Gaia's eyelashes trembled slightly as her gaze was drawn deeply to the blade in her hands.
It looked light and slender, yet it carried a very real weight when held.
An indescribably strange aura flowed along its snow-white edge, making Gaia's soul tremble ever so slightly as she gripped it.
She could feel it.
This blade hungered for slaughter and battle.
"Unbelievable... God-Emperor above, what exactly did you do?"
Mitchell clutched his throbbing head and stared at Gaia in shock.
But Gaia herself had no idea what she had done.
Strange. Picking through junk had never caused such a commotion before...
Reluctantly, she tucked the beloved blade against herself and shook her head.
"I have no idea what just happened."
She had no intention of telling Mitchell and the others about Blackstone or the Aeldari language.
Quite apart from the fact that letting humanity know about Blackstone too early might attract a certain metal skeleton who liked scavenging junk as much as she did, the fact that she could speak a xenos language alone was enough to make the Inquisition and the Deathwatch come halfway across the galaxy to seize her.
Besides, she had no idea what this sword in her hands actually was.
As far as she remembered, Aeldari divine weapons like the Five Swords of Morai-Heg all had fixed locations.
At this point in time, they had either already been taken or were still lying dormant where they were meant to be.
There was no way one of them should have ended up in the hands of a human Navigator House.
"Dawn... sword..."
She had the faintest impression, but for the moment could not remember more.
While Gaia was still wondering about the origin of the blade, Solomon approached Mitchell with a fawning smile and rubbing hands.
"Honored Lord Mitchell, may we begin choosing our compensation again...?"
Hearing that, Mitchell gradually came back to himself from his earlier shock.
But the moment he glanced at the shattered objects piled on the floor beside Solomon, his pupils contracted sharply.
He looked around anxiously. Many of the treasures in the display cases had suffered varying degrees of damage despite the protective fields, and purple veins began to bulge on his forehead.
Though he did not particularly value material possessions, when someone saw their treasure vault nearly turned inside out with their own eyes, they generally did not take it very well.
After thoroughly bombarding Solomon with a stream of elegant High Gothic profanity, Mitchell impatiently ordered the cogitator arrays tied to his bloodline to disable the self-destruct programs on the treasures.
Lena looked around and realized that under the bizarre flash of light earlier, the machine spirits of many technological artifacts had suffered severe damage and had lost most of their research value.
Streams of red light flickered wildly across her augmetic eye. In the end, with obvious reluctance, she used her share to select a few mechanical devices that still looked reasonably intact, then had Mitchell unlock their self-destruct mechanisms as well.
As for Gaia, she was entirely satisfied with what she had found.
She had a feeling that the value of this blade far exceeded the combined worth of every other treasure in the vault.
After finding a back-mounted scabbard suitable for carrying it, Gaia turned and left the chamber as well.
Watching the muscular figure of her back recede into the distance, a strange light flickered in Mitchell's ruby-red eyes.
Through the damage done to the vault this time, he had come to realize one thing.
The one called Gaia was definitely no simple person.
He could not see her road ahead, yet with a single movement she could alter the direction of others' destinies with ease.
Especially when she took up that strange blade, which was likely of xenos origin. In that instant, Mitchell had seen his own path undergo a world-shaking transformation.
Gray, uncanny mists swallowed the road that had once lain before him.
Twisted vortices blocked the new way forward.
Indescribable ghostly figures crossed within it.
A vast shadow passed overhead...
Just thinking of the images he had seen moments ago made his body tremble, while the Warp-eye on his forehead throbbed with needle-like pain.
He could not see clearly what lay behind the mist, but he could feel the ill omen pressing against the veil.
It was an unspeakable terror.
"What exactly lies hidden behind that veil?"
He closed his eyes and steadied the chaotic tide of thoughts within him.
After a long while, Mitchell opened them again. The confusion and shock had been replaced by calm detachment.
Letting out a long breath, he summoned his personal attendants through his comm-bead, ordering them to secretly transfer the treasures in this vault into other cargo and move them to the transport.
Through the thick wall-window, he looked far off across the endless star-sea at the Spear of Destiny, faintly illuminated by starlight, and a strange gleam flashed in his eyes.
The path he had glimpsed for himself, though full of storms of destruction, had also contained hidden traces of hope.
Perhaps what awaited him was not merely calamity, but a miracle beyond measure.
...
"Primitive though it is, for the likes of you, I suppose it counts as doing your best."
The finicky Navigator noble inspected the Navigator Sanctum that Solomon's people had thoroughly cleaned and redecorated, then nodded with faint disdain.
Solomon's mouth twitched. After a brief moment of expression management, he broke into a grin.
"Then, for the days ahead, until we reach Kalles, I'll have to trouble Lord Mitchell with the ship's navigation."
Mitchell sat upon the guiding seat in the Navigator Sanctum and nodded, then closed his eyes under the care of his attendants and began resting.
His navigation abilities were strong, but they placed a tremendous burden on his mind.
Before and after the pirate attack, he had overused his power. What he needed now was a long period of rest.
In truth, normal Navigators, when guiding a ship, would use symbolic imagery to describe what they saw only in vague terms, because the visions they perceived were filled with distortions and terrible curses beyond the understanding of ordinary people.
To resist that torment from the Warp, Navigators all had their own methods.
Some imagined themselves as fish, and the currents of the Warp as ocean tides.
Others imagined themselves as painters, using exquisite combinations of color to symbolize the chaos they saw within the empyrean.
Mitchell, however, was different.
Though he too used symbolic language, he did not rely on that nearly theatrical method of softening the Warp's effects on himself.
Instead, he used direct, unfiltered, beautifully savage profanity to blur those unreal horrors, allowing him to see deeper truths more directly.
That was precisely why he could see more than most.
After leaving the Navigator Sanctum and returning to the bridge, a bit of sweat appeared on Solomon's forehead.
Though he always called himself an experienced captain and often boasted about his seamanship, the truth was that he had hardly ever left this star system.
And now that his ship had a Navigator, he was realizing that the distance of his first interstellar voyage might be just a little too ambitious.
From the Segmentum Obscurus to the edge of Ultramar.
If Gaia had known that fact, she definitely would have mercilessly complained:
"This is like someone on Ancient Terra passing the written driving exam and then immediately attempting to drive from Hainan Island all the way to the Tibetan Plateau!"
Even so, Solomon remained surprisingly optimistic.
Everything had a first time, after all. If you did not try, how would you know whether you could do it?
So, wearing a confident smile, he threw a grand gesture toward the void beyond the bridge.
"Let's go. Next stop, Kalles!"
(End of Chapter)
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