V3 Chapter 116: This Is the Emperor's Manifestation, the Omnissiah's Manifestation! You Stand Excommunicate!
When the sacred bells of the God-Emperor's Grand Basilica began to toll, the pilgrims and Ecclesiarchy faithful filling the plaza gradually fell silent.
Everyone knew what they were about to witness: the returned son of the Emperor, the Imperial Regent, Master of the Thirteenth Legion, Roboute Guilliman, proving with his own hand that he had received the God-Emperor's recognition and appointment.
Whatever the outcome, this moment would become part of the Imperium's history.
Ecclesiarchy broadcast stations across every hive on Terra had already patched into the live signal, and tens of millions of the Imperium's children were waiting on the outcome through holo-projections and public broadcasts.
The Ecclesiarch, Baldo Slester, stood before the Basilica, watching the avenue Guilliman would soon arrive by, his face unreadable.
Behind him rose a colossal statue of the God-Emperor, and along either side of the avenue leading to the Basilica stood the mechanised sacred images of Saints past.
Every statue but the God-Emperor's own, at the centre, held its head bowed low, looking down.
Those faces, carved from metal and stone, held no expression at all, their sightless eyes fixed on every soul who passed beneath them along the avenue.
Slester knew perfectly well, in his heart, that the returned son of the Emperor had almost certainly already received the God-Emperor's appointment.
The very fact that the Custodians who guarded the Golden Throne itself had already begun following Guilliman's orders was, on its own, proof enough of a great deal.
But to survive, and to hold onto the power he still had, he had to gamble regardless.
The God-Emperor had sat silent upon the Golden Throne for nearly ten thousand years, almost never once responding openly to Imperial politics. Slester didn't believe He would bend so far as to send down so blunt a miracle, not even for Guilliman.
If Guilliman failed to provide his proof, Slester could use the tens of millions of the faithful gathered here to force the purge to a halt.
He could frame everything that had happened so far as the work of scheming men who'd deceived him, and buy himself time to rally the Ecclesiarchy's own strength.
If he lost, though, what awaited him would likely be a fate far more terrible than death.
Punitive servitorisation. Memory extraction. Conversion into a living Cogitator. Those terms, only just introduced in the Terran Emergency Reorganisation Decree, hadn't left his mind since.
What genuinely puzzled Slester was a strange request Guilliman had made in advance.
He'd had a great quantity of decommissioned servo-skulls hauled out to the plaza, and piled at the base of every one of the Saints' statues.
These servo-skulls had come from Ecclesiarchy storehouses, administrative offices, and the crypts beneath the Basilica itself; many of them had been decommissioned for centuries.
There were so many of them that they nearly buried the statues' pedestals; from a distance, the Saints appeared to stand praying amid a sea of skulls.
To guard against any hidden tampering, Slester had a Machine Cult priest he trusted personally inspect every one of the servo-skulls.
The priest confirmed their power sources were entirely spent, their internal wiring badly damaged, and some of the servo-skulls were even missing the critical components needed to keep them aloft at all.
The Basilica's sacred bells, the mechanised sacred images, and their drive mechanisms were inspected in the same way.
Slester had also ordered every external control line cut, and placed every device on site capable of remote operation under the Ecclesiarchy's own watch.
Just as Slester turned over how Guilliman meant to provide his proof, a heavy rumble of engines sounded from the main avenue before the Basilica.
A convoy under Custodian escort passed through the cordon, rolling slowly into the pilgrims' view.
Gold-armoured Custodians lined either side of the road, halberds held ready.
Guilliman stood atop the central ceremonial grav-vehicle, offering the barest acknowledgment to the pilgrims cheering endlessly along both sides of the road.
He held a genuine, deep-seated distaste for the Ecclesiarchy, and yet had no choice but to see this public ceremony through.
Tens of millions of eyes were watching this moment. Any visible contempt on his part would be seized on by Slester and his followers alike.
Duvette sat behind Guilliman, and couldn't help a short laugh at the sight of the Primarch's faintly furrowed brow.
For Old Thirteen, being forced to prove he'd earned the God-Emperor's recognition was probably worse than facing down a Chaos fleet head-on.
He guessed that once this demonstration was over, Guilliman would probably turn his attention to the sprawling Ecclesiarchy itself.
