343 – The Starchild

“He is the Starchild.” My words hung in the air for a moment. Cain and Jurgen looked at me with confused frowns, but luckily there was someone who was well-informed enough to appreciate the significance of what I’d just said.

Amberley sucked in a sharp breath, then spoke up in a quivering tone, “How certain are you?”

I gave the child in question a searching look, who was now pouting at me. “I started at 99%, but I’m getting less and less certain each time he pouts.”

“Good,” Alex said, huffing while crossing his arms. “Stupid prophecies. Stupid Big Me with his stupid expectations. He throws me away like garbage, and now he wants me to fix his fuck-ups. None of this would have happened had he not cast me out!”

Amberley stared at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending, and her jaw would have likely been knocking on the floor had it not been attached to her head. 

“You are his Humanity,” I said, blinking owlishly as the puzzle pieces finally clicked into place. That’s what I’d been feeling this whole time, and what I’d felt even more when he bared his soul to me. “You are the Emperor’s discarded Humanity.”

“That’s a Bingo!” He said, then giggled. “Is that how I use that word? The older memories are a bit foggy.”

The small, playful smirk at the edge of his lips told me he knew exactly what he was doing. He’d made that silly reference on purpose, though what that purpose was, I couldn’t tell. Was it to make me let down my guard and trust him, as someone else who remembered the Earth I grew up in, or was he just happy to talk with someone who understood stupid 21st-century pop-culture references? It was probably a bit of both, if I had to guess. It was working too. 

“Close enough.” I shrugged, trying my best not to show my thoughts while ignoring the bewildered peanut gallery and the Cain who was still in the process of rebooting after Cain.exe crashed at my earlier announcement. “What are you doing in the Webway anyway?”

“Hiding, obviously,” he said. “I am technically kinda like a Perpetual now, but before this it’s just been reincarnation after reincarnation of wasted life. This is my first life in which I could recall all my memories from every single one of my previous lives, and in which I managed to properly awaken even a sliver of the power I once held. It’s- I have been incomplete before, leaving me with a random assortment of fractured memories that were not very useful, which in turn made me easy pickings for … nasty things.”

He shuddered at that, and I had to resist the urge to pat his head or hug him. He was just so … huggable and petable. That mop of messy brown hair was made for patting. 

Focus. I thought to myself furiously as a wave of artificial apathy washed over me. 

“Out of curiosity,” I said, giving the appalled Inquisitor and Commissar next to me an amused look. “How many times have you ended up executed for heresy?”

“I’ve lost count, but probably in the low hundreds, sometimes as a baby, sometimes as a toddler; I only made it to puberty on roughly every fifth life. They really do hate Psykers nowadays, don’t they? It probably didn’t help that I was babbling about weird stuff in a dozen different languages before I could even walk. I got called a Demonhost more times than I care to count.” He shrugged, and the look of abject horror on the Imperials’ faces was absolutely delightful. They’d spent too much time with me to disbelieve me when I proclaimed the weird kid as the Starchild, the literal Emperor reborn in human form. “At least they were usually quick with it. I got fed to Big Me once, his disparate soul shards tried to chew me up but he spat me back out like a fur ball after I absorbed a few soul-shards in return, but I must have spent a few centuries getting my soul all chewed up so that was a massive waste of time. It took me another few dozen rebirths after that to recover to a point where I wasn’t born like a lobotomised husk anymore. That was rather horrible.”

“So I’m guessing your goal isn’t to merge with the Throne Emperor and resurrect him in all his golden glory?” I asked curiously.

“Well, yes it is, but throwing me down his gullet is not going to work, evidently,” he said, rolling his eyes in apparent condescension while he sent an adorable glare at the Imperials. I was starting to think he was less the Emperor’s Humanity, or just a large chunk of him in a child’s body … but just a child who’s inherited his memories and Will. “Stupid numbskulls. I should have blown Mars into the Sun; maybe then some people would have been allowed to develop a brain in my absence. But yes, I kinda have to get Big Me resurrected properly, because otherwise we're just dying slowly and miserably. Unless you have a plan for dealing with the four tumours, friend?”

Case in point, I very much doubted Big E would have ever said that, or used those words in particular. Alex was just so … distinctly childish. It wasn’t a bad thing, and I knew I was repeating myself here, but it was weird as hell. 

