The four Primarchs, accompanied by their honor guards, followed the attendant Iron Man into a specialized chamber. Yvraine and a dozen of her Ynnari retinue were currently being held in temporary containment by the machines.
In the center of the vast, hollowed-out cargo bay stood a singular, peculiar cage.
The prison was defined by four pillars of gleaming, silvery metal. Between them, barriers of crackling energy pulsed with faint, flowing arcs of light. While the translucent fields appeared thin and fragile, the fluctuations radiating from them carried a distinctly lethal edge. Beyond this, each of the prisoners was collared with the same metallic restraint rings used on the Imperium's own psykers.
Axion utilized these rings to effortlessly suppress the Aeldari's psychic energies, ensuring they could not manifest the power necessary to break free. However, guided by Yvraine's command, the Ynnari warriors remained stoic, offering no resistance, nor did they attempt to breach the Iron Men's cage. To act otherwise would be to invite a fate that even Ynnead, in his slumber, might not avert.
The Primarchs came to a halt before the cage, staring through the shimmering barriers at Yvraine and her kin.
"Vile xenos," Lion El'Jonson growled, his hand resting upon the pommel of his blade as he glared at Yvraine. "Tell me, what is the nature of your conspiracy?"
At the insult, Yvraine's retinue bristled with fury. "Ignorant mon-keigh! You…"
"We are not here to bicker," Yvraine interrupted, silencing her guard.
The Lion, however, was not so easily appeased. "A group of xenos captives, still defiant even within their cage, your arrogance and ignorance are staggering. I am charged by the Emperor to protect the myriad worlds of humanity; I am not to be judged by a beast in a pen. Hold your tongue, or the moment this cage opens shall be the final moment of your life."
"Primarch Lion El'Jonson of the Imperium, please restrain yourself," the attendant Iron Man interjected, speaking only after the Lion had finished his outburst to maintain proper decorum. "While these Aeldari are currently detained, they are not under the jurisdiction of the Imperium. You may be one of the Creator's works, but that does not grant you the authority to exercise the Creator's prerogatives."
With the tension briefly checked, Roboute Guilliman stepped forward, looking to the prisoner. "Tell me your purpose, Yvraine. Why is it that you sought me out so insistently?"
"I bring you a prophecy, Guilliman."
As she spoke, Yvraine raised her hands, but the psychic energies she intended to summon remained absent, not a flicker of vision could be manifested.
"Prisoner Yvraine, explain your conduct," the automata said, its head swiveling to face the center of the cage upon detecting the faint residual traces of psychic activity.
"I require the use of my powers to project the content and imagery of the prophecy," she replied.
Guilliman turned to the Iron Man, hesitated for a moment, then spoke softly. "Can you temporarily lift the suppression? I trust she cannot escape from here."
The Ironkin gave a slow nod and raised a hand. The metal rings around Yvraine's neck and limbs dissolved from solid matter into a swirling nanite fluid, pooling into a metallic sphere on the deck.
"Prisoner, do not attempt any overreach. Any action deemed a threat will result in the immediate termination of your life."
"Guilliman! You!" The Lion found his brother's actions entirely unacceptable. Cooperating with xenos was, to him, even more abhorrent than the utilization of the Iron Men.
Jaghatai Khan, however, placed a steadying hand on the Lion's shoulder. "Stay your hand, brother. Let us see what message this xenos brings."
Yvraine's form began to radiate with a faint, ghostly psychic light. Her slender arms moved in fluid motions, and as the warp-energies surged, twelve runes ignited in the air, coalescing into nine shattered mirrors that drifted within the cage.
Within the fractured prisms, three omens flickered like dying embers. Yvraine began to chant in the ancient Aeldari tongue, her voice elegant, ethereal, and laden with a chilling significance:
"The third eye of the One-Eyed Watcher pierces the veil of imaginary space,
At the terminus of the seventh root of the Forest of Eternal Night,
It catches the scent of the Fading Silver Wolf.
The Iron Colossus and the Rider of the Wind,
Shall steer their course toward the eye that devours the stars,
Shattering the bulwarks of iron.
When the iron hooves crush the sixth hourglass,
The whispers of the abyss shall weave a thorny cage,
And cold iron shall cut down the vines."
Countless flickers of distorted imagery pulsed within the prisms; even without full clarity, the underlying sense of profanity and malice was palpable.
As Yvraine recited the prophecy, an identical voice echoed with a half-second delay, chanting the words simultaneously in Low Gothic. It was the attendant automata, processing the translation in real-time.
While the Primarchs were struck by the capability of the machine, they kept their focus on the task, desperately attempting to catalog the images flashing within the shards and decipher their meaning. The Aeldari were notorious for their cryptic riddles, and most of their prophecies were buried in layers of maddening abstraction. In eras past, when their pantheon remained whole, they might have easily parsed these celestial signals. Since the Great Fall, however, even they often struggled to understand the visions they received.
But this time, it was different. Yvraine silently gripped a crystal hidden in her palm. This prophecy did not originate from any Aeldari Farseer. The Solitaire, the one who had gifted her the Iron Men's quantum communications device, had left behind cryptic instructions that ultimately led her to this crystal. On her own, she could never have manifested images so laden with such concentrated malice. It was only after witnessing the raw, terrifying war-might of the Iron Men that she realized the true value of this intelligence. Only she, the chosen of the God of the Dead, possessed the capacity to project this vision.
The Khan looked up, peering through the cage at Yvraine. "What is this prophecy intended to convey? I saw the shadow of Russ in one of those shattered frames."
Before Yvraine could reply, the attendant Iron Man projected a massive holographic display. It contained all the fragmented imagery from the nine prisms, but with a staggering addition. Using predictive algorithms and comparative analysis, Axion had performed a massive reconstruction of the shards, sharpening the blurry scenes into clear, stable visuals.
It was akin to taking a decaying, ancient reel of film, performing frame interpolation, and remastering it into high-definition. While some images remained too warped or corrupted for Axion to identify, the machine had extrapolated the missing data based on geometry and edge-curve analysis, resulting in a display that was occasionally surreal and grotesque.
Most of the imagery remained fractured, yet for a prophecy that was typically shrouded in utter ambiguity, this was an unprecedented breakthrough.
The four Primarchs stood before the holographic display, scrutinizing every detail. The majority of the clear scenes depicted brutal, relentless warfare. The variety of foes was vast: Iron Warriors, Thousand Sons, nightmarish, twisted forests, and legions of daemons. In some segments, Iron Men and White Scars warriors were seen fighting in unified fronts across wildly different environments.
Clearly, the vision encompassed at least five distinct battlegrounds. Some of the environments were so similar that even the Iron Men could not determine if they were the same engagement, making it impossible to calculate exactly how many trials lay ahead.
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