Tethered Flame

The incense in the corner brazier had burned halfway down the stick, smoldering with a low hiss. Ash had formed a delicate spiral under it sacred, supposedly, if you believed the Sisterhood’s pamphlets. Cassian didn’t.

He leaned against the windowsill, a narrow slit of stained glass showing only rooftops, smoke, and the distant glow of Savavarn’s grand processional tiers. Behind him, Farron adjusted the hem of his crimson robes like it mattered.

“You’ve been fidgeting for twenty minutes,” Cassian said. “Makes you look nervous.”

Farron didn’t look up. “I am recalibrating the satellite uplink from the orbital relay to our cogitator node here. Nervousness is a biological flaw.”

“Uh huh.” Cassian turned around, crossing the small room. “And are the biological flaws still able to worry about bound warp entities we left in orbit, or is that too inefficient for Mechanicus doctrine?”

Farron’s metal jaw twitched. “It is not worry. It is vigilance.”

Cassian grunted, pulled out a chair, and sat down across from him. “Call it what you want. I’m just hoping it’s not screaming in its vat coffin yet.”

Farron finally met his eyes. The Magos rarely blinked couldn’t, maybe and his gaze always looked about ten percent too clinical. “No. Still dormant. Its heart rate hasn’t changed. Psychic readings stable. Containment levels are holding at ninety-seven point—”

“Is ninety seven good?” Cassian asked.

“Better than average,” Farron said, without a trace of humor. Then, after a pause: “Unless you’re comparing it to pre Heresy Containment Doctrine. Which we’re not. Because I don’t have a time machine.”

Cassian smirked. “Finally. A joke. You feeling alright?”

“No. I’m surrounded by incense fumes, and the plumbing here operates on prayer and spit.”

“Welcome to the pilgrim world.”

Farron looked back to the portable monitor humming beside him. Cassian watched the screen flicker with readouts: heat mapping, warp pressure data, psionic static suppression. All of it surrounding one small figure in one locked room on one massive ship, still in orbit above.

“Did you reinforce the stasis seal?” Cassian asked, after a while.

“Triple locked it. Quantum thread weave from my own special creation. Warded with low level null field overlays,” Farron replied. “It’s not getting out unless you tell it to. Or unless someone very stupid tries to touch it. Which I’ve made… prohibitively difficult.”

“And Faevelith’s wards?”

Farron nodded toward the hanging bundle of silken cords in the corner of the room. “Still singing. In her tongue. Low warp harmonics, stable at baseline. She weaved them into the chamber walls. I monitored the psychic echo myself. If it tries to scream, it’ll hear itself lullabied back to sleep.”

“Sleep,” Cassian muttered. “That’d be a nice thing for it to keep doing.”

They sat in silence for a moment. The ambient hum of a hymnal procession passed outside the room chanting voices, feet on cobblestone, someone dragging chains. Probably voluntary.

Cassian glanced toward the window. “You ever think we should’ve just incinerated it? Instead of binding it?”

“I think we’re both past the point of wanting easy answers,” Farron said quietly.

Cassian exhaled. “Fair.”

The monitor chirped once. Nothing urgent. Farron didn’t even look.

“You’re still watching it.”

“I’m always watching it,” Farron said. “You think I’d leave that thing unobserved while we’re on a world this soaked in religious mania? One Sister of Battle getting a ‘bad feeling’ and we’re both getting atomized before we can explain ourselves.”

Cassian laughed. “She’d have to get through you first. That chassis of yours is basically a war crime.”

“It is modular,” Farron replied. “And slightly above regulation tolerances. But only slightly.”

They sat again in silence, the tension dissipating just a little.

Cassian leaned back. “So. We’re low-key. The thing’s sealed. Nobody’s screaming. That’s a decent start.”

Farron nodded. “Acceptable parameters.”

Cassian paused, tapping his fingers against the table. “And if it wakes?”

Farron’s gaze hardened. “Then we’ll do what we always do.”

Cassian tilted his head. “Which is?”