The convoy came to a stop beneath the God-Emperor's statue, and Guilliman stepped down from the grav-vehicle. Slester immediately came forward with several Cardinals to greet him, but the Imperial Regent's gaze only rested on him for a moment before passing on, moving straight toward his father's statue instead.
Duvette, meanwhile, slipped away from the group under the Custodians' cover, and made for the colonnade along the side of the plaza.
He came to a stop at last in the shadow cast by one of the Saints' statues, a spot from which Guilliman remained in view.
Guilliman raised his head, gazing up at the towering mechanised statue before him.
It had been shaped in the Emperor's own image from the days He still walked among men — clad in golden war-plate, sword in his right hand, left hand outstretched, looking down over all humanity below.
Feeling the fervour of the faithful at his back, a fresh wave of sorrow rose in Guilliman once more.
Humanity had once been able to live by knowledge and reason. Now, it could only seek shelter in fear, beneath the protection of a god.
He knelt slowly on one knee. What Guilliman knelt to now was his own father, and the sovereign who ruled humanity's Imperium — not the deity the Ecclesiarchy had pieced together out of countless myths.
The noise across the plaza dropped away fast, silence spreading outward from the crowd nearest the statue.
More and more of the faithful prostrated themselves, murmuring prayers alongside the Emperor's own son, waiting for the miracle to descend.
Duvette watched it all from the shadows, and couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
He found himself understanding, a little, why Guilliman despised religion so much. Even he felt a weight settle over him, watching the crowd prostrate itself like this, one he couldn't quite get used to.
Guilliman began, as planned, to declare his own identity and duty aloud.
His voice carried across the plaza through the Ecclesiarchy's own amplification systems, and out to every hive across Terra besides.
"I am Roboute Guilliman. Master of the Thirteenth Legion. Lord of Ultramar. Thirteenth son of the Master of Mankind."
"I have passed through the Eternity Gate, and stood before the Golden Throne, before my father. I have accepted his command. As Imperial Regent, I will set the Imperium back in order, remove the traitors within it, and lead humanity onward, that it might endure."
Duvette timed it carefully, and activated [Blessing of the Omnissiah] the instant Guilliman finished his final word.
The servo-skull nearest to Guilliman was the first to respond.
A faint red light kindled in its hollow eye sockets, and its long-dead hover unit sputtered to life in fits and starts before it rose slowly off the ground, trailing dust.
A second servo-skull rose right after it.
The skulls piled up beneath the Saints' statues came back to life one after another, hundreds upon hundreds of indicator lights beginning to flicker.
Power sources long since drained began producing output again, severed wiring resumed conducting, and even the servo-skulls missing their hover components lifted off the ground regardless, driven by machine spirit alone.
A wave of gasps broke out across the plaza, impossible for the faithful to hold back.
The very servo-skulls the Machine Cult priest had personally inspected and confirmed dead now circled slowly around Guilliman, still kneeling on one knee beneath the God-Emperor's statue.
The composure on Slester's face began to crack.
He turned to the Machine Cult priest beside him. The priest's mechanical eye spun fast, several data cables already plugged into his portable scanning equipment.
"The power readings can't be explained." the priest said, in a low, mechanical voice. "They're running. Their machine spirits are in a state of extreme activity."
Duvette watched the servo-skulls take flight again, a small smile touching the corner of his mouth.
Up to this point, everything was going exactly to plan.
The next moment, a heavy grinding of gears suddenly sounded from both sides of the avenue.
One of the bowed statues of a Saint slowly turned its head, looking toward Guilliman, kneeling before the God-Emperor's image.
Then a second statue followed, then a third, until every mechanised sacred image along the entire avenue had begun to shift.
The smile on Duvette's face faltered slightly. His gaze left the skill panel only he could see, sweeping fast across the statues now turning to follow Guilliman.
Those statues weren't within his skill's target range.
At the same moment, a heavier grinding of machinery sounded from within the God-Emperor's statue before Guilliman, and the colossal head crowning the Basilica bowed slowly downward, its gaze finally settling on Guilliman, still kneeling on one knee.
Slester lurched back a step. He knew these statues held mechanical drive systems inside them, but those systems had stood still for over a thousand years, long since abandoned by anyone who might have maintained them.
The Basilica's sacred bells suddenly began to toll once more, from somewhere deep within.
