“I will be honest. I have never had the honour of visiting this part of the Ark.”
The gene-foundries of the Biologis clades were located deep within the belly of the Omnissiah’s Wrath, away from any atmospheric disturbances or erratic microclimates that may disrupt their delicate work. The flesh has its own strengths, but it lacked the rugged erudition of metal. It needed seclusion, aid, perfect support, to bear fruit.
As they made their way through the myriad mag-lev carriage networks, teleportarium stations, and security checkpoints, the environment around them grew less and less like a ship of iron and silica. It was replaced by a strange, fleshy environment, like the belly of a beast. It began slowly, with tendrils of glowing bacteria tracing faint patterns over the metal. Now, the walls pulsed, heaved, and sighed in tune with what seemed to be a heartbeat, leaking clear rivers of fluid and pus. Small life-forms scuttled around their feet: chittering arthropods, slimy molluscoids, and crawling reptiles that fed off the putrefying detritus. Occasionally, something far larger would dart through a shadowed corner, holding its quarry of a dozen dead creatures. A full-fledged ecosystem had taken root in this forgotten sector, with bio-forms and food webs she had seen nowhere else.
The harsh industrial lighting had fallen away entirely in favour of the diffuse glow of swarms of bio-luminescent insects, spiralling and weaving hypnotic patterns above their heads as they approached the final checkpoint before entering the Laboratoriums proper. It was the first glimpse of metal and traditional technology she had seen in a while.
“I’ve been a few times,” Val said, pushing a thick vine out of his way. It quivered at his touch, spilling a foul-smelling purple liquid onto his hand from a small pustule. It steamed against the metal, but could not corrode its protective laminations. “It’s always an… experience.”
“Touch nothing, Adsecularis Rogal.” Galiel looked back at the old menial who had decided to come with them with no superfluous words spoken. On one hand, she detested the prospect of having to interact with painfully slow, unaugmented people again. On the other, she had a begrudging respect for his near-canid loyalty.
Rogal’s eyes were full of pure, unabashed wonder, his ragged cap clutched against his chest as he snapped his head from side to side, stretching the limits of his baseline capacity for absorbing information. “What manner of wonders the Omnissiah bestows us with!”
“Some of these ‘wonders’, menial…” Theta growled, grabbing a wasp-like creature that lunged at him from the shadows at lightning speed, “are instantly lethal, so do as the blessed one says and watch your way.”
“Cut him a break.” Val rested his hand against the identi-pad of the checkpoint, activating an authentication electoo. “He’s never left his little corner of the ship.”
“A ‘break’ won’t help him if he dies horribly here, Val.” She switched to binharic again, adding a twinge of half-joking admonishment. “Let me preserve our resources, please.”
“After all the damage you’ve done, I suppose every little bit helps,” he quipped back.
She only synthesized a meaningless, indignant growl in response, lightly shoving him with a mechadendrite. The door irised open, allowing them ingress.
On the other end was a long hall, the harsh white of its walls and bright lights another rude shock after the warm, organic environment of their journey. The door sealed shut behind them, signalling the dedicated machine spirits of overhead dispensers to spray them with a fine but intrusive mist of disinfectant. The minute, spore-like spectrographic profile of the chemical was not kind to her respirators, triggering failsafe anti-toxin mechanisms that were nevertheless impotent at keeping the bioengineered cleanse-particles out. This was followed by another faint rain of harsh chemical corrosives before the door at the other end opened, letting out a hiss of recycled air.
On the other end, the full splendour of the expedition’s Genetors was arrayed for all to see. The interiors of the massive foundry-temple bore a quality that was at once utilitarian and ostentatious. Strategically placed walkways were covered with subtle fractal patterns of glass, shifting and scuttling in a dizzying display as adepts walked over them. Small, winged creatures flapped madly through the air, struggling to hold themselves aloft as they carried vellum scrolls, test tubes, and data-chips from one corner to the other. Other, larger creatures crawled around the ground, snaking between the pounding footsteps of priests and menials, functioning molecular printers and bio-injection assemblies fused to their backs. The metal and circuitry of gene-drive machines enmeshed smoothly with stabilizing tendrils of flesh and delicately shaped scar tissue, webbed netting of silky organic material damping the vibrations of their operation.