“Not in the short term, I’m afraid,” I said dryly, crossing my arms. I would need a lot of time and growth before I felt confident enough to start throwing hands with a Chaos God inside their Realms. As for doing so against the four of them united? That was all but hopeless. The heat death of the universe would come sooner.

“On a slightly happier note, I have a plan … of sorts, if you are willing to help?” Alex said, clasping his hands together and giving me an adorable pleading look. Did he make this body just to- Ah, whatever. 

“What is it?” I asked, trying not to look like I’d just folded like a lawn chair before his cuteness.

“It’s nothing concrete yet, but with your help it goes from being a long shot to marginally more possible to succeed,” Alex said happily. “But it will have to wait for the right time; for now, I’d just like to be protected from all the nasties wanting to chew me up!”

“That I can do.” I nodded.

“No,” Alex said to the Inquisitor, his gaze flickering over to her with a stern, serious look in his eyes, and the woman’s mouth, which had just opened to interject something, fell shut. “Just no. I’d sooner stick my head inside a Lord of Change’s beak than trust the Imperium in its current state not to get in my way and to protect me properly. My new friend here might not be as experienced yet, but she is already a more powerful Psyker when it comes to pure power and potential than anyone I’d ever met outside of perhaps myself at my prime.”

“Before or after Molech?” I asked curiously.

He gave me a look. “After.”

“Neat.”

He chuckled, and the sound came out in a way that reminded everyone that despite everything, Emperor Junior still looked like a tween boy. His tone had a quality to it that made you forget it was the squeaky voice of a boy on the cusp of puberty, but the chuckle banished that illusion. The Imperials looked even more weirded out than before, especially Jurgen, who seemed to be working those two lone brain cells of his reaaaallly hard while frowning in ‘deep thought’. Alex didn’t seem to mind, his tiny shoulders even losing that tension they held as if to signify he was done talking about the serious stuff. 

“So,” I started. “How exactly do you think I’ll be able to protect you? I almost got murked like half a dozen times just this year. I could barely protect myself from a Greater Daemon, a Necron superweapon or a Tyranid … whatever the fuck that was.”

“Well, the easiest would be if you were willing to grant me shelter in your realm within the Immaterium,” Alex said with a small grimace, though he gave me a slightly hopeful look.

“Not a chance,” I answered out of hand, then paused. “Not now, not until I can trust you not to fuck me over.”

The Emperor of Mankind was very much an ‘ends justify the means’ type of guy to the absolute extreme. I wasn’t sure how much of that transferred over to Alex as his ‘discarded humanity’, but I wasn’t taking chances. The Prime Emperor for sure would have used the opportunity to usurp my power as his own; he was pathologically incapable of trusting anyone more than absolutely necessary.

He’d trusted Malcador, with his secrets and spy network at least, but I wasn’t so sure how far that went. Maybe that, too, was due to his lack of humanity, compassion and empathy, but who knew. The point was, Emps Jr was staying out of my Realm, end of story. 

“Then at your side would be the next safest place to be,” Alex said, only looking mildly disappointed. Was that because he’d missed an opportunity to usurp everything I had, or because he was genuinely disappointed by my lack of trust? “I understand, don’t worry. I wouldn’t let me have free rein in my own realm if I had one either. In fact, I'd technically imprisoned myself in my own soul because I couldn't even trust myself, so I hardly have the right to judge you. That paranoia is what keeps us alive … what a sad world we live in. Alternatively, I could stay here. This section of the Webway is cut off entirely from the larger system.”

“What’s that then?” I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder to point at the very much still present door-shaped portal. 

“A temporary gate,” Alex said, his childish face taking on a smug look. “I remember using this place as a hideout long ago. Took me a few centuries of fiddling with it on and off again to figure out the mechanism; Eldar stuff is so needlessly complicated, but I managed. It was a good time-waster while it lasted. I was planning to tie it to the Human Webway once that was finished … but you know how that went.”

I could not find a control terminal of any sort anywhere within the labyrinthine cobblestone catacombs. It made sense, if I thought about it. It wouldn’t have taken Big Emps centuries to figure out how to make this strange place dance to his tune if there were a user manual for it, or an easy-to-use terminal. Aeldari high-tech was confusing at the best of times, and that was when they weren’t actively trying to go for subtlety. 

