No spectacular Warp omens appeared. Yet at the shout of surprise, a mass of golden fire bloomed among the crowd.
The flames only looked like fire. They burned nothing and had no heat. They simply spread quietly and climbed over everyone present except the transmigrators.
Soon the phantom flames faded, leaving only faint traces in the soldiers' eyes, fine motes of golden light.
Such a sign naturally sent the faithful into fervent prayer.
The Sisters especially. A vision they might only witness once before death had now occurred twice in a few hours. They chanted hymns with piety and began composing records of the event.
"Good work, Ramses."
Arthur let out a breath and did not stint on praise.
In an era before the Great Rift, coaxing a manifestation from the Emperor took real doing.
Ramses did not look pleased. He looked as if something had disgusted him.
"Sorry."
He raised his hands to the three like a man admitting guilt.
"I acted on my own."
Romulus blinked. Had he not heard that same line a moment ago?
"What happened exactly?"
Arthur was lost. Since he had already been the one digging for gold in Warp filth, the job of Warp research had naturally fallen to Ramses. No one could see why he looked apologetic after a clear success.
"I messed up. I was stupid."
Even after completing his attempt and saving a great many people's futures, Ramses felt awful. He looked at the shared soul-points the others had transferred to him for this use and felt he had been fleeced.
"Remember the safehouse we had in the Warp right after we arrived?"
He asked out of nowhere.
"I remember," Arthur said. He even remembered there being a roll of toilet paper in it.
"That thing was created by our instinctive rejection of the Warp at landing. In essence it is a ring of psychic bulwark in the Warp with some masking effect. Not that Warp entities can see us anyway, so it is basically useless."
Ramses explained the safehouse's principle.
"Then the Emperor seems to have judged us as a special Warp entity born under human influence, and that space is the domain where our true selves exist…"
He cut himself off.
"You know that being noticed by the Emperor is not necessarily a good thing, right?"
"Understood," Arthur said.
He had read plenty of GW novels, both translations and in English. He knew the favorite sport of Chaos.
Target those most devoted to the Emperor and corrupt them. A perverse hobby of forcing the pure into sin.
The worst cases are often Battle Sisters and Astartes who have drawn the Emperor's gaze.
Many heretics and daemons boast of Fallen Sisters, or delight in capturing loyalist Space Marines to sacrifice to the Four. It pleases their masters and earns greater boons.
So in Warhammer, praying to the God-Emperor with no response is often the best outcome. If you get a response, either you are about to die or something uncanny is involved.
Being noticed while alive raises your risk of being noticed by the Four as well. You might be tortured by Chaos champions in life, and torn apart in the Warp after death.
And the Emperor often cannot save such people, because there are too many. Even He cannot cover them all.
"Our safehouse can screen them. If they die, the Four cannot sense them for a while, which gives the Emperor time to extract them from the safehouse?"
Arthur grasped Ramses' meaning.
"Yes." Ramses nodded. "So the Emperor used psychic image-writing to tell me to expand the safehouse's range, large enough to cover a hundred people."
"He actually wanted it larger, but I already said anything tied to the Warp and complex matter is very costly to generate. I expanded a bit, felt something was off, and stopped."
"And then—"
The quartermaster Romulus turned green.
Ramses pointed at the Guardsmen and Sisters who bore the new marks.
"He tagged them all and left. Offered nothing else. Even the daemons near my Warp projection scattered in fear and ran."
Silence fell over the four.
"The Emperor's move…"
"So we spent our points to expand a Warp warehouse for the Emperor's storage, and He did not even pay rent. He stuffed it full, walked off with the credit, and took our bowl of rice with Him?"
Romulus glanced back at the crowd lost in religious ecstasy.
"Oh, and He marked every one of them, which indirectly forces us to either keep expanding the safehouse or control how many of them die. Otherwise we just watch them die?"
The others nodded.
There was some emotion mixed in, but that was essentially it. Ramses, who had communicated by psychic means, knew this was exactly the Emperor's intent.
From His perspective, even if the bet failed it did not matter. Against the future of all humanity, the lives of a few thousand were a stake He could afford to lose.
"How many points did it cost?"
Ramses flagged the shared data in red.
"No—" Romulus let out a sharp binary screech.
"How could the Emperor do that?"
He could have shown some goodwill. At least make His attitude clear.
Use and leave. Were they tools to Him?
"At least give feedback. A single word would be something. He must have perceived us through the Sisters in the Warp earlier. Did He not understand what we showed about our stance?"
They were angry. Not because rescuing people had cost them, but because of the Emperor's attitude.
It felt like this: whether you protect them or not, I have marked them and issued the task. I am leaving. You figure it out. As if He had them right where He wanted them.
"Maybe He understands too well," Ramses said.
As the oldest among them, and due to his background, Ramses had broader experience. He knew exactly what these just-graduated friends were like.
Set aside the aura their imposing bodies gave them before Imperial citizens. These three radiated something that did not fit this world.
A kind of clear-eyed foolishness.
No, not foolishness.
Call it goodness.
The goodness of people raised in whole, loving families, who had only just stepped into society, still holding bright expectations about others and the world.
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