All around them, a haze lingered in the air. Her sensoriums’ bio-analyticae programs claimed it was an intelligent virion swarm. The particles responded to subtle haptic signals from attending Techpriests, forming shifting, three-dimensional images of bio-form blueprints, chromosomal genotypic arrays, or chimeric protein frameworks. Glowing vines snaked up the tastefully carved pillars holding up the domed roof, transmitting motive electro-force to and from delicate cogitation stacks wrapped in their leafy embrace. Each pulse sent a multi-coloured burst of light racing up and down the stems, faintly lighting up the sanctums and alcoves where more specialized project teams plied their trade, away from both prying eyes and safety risks. The dome above was decorated with a mural, formed not from paint, but the carefully controlled illumination patterns of bio-luminescent lichens and mosses. Columns of black aphid-like creatures marched in a never-ending labyrinth of pre-laid pheromone trails through the art piece, lending definition to the edges and depth to the scenery by selectively eating away the substrate. The story depicted was obvious even to those not of the creed: the celebrated Organicist , Archmagos Alicina Hexarka, towering over the machine form of the defeated Arch-Heretek A-1/1/1.
“Who is that?” Rogal craned his neck to stare up at the mural, almost stepping into the path of a lumbering mammalian cargo animal.
Its attending menials screamed expletives at him from their mounted howdahs, but their language was far, far removed from that spoken by the Purgatus menials: in diction, vocabulary, or grammar, the two bore only the most passing of resemblances. The result of this linguistic drift, of course, was that Rogal understood nothing of their curses, only cheerfully waving his cap at them as they marched on.
“That is Archmagos Hexarka,” Theta-4-0 answered simply.
“That is… a Techpriest, blessed one?” His eyes traced the signature red robes of the Genetor’s form: a sure sign of her allegiance to the Machine God. But instead of mechadendrites, writhing, organic tentacles protruded from her back, appearing to whip and lash around as the colour patterns shifted on a set timer.
Her face had distinctly arachnoid features, complete with gnashing chitinous mandibles. Her considerable bulk came not from lab-grown myomers but genetic therapy and implanted hormone glands. The folds of her heavy cloak seemed to shift and sway in definite patterns, suggesting the existence of biological symbiotic organisms scurrying all over her body. There was also the presence of the blessed machine, of course: a sub-dermal carapace peeking through there, an electro-grafted interface port here. Load-bearing clamps along the length of her spine. One gleaming, bionic targeting oculus among eight. But there was no mistaking it. For the Organicists, the primary machines were those of the flesh.
“Archmagos Hexarka was a master of the biological machine.” Val touched a hand to his forehead. “The first to master the Twenty Paths of the Flesh, and the creator of the Twenty-First.”
Rogal blinked, not understanding anything but still suitably impressed. “And the other one, my lord?”
“A-1/1/1. A heretek of the highest order. He believed that shedding the blessed human form was the only path to enlightenment, and abandoned his flesh wholly for a soulless machine form.”
“By defeating him, Lady Hexarka proved the superiority of the Omnissiah’s design over even the most disgustingly sophisticated heresy.” Galiel bowed her head slightly, bending a mechadendrite into the Twentieth Contortion of Worship. “The Ballad of Holy Hexarka. Every Lector-Dogmatis back home knows it by heart.”
“What happened to her?”
“Certain heretical sects grew jealous of the Organicists’ growing influence under her aegis, so they conspired to have her declared a heretek and executed. I am told the Fabricator-General at the time was suitably furious when their deception was revealed.”
The new voice made them all turn around to look upon its source. It was a small, stunted individual, red robes barely draped over the tumorous, ever-shifting bulk of his body. One of his hands held a small herald’s staff tipped by a three-dimensional assembly of cogs, rotating and shifting in tune with his nervous jitters.
“I must apologize for my current state. My flesh is still adjusting to the latest gene-works. You are Enginseer Galiel?”
She nodded. “I did not catch your identity, my lord.”
He was absolutely dark in the Noosphere, with not even a simple tag broadcasting his identity.
“I have had my node removed temporarily. It was reacting quite unfavourably with my new immune symbiotes. My name is Adeptus-Genetor Synanceia. I work with Lady Xani. She is expecting you.”
She bowed her head. “I cannot express my gratitude at her taking out the time to meet us.”
