347 – Concerns of a Lover

Selene didn’t know how to feel anymore. She’d thought she was over it, that she’d long made her decision and was perfectly happy with it. The Imperium of Mankind had been her home for long decades, but she could count on one hand with fingers left over the number of people from it that she actually liked.

Any of them that she would have missed were dead, their bodies either cremated or consumed. Her grandmother had always elicited mixed emotions in her; the woman had been the one to save her from the fate of becoming a vacuous wallflower like all the other empty-headed noblegirls, but she’d also been the one to railroad her into a future wrought with peril. Strenuous training at first, then the years in the Astra Militarum to ‘get her bloodied ’, and then some more body-breaking training.

Then the Wanderer. She still missed that damned ship, but it had been taken from her and it very likely ended up moulded into a Space Hulk by now, or just torn apart by Daemons. That traitorous asshole hopefully suffered long and hard before he expired. 

All things told, she’d been happy with her decision to abandon all that and throw her lot in with the often annoying and always lovable, powerful idiot that waltzed into her life. The Imperium had given her a lot, but took it all away in the end, and would have seen her dead. She would have become a statistic. No one alive would have missed her.

Even her grandmother would have just likely shrugged and dubbed her a failure for not managing to retain her second-in-command’s loyalty in a moment of great peril. 

Echidna would have missed her. And somehow, that made all the difference. Selene rather liked feeling wanted, loved and cherished. It was such a rare treat in her previous lifestyle and Echidna was just so free with her affections, non-contingent of her being wealthy, powerful, or influential. Just for who she was. 

It wasn’t even that Selene betrayed the Imperium, it was more like the Imperium betrayed her … through its traitorous citizens, yes, but it still felt like a wholesale betrayal. Maybe it had been a test she failed, to see whether she chose to betray the Imperium or choose a “glorious” death when a shapeshifting psyker extended a helping hand in her moment of despair. 

If so, she was happy to have failed. She hadn’t felt guilty about her decision for a single moment since … right up until she had the God-Emperor standing before her. The boy that called himself ‘Alex’ had that aura of familiarity, like a friend you’d known your whole life, despite having only just recently met. 

Selene had never been especially pious, it came with being born into a Rogue Trader Dynasty that had a hand-written Writ of Trade with the Emperor’s very own personal signature on it from ten thousand years ago. She never believed the myths, the silly embellishments born over the millenia, or the lies the Adeptus Ministrorum spread to entrench themselves and make themselves appear more important than they actually were. 

She had known though, with absolute certainty, that some parts of the legends were real. The Voss Dynasty had records going back to the very first century of the Great Crusade, they had records of the first Rogue Trader of their family who acted as an explorer and forward scout for one arm of the Crusade. They had scouted dozens, if not hundreds, of worlds, supplying information for His forces to conquer. She knew there was a kernel of truth to all of it, and she also knew that the Emperor’s Divinity was a real, tangible thing. 

She had seen priests of the Imperial cult bless bullets and water, then watched those same things tear through the ranks of the unbelievers with ease whereas the non-blessed variants pinged off of armour or did insignificant damage. She had seen a priest chant and a Daemon reel back as if burned. She had also heard of the Living Saints and their miraculous deeds, not the legends, but from credible sources she trusted not to embellish what had happened. The Imperium, its administration, and its beliefs could get things done. 

Still, she had felt like, just a bit, as if the Emperor didn’t care. She had been left for dead, and it was someone anyone in the Imperium would have called a heretic without a second thought who lent a helping hand. That was a sign, though what for, she couldn’t know. 

Was it a sign that he approved of her decision, or that he’d written her off as a failure already? 

I could ask. The intrusive, insidious thought burrowed into her mind. The Emperor Reborn was hanging around in a room within walking distance of the apartment suite she’d received from Echidna. I could just walk over there and ask-

“He wouldn’t know,” Echidna’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts, and Selene groaned as she felt those masterful fingers get to work on massaging the tension out of her shoulders. “He hasn’t been part of the Throne Emperor since Horus sundered his soul. Even if he had been, you know what I told you about him. The Emperor is a million soul-shards with a billion different fragmented minds that all grasp and reach and act on their own. He has no singular mind, each fragment of him is different, and each is probably preoccupied with any one time. They notice one issue, but by focusing on it, a billion other problems go unnoticed. It could have been plain bad luck that he didn’t notice you.”

“Would he have cared if he did notice?” Selene found herself asking, her face pressed into a sinfully soft pillow that muffled her voice. “Would he have cared?”

“Who knows?” Echidna said, and the shrug was audible in her voice. “It would have probably depended on which shard focused on you, and even then, the only time he’d ever overtly intervened in anything was when his blueberry boy scout nearly died … or will die. Not sure whether that happened yet. The only exceptions are Saints, and it’s not fun being an Imperial Saint … and even then, Saints are made for a purpose. You … Saints are made to save worlds or accomplish tasks that save entire Sectors. There was no such task for you at Follax IV.”

Selene knew that. Unfortunately, logic didn’t matter to that persistent twinge of guilt still eating away at her. A good Imperial woman would have chosen death. Selene chose to trust in the woman she knew was impersonating an Inquisitor and had other strange and probably heretical powers. By all metrics, she was a traitor of the highest order. 

What did that make her?

She’d never cared before, always feeling like it had been her only choice, and that her life had been better than ever since making it … but … 

“Give it time,” Echidna whispered soothingly, and Selene groaned as her fingers expertly worked a knot of muscle. “I very much doubt Alex would blame you for betraying the current Imperium, especially considering that technically he is doing the same thing by not immediately sending himself to be devoured, and the Throne Emperor is in no state to blame anyone. Also, have you done anything that would actually harm the Imperium? I mean, helping me means I’ll be better prepared to help the Primarchs, and the Emperor when the time comes. If none of them betrays me, we might just maintain some sort of an alliance even after Big E gets resurrected."

