Editing The Tales of the Emperasque: Part Two (section)

==Back at Craftworld Ulthwé==
Farseer Taldeer, daughter of the mightiest psyker the Eldar race had ever birthed, knelt at the side of the stasis-locked body of Robute Guilliman. His face was stopped in time, and Taldeer could see, with her Eldar eyes, small pockmarks on either side of his mouth, a grimace of pain. A nasty, green-tinged cut crossed his neck, and an empty, sad look filled his eyes.

With his mind as frozen as the rest of him, all she could do was look. She couldn’t read his mind, even if she tried: even the Eldar can’t reverse or unfreeze time. LIIVI sat down in a chair next to her and looked at the Primarch pensively. “So…that’s what he looks like. We were always told that he was the one who held the Imperium together in the aftermath of the Heresy.”

She shook her head slowly. It was unnerving to be next to someone with a mind frozen in time. Such an empty blankness where thought should be. She straightened up, slowly. “I have no idea. That was before I was born.” LIIVI looked at the shimmering yellow field of energy that surrounded him, maintained by the tiny black box the Emperor had brought with him from Macragge. Taldeer looked at him sideways and let a smile quirk the corners of her mouth. She gently stretched her mind to LIIVI’s, and his lips twitched in the approximation of a smile he saved for her.

“I can feel that, you know. Aren’t I as blank as he is?” She shook her head emphatically.

“No, you’re just free of clutter. Waste. His mind is just…not there. A dead man has more of a mind than he does.” She grinned and sat beside him, letting her head rest against his. When she spoke again, it was almost silent. “I have to wonder what he meant…if Father’s all right.” LIIVI didn’t answer.

Neither of them could see it, but the air around the base of the Webway Assembly Gates was suddenly filled with a suffuse, purple haze. The Guardians posted nearby pointed and backed off, uneasily. The monstrous new body of the Emperor of Mankind appeared in the midst of the clutter of Gates and landing pads. “FINALLY. I HATE RAW WARP TRAVEL.”

Taldeer, several buildings away, leapt to her feet when she sensed the Emperor return…with someone else in tow. “It…it can’t be…”

With the characteristic CRACK of displaced air that always accompanied a teleportation, the Emperor’s monstrous new form arrived in the conference room. “GOT HIM.”

Taldeer gasped and ran to her prostrate father, who was clearly comatose, with a rictus of impossible ecstasy on his face. “Father! No…was he too late?”

“HE’S RIGHT HERE, FARSEER, AND NO, YOUR FATHER WILL RECOVER. MIGHT TAKE A WHILE THOUGH, I’D TIE HIM TO A BED SO HE DOESN’T HURT HIMSELF IN WITHDRAWAL.” The seventy foot long Emperor did something with his shoulders that was probably a shrug. “SATISFIED NOW?”

Taldeer was in no condition to answer, bent over her father clutching his chest, heaving sobs inconsolably. LIIVI squeezed her shoulder, which he was pretty sure was what someone with a sense of empathy would have done. Macha tore into the room from where she had been waiting with the rest of the council, in the next room over. She saw her father’s form on the floor and screamed. “Father! You…” she broke off when she saw his condition, and rounded on the gigantic Emperor. “Is he…is he dead?”

“NOPE, I WAS JUST IN TIME,” the quadrupedal God of Man replied, with a sense of smugness that didn’t really make it through his alien mouth.

Yrric and the others filed in more sedately, gazing at the tableau before them in awe. The gigantic Emperor turned and stared at them, his footfalls shaking the floor with every step. “SO, DO WE HAVE A DEAL? YOU HEAL MY SON BACK UP?”

Iyanna glanced at the others, catching a few nods. “The Council of the Farseers are in your debt, make no mistake of it. Roboute Guilliman will live.”

“FANTASTIC. NOW, I HAVE SOMEONE ELSE TO FIND, BUT I WON’T BRING HIM HERE. I CAN THINK OF A MUCH MORE SUITABLE PLACE FOR HIM TO WIND UP…” the Emperor trailed off, distracted, before teleporting off into the Warp once more. Macha knelt beside her sister and traced her hand over the soulstone Eldrad had bound to his armor.

“You’re not the only one who pays their debts, friend…” she whispered to the empty air.