A Cold God, Chapter 37

Their meeting had gone as expected. Few words were needed when thoughts already passed openly between us. After the barest of introductions, the work began. Thell and his kind understood the purpose of their presence, and they submitted without hesitation. One by one, all twenty-five White Walkers lowered themselves to the examination slabs prepared by my Astartes. Their movements were silent, unhurried, precise. They did not breathe, so no chest rose or fell. Their stillness was absolute.

The first tests were simple. The Astartes examined their anatomy in direct comparison to baseline human tissue. Incisions were made with blades honed to monomolecular sharpness. The flesh of the Walkers parted cleanly, and pale light glowed faintly within the wounds as if the body resisted the intrusion by channeling its strange essence. What would have killed a man did not disturb them at all. When the cuts were closed, they knitted themselves whole again within moments, strands of flesh sealing seamlessly, leaving no mark of injury.

The Ossmodula and Biscopea were the first implants tested. My sons inserted the gene-seed derived organs with care, connecting them to skeletal anchor points and the dormant musculature of the Walkers. To our satisfaction, the process succeeded. The implants drew directly upon the void-linked energies within their bodies, channeling them into hardened bone and expanded muscle. The Walkers’ frames grew denser and heavier. Ribs thickened, limbs swelled with strength, joints reinforced themselves with calcified ridges. The transformation was visible even to the eye. What normally required months of growth in a human aspirant completed within hours in the White Walkers. The change left them standing larger, heavier, more physically imposing than they had been before the operation.

The tests of the secondary heart came next, but they ended almost immediately. There was nothing to connect it to. Their chests were empty of any beating organ. My sons confirmed through dissection and auspex scans what we already knew—their blood did not flow, their circulation did not exist. They required no additional heart, and so that organ was discarded. The Haemastamen and the Oolitic Kidney were deemed useless for the same reason. With no blood to purify and no toxins to filter, there was no place for them. Larraman’s Organ too was unnecessary. Where a mortal Astartes bled and clotted, the Walkers did not. Their bodies closed wounds by summoning their frozen essence into the flesh itself. No scar tissue, no crust of dried blood, only pale skin made whole again.

The Catalepsian Node was tested as well, but redundant. They required no sleep. Not rest, not dreams, not unconsciousness of any kind. My sons noted the obvious advantage, though it gave the Walkers no new gift they did not already possess. The Preomnor was similarly dismissed. They did not eat. They did not drink. Nothing organic passed through them except by deliberate action. The implant served no purpose.

The Omophagea was different. This one succeeded. When implanted into the first subject, Thell himself, the results were clear. He consumed the flesh of a beast brought for testing—a wolf native to this frozen world—and within moments recited the memories of its hunts and kills as though they had been his own. The organ interfaced with his being, its function unimpeded by the lack of living blood. Knowledge could now be harvested through flesh. A valuable adaptation.

The Multi-lung, too, was abandoned. They had no lungs to begin with and required no air to persist. The Lyman’s Ear was tested, and here the results were promising. The Walkers’ hearing, already sharper than human limits, sharpened further. They reported the sound of distant avalanches beyond the mountains, the shifting of icebergs far out upon the sea. Their senses extended into ranges inaccessible to ordinary men.

The Hibernator Implant was another irrelevance. The Walkers already possessed the ability to lie dormant in any place and for any span of time, and their control over that state was absolute. The Melanchromic Organ, too, was unnecessary. Their pallid flesh did not darken, did not burn, and radiation left them unchanged. They had already endured the exposure of the void without even the shielding of armor.

The Neuroglottis was tested, and compatibility was confirmed. They could taste the air, the residue of chemical traces, the spoor of beasts. Their tongues could analyze toxins and compounds with precision, though for them it was more than analysis—it was recognition, immediate and instinctive. Another strength confirmed. The Mucranoid, however, was again deemed irrelevant. The Walkers endured extremes without aid, surviving vacuum and void without suit or mask. Their flesh did not need to adapt; it already had.

The final tests were the most critical. The Progenoid Glands were implanted, and the results were decisive. Their bodies accepted them without rejection. When harvested, the progenoids replicated as expected, storing genetic memory for future generations. The Black Carapace was then tested. Each of the White Walkers was implanted with the subdermal mesh. It bonded without issue. Their pale flesh accepted the black sheath, and when tested against power armor’s neural links, the integration was seamless. Armor obeyed their thought as if they had been bred for it.

When the trials were concluded, the Astartes stood around the slabs in silence. My sons were not prone to excitement, but this was likely the closest they were ever going to get. The Walkers had proven themselves. Not human, not mortal, but more than capable of carrying the gene-seed. They did not need the full suite of nineteen organs. Many were redundant, useless in bodies such as theirs. But the most vital—those that defined the strength, endurance, and martial supremacy of an Astartes—they bore those without flaw. And with Progenoids and Black Carapace, they could be counted among the true. Most importantly, all of them were able to accept my gene-seed without complications. 

I studied them when they rose again, their pale flesh altered, their frames broader, heavier, taller than before. The chill about them deepened. They had become something between what they were and what my sons already were. A new thing. A third path born of the two. They did not falter, did not stumble. They accepted their altered state without protest. Their sapphire eyes burned bright in the half-light. Thell was the first to speak. “We live to serve you, father. Point the way for us and we will follow.” 

I turned to the older Astartes. “Rejoice and embrace your brothers.”