The first toll rolled out across the plaza, its weight settling into every chest present.
The Ecclesiarchy personnel responsible for the bells fled their control station in a panic, hurrying to prove to the Inquisitor standing nearby that no one had touched the machinery.
The second toll came, then the third, the bells still ringing entirely on their own.
Not until the thirteenth toll fell silent did the Basilica settle back into quiet.
At the same moment, the candles ringing the plaza began to burn on their own. None of them had been mechanically altered in any way, and some were even sealed away inside closed shrine niches, yet white-gold flame appeared on every wick regardless, and every flame bent, in unison, toward Guilliman.
Duvette narrowed his eyes. Well, now. That one, at least, absolutely had nothing to do with him.
The servo-skulls hovering in the air all stopped moving at once. After a brief pause, they rearranged themselves, forming a massive Imperial Aquila above Guilliman's head. Their vox-units activated in turn, and a solemn litany rose from thousands of voxmitters together.
None of this had been part of Duvette's plan either.
Slester's face had gone bone white. He'd chosen the site himself. His own people had inspected every mechanism. The Ecclesiarchy itself had cut the control lines. What was happening before him now had gone well beyond anything human manipulation could explain.
"Is this really... the God-Emperor's divine manifestation?"
Guilliman let out a slow breath. He assumed Duvette had succeeded, even though the scene before him had gone far beyond what they'd originally planned. There was no time left to dwell on it now, regardless.
He rose to his feet and turned to face Slester.
The servo-skulls in the air stopped their recitation all at once, then followed Guilliman's gaze, turning thousands of mechanical eyes to bear on the Ecclesiarch.
Silence fell over the site once more.
"Answer me now, Slester. Have I completed my proof?" Guilliman's voice carried across the plaza through the amplifiers.
Slester opened his mouth, but only a garbled sound made it out of his throat. The Machine Cult priest beside him glanced at him once, then was the first to kneel.
"Every record has been confirmed." the priest declared, loudly. "The machine spirits rejoice. The will of the Omnissiah has descended upon this place!"
Slester's body began to shake. He knew he'd lost his last way out, and had no choice but to admit it, in a faint voice, before the amplifiers.
"This is... the God-Emperor's manifestation. You have completed your proof."
Lord Inquisitor Heinz stepped out from the witness gallery, raising the seal that carried the Inquisitorial Tribunal's own authority. A crimson mark appeared in the air, and the cheering across the plaza briefly quieted.
"This is the Emperor's own manifestation, and the Omnissiah's answer besides!" Heinz's voice rang out across the plaza. "Baldo Slester. You, a servant of the God-Emperor, dared to question a decision He had already made, and took part in falsifying decrees and in the assassination attempt against the Imperial Regent's own envoy."
"You stand excommunicate!"
The servo-skulls circling overhead answered in the same instant, thousands of mechanical voices overlapping. Slester staggered backward, and finally collapsed at the foot of the God-Emperor's statue.
Guilliman looked down at him, unmoved, and raised a hand.
Several Custodians stepped forward at once, hauling the Ecclesiarch, all will to resist gone out of him, up off the ground.
"The one facing judgment today is a man who used faith itself to launch a rebellion." Guilliman looked out over the pilgrims filling the plaza. "The Imperium's children may continue their prayers. The Ecclesiarchy will continue to carry out its duties. But no one, ever again, will use my father's name to serve their own private ends."
After a brief hush, the cheering rose once more.
Millions of the faithful shouted out the names of Guilliman and the God-Emperor together, watching with their own eyes as Slester was led off the plaza by the Custodians.
Guilliman didn't linger. Under the protection of his Honour Guard and the Custodians, he withdrew into the shadow along the Basilica's side.
Duvette was already standing there, looking down at empty space, apparently lost in thought.
"You did well, Duvette." Guilliman said, walking up to him.
Duvette raised his head at that, and held Guilliman's gaze for a moment.
"What if I told you all I actually did was get those decommissioned servo-skulls running again?"
The expression on Guilliman's face slowly froze. He turned to look at the white-gold candle flames, still burning on their own, then glanced once more at the statues of the Saints, already settled back into their original poses.
"None of the rest of it had anything to do with you?" Guilliman asked.
Duvette nodded without a word, and turned to look toward the direction of the Eternity Gate.
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