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Chapter 121: The Emperor and the Star God
"I have come for you." The Emperor nodded slowly. "I surely know what you are."
"Hi-Hi, Tell me, what do you want? Power? Or knowledge?" Yggra'nya asked, voice dripping with mockery.
"Release me, and you can have everything you desire."
The Emperor's response was direct. "I only need you. You're a great force of the material realm. The energy inside you is pure and everlasting. A Perfect power source."
Yggra'nya's three eyes fixed on the Emperor. The Raven could sense the speechless fury radiating from the Star God.
'Was getting backstabbed by those slaves and used as a battery, not bad enough.' The fragment's rage burned through the tesseract walls. 'That now, a pest born yesterday wants to do the same thing?
'Does everyone think a Star God is just some weak creature they can push around?
"Your words amuse me, mortal." Yggra'nya's voice turned ice-cold. "I am a god. Eternal and indestructible."
"Those slaves betrayed me, but they cannot kill me. They can only imprison me. One day, I will return to the real world and wield infinite power again, AND WHEN THAT DAY COMES, I WIâ "
"I don't care about any of that." The Emperor interrupted the false god's useless talk.
"Right now, I'm going to free you from here. Then I'll put a chain on you and take you back with me. And you will work for the rest of your life in the service of humanity."
"Be grateful, it is an honour that many will not get."
Both The Raven and Yggra'nya looked shocked at the audacity of the Emperor's words.
'Brother, you are turning a being who lived his life as God into a slave, and you are telling him to feel honoured. Oh, Big Guy is always like, Arrogant and dismissive toward everyone, no matter who they are.'
The Emperor didn't wait for anyone's answer. With his slight will, Terrible psychic power erupted from his body.
The tesseract labyrinth shattered instantly, exploding into countless fragments.
For a moment, the underground chamber was filled with absolute silence. Sixty million years of imprisonment ended in a heartbeat.
Then came the roar
A black flame shot into the sky, melting through the thick metal surface and leaving a glowing hole behind. The World Shaper, Yggra'nya, was free.
"FINALLY"! The Star God's consciousness expanded, reaching beyond the prison walls for the first time in epochs. "FINALLY!"
The seven giant spheres around the main building exploded at once. Yggra'nya devoured all the energy they contained, pulling power from storage systems that had sustained the World Engine for millennia. The necrodermis that formed the spheres flowed into him like liquid mercury, reshaping itself into a new form of terror.
He emerged looking somewhat like the Necrons, but completely different. Like an evil god from some alien religion, wielding destruction and disaster. Three blazing eyes sat on his head. Liquid metal covered his horrifying form. Torn and compressed metal became writhing tentacles that dragged him between the spires.
"The slaves..." His gaze fell on the assembled Necron nobility. "Your time for reckoning has come."
Yggra'nya let out a roar of pure rage. The sound tore through sky and earth, shaking the World Engine's superstructure. Then he lunged at Tyrrakhis the Silent Crown and the other Necron nobles.
Phaeron Tyrrakhis's metal body shook with fear. We have no way to fight a free Star God. His tactical systems screamed warnings. Even just a fragment has unimaginable power.
The irony wasn't lost on him. Normally, when they used Star God shards against enemies, the shards had to stay contained. Once control was lost, the Necrons would be the ones to suffer.
Star Gods hated them more than any other race in the galaxy.
"Master Yggra'nya," Tyrrakhis raised her hands in supplication, "I offer the dynasty's command codes. You can control every Necron in the Magadha Dynasty."
"You all deserve to die," Yggra'nya roared, cutting him off. "The slaves of yesterday dared to betray their master. Now it's time for judgment."
An invisible force lifted Tyrrakhis into the air. Purple-black flames erupted around him. This is how it ends, was his last coherent thought before burning to ash.
Other Necron nobles were dragged into the air against their will. Yggra'nya slowly dissected them with his mind, savouring their terror. Piece by piece, they were stripped away. The proud lords gradually fell apart until only thin metal skeletons remained, still writhing in agony.
'Sixty million years of rage.' Yggra'nya thought as he methodically destroyed his former captors. 'Not nearly long enough.'
Those Necron warriors who still retained emotions screamed in terror when they witnessed the slaughter. They fled in every direction, their programming overridden by primal fear burned deep in their cores.
After venting his hatred on the Necrons, Yggra'nya turned his attention to the Emperor. The human had emerged from underground, watching the massacre with apparent calm.
'This one freed me,' the Star God mused, 'but only to enslave me again.'
"Foolish mortal! You could have received my gifts, but you're too arrogant. Today, you'll pay the price."
"Oh, how scary," the Raven said, clutching his chest dramatically. "Quick, Big Corn Cob, come protect me!"
Valdor rolled his eyes but stepped forward anyway. "Your faithful Imperial Guard commander is here to protect you, esteemed Mr. Raven."
'Interesting, he thinks' The Emperor's deep eyes showed a hint of surprise at Valdor's response. But he quickly suppressed it, turning to face the sky where Yggra'nya hovered.
