Khaine carried the chair through the silent hallways without complaint. Much complaint. Khaine refrained from loudly cursing his lord’s contemptuous idiosyncrasies. He freely grumbled through the half dozen languages he knew as he walked. The weight of the chair was a constant reminder of the problems that were to come when Palatine’s domain pleaded for a taste of real oversight. Not the hands-off carelessness that had let things so rapidly devolve from their golden age.
“At least stop bouncing me around. It is making me nauseous.” Words laced with unused power groused from the skull. Despite the stupidity of the situation and his own ill mood Khaine was not nearly blind enough to irritate Incus any further. “Apologies, my lord.” He retorted with a cold flatness most diplomats fell into with him. After the fear and knee shaking finally abated, anyhow.
Despite the bone-chilling silence, Khaine couldn’t find a good way to get a conversation moving. Resorting to the courageous role of chair steward until his feet finally found their way to the throne room. The large crucible of a room filled with tapestries and relics. Stone marred from dozens of battles. His own prestigious seat was an unassuming perch on the wall near the entrance. Directly opposite it was the throne. Perfectly molded to fit the squat, meatless body of his lord.
He strode to that throne with care. Hefting the chair stoically towards the throne once. Then twice. The third was a barely contained rattle to just dislodge the skull from the chair before his aggravation finally took hold. With a soundless roar, he raised the chair to the sky and brought it down on the throne with a mighty crash. Splinters of wood scattered across the pock-marked ground, dust filling the air. And the skull finally broke free from the seat with a mighty crack.
Khaine watched as his lord’s power flashed around him like a spider somehow pulling it’s web back into itself. Bones he hadn’t noticed melded free of the chair-turned-kindling. Snapping back to their rightful place like reality’s truth making itself known. Incus’s dark robe slipped into the material world around his shoulders with fondness that almost made Khaine blush. In a split moment, he felt the rushing magic at his lord’s ivory-tipped fingers. Only to be compounded when the same eerie green light that suffused his joints flickered to life in the pale crystalized eye sockets of the lich now sitting on his throne.
Like mana bleached emeralds looking for the tortured souls of all who opposed him.
“Really, that seemed unnecessary. I doubt I was gone long enough to warrant that. Besides, aren’t you the one shirking your duty? Keep the royal delegations waiting and I’ll have to find a new high dignitary.”
Khaine let his arms cross as the balls of his feet pulled mana up from the stones beneath them. Shooting deep into the earth for support in the face of the magical cascade of power before him. He had no illusion that Incus could snuff him out or leave his immortal form a decrepit hunk with a flick of a boney finger. After all, it was a fool who let their creations become more powerful than them.
“I’ve been away far longer than was discussed, my lord. I expected you to immerse yourself in your creation’s mana weave or pass a few of your duties off but hid away in the pantry for me to return.” Khaine retorted a little more hotly than he meant to. His lord simply waived it off with a gracious hand before his phalanges scraped softly against the tomb dust on his armrests. The latent mana in his skeleton cleaned him before he could even rub his fingertips together.
“Hmm… You were only supposed to be gone a year at most. What happened?” Incus asked with worry, unashamed of the slight outburst but yet to pull his power back in. He wouldn’t until it settled into his form. The Maxim’s of Magic may help after a time but Khaine knew just how much his lord would loathe using ‘Training Wheels’ for such a personal issue.
“To be frank sire, your realm has seen little in the way of proper management. “ Khaine spoke freely before sitting on the floor of the circular throne room. Its symbolic meaning is all but lost to time. “Border disputes, bands of roving warriors looking to make a living in wildlands grown from dead civilization, dark entities vying to carve their own kingdom from your domain, chiefdoms war with petty kings while both claim lineage to true heirs of your land with barely a shred of proof. The boons you gave your people were amazing but without guidance, all it did was make them targets…”
“How long?” Incus’s normally calm words rang like a bell throughout the throne room. Khaine sat in thought as to how he was going to respond for a handful of moments before finally speaking.
“It's been just over a century, lord.” He softly entombed his emotion into the words.
“I spent a long time working from holding to holding trying to keep things running but I don’t know how these machinations of yours function. I could only ever fight in one place or another, not both at once. I thought if I kept moving, kept working our combined efforts would right things quickly enough.” As the magic in the air finally began to pull back into the lich, Khaine stood once more to his full height.
“When you didn’t respond to my missives I just assumed you were busy or preoccupied. In my folly, I found myself on the wrong end of one of Khuvrasil’s probing attacks. The foolhardy godling chose to take dispatching me upon himself with little thought to the accords. When I reformed I was able to learn that many believe you are either dead or bound to this tomb by the will of an unknown pantheon.”
