[You crouch on the metal floor in your armor.]
[The Cryptek's head is in your palm. You are turning it over slowly, more out of something to do with your hands than any practical purpose. You have already worked out the shape of what is happening.]
["I don't even know when I first fell for it." The sound you make is somewhere between amusement and contempt. "The first time I encountered Trazyn, I was already inside the Tesseract Labyrinth, weren't I?"]
[You take a breath and push down the frustration that wants to surface.]
[Your eyes move across the scattered Necron remains on the metal floor, then to the heavy catalog lying beside the largest piece. You drop the head, pick up the catalog, and open it.]
[The aliens fill the corridor behind you with noise. You ignore them. You are not trying to memorize the catalog's contents so much as you are reading Trazyn through it: the categories he uses, the way he organizes his acquisitions, the logic behind what he considers worth keeping. Understanding how a collector thinks is more useful right now than any map.]
[By the time Fulgrim's clone arrives, moving through what remains of the alien press with the unhurried precision of someone who has been doing this for centuries, you have what you need.]
[You stand and carry the catalog in the crook of your arm as you walk toward him. The last of the aliens in your shared line of sight are already finished.]
["Before you say anything." You stop him with a look. "I need to tell you everything. All of it."]
[You do.]
[Fulgrim's clone listens without interrupting. His purple eyes go very slightly wider at one point, then settle back into something still and thoughtful. When you finish, he nods once.]
["So this is how many times we have met already." It is not quite a question. "I always assumed the déjà vu was a residual effect of the stasis field. I never considered it could be this."]
["A simple Necron Overlord is not the problem," you say. "The problem is that Trazyn is too precise. He has used the Labyrinth's temporal mechanics to contain us inside a repeating structure. Without that, either of us could deal with him directly. But he is not giving us a clean engagement."]
[You tilt your head back slightly, reading the ceiling, working through the architecture of the loop.]
["The trigger point for the reset is the encounter with the Black Legion Terminators and the Harlequins. There may be others in the wider space. But identifying them takes time and iteration." You look back at him. "So we stay here. We hold this position and fight through everything that comes to us. We do not move toward the trigger."]
[Fulgrim's clone does not question the logic. He finds the nearest corner, angles his back into it, and nods.]
[The two of you take up a position back to back.]
[What follows is a sustained and grinding engagement. The aliens press in from the open corridors in waves, each one drawn by the noise and the blood of the last. You work the Blood Scythe in tight arcs, conserving movement, not wasting strokes. Fulgrim's clone carries the frontal pressure with the physicality of a Primarch frame at full function, his longsword finding the most efficient path through whatever reaches him.]
[Time passes. Your arms develop a bone-deep numbness that does not resolve between contacts. The speed of your swings drops by degrees you cannot fully afford. The Blood Scythe is heavier than it was.]
[Fulgrim's clone's white hair is soaked through in alien blood, dark from root to tip. His ornate armor, purple and gold, has accumulated damage across every surface: scoring, cracking, stress fractures spreading from repeated impacts. He does not complain. He does not slow down.]
[Then the aliens begin to thin, and a different kind of presence enters the tunnels.]
[Necron Warriors, fully armed, moving in organized formation, carrying out something with the methodical patience of machines that have performed the same task many thousands of times. Capture. Containment. They are not attacking to kill. They are sweeping for acquisitions.]
[You and Fulgrim's clone exchange one glance.]
[You both drive forward into the Necron formation simultaneously.]
[Metal limbs fall. Warrior frames collapse. The Necron numbers reduce quickly under two melee combatants who are not constrained by the same need to take prisoners.]
[Then Trazyn appears.]
[His silver form resolves from the far end of the corridor: tall, commanding, the Empathic Obliterator scepter resting in one hand with the ease of something carried everywhere. His green eyes find the two of you and stay there.]
["Must you really keep doing this?" The mechanical voice carries a quality that is almost genuinely puzzled. "I can offer you considerably better than this corridor. A purpose-built environment. The finest power armor ever produced in the human Imperium. Weapons fitted to your respective hands. Comfortable stasis. You would feel nothing. You would want for nothing."]
[He shakes his head very slightly.]
["Why do you keep struggling? Over and over again, you choose this."]
[Neither you nor Fulgrim's clone answers.]
[You activate your vibranium armor and go.]
["Tsk tsk." The sound he makes is genuinely appreciative. "That resilience. That refusal to yield. It has always been what I find most remarkable about the young human species."]
[Trazyn raises the Empathic Obliterator.]
[The beam that erupts from it is wide and bright, splitting the corridor with a light that has no business being underground. You are already adjusting your charge vector, Fulgrim's clone breaking left in the same instant. The beam tracks, divides, forces both of you to route around its edges.]
[You notice something at Trazyn's waist as you close the distance.]
[Metal rings. Stacked, interlocked, unmistakable. Yours.]
[Trazyn is moving now, not retreating, circling, the Empathic Obliterator swinging in wide arcs that force you to commit to a path before you can read the next angle. Fulgrim's clone pressures the opposite side, trying to split Trazyn's attention.]
[Boom.]
[The scepter connects with Fulgrim's clone's breastplate on a backswing you both misjudge by half a step. The impact is enormous. His longsword shatters at the blade. He goes backward with a spray of pale blood from his mouth, the terracotta shell of his armor splitting across the chest, and his frame staggers under the shockwave.]
[In the same instant, your legs go out from under you.]
[Pale gold blood comes from your own mouth, sudden and involuntary. The injury is identical in its distribution, as though the same force struck you both simultaneously from different directions. You catch yourself on the Blood Scythe, driving the haft into the floor, and hold your position on one knee.]
[You look up at Trazyn.]
["Interesting, isn't it?" Trazyn's voice carries no cruelty. Only professional satisfaction. "That is the Empathic Obliterator's particular quality. Any group of beings that engages me with unified intent: injure one, and the injury propagates across all of them in equal measure. It is one of the more elegant technologies the Old Ones left behind, if I do say so."]
[His green eyes settle on the Blood Scythe in your grip.]
["I will acknowledge, genuinely, that the will you have both displayed is worthy of that weapon. The Lamenters breed heroes of a particular quality." He tilts his head. "But I am sorry, little human."]
["You and the Primarch replica will be the finest pieces in my collection."]
[You stay on one knee. You lick the blood from the corner of your mouth.]
[A slow sound comes out of you. Not quite a laugh.]
["I said, Trazyn." Your eyes do not leave his. "Have you forgotten something?"]
["Hm?"]
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