"Time for another false god to fall before humanity"
Yggra'nya raised his hands. The metal ground began to break apart, responding to his will. Necrodermis transformed into an endless stream of fragments that formed rings around him. The fragments quickly reshaped into massive blades, each one capable of cutting through battleship armour.
"This planet is my creation pest." He drew power from the World Engine's core, feeling strength flow back into his fragmented essence. "Here, I can temporarily restore my peak strength; you cannot even imagine defeating me here."
With a gesture, countless blades of unknown nature flew toward the Emperor.
The Emperor's eyes blazed with golden light. Burning flames surged around him as he unleashed devastating psychic power. Reality tore open, creating a rift between the material realm and the Warp. The immaterium swallowed all the blades.
'In the material realm, no being should be able to fight a Star God.' Yggra'nya's tactical systems registered impossible readings. 'This mortal is breaking fundamental laws of reality.'
"The Warp? The tricks of those Old Ones!" Yggra'nya shrieked, releasing even more terrible energy waves. He charged at the Emperor, trying to crush the human lord with pure mass and force.
The Emperor reached out and clenched his fist. The space in front of him collapsed into two dimensions. The massive Yggra'nya was dragged into the flattened world, becoming a painting without thickness.
"Dimensional manipulation." Yggra'nya's consciousness adapted quickly. "But this is not enough to defeat me; I am the god of the material world."
Sharp blades defied physics, cutting through the two-dimensional space with ease". Strange hissing sounds erupted as Yggra'nya crawled out of the flat world, his form restoring to three dimensions through sheer will.
"If I couldn't escape such flimsy dimensional control, that would be pathetic."
Seeing the Star God escape, the Emperor launched a time attack. A temporal bubble covered Yggra'nya's upper body, abandoning it in the past. The tearing sensation from the time differential could destroy any matter.
'Pain! How??' For the first time in aeons, Yggra'nya felt genuine agony as he was nearly torn apart. He let out a horrible scream, but quickly reshaped his own timeline, returning to normal.
'This human... he wields power like the Old Ones did.'
The constant attacks made Yggra'nya incredibly angry. If conventional attacks won't work... He tried to erase the concept of the Emperor's existence, attempting to completely remove him from the physical world.
The Emperor's psychic power stopped this erasure. Both combatants realised simultaneously that their abilities were matched. When Yggra'nya launched another time attack to erase the Emperor's timeline, the human countered with his own temporal field.
'Time attacks are useless against him.'
The battle between the two was extremely fierce. Each exchange sent ripples through space-time that tore chunks from the World Engine. Reality buckled under the strain as impossible forces clashed.
'This cannot continue.' The Emperor calculated that another section of the superstructure had collapsed. 'The World Engine is finite. His power source has limits.'
"Why won't you die?" Yggra'nya's rage burned hotter as he drew deeper from the World Engine's stored energy reserves. "You are just a mortal, how are you doing this?!!"
The battle's end came not with a climactic exchange, but with gradual exhaustion.
Yggra'nya's attacks grew slower, less precise. The energy he'd drawn from the World Engine was vast, but not infinite. Sixty million years of storage, consumed in minutes of desperate combat.
'NO... not again...' His movements became sluggish as power reserves dwindled.
The Emperor struck with perfect timing, weaving complex psychic bindings around the weakened Star God. Layer after layer of containment settled into place, each one reinforced by the next.
A human-sized crystal slowly descended from the air, radiating psychic energy in controlled patterns. Trapped inside was the World Shaper, Yggra'nya.
The crystal's surface was covered in special runes that formed a logical maze, designed to trap the Star God's consciousness. As long as it was secured in Terra's Palace vaults, he would never escape again.
'Another battery.' Yggra'nya's thoughts echoed faintly from within his prison. From Necrons to humans. Nothing changes.'
The Emperor stood among the wreckage of the World Engine, holding his prize. Around him, twisted metal and broken systems stretched to the horizon. The ancient superweapon would never threaten the galaxy again.
'One fragment secured.' He thought, already calculating the energy output needed for the temporal anchor project. 'More will be required.'
Above them, the First Fleet waited in orbit. Soon, a squad of Imperial Guard would depart with their precious cargo, carrying it back to Terra under the heaviest possible security.
The Great Crusade would continue, now fueled by the power of gods themselves, driving humanity's expansion.
Terra - Council Hall
Three months after the World Engine campaign, the High Lords of Terra Council had grown in both size and ambition.
What had begun as the Emperor's War Council now coordinated resources across thousands of worlds. Its representatives came from every corner of the growing Imperium, elected by their planets or appointed by the various Imperial bureaucracies.
The Council Hall soared toward the clouds, a monument to human ambition matching Terra's greatest architecture. Inside, the spherical chamber housed thousands of seats built into the surrounding walls, much like balconies.
Anti-gravity technology allowed approved speakers to float their seats to the centre of the hall. There, surrounded by their peers, they could address the entire assembly.
The High Lords' seats surrounded a round table over nine meters across. From here, they guided an empire that spanned the stars.
'And grows stronger each day,' thought the current Speaker as another report arrived from the frontier fleets, 'with the power of Star Gods serving humanity's cause.'
[End of Chapter]