When Lin appeared at the gates of the Astartes camp — trailing a procession of Felynes hauling pushcarts and bulging bundles — the brother on sentry duty looked like he'd been hit over the head with something blunt.
He stood there squinting back and forth between Lin and the Felynes, clearly unable to decide whether he was supposed to just let Lin and his crowd of 'xenos' walk right in.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Admir arrived on the scene shortly after. The news had put an unmistakable gleam of relief in his eyes — though that gleam curdled into stunned bewilderment the moment he actually saw the 'xenos' at Lin's side.
Lin was draped in the red robes of the Mechanicus, his face arranged into an expression of solemn gravity so convincing he could have passed for a cardinal of the state church. When he saw Admir approaching, he gave a measured nod, then threw both arms wide into the air.
"Angels of the God-Emperor! I have returned!"
Had an Inquisitor been present, Lin would probably have been hauled off for a purity screening to rule out daemonic possession. But Admir had not fought through the Great Heresy, and so he simply waved Lin and the Felynes inside, quietly told a few brothers to keep a close eye on the 'xenos,' and then pulled Lin aside.
"The brother who came to warn me said you'd been captured by xenos — that they were holding you and another critically wounded brother hostage right outside our camp and trying to negotiate with us…" Admir said. "So what in the Throne's name is actually going on? Why have you suddenly come back with a pack of xenos in tow?"
"These are not xenos. These are cats."
Lin corrected him with complete earnestness. "They are one of the finest companions humanity ever knew on ancient Terra — a species that vanished during the mass extinctions of the Age of Darkness. To think we'd find genuine, bona fide cats on a planet like this… even the Emperor himself would probably shed a nostalgic tear."
"Cats?" Admir squinted at the upright-walking Felynes, then back at Lin, and said again, as if he needed to hear himself say it: "Ancient Terran fauna?"
Lin nodded without a flicker of hesitation. "The Emperor himself kept cats. It is recorded on ancient Terran data-archives."
Admir could tell Lin was talking out of thin air. He let the cat question drop entirely. "And what's with the holy-man costume? You look exactly like that remembrancer who used to come around to our company every day preaching about how the Emperor is a god."
"Show some respect. I am a Divine Emissary of the God-Emperor," Lin intoned with imperious gravity. "The Emperor has chosen the Felynes as His elect. Even you, His angels, shall not treat them with disrespect!"
The Felynes in the distance couldn't understand a word of it, but the sheer force of Lin's presence was enough to draw a small burst of cheering from them. Admir opened his mouth, shut it again, but when he caught the pointed look Lin was shooting him, he went along with it for the moment.
He turned and steered Lin into a corner where the Felynes couldn't see them. Lin dropped the act instantly — the grave, portentous bearing evaporated like smoke.
"So what actually happened?" Admir asked.
Lin shrugged. "After two monsters tried to kill me, I ran into these small creatures. They have basic intelligence. They saved me, and helped me turn the tables and kill one of the two monsters. I think they have potential as research assistants and Legion auxiliaries, so I brought them back."
"And the traveling-preacher routine?"
"A minor professional obligation."
Lin reached behind him and produced a small idol he had carved himself. It depicted the Emperor seated upon the Golden Throne — with a cat cradled in his arms. "And a technique borrowed from the Ecclesiarchy's missionaries. Grafting one faith onto another."
People often forgot the word 'faith' in Adeptus Mechanicus, and forgot what the word 'priest' in Tech-Priest truly implied. In truth, alongside their hunger and greed for knowledge, the members of the Mechanicus had never ceased propagating the teachings of the Omnissiah.
Lin had no belief in the Machine God himself, but he knew the mechanics of spreading doctrine cold.
"Grafting one faith onto another?" Admir looked puzzled.
"Transferring their existing primitive beliefs onto faith in the Emperor. I told them that cats have always been humanity's loyal companions, that the Emperor is humanity's savior, and that we — as His angels — naturally share His glory with humanity's loyal companions. It works remarkably well, I have to say."
"I'm not entirely certain what the Imperium looks like right now," Admir said, his tone firming, "but I'm certain the Imperium won't accept them. This has nothing to do with whether they venerate the Emperor. They have their own culture. Their own language. By our standards, they are xenos."
Lin shook his head. "Once they've integrated into human society, none of that will be an issue. Until then, we simply make sure no other brothers — or anyone else — learns they ever had a culture of their own."
Admir looked like he wanted to say more, but Lin had already turned and pointed at the cluster of Felynes.
"Besides, I'm not sure anyone else gets a say in this. Look."
Admir followed Lin's gesture. The Felynes had dropped to their knees and begun to pray.
As they prayed, a golden radiance began to bloom from their bodies, spreading outward in soft, luminous waves. Every Astartes in sight stood frozen, staring at it with their jaws slack.
"What in the Throne is that?" Admir breathed.
"Faith… or a rather unusual form of psychic energy," Lin replied. "You've seen it before — when Librarians channel their powers to support their battle-brothers, it looks much the same."
"Faith?" Admir's gaze drifted to the little idol Lin had carved — the Emperor on the Golden Throne, a cat in his arms. "Are you saying that's…"
"Exactly what you're thinking."
Watching the look on Admir's face — like a man who'd just seen a ghost — Lin felt a quiet, private surge of satisfaction.
The truth was, when he'd witnessed this the previous night, he'd been every bit as thunderstruck as Admir was now. Seeing Admir share his bewilderment made Lin feel, in some small way, less alone in it.
