The Magos regained his composure quickly. Having survived for over a thousand standard Terran years with the aid of technological augmentations, he had witnessed many undercurrents within the Adeptus Mechanicus. It appeared he had inadvertently stumbled into a heretical assembly.
In truth, such occurrences were common within the Cult Mechanicus. From the Forge Worlds at the Imperial core like Mars to distant frontier worlds like Rath, numerous splinter factions existed. Academic exchanges and political infighting between schools of thought often led Tech-Priests to extremes, testing the boundaries of orthodoxy until heresy took root.
The Magos had encountered such situations several times before: Tech-Priests who believed they had deciphered the secrets of the universe, Explorators obsessed with extinct civilizations, or Logis attempting to "improve" an STC template. Each time, he had personally consigned those heretics to the forges. It was his duty.
Now, his cogitator core operated at high speed. His gaze swept over the fanatical faces in the hall—the lofty Titan Princeps, the proud Knight nobles, the Biologos Magi of his own rank—and finally landed on the Fabricator-General in the corner. The ruler of Mars sat with his massive mechanical head lowered like a humble servant, silently reciting that eerie prayer.
"The God was broken, the God shall be whole."
Damnation! The Magos emitted an incredulous hiss. Even the Fabricator-General of Mars, who had resisted countless temptations, had fallen. This was no ordinary heresy.
His logic circuits calculated his odds: zero. The armed forces in the hall could tear him apart ten thousand times over. He calculated the possibility of escape: also zero.
Only one path remained: martyrdom.
The Magos began a silent self-diagnostic. Praise the Omnissiah. His plasma core reactor could initiate an uncontrollable explosion through a reverse-cycle, with a yield sufficient to level the entire hall. This was his mission. For the Machine God!
An independent logic module branched off from his main core to calculate the optimal timing for detonation. At that moment, Demian spoke again. His voice had lost its calm, replaced by a strange, rhythmic cadence.
"Listen, for I have received a revelation, and I shall proclaim to you the ancient mysteries." Demian spread his arms, his Enginseer robes billowing slightly in an invisible force. "In the immemorial past, before time was born, the God existed in all things. His body was as vast as the firmament, His will as fierce as the forge. He is the Machine God, the first tooth of the gear, the prime mover of rotation, the indefinable formless distortion, and the malevolent art from which all technology originates."
Silence fell over the hall, broken only by the hum of machinery.
"However, the God broke Himself," Demian's voice dropped low, as if recounting a sacred sacrifice. "His body shattered, becoming the myriad phenomena of the universe. Every grain of stardust, every ray of light, every stone is a stigmata of the God's flesh. He achieved wholeness through breaking and gave life through perishing. That broken divine body built an insurmountable veil between reality and falsehood—imprisoning the chaotic evils in a cage forever."
The Magos's cogitator core gave a mental snort. Typical heretical rhetoric.
"And you—" Demian's gaze swept the hall, passing over the fanatical faces and landing on the Magos. "You are obsessed with turning flesh into machinery, believing this approaches the will of the Omnissiah. You do not realize that what you seek has always been within you."
He pointed to his own chest, toward the body of flesh and blood that had undergone almost no augmentation.
"What is flesh? What is machine? Both are the body of the Broken God, the sacrament He bestowed upon us. The mechanical power you pursue so bitterly has never been within cold steel, but within all things—in every grain of sand, in every drop of water, in every beating heart."
The Magos felt a fluctuation in his core. Absurd, he told himself. Pure absurdity. If flesh was matter, it could arguably be part of the "divine body," but this was mere sophistry—a metaphysical excuse for the Enginseer's lack of augmentations.
The Mechanicus indeed viewed the human form as perfect, but most Magi saw it as the perfect starting point to test the followers of the Machine God. The Omnissiah allowed the flesh to be weak to test their will. The role of a follower was to learn, to improve the machines given by the God, and to enrich His creation in the process. The flesh is weak; the machine is salvation.
"And the will of the Deity has never passed away," Demian's voice rose again. "His will is eternal, like the fire in the forge. His will projects into the world, choosing blessed vessels to be His voice—this is the Avatar of the Omnissiah."
A low chanting began in the hall as the Tech-Priests responded to the call.
"Ten thousand years ago, an Avatar of the Omnissiah walked the galaxy. He reunited the scattered humanity and spread the faith of the Broken God to the ends of the universe. He established the Empire and fought the minions of Chaos, for he knew they were the Great Enemy of the Omnissiah."
"And now—" Demian's voice became solemn. "A new era has arrived. Ten thousand years of waiting have ended. A new Avatar of the Omnissiah has reappeared in the world. He walks among us, He looks down upon our world, and He shall reshape this decaying galaxy with the authority of the Broken God!"
"Enough!" The Magos stood up abruptly. His mechanical appendages flared out like an octopus. Coolant boiled in his extreme anger, erupting from his interfaces as white mist. "This is blasphemy!" the Magos roared. "You dare speak of the Omnissiah this way? You dare disguise this crude trickery as sacred revelation?"
He stepped forward, ignoring the listeners who turned toward him. "You say a new Avatar has descended? Fine! Then produce your arguments! Show us the evidence!"
Demian simply watched him. "Sit down. You are merely lost."
The Magos moved to argue, intending to detonate his plasma core and take these heretics with him. However, his body sat down, moving outside of his control.
What? The Magos's cogitator core raced. He attempted to activate his mechanical components—parts that had been reliable for a millennium—but the machine spirits refused his commands with a calm that bordered on the pious.
It was impossible. A sharp burst of static erupted in his mind. He checked every augmentation. Everything was functional. The machine spirits were not dormant, damaged, or interfered with. They simply refused to obey him, as if they had finally heard their true master.
The Magos looked at Demian on the stage. The young Tech-Priest remained there, his expression calm and his gaze merciful.
"Cheer," Demian's voice rang out again, now carrying an indefinable power. "For I bring you the gospel! The Omnissiah walks among us. He is about to descend upon this world, bringing his faith, bringing the wholeness and glory of the Broken God."
As his words fell, everyone in the hall saw it. Within their bionic eyes, their optical lenses, and every machine linked to them, the machine spirits rejoiced. They displayed a single image in the only way they could.
It was the high orbit of Mars.
A figure.
The silhouette floated there silently, looking down at the red planet below. Behind him was the endless starry sky. He suspended himself in the vacuum like a god descending upon the world.
Not just them. Simultaneously, in every corner of Mars, Magi, Fabricators, and ordinary cultists stopped what they were doing in terror or ecstasy. The machine spirits within their augmentations surged with joy, projecting the vision of that figure into their sight. No one was exempt; all saw his presence.