“Do you really think that’s possible?” Selene asked, turning her head sideways to throw a look at her lover, who put on a pensive frown. 

“We could probably do a quick and dirty resurrection right now if we hopped over to Terra, but that would almost certainly result in a Dark King scenario.” Echidna shrugged, fingers still working their magic. “Who knows? Alex seems to think it’s possible, and he is something of an expert on rebirth, I guess. I’m sure it’s possible, but I’m also sure there are going to be a hell of a lot of obstacles in the way.”

“What obstacles?” Selene continued, mostly just to distract herself. Echidna had such a nice voice; it was a delight to listen to it, especially when she started rambling about something. And oh, she loved to ramble sometimes, especially when it came to knowledge she was confident nobody else knew. 

“Chaos, for one, they’ll be quite resistant to the idea, I’m sure,” Echidna hummed. “I’m not sure how the Grey Knights will react; they have something of a secret duty to make sure Emps keeps his skeletal butt on the Golden Throne. There is also Valdor, who is doing his own thing and might think we are shitting all over his plans to resurrect the Emperor, same with Russ. Then of course there is Guilliman, who might fear that the man who stands up from the Golden Throne will not be the same one that sat down on it. Rightly so, but even if we do things right, he might think it’s not enough and oppose it. Fear of the unknown does a lot.”

Echidna’s hands were under her shirt now, massaging her waist and making delightful circular motions with her thumbs that travelled down along her spine. Selene knew how massages ended with Echidna when she let the woman get away with it, but she didn’t mind. She was in the mood for distractions, and there was no better distraction than letting her beautiful lover play with her body. That would be a few hours at least where she couldn’t spiral, overthink and feel guilty about foolish things. 

“Mankind will be better off once we are done, you know that,” Echidna continued softly, masterfully blending what Selene wanted to hear with the truth. “Even the Emperor doesn’t trust or has any loyalty to the current form his erstwhile Empire has taken. It’s a decrepit, decaying carcass of a society that should have died thousands of years ago but clung on to life through sheer grit and human spite. We are helping Mankind heal.”

“You never struck me as an altruist, and it’s certainly not patriotism that’s driving you,” Selene mumbled. “Why are you doing this? Just going with the flow?”

“I said that I want to build a society where I can enjoy life as best as I can, right? Since there is no actual society in this shithole of a galaxy that I’d enjoy living in, I’m going to have to build one,” Echidna replied, as if that was so simple. 

“But you have it,” Selene said, letting out a satisfied groan as those magical fingers worked out another knot just above where her shorts covered her hip. The hands ghosted over the fabric, then continued their work on her right thigh. “Vallia is right here. You could build your little slice of paradise here. Why conquer the Sector? Why work with the Imperials to change the Imperium? If anything, the weaker they are the less you’d have to worry about an invading crusade.”

“Because if I’m getting into the Empire Building business, I’m going to do it well, do it big and be the best at it. Go big or go home, you know? So I’m going to build the largest and greatest empire this shithole of a galaxy has ever seen,” Echidna declared with a glimmer of something spiteful and arrogant shining through her words. She really thought the best way to give a giant middle finger to the current galaxy was to make it better, even if she had to drag it into the future kicking and screaming. “I have the power to upend the Fate of this galaxy, I’m not going to be satisfied with a single paltry moon. Besides, it’s not as if merely sticking my head into the sand will make all the horrors out there in the Void ignore me. There are too many dangers out there for me to be reactive in keeping us safe. A stronger Imperium of Mankind will be a greater buffer against whatever Chaos may throw at us, giving us time to develop our own. There are few that can stand against me, and so long as we play it careful, development will go well.”

Selene suspected the most truthful part of this entire conversation was in that first sentence. If Echidna got into something, be it psyker stuff, tech stuff or empire building, she wanted to be the best at it, or at least go into it with that as her end goal. There was no one more motivated than a narcissist with something to prove. Selene loved that woman, but she was not without faults, not even close. Her narcissism was one of the milder, if the most immediately apparent, ones.

Not that Selene minded. It wasn’t as intense a narcissism as it was in some nobles she’d known, and when backed up by skill and power, it made the woman appear confident instead of obnoxious. It made her want to excel at everything she did, which was also a rather attractive trait to have in a lover. What she wanted, she got.

“It just feels so … “ Selene trailed off, trying to find the words to describe the conflicting mix of emotions she was feeling, only to come up short. “Weird.”

It was a lame alternative, but it was the best she got. Echidna just gave a hum in response, continuing her massage down her right calf, then further on to the soles of her feet. With each gentle yet firm motion that squeezed the tension out of her muscles, Selene could almost feel her worries draining away. They were still there, but the sensations rippling through her weary body felt much more important at the moment.

“You know you can speak to me whenever you want, on whatever topic you want; I could listen to your ramble about voidship combat doctrine for hours without growing bored,” Echidna continued, and Selene almost snorted. “Err, what I mean is, if you want to talk, I’m always here. Even if you think I wouldn’t want to talk about a topic, I’ll always hear you out. You know that, right?”

Selene smiled fondly, she knew that but it was nice to hear all the same. It reaffirmed things, to hear it aloud, and it lifted her spirits to hear the usually composed and confident sound so adorably awkward. It was a rare treat she always took all due delight in.

“I know,” Selene said fondly, her voice soft and even a bit vulnerable. “Thank you.”