“Taking out the time?” Synanceia gurgled, leaking pus from his mouth in an action that was probably supposed to be a laugh. “My dear, have you met the Arch-Genetor? You will find her in the White Forest, working on her latest meditation. Do not expect her to pause her projects. She is… dedicated.”
“The White Forest?” She snapped her ocular shutters open and shut. “I do not…”
“Of course. Valacon, I suggest you know enough to guide her there?”
Val grunted. “I was hoping you could lead us there yourself, brother Synanceia.”
“Mars, no. My body is no condition. Oh, that reminds me…” He staggered over and produced a small atomizer from under his robes. “Inhale deeply.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Before he could react, Synanceia sprayed three quick puffs right in his respirator. Immediately, he doubled over, hacking and coughing. “Omnissiah, what in the Warp did you do to me?”
“Just some temporary gene-drive. Do not fret, it does not have long-term consequences. Usually.”
“Do not alter a man’s genes without consent!” He shook himself like a felinid, as if that would dislodge whatever effects the aggressive virions in the suspension were causing.
“Inhale deeply,” Synanceia told her, spraying the solution in her face as well. It did not feel or taste much different from aerosolized water, contrary to Val’s dramatic reaction. “The White Forest is thick with xenobiotics nowadays. Some kind of psychically-attracted ecosystem that forms whenever there is enough concentration of the material. These alterations will protect you from their effects for a few hours. The rudeness is regretted, but it is either this or quadriplegia and possible death.”
“What is the White Forest?” Rogal asked, sneezing as Synanceia hesitantly administered the antidote to him as well, as if unsure whether to waste it on a menial.
“Hold your tongue, Adsecularis, and you shall see.” Theta did not react to the intrusion of the atomizer at all, staring ahead with a blankly obedient expression.
“Theta, stop bullying the man.” Val sighed and rubbed his neck, the metal making creaking sounds. “So, the experiment was a success? It was barely a tree when I last came here.”
The Adeptus-Genetor nodded. “At least we know it is functional now, with the insects and whatnot. Say what you will about the Arch-Genetor, but she is truly one of the Machine God’s chosen. No other could have accomplished what she has here. I cannot wait to return knowledge of this discovery to the Spire. But we should not tarry further. I still have to run my rota for the next few hours. You should also get underway immediately. Lady Xani does not like to be kept waiting, Archmagos’ orders or not.” He gave them both a stiff bow, struggling past a new thicket of ulcers on his abdomen. “Go in the Machine God’s light.”
“You too, my lord.” When they raised their heads, he was gone.
“Did you see him?” Galiel canted in a narrow-beam binharic whisper.
“Yeah, he’s swelling like bread in an oven. Must have messed something up.”
“Will he be alright?”
“He usually is. Did I tell you about the time he accidentally gave himself an intestinal obstruction?”
“What? No!”
“He was… expelling waste out of his mouth for three days, honest.”
“Weirdo.”
He nodded. “Well, we should probably stop whispering now, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool, cool.” He turned back to their two companions, switching to his flesh-voice. “Come on.”
Val led them down a labyrinth of gently breathing stairs and pus-encrusted landings, deep into the well of the temple. Here, a puckered sphincter guarded the way into the deeper crypts.
An attending adept turned to the organic barrier and canted a rapid infrasonic pattern, upon which the sphincter twitched and irised open, revealing a gently sloping pathway lit by bioluminescent lichen clusters.
“A sonic door?” She sent a nerve signal that moved her optics in an approximation of an eyebrow raise. “Smart.”
“No transmissions are allowed beyond this point, lady Enginseer.” The adept bowed slightly and touched a heavy grounding cable to each of her limbs. “All non-essential augmetics, active-scan sensoriums, Noospheric nodes, and other emitting technology must be kept off. The effect of electromagnetism, sound, any kind of energy application on the Forest is still being studied, but it has been known to react violently.”
“Understood. Are Astronet nodes permitted?”
“Yes, they are necessary for the work carried on inside. But please do not transmit anything without the appropriate encoding libraries. It may agitate the material and cause unforeseen differentiation.”
“Who else is with the Arch-Genetor?”