And they did. The hall filled with the sound of armored hands striking against armored shoulders. Voices rose in acknowledgment, not loud but firm, as the Icewalkers were accepted without resistance. They had proven themselves in trial and in gene-forging. There was no need for hesitation.

After that, I began teaching them something I had been surprised they had not already learned in the century of my absence: the shaping of True Ice. The material was unlike ordinary frost or stone. It was harder than any alloy known to man and colder than the surface of void-struck rock. It could be drawn out into any form, its permanence limited only by the discipline and control of the wielder.

Training them in its use was a long and exacting process. Thell and his kin had known instinctively how to summon frost, how to still air and harden water with the touch of their will, but True Ice was a step beyond. At first, their efforts shattered. Ice collapsed into dust, forms lost shape and strength. They created shards, splinters, thin blades that cracked under their own weight. I guided their hands and their thoughts, showing them how to draw not from surface power but from the deep tether of the void within themselves.

It took them ten years to achieve mastery. A decade of repetition, of failures, of the sound of ice breaking on stone floors. Ten years of battles fought in the frost fields beyond the city, where their efforts were tested against summoned constructs and beasts pulled from the frozen wastes. Even with our shared memories and my constant direction, the art resisted them. But one by one, they began to succeed. The first was Zalir. He forged a sword the length of a man, its edge sharp enough to shear through iron plate without blunting. Others followed his example. Thell himself mastered the shaping soon after Zalir, and where Zalir favored the blade, Thell raised for himself a halberd tall as his own frame, its haft smooth and flawless, its edge carrying frost that never melted.

While my sons learned, the City of Dawn grew. In those ten years its walls doubled in span. Hydroponic farms were built in vast tiers, their stacked chambers producing food enough to sustain a growing multitude. The Mechanicum raised manufactorums of impossible scale, their forges and assembly lines fueled by the planet’s untouched resources. Ore was dragged up from beneath the frozen ground, refined, and carried out in armored convoys to supply the factories. From these factories came tools, weapons, armored vehicles, and the beginnings of a fleet. I aided in that by creating massive amounts of True Ice for the Mechanicum Tech Priests to use and study. Mostly, they made use of it as eternal coolants that never needed to be replaced.

Roads of stone and ferrocrete stretched from the city into the wastes. Trade districts opened, and centers of learning rose beside them. Hospitals staffed by physicians of both the Imperium and my own people cured what once would have ended lives in weeks. The plagues that had haunted earlier generations were broken down in laboratories, and their cures distributed freely. Life spans lengthened. Families grew.

Colonists arrived on steady schedules. Freighters descended from orbit and poured out men, women, and children from distant worlds. They came with accents and manners not native to this place, and in time they mingled with my people. They married, bore children, and raised them under the banners of the Imperium and the quiet faith my people still kept in me. I had instructed that the Imperial Truth be taught. Science was taught in the academies, engineering and mathematics carried forward by the Mechanicum, but still my name was spoken with reverence. They raised statues of my Icewalker form in the squares and along the roads, carved from stone and cast from metal. I did not order it, nor did I forbid it. I let them build as they wished.

The population swelled. From thousands it grew to hundreds of thousands, then to millions. Markets filled, voices of a hundred dialects mingled, and the light of the city burned against the dark of the frozen wastes. My sons walked openly through its streets, and none feared them. To the people they were guardians, pale warriors clad in power armor, living symbols of protection.

It was during this time that relics of the old world were found. In the ruins of the empire I had destroyed a century before, teams uncovered clutches of eggs sealed in hardened stone. They were immense, scaled things, preserved by frost. Attempts were made to incubate them, and many failed. Shells cracked without life within, yolks rotted, and whole clutches were discarded. But persistence succeeded at last. The first of a new generation of Lightbringers clawed its way free in the incubation halls. The creature was a scaled beast with wings vast enough to shadow a street and breath hot enough to blacken steel. It was not a dragon of old Terran myth but its own kind, a true species native to this world, resurrected after near extinction. Within a decade, dozens had hatched.

The city celebrated their hatching. Breeding pens were established, and handlers raised to tend to them. They became symbols of the world’s rebirth, creatures of fire living alongside my sons of ice.

In orbit above, the beginnings of a fleet took shape. Captain Lokir Amarith assumed command at my order. Shipyards expanded into the void, frames of cruisers and frigates welded together by teams of voidsmen and servitors. The Mechanicum oversaw the arming of vessels, mounting macro-batteries and lances along their spines. It was slow work, but steady. Each year more ships joined the growing armada. Lokir drilled his men, formed them into squadrons, and prepared them for the wars that would one day come.

Yet war did not come immediately. Unlike my siblings across the stars, I was not called to conquest at once. My brothers raised legions to burn and conquer, and marshaled fleets to bring compliance by fire. Here, on this world, I was left to build. My sons dedicated themselves to training. My fleet grew. My people multiplied. But no order of war came. We prepared, nonetheless.

That was confirmed when the Emperor sent his message. It arrived through the astropathic choir, sealed in his voice. He spoke not of war but of preparation. He said the day would come when I must answer his call, but not now. My duty was to muster my strength, to raise my sons, to forge an army ready to march when the time came.

That message was sent five years ago. Since then, all we’ve done was prepare.

And then, one day, an unfamiliar ship appeared in orbit. A message from Commander Lokir Amarith informed me that the visitor was the flagship of a sibling of mine, Horus Lupercal.