To better shield Axion and his creations from the incessant prying of the Ark Mechanicus's personnel, Belisarius Cawl extended a considerate invitation. He requested that Axion, his personal guard, and a full squad of Erratana-class Armored Wardens, each standing slightly larger than a standard Ironclad Dreadnought, remain by his side at all times.
Axion did not refuse.
Once one looked past Cawl's habit of absentmindedly stroking the chassis of the ancient constructs, the other Tech-Priests indeed became far more disciplined. At the very least, Axion no longer found crushed sensor probes or other intrusive scrap wedged into the joint actuators of the Armored Wardens.
As a Dominus-grade Archmagos, Cawl was perpetually occupied, yet he had contributed a staggering wealth of knowledge to the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Empire, not least of which was a vast collection of technical treatises. Though most of these volumes were physically produced by Servo-skulls and recording servitors, the fount of knowledge was Cawl himself.
Cawl was never stingy toward those of his own faction, the radicals who favored innovation and the synthesis of new technology from the old. He presented Axion with a gift: a collection of foundational technical texts compiled via recording servitor. Over ten thousand years, Cawl had accumulated too much data; offloading a portion of obsolete technical knowledge to free up memory sectors was, in his eyes, a logical necessity.
It was for these reasons that the other priests aboard the Ark Mechanicus afforded Cawl an extra measure of respect, even if they still harbored secret desires to conduct "independent research" the moment he turned his back. Cawl found this unsurprising; to a man of science, curiosity regarding the unknown was as essential as oxygen.
As Cawl divided his focus between analyzing the data recovered from the massive Necron constructs and overseeing the repair of the Ark, Axion followed him, wandering through the gargantuan vessel. Eventually, Axion discovered something that piqued his interest: a topographical scan of an ancient mural.
The imagery triggered a sudden resonance within Axion's ancient data-vaults. The mural was unmistakably Necron in style, but it depicted a massive device of such peculiar design that his database flickered with a potential match.
Sensing Axion's fascination with the mural, Cawl spoke with a note of professional pride.
"I recovered that mural data from an ancient blackstone obelisk near the Nephilim Sector. It appears to depict a conflict between the Necrons of this region and another dynasty over a specific artifact."
"Caoineag," Axion uttered.
Axion's database contained no official name for the object, but it held a designation derived from the Aeldari lexicon.
Confusion clouded Cawl's features. He had never heard the strange word.
Axion pointed toward the strangely shaped, hexagonal device depicted in the mural and repeated himself.
"Caoineag. That is what the Aeldari once called this creation. My records contain an entry regarding the acquisition of this xenos artifact, along with several preliminary test logs. During the Great Expansion, an Iron Men legion accidentally annihilated a dormant Tomb World that housed such a device."
"The engineers attempted to activate the machine," Axion continued. "They discovered it possessed the capacity to manipulate time and generate inexhaustible energy. It was later transported to a classified research facility north of the Sol System."
"I have no further records of the project's outcome, but I recognize the geometry of the construct."
Axion's description struck a chord of familiarity in Cawl. A Necron artifact? Inexhaustible energy? Chronal manipulation?
It sounded hauntingly familiar.
Given the staggering scale of his memory banks, it often took Cawl a significant amount of time to index and retrieve specific archival data. He stood motionless for several minutes, sifting through layers of ancient sub-routines until he identified the source of his recognition.
Once, a legend had circulated within the Cult Mechanicus regarding a peerless Necron artifact known as the Breath of the Gods.
The origin of the information was unknown, its source location redacted. However, the Cult maintained a high-clearance mission log regarding it. In 383.M38, the Magos Explorator Vettius Telok had discovered the device within the Halo Stars on the edge of Segmentum Obscurus. Under some unknown influence, Telok had descended into total madness, conducting horrific experiments on a population of Hrud.
Ultimately, Telok was slain by Archmagos Lexell Kotov in an uneasy alliance with the Aeldari of Craftworld Biel-Tan. The artifact itself was reported destroyed during the confrontation.
Because the incident involved two Archmagi and xenos intervention, the records had been classified as Restricted. Cawl had access to them not only because of his supreme authority but also because his research required vast amounts of technical data. Such dangerous, high-level knowledge, along with records of clandestine operations, was stored in the forbidden vaults of Mars, which Cawl treated as his personal library.
However, beyond the rumors, the mission logs had made no explicit mention of time manipulation; they spoke only of a titanic energy output.
The edge of Segmentum Obscurus... Axion also originates from Segmentum Obscurus, specifically the Halo Zone.
A thousand hypotheses flooded Cawl's mind.
During the Federation era before the rise of the Imperium, was Segmentum Obscurus the primary hub for high-tech research? Why does every bizarre and ancient relic seem to originate from there?
Despite his questions, Cawl knew he would get no easy answers. Axion's clearance was high, but his pre-loaded general data consisted mostly of information public to the Iron Men. High-level intelligence required real-time synchronization with a superior node via a quantum information network, a network that had been silent for millennia. Even if the Federation's most classified secrets existed in an Iron Man database, Axion had no way to access them now.
Furthermore, while the Adeptus Mechanicus had occupied Mars since the Age of Darkness and kept meticulous records, the galaxy back then was teeming with factions. The Cult of the Machine had not yet become the co-equal partner to an empire; in the Federation era, they were merely a niche technocratic cult recently migrated to Mars. They would have had no access to the Federation's inner sanctum of secrets.
Axion only recognized the device because the Iron Men's combat archives recorded the Breath of the Gods as a recovered asset.
It was clear that Axion was now deeply invested in the artifact.
"Inquiry: Axion, what was the specific coordinate of the first acquisition of this xenos construct in the Iron Men records?"
Cawl needed to know: if the device on this mural was indeed the Breath of the Gods, was it the same unit that was reportedly destroyed? Or did it mean that multiple iterations of this Necron engine existed?
Thinking of the Necron energy field currently suffocating the sector, Cawl realized such a feat required a monumental power source. If there were multiple "Breaths of the Gods" in existence, he might have found a far more efficient way to resolve the current crisis.
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