"Protect His Majesty."
"Protect our lord."
"..."
The Silent King's household guard moved first, charging Datch and his party with phase weapons live.
They would never permit their king to be threatened. That mission was carved deep into their code of conduct.
The Silent King's undying escorts were formidable — every one a warrior of the galaxy's first rank —
but their enemies were star-gods, and a nameless existence whom even the four Chaos Gods feared.
Datch did not so much as react. The Void Dragon, Zarhulash, and the other star-gods simply released their own energy and pinned the Necron guards where they stood.
Even Szarekh, lord of the undying and the Silent King himself, was utterly suppressed by the star-gods' power and had no means to resist.
"Go and free the Burning One," Datch said, turning to Orikan.
Trazyn sprang forward at once. "My lord, let me handle this. A rough fellow like Orikan isn't suited to such work."
The Endless could not keep the excitement and zeal out of his voice.
Orikan stood frozen beside them, lost for words.
Trazyn, Trazyn — if you want to steal the job, then steal it! Don't slander people for no reason!
"Fine. Go, then."
Datch handed the job to Trazyn without a second thought.
To him, it hardly mattered which NPC freed the Burning One.
He would be catching them all with Master Balls later anyway.
His staff glowing faintly in his hand, Trazyn walked towards the Silent King's throne, his stride elegant and composed, each step ringing clear.
The Silent King Szarekh glared at him in fury.
A member of the Triarch standing nearby spoke in Szarekh's stead.
"Trazyn, have you betrayed your own race and sided with those accursed apes? You have truly disappointed our lord!"
Trazyn ignored the insult and kept walking towards the throne.
"Traitor? The true traitor is you, Szarekh."
"You ruined everything. You turned our fear of death into slavery to the star-gods, and you turned those who feared death into the undying."
"You stripped our whole race of hope, stripped us of the power to breed, and made us soulless metal skeletons."
Trazyn raised his staff and levelled it at Szarekh. "The Nameless One is our only hope. He alone can save our people."
"Open your eyes and look outside, Szarekh. Among the Necrons there are already those whose curse has been lifted and who have regained their flesh. That is not your achievement. It is the work of the Nameless Ones."
As he spoke, Trazyn turned his staff on the Silent King's throne.
Faint ripples spread. An ancient seal broke.
Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One, was released.
Betrayed, shattered, and imprisoned by the Necrons at the end of the War in Heaven, this star-god had been used as a source of energy.
For long ages it had been treated as little more than a living battery.
Szarekh had even flayed its outer skin and made a cloak of it.
The instant it was freed, the Burning One erupted with a roar, unleashing a terrible torrent of energy that blasted away everything around it.
It meant to destroy all it could see — to reduce the throne that had confined it, and the whole battleship Song of Oblivion with it, to cosmic dust.
In the next instant the Void Dragon and Zarhulash, together with the other star-gods under Datch's command, joined forces to suppress their frenzied kin.
However, it resisted, it could not break free of the star-gods' coalition; all it could do was rage impotently.
Datch took out a Master Ball and threw it at the Burning One, which the star-gods had pinned to the floor.
The Master Ball's light engulfed the Burning One as it roared and struggled desperately.
Its living-metal body was sucked into the sphere as if drawn into a whirlpool.
The Master Ball snapped shut and bounced once on landing; the green indicator lit up, confirming the capture.
With the Burning One caught, Datch took out Shatter the Hammer, tapped the Master Ball, and repaired the damaged star-god.
The Burning One had been confined in the throne for thousands of years. Its energy had been drained again and again, its skin had been flayed, and the torment had warped its mind.
Left untreated, the Burning One could easily become a monster bereft of reason, attacking every living thing without discrimination.
Golden light burst forth, and Nyadra'zatha, wielder of flame, regained its sanity.
Yet it refused to submit to the Nameless Ones and rebelled at once.
The terrible force of the rules immediately visited unbearable pain upon it, and only once it abandoned all thought of resisting the nameless existence did the pain subside.