“Blow it to kingdom come.” Farron said. “Anything can be blown up, if given enough ordnance.”

Cassian chuckled, slowly. “Never knew you to be demolition expert.”

Farron adjusted a dial on the monitor. “I’m just used to bad odds.”

Cassian smiled at that. “Let’s just keep it sleeping then.”

Farron didn’t look up. “That is the plan.”

After a long moment Cassian leaned against the table’s edge, arms folded. “Any luck pinging the local Mechanicus?”

Farron’s eyes didn’t move from the monitor. “Negative. Most vox channels are clogged with chant loops, static, and” he paused, his lip twitching in distaste, “praise litanies twenty digits long.”

Cassian raised a brow. “Give me an example.”

The Magos recited, flat and flawless:

“To the Omnissiah who is the Emperor who is the Omnissiah who is the Gear, who is the Light, who is the Radiant Flame who blesses circuit and soul-”

“Stop.”

Farron did. “That was the short version.”

Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose. “So no real communication? No formal response?”

“No response with substance,” Farron corrected. “I did receive an automated reply from a local Forge Enclave relay node. It only said: Your devotion is noted. Praise the Spark Eternal.”

Cassian let out a soft breath. “Useless.”

“Essentially,” Farron said. “This is not a Forge World. The Mechanicus presence here is minimal and mostly symbolic. Shrine maintenance. Relic conservation. Blessing vending machines.”

Cassian looked out the window, where distant towers bled incense into the sky. “Well, we need more than that.”

“Indeed.” Farron finally turned, his expression tightening. “Especially considering what we carry.”

Cassian met his gaze. “The STC.”

Farron nodded.

For a long time, neither spoke. The hum of the cogitator systems filled the space.

Cassian finally broke the silence. “You’ve had it for what, three centuries?”

“Three hundred and twenty-two years,” Farron said, tapping his finger to his skull. “And yes, I’ve studied it. Extensively. Every line of its logic matrix, every schematic strand. The majority of it focuses on the Panacea Project.”

Cassian frowned. “Panacea. That wasn’t in the original brief or information you told me.”

“It wouldn’t have been. The data core was fragmented when we found it. But over time, I rebuilt its protocols. It’s a medical system self replicating nanoform constructs. Designed in the Dark Age of Technology to immunize human biology against any known pathogen. Alien. Synthetic. Warp based, even.”

Cassian leaned forward. “You’re saying—”

“It was designed to make humanity biologically invulnerable,” Farron said. “Not just from disease. From plague-weapons. Genocidal strains. It would have made humans functionally immune to extinction via infection.”

Cassian blinked. “Holy Shit.”

“Quite.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the gravity of it sinking in.

“Have you tested it?”

“On rats. On cloned flesh. On myself, to a degree,” Farron said. “The nanites can purge exotic viruses, correct malformed gene strands, and neutralize low-level warp-taint. It’s the reason you’re still alive, we took massive risks in that daemon world with me reprogramming it and using it to augment your whole body.”

Cassian glanced down at his own chest. “But it did work out in then end didn't it, I am stronger than ever. It is honestly a marvel.’

Farron allowed a thin smile. “It’s more than a marvel. It’s a heresy to the ignorant, and a holy grail to the wise.”

“And that’s why we need a Mechanicus contact,” Cassian said. “Not some shrine keeper. Someone real. Someone high enough to appreciate what we’re holding.”

“They awarded an entire planet once,” Farron muttered, “for a combat knife schematic.”

Cassian smirked. “I want something much better than a planet. The STC is far more valuable than some schematic of knife. I have my own plans of what I want.”

Just then, the door creaked open.

Cassian didn’t turn. He didn’t need to. A soft set of footsteps approached barefoot and light.

Faevelith didn’t speak. She simply walked past the them, around the side of the table, and settled against him with an almost careless grace. Her body leaned into his, head tucked under his chin, long black hair brushing his collar.

Cassian sighed.

