Warhammer 40k: Ours Journey

Chapter 20: There's a Reason the Emperor is Stuck on the Throne

There were no grand, reality-bending phenomena as there had been in the Warp, but as the gasps of surprise rippled through the crowd, a globe of golden fire materialized in their midst.

The flames had the form of a fire, but they did not burn. They radiated no heat. They simply spread out silently, climbing over every person present—except for the four transmigrators.

Soon, the fiery phantoms dissipated, leaving behind only faint traces in the eyes of the soldiers: tiny, shimmering specks of gold.

This miraculous event, naturally, sent the many faithful into a frenzy of prayer. This was especially true for the Sisters; a miracle they might only witness once in their lifetime, right before death, had now occurred twice in the span of a few short hours. They began to sing hymns with renewed fervor, determined to record this experience for posterity.

"Well done, Ramesses," Arthur said, breathing a sigh of relief. He didn't hold back his praise. In an era before the Great Rift, getting the Emperor to manifest His power was no small feat.

"..."

But Ramesses, who had clearly done a good thing, showed no signs of happiness. Instead, he looked as if he'd just been thoroughly disgusted by something.

"My apologies," Ramesses said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I acted on my own."

"..." Romulus blinked. Haven't I just heard that line before?

"What on earth happened?" Arthur asked, equally confused.

Since Ramesses had already been the one to go digging for gold in the Warp's cesspit, the glorious task of researching the Immaterium had naturally fallen to him. So none of them understood why Ramesses, who had clearly just achieved a great success, looked like he was at a confessional.

"I am guilty. I was an idiot," said Ramesses, the man who had successfully completed his experiment and saved the future of a large group of people. His mood, however, was anything but bright. He looked at the massive chunk that had been taken out of the shared soul-point pool he'd been given to use, and felt like he'd just been completely scammed.

"Remember how we had a 'safe house' in the Warp when we first landed?" he asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

"I remember," Arthur nodded. He even remembered there was a copy of the Codex Astartes in there.

"That thing was created by our own instinctive rejection of the Warp when we arrived. It's essentially just a psychic barrier in the Immaterium, providing a certain degree of concealment. Of course, Warp creatures can't see us anyway, so the thing is actually useless," Ramesses explained.

"Then the Emperor probably classified us as some kind of special Warp entity born from human influence, and that 'safe house' is the domain where our true selves exist..."

"Never mind, let's not get into that—you guys know that being noticed by the Emperor isn't necessarily a good thing, right?"

"Understood," Arthur nodded. He had read plenty of novels published by GW. Besides reading the translated versions, he had also chewed his way through the English originals. He was well aware of one of Chaos's favorite pastimes: corrupting those who had the strongest faith in the Emperor. It was a cruel, twisted pleasure, like forcing a virtuous person into depravity. The prime targets were, naturally, the various Battle-Sisters and Astartes who were directly watched over by the Emperor.

Many heretic lords and daemon princes took pride in having a fallen Sister of Battle in their retinue, or had a hobby of capturing loyalist Space Marines to sacrifice to the Four Gods. Doing so pleased their masters and earned them greater boons.

So, in the world of Warhammer, when you pray to the God-Emperor, no response is the best response. If He actually answers, it either means you're about to die, or it's some daemon in disguise. In a way, if the Emperor notices you while you're alive, the risk of the Four Gods noticing you also skyrockets. You might be tormented by various Chaos champions while you live, and after you die, you might get to experience being drawn and quartered by five different entities in the Warp.

And in many cases, the Emperor can't protect these people. There are simply too many of them. Even He can't watch over everyone.

"And our 'safe house' can isolate these people. For example, if they die, the Four Gods won't sense them for a short time, so the Emperor can leisurely pull them out from there?" Arthur was beginning to understand Ramesses's meaning.

"Exactly," Ramesses nodded. "So, the Emperor, using psychic imagery, told me to expand the range of this safe house to a size that could envelop a few hundred people."

"Actually, He wanted it bigger, but as I said before, creating things connected to the Warp or with complex material structures is very expensive. I expanded it a bit, felt something was wrong, and stopped."

"And then—" Romulus, the one in charge of their "finances," turned green.

Ramesses pointed at the Guardsmen and Sisters who had been marked.

"And then He put a mark on everyone and just... left. No payment, nothing. He even scared away all the daemons near my psychic projection, which was my source of income."

A dead silence fell over the four of them.

"So the Emperor's move was..."

"It's like we paid to build a warehouse extension in the Warp for the Emperor to store His valuables, and not only did He not pay rent, He just dropped off His stuff and left, taking our rice bowl with Him, and getting all the credit for it?!" Romulus looked back at the crowd, who were deep in a state of religious ecstasy.

"Oh, right. And He marked all these people, basically forcing us to either keep expanding the safe house or control the number of them who die, or else just watch them perish?"

The others nodded. It was a bit colored by their own emotions, but that seemed to be the gist of it. And Ramesses, who had communicated directly with the Emperor via psychic means, knew for a fact that this was exactly what the Emperor meant. For Him, it was a gamble He could afford to lose. Compared to the future of the entire human race, the lives of a few thousand people were an acceptable loss.

"How many souls did it cost?"

Ramesses highlighted the number in their shared data log in bright red.

"No—" Romulus let out a sharp, binary screech. "Wait, how can the Emperor do this?!"

The guy could have at least shown some goodwill! Even just a gesture would have been something!

Using us and then leaving, treating us like tools?

"He could have at least given us some feedback! A single grunt would have shown he was still a person! He must have observed us through the Sisters back in the Warp, didn't He know what our attitude was?"

They were all a little angry. It wasn't because they felt they had lost out by saving people, but because of the Emperor's attitude. It felt like He was saying, 'Protect them or don't, I don't care. I've marked them, the task has been assigned. I'm leaving now, you figure it out.' It was as if He was certain they would comply.

"Maybe it's because He understood us too well," Ramesses said. As the oldest of the group, and someone who had a bit more life experience for personal reasons, he knew what his friends, who were all basically recent college graduates, were like.

Putting aside the imposing aura their new, majestic forms gave them in the eyes of Imperial citizens, the three of them exuded an air that was completely out of sync with their surroundings.

Hmm, a kind of... pure-hearted foolishness?

No, not foolishness.

It should be called kindness.

The kind of kindness that comes from being raised in a loving, stable family, just stepping into society, and still holding onto beautiful expectations for others and the world.

(End of Chapter)