Realising it could not fight the Nameless Ones, Nyadra'zatha accepted the situation without further fuss.
It went down on one knee and showed its submission to the nameless existence.
The Silent King Szarekh sat on his throne and watched with an indescribable bitterness in his breast.
If you had respected me back then, we would never have become enemies.
"Good. That transaction is complete. Now it's my turn." Trazyn produced a hyperdimensional Rubik's cube glowing faintly.
The cube gave off a pale blue light, like the dying ember of an ancient star, and lit up the gloomy palace.
It was an indispensable tool in his career as an archaeologist, and it had helped him excavate all manner of troublesome relics.
From uncooperative fragments of Eldar gods to overly active beasts from dimensional rifts —
whatever the existence, once trapped inside, it was locked in a time-loop, repeating forever, with no escape.
"What do you intend to do?" asked Szarekh — no, the Triarch representative standing beside the throne.
Szarekh knew Trazyn.
I know this man's greatest hobby.
It is neither power nor wealth. It is stuffing everything he deems historically important into that accursed museum of his and turning it into a specimen.
Trazyn had produced a hyperdimensional cube before his very eyes; the intent was plain.
"Your age is over, Szarekh. But to simply die would be a waste. Far too much of a waste."
"You are the last supreme ruler of the Necrontyr civilisation, the prime mover of the War in Heaven, the architect of the anti-daemon Pariah dead-zones, and the one who made the final decision to turn our whole race into the undying."
"Every decision you make changes the flow of history across the entire galaxy."
Trazyn weighed the hyperdimensional cube lightly in his palm; its blue light grew brighter still.
"You ought to be displayed as a museum specimen, so that future generations may learn of your follies."
At that, Szarekh's living-metal face changed abruptly, and for the first time he opened his mouth.
"Don't, Trazyn. Don't do this!"
Szarekh tried to resist.
But the combined suppression of the star-gods held him motionless; he could only watch, powerless, as events unfolded.
"Nothing is impossible." Trazyn tossed the hyperdimensional cube.
It spun off his palm, rose into the air, and stopped dead above the Silent King's head.
Dim light poured out and enveloped Szarekh, his armed escorts, and the two other members of the Triarch standing on either side of the throne — who until then had been all but invisible.
In an instant the Silent King and his entourage were imprisoned in the silent cube.
Trazyn had already prepared a new exhibition hall for the Silent King back on Solemnace.
A placard ought to stand beside it.
The inscription would read: "The last rulers of the Necrontyr civilisation — Silent King Szarekh and his close attendants."
The hyperdimensional cube could hold even star-god fragments; holding Szarekh, stripped of his throne's power, would be no trouble at all.
In short, there was no need to worry that the Silent King might escape.
Unless someone intervened, Szarekh would remain locked inside the cube until the day the universe died.
At that moment, a dull metallic clang sounded from every entrance of the palace at once.
Necron nobles poured in through every gate with hosts of soldiers at their backs.
They had witnessed the final scene: Trazyn throwing the hyperdimensional cube and locking Silent King Szarekh, his guard, and the other two members of the Triarch in a time-loop as specimens.
These nobles and soldiers had sworn absolute loyalty to the Silent King.
That loyalty was etched into the very root of their existence; come what may, they would never betray it.
"Free our lord, or face our wrath!"
A Necron noble roared from a hovering barge.
His living-metal face was twisted with anger.
The undying soldiers raised their gauss rifles as one.
In the next instant, a dense hail of gauss beams burst from every muzzle.
Green rays criss-crossed the gloomy palace courtyard, weaving a dazzling net of light.
Datch raised the hand in the Infinity Gauntlet and snapped his fingers.
At once, a faintly shimmering spatial barrier appeared and cut off every beam.
Those green energy beams, powerful enough to unravel matter atom by atom, dissolved into countless tiny motes of light the instant they struck the barrier.
Datch had no intention whatsoever of letting anyone free Szarekh.
The Silent King's age was over. The Necrons would no longer be ruled by that man.
