skar continued, “Were you anyone else, Blackgar, I might apologize. But you’re an Inquisitor, through and through. This is the job we all share, and it is only ours—yours—because no one else in the Imperium can be trusted with it.”
I sat with that for moments more, eventually bringing my face into my hands in a futile move to hold the weight of my head. Eventually, when it became evident that only my neck could do so, my hands fell from my face and were held before me, that I might look them over, one flesh and blood and the other mechanized. Keeping them in view, I asked, “How much of me is real?”
“Come again?” Caliman grunted.
“You reprogrammed my memory of the 8th. How much of who I am is who I was?” I clarified.
“We did not change much about your personality, at least not intentionally,” van der Skar answered. “I understand that since the 8th you’ve hated your psykana, and the fact that you possess it. That was not our intention, but it’s also not an unexpected result given the memory we had provided for you to cover up Cronos’s reveal. We have not endeavored to redefine who you were or are now, and most of your memories are intact and genuine.”
“What’s…is there…do we have a dossier on Cronos? Some form of intel, perhaps, that Malleus may possess?” I wondered. “And what is the action plan for it?”
“Malleus has nothing. Or, if they have anything, their investigation has only begun following Thaddeus Scayn’s investigation and sanctioning of you, as well as whatever they gleamed from Ordo Chronos’s source,” van der Skar explained. “What we do know is that which is usual and expected of the daemonic; the more that know Cronos by name, the more powerful it becomes. It is selfish in nature, but does appear to have a master. We can also infer that it can be dealt with; it saw the need to protect itself—and you—from the Xenos. We believe it was not strong enough to emerge into the materium in full at that point, and is likewise unable to emerge from the wards we’ve implanted within you, nor against the suppression provided by your armaments. And yet…Ordo Chronos insists it can incur damage on a multi-system scale if left unchecked. We also…hm. Cronos possesses a relation to Ouranos. We are unsure if they are rivals, allies, or something else. But the source did confirm they are aware of one another.”
“If they were allies, why would Ouranos be designing my end through Lucene?” I asked.
“A fair question. One we do not know the answer to. Where concerns the daemonic and heretical, it is possible they pursue the same overall goal, but have different intentions for reaching it. Ours must be equivalent: to purge them both in Holy Flame.”
“Does the source believe such a thing possible?”
“Hm…tough to say,” van der Skar admitted. “They did not seem to know.”
“And as for your action plan, it is not much changed in the immediate, hard though that may be to accept,” Caliman answered my earlier question. “Pursue the Shatter Corps. Find and eliminate Valeran Mortoc. When that is done, see where the Emperor guides you from there. And along the way, foster your relationship with Seraina—Bliss Carmichael.”
“Uh, ex-excuse me?” I stammered, that one catching me by surprise even still. “Where does that come from? Why Bliss?”
“You’ll need her. And she already needs you,” Caliman explained. “I already told you that I assigned her to you in case you needed to be put down. That hasn’t changed. In the event of an imminent catastrophic showing from Cronos, Carmichael may not be able to kill the daemon herself outright, but she can certainly kill you before Cronos succeeds in emerging from you. When we are gone—which for me will likely be soon—Carmichael will be the only one you can turn to for that sort of security. She is, also, an Inquisitor. She can know some of what we’ve shared with you.”
“OK. Sure. A scorched earth policy, I suppose. But why does she need me?” I asked, recognizing the oddity that Caliman had wasted weakened breath to specify such a point.
He opened his mouth to reply, but did not find the words. The response, whatever it was, troubled him—I saw further pain in his eyes. van der Skar revealed its source: “Emile Al-Amar is dead. I understand the two are sisters.”
“What? How?” I asked in a stunned blink, which prompted a snort from Caliman.
“Really?” Caliman asked in response, and gestured over himself. Whatever had ruined him so had likewise slain Emile. “And I understand her current…err…‘mate’ declined the timelessness which you and she possess. Save for you, she will be alone in the cosmos, in time. That girl does not do well with loneliness. Keep her close, as much for your sake as her own.”
“We ask a great deal of you, Callant Blackgar,” van der Skar acknowledged. “And as ever, time is a grave enemy. But for now, focus on the task at hand. Had we the opportunity, we would have spared you this information until Mortoc was dead, but we cannot. Do not let this conversation distract you even so. Find Valeran Mortoc and put a Bolt in his skull. Quintus is saved, but lost. The planet’s location and strategic relevance are compromised. As the Dawnshadow needs to move in the first place, it will join you in your crusade across the stars, at least in part. But it cannot leave Ixaniad.”
“Jaegetri’s not in Ixaniad,” I noted.
“Precisely. If that intel holds up, and we continue to believe Jaegetri is where our bastard foe resides, you must venture there without the aid of a starfort. Some of Battlefleet Ixaniad may join you; the reinforcing fleet we received was commanded by Admiral Alejandro Batos—the very same you encountered and worked with during the Hestia Majoris affair, though he was but a Rear Admiral then. In him, you may find an ally willing to lay siege beyond Ixaniad’s borders. This is not an impossible war, but it is a bloody one. See it finished, Blackar,” van der Skar ordered. “For the Emperor, and the Glory of Mankind.”
“For the Emperor,” Caliman and I repeated in unison, though his was weak and weary, mine somber and hollow.