“Why not make this the Human Webway?” I asked curiously.

“It can only connect to other, specific parts of the Webway, not to Webway Gates leading back to the Materium, and especially not to newly made faux-Gates like the one under the Palace,” Alex said with a grimace. “Figuring out how to connect it to the rest would have been a long-term project.”

Cain and Jurgen were fully checked out by then, looking numb and borderline catatonic from the shock … Cain was at least. That bovine look of confused incomprehension was Jurgen’s default expression, so who knew how he was taking it?

Amberley was swiftly approaching something similar, though there was the hunger to her as she absorbed every single word we exchanged like a dried-out sponge soaking up the rain. I wasn’t sure how widespread knowledge of the War in the Webway was among the Inquisition, or if they even knew about the wide-open Webway Gate the Throne Emperor was squatting on to keep the hordes of daemons squatting on the other side from getting through. 

Well, now she knows. 

Selene … well, there were no words to describe the rather conflicting storm of emotions she felt as she watched me practically banter and chat with the Mini Emperor. I wasn’t even going to try untangling that one, letting her deal with it on her own pace and being there when she wanted to rant or talk about it would likely be the best way to handle it. 

“I’m not going to babysit you, and I’ve already pissed off a Chaos God or two so sticking to me isn’t exactly the safest bet, how much of your power can you still use?” I asked, putting on a thoughtful frown. I’d felt his soul, his presence, so I had a guess, but he would know better than me still. 

He was a torn-off piece of soul-stuff and memories; sure, he’d been torn off gently and with the precision of a surgeon using a psychic scalpel, but the fact that he was not a naturally formed whole soul remained. I had to assume that was why he felt so much weaker than I would have expected from even just a shard of the Emperor, and why his golden light felt so brittle.

Throne Emperor wouldn’t have given his discarded, sealed shard more power than absolutely necessary, so I assumed whatever he had was inherent to the strength of his soul and the rest was later taken from soul shards he’d managed to absorb. 

“I’m not going to be a burden, and while my power might not rival yours as I am, I have most of Big Me’s experience and memories to call upon,” Alex said with a smugness only a child could show. “Besides, I’ve gotten really good at hiding, have I not? I’ve managed to evade even your oppressive senses until that Blank there made my psychic shroud waver … I could teach you, if you want, but that would require a bit more trust. My stealth is the only thing I have going for me at the moment if you decide I’d make a better snack than a friend.”

Tempting. Very tempting. Who wouldn’t have wanted to learn ‘how to psyker’ from the Emperor himself? But … trust. Trust was a double-edged sword, and something that I found myself rather reluctant to give to the galaxy’s most infamous deadbeat dad, to the same man who had brought about the Great Crusade that so ruthlessly exterminated so many dangerous and peaceful civilisations alike. 

I suppose I’ll have to wait and see just how much difference it makes that this version of him still has his humanity and compassion. 

“Very well, you may come with us,” I said slowly and solemnly. “You will be my guest, and we will see whether we can trust each other to be more. I know we tentatively agreed to become friends, but you should know something like that is built upon shared experiences, not mere words.”

“That’s … good?” He said, looking wary for a moment before giving a serious nod. “Very well. It’s not optimal, but much better than my most pessimistic expectations. Alright! Sooo, just out of curiosity, how did you manage to piss off the four tumours? I don’t suppose you swindled them out of a good portion of their powers?”

“Isn’t that what you did on Molech?” I raised an eyebrow, and he grinned unashamedly, looking a bit smug, though he neither confirmed nor denied it. It could have been a ruse to have me believe what might have been Chaos propaganda to keep the actual truth close to his chest. “I may or may not have stolen some Eldar souls from Excess, and I might have erased a Lord of Change, plus a fair bit of other daemons of all kinds. I doubt Decay likes me much, since I’ve been waging a war on the abysmal healthcare system in the places I’ve taken over. Maybe only War likes me, but you can’t really tell with him. He expresses both like and dislike the same way: trying to have you beaten to death by one of his mooks.”

“Eh, it could be worse.” Alex shrugged after a moment. “So? Can we go now? I’ve spent the last five years of my life in these dreary catacombs, and I’d very much like to see the sun … a sun, again.”