Gaia's pupils contracted, and even her breathing became slightly more hurried.
She had assumed this was just a rather general, simplified star chart.
She had not expected it to include the patterns of Warp tides, along with a stable long-distance Warp route.
If the Imperium ever found out about this, it would absolutely be revered as a holy relic.
That made it even stranger.
How could a pirate possibly possess something like this?
"Something this valuable should only have been accessible to the highest-ranking people in the Imperium."
And in the world of Warhammer, where information security was no less intense, something like this was simply absurd.
She voiced her doubts immediately.
"How could a pirate who was sidelined badly enough to be sent boarding the lower deck possibly have the right to carry something like this?"
Her reasoning was sound, and it pulled Solomon into thought as well.
But Lena Magos seemed completely unaffected by Gaia's words. She spoke in her cold mechanical tone.
"That it exists is itself a fact. Whatever its origin, this star chart is now here before us."
"Such precise mapping. Such a perfect creation. It can only greatly assist the Spear of Destiny in her Warp voyage."
"Can you not hear her machine-spirit singing, longing to roam and pierce through the void without restraint?"
Solomon frowned slightly. He truly did not want to give up this chart. The Path of Fate marked on it was simply too alluring.
In the end, he drew a deep breath and spoke slowly.
"The appearance of this chart is indeed a little too convenient. But I have always believed that voyaging across the void is a journey woven equally from miracles and dangers."
"Perhaps it is because we endured the danger of a pirate attack that we were rewarded with the miracle of this star chart."
"If what this chart says is true, then following the Path of Fate will let us avoid those dangerous Warp tides and safely reach the Jericho Sector, at the boundary between the Segmentum Obscurus and Ultramar."
"There are abundant supplies there. It would be an excellent place to replenish for a long voyage."
Hearing that, Gaia hesitated.
If the chart truly had no problems, then it really would save them from countless complications and let them cross this region of the Warp safely.
Still, out of caution, she made another suggestion.
"Then let's do what we said before and ask Mitchell first."
"It won't be too late to decide after he sees the prospects of the Path of Fate."
Solomon had no objection to that.
So he sent someone to the Navigator Sanctum to ask what Mitchell had seen.
Since a Navigator had to directly face the raging Warp during transit, they could not move around and instead had to rely on the psychic shielding of the guiding seat to protect themselves as much as possible.
And ordinary vox communication would be distorted by the massive psychic interference around the Sanctum, so communication between the Navigator and the bridge usually had to go through a much more primitive chain:
Navigator → servant → crewman → captain
On Solomon's ship, however, almost nobody liked taking that job.
The reason was simple. Since the Navigator aboard this ship had a somewhat unique personality, every single relay message from him ended up turning into a stream of profanity aimed straight at Solomon.
Solomon himself did not particularly care, but for the poor messenger, performing an act that would get them executed ten times over on any other ship was enough to make their spine go cold.
On top of that, Navigators were widely viewed by ordinary crewmen as bringers of ill omen, so most of them already disliked going anywhere near the Navigator Sanctum.
Still, the unfortunate soul assigned to relay the message this time steeled himself and went to the Sanctum. After asking the question through the sealed door and receiving a reply from the servants inside, he hurried back as fast as he could.
"Let someone else do it next time. That damned place keeps getting more sinister every time..."
Muttering under his breath, he returned to the bridge and relayed what he had heard.
"To follow the road of fate is the correct choice. There is no need to worry. Everything is the best possible arrangement."
Translated into plain Low Gothic, that meant Mitchell had no objections to them moving forward along the Path of Fate.
Gaia's brows drew tightly together.
Even though Navigator Mitchell had now effectively certified the chart's reliability and proved her concerns unfounded, she still could not shake the feeling of anxiety.
"Well then, since the star chart has been confirmed to be fine, the Spear of Destiny moves forward at full speed!"
Now that the course was clear, all that remained was to charge along the Path of Fate as fast as possible.
...
The heavy scent of blood drifted through the enclosed dread, continuously assaulting Mitchell's sense of smell as he lay unconscious.
His nose twitched as the thick signal of blood hammered against his brain, finally dragging him back toward awareness.
Wrapped in that chilling crimson atmosphere, Mitchell regained full clarity almost the moment he came out of shock.
Though the psychic shield bound him to the guiding seat, he could still turn his head.
And then a horrifying scene of mutilated servant corpses entered his vision.
Their bodies had been arranged into piles of different sizes in grotesque poses, placed in a ring around him.
Mitchell's breathing quickened, and blood vessels stood out in his eyes.
He did not feel fear. The only thing filling him now was fury.
These servants might have been lowborn in his eyes, but they had remained by his side for years.
They feared him, yes, but they did not regard him as a monster the way outsiders did.
His hands clenched into fists, and his warped fingernails bit through his palms, drawing pale violet blood.
"Oh, don't be angry, don't be angry."
A mocking, slippery, evil laugh came from the blind spot behind him.
"You filthy, twisted swine..."
Mitchell instantly understood that this voice was the cause of the massacre before him, and he spat out a vicious curse.
If only the creature had not been in his blind spot, he would have torn off the jeweled band from his brow and blasted it apart with his eye of damnation.
"In truth, what you should be worrying about right now is yourself."
The mocking laughter sneered.
Under the direction of those words, Mitchell suddenly realized that the piles of corpses around him seemed to follow some blasphemous numerical pattern.
Their ages, times of death, and the number of bodies in each pile all adhered to some evil law.
And through that feast of slaughter, a supreme being had, in delight, cast a brief fragment of Its gaze toward this place.
In the next instant, Mitchell howled in agony. Under the torment of a soul-piercing vision, blood seeped from every pore of his body, and even the bones inside him began to crack and warp with hideous sounds.
"Well then, good luck to you. That is, if luck is still of any use to you."
The shrill laughter drifted away, finally vanishing with the opening and closing of the Sanctum door.
(End of Chapter)
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