The silent war escalated into a cataclysm. The Void Dragon unleashed the full might of its being. Beams of anti-entropic energy and tendrils of monomolecular-sharp living metal slammed against the interior of the Emperor's cage, creating percussive booms that shook the very bedrock of Mars.
The Monarch remained the eye of the storm. His will was a lockpick, his authority a key, and he was relentlessly turning it in the core of the Dragon's essence. The shadows around him churned into a vortex of absolute darkness that met the Dragon's emerald fury, nullifying it.
The knowledge flowed into him, a torrent of alien, crystalline logic. He saw the true nature of reality as a tapestry of mathematical constants. He saw the War in Heaven. He saw the C'tan feasting on life to forge the soulless legions of the Necrons.
Most importantly, he saw the science: mastery of inertia-less drives, manipulation of dimensional gateways, the principles of Blackstone. The path home was a complex equation, and he now possessed all the variables.
But this extraction was not without a price. The golden cage was not designed for this. The combined pressure of the Dragon's rage and the Monarch's unyielding will was pushing the ancient device beyond its limits.
With a sound that was both a high-pitched psychic shriek and the groaning crack of reality itself, a primary energy conduit on the cage overloaded. A hairline fracture, blazing with golden and green light, spiderwebbed across a section of the lattice.
It was enough.
A sliver of the Void Dragon's essence, a shard of the god's own consciousness, tore free. It did not attack the Monarch or the Custodes. It was a creature of the machine. With a reality-bending burst of speed, it shot upwards, phasing through the solid ceiling of the vault as if it were smoke. A virus, seeking a new host in the global data-net of Mars.
The battle of wills ended. The link was severed. The Monarch had what he wanted. He lowered his hand, the storm in the cavern instantly subsiding. The main body of the Dragon writhed in silent, frustrated agony, weakened and still trapped within its failing prison.
But on the surface of Mars, a new hell was being born.
A deep, ancient klaxon began to sound. Through his connection to the Spear of Judgement, the Monarch could sense the chaos erupting. An entire Forge-complex had gone silent, its data-flow severed, replaced by a single, repeating string of alien code. Then, its automated defenses, its legions of Skitarii, and its towering Knight-Titans began to activate, their targeting runes glowing not with the blessed red of the Omnissiah, but with the same sickly, soulless green as the Dragon below. The plague had found a foothold.
He turned from the cage, his mission complete.
"What have you done?"
Shield-Captain Valerian stood before him, his golden armor scorched, his face a mask of cold, righteous fury. His Shield-Host had their guardian spears leveled.
"You came here seeking knowledge," Valerian's voice was dangerously low. "Instead, you have unleashed an ancient plague upon the Throneworld's sister planet. You have doomed billions."
"I have what I came for," the Monarch replied, his tone devoid of apology. "Your Imperium kept a hungry god in its basement and built a church on top. You deluded yourselves into believing you could control it. I merely exposed the flaw in your design. This chaos is the product of your own hubris, not my actions."
He gestured to his knights, who materialized around him. "This is a matter for the priests and their broken god. We are leaving."
The Custodes stood their ground. "You will not leave," Valerian declared. "You are now an active and catastrophic threat. By the authority of the Golden Throne, you will be contained."
A faint smile touched the Monarch's lips. "Contained? Your Regent tried. Your god tried. Now you will try?"
The shadows at his feet began to writhe and expand.
"You have mistaken my patience for weakness, Shield-Captain. Let me correct that assumption."