30th MillenniumSoutheastern Fringe of the Milky WayTomb World SolemnaceSeveral Minutes Later
I kept casting sideways glances at two particular exhibits in Trazyn's collection, my eye twitching ever so slightly. Out of everything I had seen so far, those two artifacts impressed me more than all the others combined, and there was already an astonishing amount to be impressed by.
The endless galleries of Solemnace contained countless wonders. Representatives of races that had evolved, flourished, and gone extinct over the past sixty million years. Artifacts so extraordinary that words failed to do them justice. Krorks. Other Necrons. Relics from the War in Heaven.
Yet for someone who had once come from twenty-first-century Terra, none of that struck me quite as deeply as this.
Bathed in rigid emerald light atop polished necrodermis pedestals stood an unmistakable piece of human history.
An American spacecraft.
The Lunar Module.
The machine that had carried humanity's first explorers onto the Moon, regardless of what conspiracy theorists might have claimed about sound stages and fabricated footage.
And right beside it...
The legendary Soviet Lunokhod-1.
The sight of those two relics nearly unleashed a devastating wave of nostalgia, hidden only by my Harlequin mask. Fortunately, the mask could be commanded mentally not to display its wearer's emotions.
Now this was what it meant to be a curator of history.
Respect, Trazyn.
I genuinely respected him for this.
"These are two products of human science. A remarkably primitive interplanetary craft and a drone, respectively."
Naturally, Trazyn would not have been Trazyn if he had failed to notice my interest.
"And humans are those creatures your kind call mon-keigh. They..."
He paused, apparently realizing he was about to launch into the familiar condescending explanation older races reserved for younger ones.
Personally, I had never considered terms like young race or lesser race offensive.
How old was Homo sapiens?
Two hundred thousand years?
Perhaps a million, if one counted our proto-human ancestors.
The Aeldari had existed for more than sixty million years.
That wasn't racism.
It was mathematics.
Mathematics did not care about feelings.
No one became offended when a retiree called a university student young, or when an older brother referred to his younger sister as... well, younger. Whether that older person happened to be wiser, stupider, more arrogant, or more naïve changed nothing about the simple fact that they had existed longer.
Numbers were stubborn that way.
"We know, O Infinite One."
I answered while continuing that line of thought.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"Their Federation shone brightly across the galaxy."
I shrugged.
"But not for very long."
It was a perfectly truthful statement.
Compared to civilizations that had endured for sixty million years, even if one of them had spent most of that time asleep, humanity's golden age had been astonishingly brief.
Circumstances did not change the outcome.
Facts remained facts.
"Besides, our God drew inspiration from them when creating our style. I suspect it happened around the same era these machines were built."
I gestured toward the Lunar Module and Lunokhod.
"Oh. I see."
The sixty-million-year-old living machine immediately began muttering to himself.
"In that case, several minor galleries may require restructuring. If the connection to humanity is stronger than previously believed..."
He seemed entirely unbothered by the prospect.
Beside me, Killing Mockery and I exchanged glances.
I merely shrugged.
I was already familiar with this sort of behavior.
She, however, was experiencing Solemnace for the first time and appeared, to put it politely, utterly bewildered.
Her mask displayed exactly that.
"O Infinite One, perhaps you possess additional artifacts from that era? The Black Library contains an extensive body of knowledge concerning humanity's early history. I would be happy to assist with their identification."
I was deliberately appealing to his collector's instincts.
They could make even an ancient Necron act surprisingly carelessly.
Meanwhile, my companion shot me another curious look, seemingly trying to determine whether I was bluffing about the Black Library's archives or whether I genuinely had access to knowledge she lacked.
"After all," I continued, "possessing a relic without knowing exactly what it is must be rather inconvenient."
"Yes. Very. Very inconvenient."
For perhaps the first time since our meeting, genuine irritation crept into Trazyn's voice.
"Certain records have been lost due to the passage of time, malfunctioning scarabs, or the vandalism of a particular individual."
Definitely Orikan.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind.
"Rest assured, Aeldari. Your contribution shall not be forgotten. When you are eventually displayed within one of my galleries, this assistance will be duly noted in your description."
"You may call me Knowing Jester."
I offered a theatrical bow without breaking stride.
"This is my companion, Killing Mockery."
I gestured toward the Harlequin woman, who returned an equally theatrical bow.
"New information for the catalog. Appreciated. It would have been unfortunate to identify your names through alternative methods."
The Necron inclined his head before coming to a stop.
"Follow me. I shall show you several artifacts from the same collection. Though I am uncertain whether it should be titled The Rise of Humanity... or perhaps The Youth of Man."
...
Trazyn was a kleptomaniac.
No, I had known that already.
But firsthand experience conveyed truths that mere knowledge never fully could.
There was a stone recovered from Spain engraved with ancient human memes that had apparently caused considerable confusion among the Necrons. There was a partially damaged, yet unmistakable, Statue of Liberty.
The actual Statue of Liberty.
There was Lenin's Mausoleum.
Completely intact.
Fragments of the Egyptian pyramids rested nearby, accompanied by records revealing that several Necrons had subtly influenced their design after visiting Terra millennia before Christ.
And that...
Was that really the Colossus of Rhodes?
Missing its feet, perhaps.
But still.
The Colossus of Rhodes.
Emperor preserve me.
And those were merely some of the most significant architectural relics. Thousands of other masterpieces from ancient Terra surrounded them, while tens of thousands of more ordinary remnants of humanity's distant past filled the galleries beyond.
It was astonishing.
A fragment of my home world.
A fragment of my original reality somehow preserved within another universe.
Enough nostalgia.
I drew a slow breath.
Time to explain what I knew.
Fortunately, I had been a rather well-read human. As a child, I had devoured encyclopedias. Back then, the internet had been a very different thing from what later generations would come to know.
"Thank you for assisting with the cataloging, Aeldari. However, considering my arrangement with your God, I believe we should proceed to the matter for which you were sent."
At last.
We had arrived at the true purpose of our visit to the lair of a slightly deranged Necron obsessed with collecting everything that existed.
"Indeed, O Infinite One."
I gave another theatrical bow before retrieving a small object from a hidden compartment.
An ordinary Aeldari amulet.
Or so it appeared.
It looked no different from the billions of similar trinkets scattered throughout Aeldari civilization.
Trazyn accepted it between his metallic fingers.
"Oh yes. I see it."
His glowing eyes narrowed as he studied the object.
"A shard of a C'tan contained within this artifact."
I froze beneath my mask.
Fortunately, Trazyn couldn't see my expression.
The last thing I wanted was to shatter the illusion of being the all-knowing servant of an equally all-knowing god.
One never knew when that reputation might prove useful.
"No..."
The ancient collector tilted his head.
"Merely a fragment of a fragment of a fragment." He paused. "But payment has been made."