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Incus slouched into his throne with true exhaustion. The weight of the task before him was more than enough to send the magic between his bones flickering with tired emotion. The moments passed without more words. Khaine could have pressed on with more information. He had only spent a few dozen years actively moving through the land as his lord’s embodied will, but he had learned much of the dangers they faced.
“Summon a hero.” The lich finally responded with a groan. Slowly raising himself to his full height and stepping off the throne. If he had eyes, Khaine would have blinked.
“... Sire? What plan do we have for the realm? What strategy do we undertake for saving what subjects remain loyal?” Khaine followed as the lord strode to the side of his chamber. Directly towards his study. The place of refuge he normally lost himself in magical theory. Incus didn’t give a thought to stopping his follower from slipping in behind him.
“No.” Incus simply responded flatly. Finding the extravagant lounging chair in the center of his vacant study. “You don’t know the effort I’ve put into this realm. How long I toiled tediously to give the races a footing that would unify them in prosperity. I mastered pursuits that gave me nothing just to find ways to improve their lives.” He stood beside the chair, stroking its still fine fabric and plush cushions.
“I’ve done more than enough for them, Khaine… And it is an approach that fails them all the better in the end.” Incus slowly laid down with a weariness that matched the age of his bones. “If they wish to decry me a monster then I shall be judged as they see fit. Until that day… Just… Prepare the summoning array. It is time for something different.”
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
His body retched before his spine slammed into the hard, cold ground. Rain and glass falling around him in a sheet before the only noise was his wetsuit dripping onto the ground. Hot pokers still burned in his torso from the high-caliber rounds lodged in his subdermal armor. The stab-resistant padding had done nothing to prevent that. He knew that was the reason he’d been assigned it now.
Slowly, he rolled onto his side, curling up into a slightly more comfortable position to breathe. And possibly not bleed out.
Assessing…
He jolted slightly at the voice of his handler in his ear. Cold adrenaline heated back up in his veins as he struggled to a crouching position. Vitriolic emotions gurgled to the surface of his mind unbidden. His senses flashed by him, all tinted with baleful rage.
“Looks like the operation was a failure. I’m still breathing.” He spat the words, spittle spraying into his rebreather under the faceplate.
For now.
Came the cold response. He pushed the voice aside mentally in the same movement he used to right himself on his feet. A cave. A cold, dank cave with a glowing floor. With a wobble that grated on him more than he cared to admit, he stumbled from side to side and turned to take in the glowing floor. A weirdly shaped circle. No curves, but enough shifting green corners and edges to make his head hurt.
He stood there, viscous hyperfusion blood dripping onto the floor. Questions rebounded in his head. Confusion making it all worse. The gears in his mind whirred frantically as he tried to make sense of the situation. After an eternity he simply found a wall to sit down against. Options were limited, allies less so.
“Handler, inquiry. What is your true designation?” He asked through grit teeth.
Processing… Denied.
He resisted the urge to rub his faceplate and tried to push forward. After all, what better way to test your adaptability than negotiations with your betrayer. “New inquiry, what was to happen to my remains upon completion of mission?”
Processing… Your remains were to be analyzed, dissected, repurposed and disposed of at a nearby black site for the betterment of
company personnel.
“You suck.” He grumbled low in his throat without thinking. After another few moments of collecting his composure, he pressed forward. “Handler, the technology I am composed of is considered proprietary. Upon failure of termination, wouldn’t it be best to keep me alive long enough for a retrieval team to find me?” The silence plodded along longer than he’d have thought was needed. Leaving him sitting alone in a dank cave while the voice in his ear thought things over.
I cannot find any local communications. No known frequencies of any kind I can decode… Wait…
He jumped a bit at the loss of it’s rigid protocol. That was the second time it had slipped into a decidedly social way of speaking.
Character assessment underway and preliminary results are as shown
Attribute
Score
Strength
14
Dexterity
8
Constitution
8
Charisma
10
Intelligence
13
Willpower
14
Do you wish to contest these results?
He sat looking at the screen before his eyes found the question at the bottom. It wasn’t in his helmet but projected into his sight by the handler. That much he could tell at least. He had been shot multiple times, blown out of a window, and was now miserably cold on a cave floor. Before he knew it he had latched onto the word ‘Contest’ like a life vest.
“Fuck yes.” He growled low in his throat. Before he felt the weightless tingle that brought him here he could have sworn the handler laughed in his ear.