During his reign, Szarekh had transformed those who feared death into Necrons, started the War in Heaven, built the Pariah dead-zones, and turned his entire race into prisoners of living metal.
He may have been the greatest ruler his race ever had, but he no longer has the right to lead them into the future.
We need a change of ruler — someone who serves the interests of the Imperium of Man — and a new place for the Necrons in this new age.
Datch turned to Orikan beside him and asked casually, "Orikan, do you want to be supreme ruler of the Necrons?"
Orikan was stunned. His logic core crashed, and the staff nearly slipped from his fingers.
Nameless lord, do you always decide things this abruptly?
"I don't think Orikan is suited to the post," Trazyn objected at once.
"He has never managed anything in his life. All he does is use a time-travel device to peek at other people's futures behind their backs. Put him in charge, and he will be completely lost."
"Why not consider me instead? I am extremely experienced. I have run the Solemnace museum for tens of thousands of years, and I manage every relic, every display case, and every archive file to perfection."
Trazyn pushed himself forward with all his might, terrified that the Nameless One would pick Orikan over him.
Brother, you can't have a life that good.
If you become ruler of the Necrons, what am I supposed to do?
I'll be jealous, envious, and resentful.
"Get lost." Orikan kicked away the Trazyn who had sidled up.
I recruited you into the service of the Nameless Ones, and this is how you repay me? Trying to wreck my future right in front of me!
"My lord, thank you for your trust. I will do my utmost."
Datch ignored Trazyn. Hand the throne to that man, and every Necron dynasty would be plunged into serious crisis.
While helping to gather the star-god fragments, Trazyn's obsession with relics had reached a completely unhinged level.
As ruler, he would very likely seize every precious relic and ancient artefact in the entire Necron civilisation.
By then it would no longer be the Solemnace museum; it would be the museum of the whole galaxy.
"Then I entrust rule of the Necrons to you," Datch told Orikan.
Then he took the amazing medicine-making machine out of his backpack and began preparing to lift the curse that had plagued the Necrons.
The forebears of the Necrons were those who feared death, cursed with short lives and cancer.
They had once been creatures of flesh and blood, but their gene-sequences had been eroded again and again by the toxic, ancient stars of a cradle-galaxy polluted by the star-gods.
In other words, their lifespans had never been anything to envy; generation after generation, those who feared death met the inescapable end of a brief life.
The greatest scientists of the Necrontyr exhausted every scrap of their civilisation's wisdom and still could not lift the curse etched into the deepest level of their genes.
In the end, in desperation, they were seduced by the star-gods, abandoned the flesh, and chose to live on inside cold shells of living metal.
To secure his position, Orikan needed the rulers of the various dynasties to sincerely accept and submit to him.
For that, he had to deliver results.
A feat like breaking the biological curse, or ridding them of the curse of cancer, would surely secure him the ruler's seat.
Datch had considered simply wiping out the Necrons, but after weighing his options he had dropped the idea.
The vast majority of Necrons were, in fact, perfectly ordinary people.
They had held no power as rulers and gained nothing from the long War in Heaven. From first to last they had been nothing but a pitiful herd of beasts of burden!
Besides, after the War in Heaven and sixty million years of sleep, almost no Necrons with self-awareness and reason actually remained.
Most were metal skeletons without intellect or response, fit only to obey orders.
Even with the biological curse lifted, only a very few could truly be brought back as those who feared death.
Most of their souls had vanished long ago over countless long sleeps.
Even their memories had been steadily lost during reconstruction, left incomplete by repeated overwriting and formatting.
The number of survivors with their reason intact would probably be only a fraction of the race at its peak.
Much like the Craftworld Eldar, they would find it hard to regain their former glory.
Better, perhaps, to keep them alive and have them contribute to the rise of the Imperium of Man.
Knowledge of ancient Necron science: technology, construction techniques, energy manipulation, matter transmutation.
All of it was strength the Imperium of Man could draw on in the conquest of the galaxy and the war against the four Chaos Gods.
...