The adept bowed again. “Forgive me, my lady, but I am not permitted to reveal any details. If the Arch-Genetor sees fit, she will reveal all that is necessary herself.” He gestured at the open path. “I must urge haste. Your time is limited.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded and walked past him, leading their motley party into the depths. The sphincter slammed shut behind them with uncomfortable speed, leaving them only with the diffuse light of the symbiotic fungi-algae. A few dozen feet away, the lights abruptly ended, leaving only pitch-black darkness to await them.
“Val, Synanceia said you had come to the White Forest before?”
“Yes, a while back, though there was no forest then. Only the White Tree.” He rotated his head a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees on his neck swivel, absorbing the surroundings. “This place looked a lot different back then. Smaller.”
Part of her wanted to do an augury sweep of the darkness ahead, just to be sure, but she remembered the adept’s warning. The forest, whatever it was, would not like it if she did that.
“What exactly is the White Tree… Forest… whatever?”
“An experiment.” Val turned to the Skitarius. “Theta, you have the front.”
Theta-4-0 bowed and marched to the front of the party, marching resolutely into the darkness with his galvanic caster held aloft. One of his mechadendrites descended, activating a glow-orb to light the way before them. For just a moment, Galiel caught a glimpse of something white quivering in the light, before Theta moved on.
“Stick close, Rogal.” Val sighed and turned on his own glow-orb, plunging after his point-man.
Galiel, somehow, had forgotten a glow-orb, which meant that she had little choice but to hold on tightly to the end of his robe as they walked together. The path was a barren, flat track, worn into the strangely purplish soil by months and years of footsteps. As far as their light reached, nothing resembling a tree, let alone a forest, was in sight. However, the darkness had a strange, inky quality, and she could swear that the lumen-potential of their lights was suddenly far below manufactorum tolerances, let alone expectations.
“Can’t believe you didn’t tell me to bring an optical dendrite,” she grumbled, deliberately bumping a shoulder into Val’s back, though his stabilizing implants meant it did little.
“What kind of idiot neglects to bring light on an adventure? Besides, how else would I have you clinging to my arm so romantically?”
She only canted an angry garble of binary in response and pulled herself closer to him.
“Aw, I love you too, Gal.” He patted a hand against her cheek, metal thudding dully against her sub-dermal plastoids.
“Why is it so dark? Or did you get your light off a hive black market?”
“You jest, but if someone heard you, they would have my head for polluting my form. No, something is wrong with the environment itself here. Maybe the xenobiotics Synanceia was talking about interfere with light somehow?”
“Val, why is this called the White Forest? This place seems… empty.”
He smirked under his respirator, switching to his flesh-voice. “Rogal, meet up with Theta. Ask him to vox back when he finds the project Laboratorium.”
Rogal tried to bow while walking and almost fell over. “Yes, my lord. Uh… What does this Laboratorium look like?”
“It is a… Laboratorium. Machines. Scientists. You’ll know it when you see it. Just… shoo.” He waved him along until the Adsecularis disappeared into the darkness.
Galiel raised an eyebrow. “Val, what are you…”
Her next words were interrupted by a surprised noise as he wrapped his mechadendrites along her waist, almost lifting her off her feet as he pulled her close. “I was thinking we could do some… exploring.”
“You have a… liberal definition of exploration,” she sighed as he leaned into her face, interface mechadendrite playfully nudging against hers.
“It is for the purely noble purpose of satisfying your curiosity, I assure you.”
“The count of questions is growing with every iteration.” With a burst of strength, she pushed against him, and they both half-ran, half-stumbled off the beaten path until Val’s back hit something solid. He did not gasp like she had, but his heavy sigh was signal enough. “There is just so much to see, after all.”
“Enginseer Tunakha, are those new strength enhancements? You manufactorum gals holding out on the rest of us?” He brushed a strand of her hair out of her optics with his hand as his respirator’s access ports hissed open.
“I take apart vehicle chasses for a living, Val,” she whispered into his auditory ports. “That military-grade musculature may scare the other ladies, but it does not impress me.”
“Oh, really?” He hooked his arms under hers and physically raised her off the ground, as easily as a servo-arm would lift a small screw.
She giggled, trying desperately to maintain the suave air as he threw her roughly against whatever they were resting on, planting a hot kiss on her brow. The feel of his organic lips after so long sent shudders through her spine. “We… we should not fall too far behind.”