When he'd raised his arms and proclaimed the Emperor's faith to a tribe of Felynes who had, until that moment, worshipped a black dragon, most of them had reacted with polite skepticism. Lin had resorted to carving an idol of the Emperor himself — the Emperor, holding a cat.
He had declared that Felynes had been humanity's cherished companions since time immemorial, and that their tribe had simply become scattered and lost their history. He had then painted a mural — which he titled The Great Expedition of the Emperor and the Cats — and delivered to the Felynes an account of their own 'ancient history.'
He had felt only marginally guilty about this, given that certain apocryphal texts did record a Custodian Marshal nicknamed 'Little Kitten' serving at the Emperor's side. It made his 'history' feel only partially fabricated.
The conviction with which Lin delivered all of this soon began to erode some of the Felynes' doubts. A few of them began, tentatively, to pray to the Emperor. Lin hadn't rushed things — he'd thought of it as a decent beginning, planning to gradually deepen the Emperor's faith within the tribe before eventually bringing them aboard his future vessel as pets and auxiliaries.
But then, as more and more Felynes joined in the prayer, golden psychic light — the Emperor's own — had genuinely begun to flicker to life around them.
That unmistakable response sent the Felynes' faith tipping completely and irreversibly in one direction. Nearly every last one of them became a devotee of the God-Emperor on the spot. The only one left gasping was Lin himself, who had only intended to use the Emperor as a convenient fiction.
He had examined the Felynes from head to toe, inside and out. He found nothing that explained it.
If the one bestowing a blessing had to be personally watching the recipient — why would the old man on the Golden Throne go to such lengths to bless a tribe of Felynes? Surely not just to have a look at them?
Unable to fathom why the Emperor would bless these Felynes, Lin had been forced to redirect his thinking toward the possibility that the Emperor had deliberately arranged for him to be stranded on this planet in the first place.
He'd already wondered before whether the Emperor had once played Monster Hunter. Now, pushing the thought further, he reckoned that if the Emperor had played it back in the day, he'd probably always run with a Felyne support setup — which would explain why he had such a deep fondness for them.
Whatever the reason, that blessing — so unmistakably similar to the cold-sun psychic energy of the Warp — couldn't be faked. Lin had no choice but to use this unexpectedly real response to accelerate his plans.
First thing the next morning, he had set out with the comatose Astartes and the Felynes with their packed belongings. In addition to the Bazelgeuse materials the Felynes had already collected, Lin had gone back to package up the Tigrex materials as well, and had the Felynes haul everything back to camp. They returned laden.
Lin gave Admir a broad summary of events, keeping to the parts worth telling. Admir's response was to draw a very slow, very deep breath.
"So — does prayer actually work for us now?" he asked, cautiously.
"You only want to pray now that you know it works? Isn't that a bit mercenary?"
"If prayer gets a real response, then it isn't superstitious nonsense — it's an objectively verifiable phenomenon," Admir said with complete sincerity. "We need to get back to the galaxy and keep fighting for humanity. What's wrong with being practical?"
"Unfortunately, as far as I know, most human prayers go unanswered. That's precisely why I was so astonished that the Felynes' prayers were answered so readily and easily."
Since he'd been dropped onto this planet, Lin — being a Blank — had felt nothing himself. Yet the Felynes' behavior had given him the persistent, nagging sense that something unseen was watching him through the hands of believers.
If Admir and the others started praying to the Emperor right now, they would probably get an actual response. But Lin had no desire to draw these warriors further into the orbit of the state church's ideology, and so he deflected the suggestion with gentle but deliberate ambiguity.
"Alright." Admir shrugged, not particularly put out. "So what do you intend to do with these xenos?"
"Felynes."
Lin corrected the term. "Keep them in the camp. Even if they were formally recognized someday, they'd still be difficult to present openly within the Imperium. I plan to give them logistical roles — auxiliary support work."
"So this is our little secret?"
"Hey, hey! What little secret?!" Lin's expression shifted sharply. "Don't say things like that!"
"You're awfully jumpy about that phrasing… Regardless, we will provisionally accept these xenos — these Felynes — into our camp."
Admir said, "But whether my brothers can accept xenos is not my decision to make. That depends entirely on how the Felynes conduct themselves. Still — I cannot get my head around it. Why would the Emperor's psychic power descend upon them?"
"It's not about race or xenos status. The Emperor sits upon the Golden Throne on Terra. Why can He transmit His own psychic power across this vast a distance and reach this planet?"
"After the Emperor took the Golden Throne, much changed across the Imperium. But there's no rush to explain all of that — you'll come to understand it in time. For now, let's keep our eyes on the immediate problem: how do we get off this planet."
Admir nodded. "There was the unexpected detour of being hunted by other monsters, but based on your original plan — after hunting the Tigrex, all that remains is the final confrontation with the male Rathalos that's claimed the derelict space-hulk, yes? Has the plan changed?"
"The plan hasn't changed. We just need to make more preparations."
Lin rubbed his chin, thinking of the black dragon shrine that had crumbled to pieces in his hands the night before. "In fact, just as hunting the Tigrex led straight into being chased by two more monsters — even if our objectives stay the same, the variables we'll encounter along the way are going to be far greater in number than we expect."
"Something pulling strings behind the scenes?" Admir's response was immediate.
"Exactly." Lin nodded. "Admir — have you ever heard of the Soul of the World?"
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