Farron, ever polite, said nothing. His eyes flicked briefly to the spot where the Exarch’s aura began to bleed into Cassian’s, faint eddies of unseen psychic power curling between them.

Faevelith gave a soft hum, almost feline. Her fingers played idly with the edge of Cassian’s sleeve, and her breath warmed his neck.

“You’re clingy today,” he muttered.

She didn’t respond. Just sighed, content, and pressed closer.

Cassian, half exasperated, half accustomed, adjusted slightly to let her settle. “You know we’re discussing pan

galactic medical nanites, right?”

Faevelith made a low noise in her throat. Might’ve been agreement. Or defiance. Or boredom. Who knows with her?

Farron returned to his data. “Shall I assume this meeting is adjourned?”

Cassian tilted his head back, eyes toward the ceiling. “Not officially.”

“But functionally?”

Cassian glanced down at the Eldar curled against him. Her eyes were closed. Her hand had found his.

“Yeah,” he said. “Functionally.”

—-

Cassian sat back, the weight of Faevelith’s warmth pressed firmly against his side. Her steady breath tickled his neck, a sharp contrast to the cold hum of Farron’s cogitator across the room. The Magos was still deeply engrossed in his calculations, fingers moving with mechanical precision over the glowing keys, occasionally glancing at a data readout, then back to the silent walls that surrounded them.

Cassian broke the quiet first. “There’s something I need to tell you both.” He shifted, careful not to disturb Faevelith’s comfort. She didn’t move, just pressed a little closer, like she could anchor him here if he tried to pull away.

Farron’s eyes flicked briefly to him, then back to his work. “Go on,” the Magos said, voice low and cautious.

“It’s about the... Illuminati.” The word felt heavier than it should, like a code or a curse. “I got an invitation.”

Neither Faevelith nor Farron reacted immediately. Faevelith’s eyes remained closed, but Cassian could sense the shift in her tension, subtle, but there. Farron’s fingers paused over the keys.

“Illuminati?” Faevelith finally murmured, breaking the silence, eyes fluttering open to focus on him. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that one.”

Cassian exhaled slowly, thinking how best to explain something so shadowy without sounding like a conspiracy theorist though it was exactly that. “The Illuminati is... well, it’s an old secret society within the Imperium. Not officially recognized by anyone except those in the deepest folds of power. They operate in the shadows, pulling strings sometimes for knowledge, sometimes for influence.” He glanced at Farron, who was now watching him more closely.

“They’re not part of the Ministorum, not even the Inquisition. Think of them as... custodians of forbidden knowledge. Guardians and manipulators, all at once. They don’t care about saints or relics, just power and secrets.”

Faevelith’s brow furrowed. “When did you get mixed up with these shadow puppets?” Her voice had that edge half teasing, half something else. “You don’t strike me as the secret society type.”

Cassian smirked despite himself. “I joined back on Desoleum.” The name hung heavy in the room. “That hive world you probably don’t want to visit. It’s a crater now, courtesy of a Khorne daemon infestation. Total nightmare.”

Farron’s gaze sharpened for a moment, recalling data from the reports. “You were there? I was there too, but... we never crossed paths.”

“Yeah,” Cassian said quietly. “We only met after leaving orbit, on that evacuation ship. Funny how things work.”

Faevelith’s eyes narrowed, studying him. “So this meeting the one you were invited to do I come with you?”

Cassian hesitated, feeling the weight of her gaze and her closeness. He rubbed the back of his neck, then shook his head. “No. This is something I have to do alone. The Illuminati... they work best with discretion, and I can’t bring anyone else into that web. Not even you.”

Faevelith pulled back slightly, but the grip she had on his sleeve didn’t loosen. “I don’t like it.”

“I know.” He reached for her hand, squeezing it lightly. “But it’s necessary.”

Farron cleared his throat, breaking the tension. “Then you should prepare at least. We still have some spare weapons and body armour you can use.”

Cassian nodded, eyes drifting back to the thick incense smoke drifting faintly outside the window.

---

Word Count: 2060