He playfully pinned her against the wall with his arms, his mechadendrites grasping and binding hers. “Do you want to leave so fast? I even applied the special incense today. The first-grade promethium one. I’ve heard it makes the factorum chicks go wild.”
“Shut up.” She turned his head to the side to push him away, and stared directly into a pair of empty white eyes.
With a screech of binharic expletives from her augmitters, she heaved herself away, bringing the glow-orb down upon whatever Omissiah-damned abomination had decided to appear before her. Her cogitation cores glitched and stuttered from the sudden overload of stress hormones: a fight-or-flight response. She tried to access her chem-glands to counteract it, but the signals were slow to travel through overflowing engrammatic buffers. Arousal, fear, repulsion: all was blending together into a mess of conflicting thought-streams that threatened to fill every bit of her data-cubes with lethal garbage.
“Hey. Hey.” Val squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
She realized her respirator had all valves open to full. Hyperventilation. Closing her optics to drown out the extra load from the sensor parsers, she tried again to reach her hormonal regulation cores. This time, the blockage was easier to navigate. Soon, the soothing tingle of parasympathetic stimulation was spreading through her neural systems.
Now, she felt brave enough to take another look. It was a humanoid, that her libraries indicated to be Aeldari in origin. His cheeks were sunken, skin paper-thin, and mucous membranes completely dry. The picture of starvation and malnutrition. His empty eyes struggled through layers of milky cataracts to focus on the light of the glow-orb.
From the neck down, a crystalline matrix covered and encased him in jagged edges and striated columns, glowing faintly with the light of unseen stars from deep within. The entire structure took the shape of a rough cylinder, with only the Xeno’s head sticking out from its bulk. Above, it split into a number of branches, each with stalactite-like projections hanging in bunches from them. Some of the stoutest ones split into further branches, stretching out into a rough canopy that glinted with a mesmerizingly faint glow in the light.
A tree. A White Tree.
“What in the Warp in this?” she whispered.
The tree seemed to respond to the name of the Warp, shuddering as its stalactite leaves shifted and swayed. She could have almost sworn they were trying to grow towards her.
Val shrugged. “This is a White Tree, but the knife-ear… that thing wasn’t there when I was last here. There was some sort of rock in that spot on the tree. No… creature.”
“Okay, just what is a White Tree?” She rounded on him. “You’ve been avoiding the question.”
He sighed. “I was not sure how much I should reveal, since this is Xani’s pet project, and a pretty secret one at that. Like, this would be in the Spire back on Sanctus Ferrum. So I’d much rather she tell you—”
“There you are.”
A man melted into the light behind him. He was dressed in a long, flowing red cape lined with fur, over an ornate dress uniform of a Basilikon Astra non-ordained officer in gold, black and white. A sabre hung from his belt, engraved on the hilt with the heraldry of some noble house she did not recognize. On the other side, a small plasma pistol was tucked securely into an electro-disablement holster for complete safety. Both gun and holster were rare for personal artefacts. That meant the sword was also likely to be master-crafted.
“Your escort was at their wit’s end when they discovered your disappearance. The Skitarius was about to commit ritual suicide. You are lucky I found them when I did, my lady. My lord.” He gave Val a short bow. “Did you enjoy your… sojourn in the White Forest? I am told it might be disquieting the first few times.”
“Are we supposed to recognize you, officer?” Galiel turned to face him.
“More importantly…” Val raised a finger. “How long have you been here and what did you see?”
“I saw nothing that ought not to be seen, my lord.”
“I’m too dumb for this polite grox-shit.”
“Then let me say that discretion is the noblest of virtues a servant may possess, and let us leave it at that.” He gave her a deep bow. “I am not surprised you do not recognize me, lady Enginseer. We have not had much cause to interact. I am Optimate Paul Virzal the Third, Head of Security Grade Secundus for the Omnissiah’s Wrath. The Archmagos has instructed me to assist in your investigation.”
“I see.”
An Optimate. The intermediary between the menial ratings and the ordained Techpriests. Scions of aristocrats with oaths or debts to the Mechanicus, shipped off for service to it in exchange for favours and concessions. Not indentured labour, but not quite free either.
“Then you will answer my questions?” she asked.
“To the best of my knowledge and ability, my lady.” Paul gestured at the path they had left behind. “But perhaps conversation is best made while underway.”