My hearts almost stopped as I got a better look at my own reflection. The familiar yet so very distant girl was staring back, eyes gleaming brightly with a golden glow. Coupled with an unknown source of lumination that seemed to originate from around her head, she exuded a magnificent level of saintly presence that compelled subservience.
There was a sort of religious piousness resonating in the air, I could even feel the level of faith the sisters were emanating and their willingness to serve.
Through the acknowledgement of the canoness and my legitimacy established by the legends from the Order's founder, in a way I have my very own army now. Without prompting my mind was already running some cold calculations.
It was understood if I played the card of being the Emperor's daughter well, with but a word of command the whole Order would mobilise against the rebels head-on despite the odds, the Sororitas' very own zealotry and subscription to the Emperor's divinity would see them grinding forward regardless of casualties.
We could probably do it too, with help from Kryptorer on electronics warfare and intelligence, together with the support of the governor's forces we could strike into the heart of the rebels and decapitate its leadership, ending this threat now and be prepared for the real incoming crises.
The whole Sororitas Order could get into position before the enemies even knew what hit them with a total shutdown of their communication network. To increase the odds of success, I would need to be leading in the front with this ridiculous flaming sword in hand and ceaselessly using my authority to turn the rebels' mightiest weapons on themselves, all the while spamming thought acceleration to always be on top of every tactical situation.
If we were lucky enough we might even be able to get close enough for me to cut down the enemy leaders with this sword. Rendered leaderless and in the chaos of the battlefield, the bulk of the rebel forces would be easily destroyed by our coordinated front, hundreds of thousands of rebels would be grounded to dust.
Valour and glory await! There will be casualties, hopefully on an acceptable level.
Too bad we did not have access to Astartes unit to lead as the speartip… Wait, what am I doing? If only I could know what would happen if that idea was put into action… then I noticed a new line appearing in my vision.
[Run Simulatio? YES / NO]
Simulatio? That's new, but this unknown service had yet to fail me, I chose yes without hesitation.
[Simulatio] Activated-
There was a flash, suddenly I was suddenly transported into a battlefield where dust was omnipresent and explosions were constantly thundering in the background, dead bodies littered everywhere and endless streams of tracers lit up the sky.
My mind, my superhuman mind was registering over a hundred immediate threats and over a thousand background information were fighting for my attention. The enemy's communication network was down, but having nowhere to go most of them had resolved to fight to the death.
Every street and alley was jam-packed with entrenched soldiers. Despite constant airstrikes and artillery bombardments they did not yield, again they had nowhere to go and this place might probably be their home. Faint cries of children could even be heard between earth-shattering explosions.
Nearby the bulk of enemy elite troops had barricaded themselves, resulting in brutal close-quarters fighting that could only be described as a colossal meat grinder.
Squads and squads of sisters under the cover fire of constant bolter barrage got close to their quarry, their power armour deflecting hails of small arms fire raining down on them. Once they got close enough, they let loose of their flamers and meltas to burn a way through, their grisly progress marked by the smell of burnt flesh filling the air under a sky darkened with misery.
Under my direct command, the sisters would not falter but the enemies would not yield. This war was started on the basis of labelling the rebels as heretics, being condemned as such they knew their only way out was to fight to their death.
This was a bloody mess and a literal hell on earth, any non-veteran of such large scale warfare will probably not make it through. Just as that thought flashed through my mind I caught sight of several fallen sisters in a huge crater not far from me.
Compelled by an unspeakable ominous feeling I approached the crater with trepidation and took a closer look. There amongst the fallen was a familiar face, the first person I met in this world, Palatine Alicya Sabatith lay dead in the crater. She was a literal bloody mess, but even under that pile of brain matter, there was still enough of her face to identify her. Being caught in between zeal and inexperience, or even just plain bad luck had probably taken her life.
Looking at Alicya's corpse amidst a background of constant muffled explosions, I felt my soul leaving my body, but wait… didn't she just kneel down happily before me mere moments ago?
My eyes snapped open and I was back in the meeting room, a quick check on the chronometer told me it was just a few seconds after I saw my own reflections. Gasping for air despite not feeling out of breath, I quickly turned off [Psykana Activa] while ignoring a few [Regalis] messages that had popped up in my vision.
As I got back into the sweet embrace of normalcy, in the reflections my halo and the raging blue flames on my sword started slowly fading away. My mind was still racing from what I saw but the sight of Alicya well and alive had calmed my shaken nerves.
Was that a simulation mixed with a bit of prescience? I looked around, found no answer and could no longer just keep the sisters waiting, but that brief vision of the hellish battlefield had shown me how lacking I was in real war experience and leadership capacity. If I were to lead now it will only end up in a real disaster.
I calmed myself further and approached the kneeling canoness.
'That is something I will not do at the moment. Sisters, please rise.' I decided.
Diadinah looked up but did not stand. 'Lady Syrine, please accept the command of the Order.' She pleaded with me again.
'While I might be the person your prophecies spoke of,' I admitted, 'please understand I am sorely lacking in experience and am suffering from partial memory loss. Pushing me to lead the Order now is just asking for the ruination of the Emperor's domain. I will definitely act with His best interest in mind. So please, stand up so we may work on how to proceed forward. As you have said, we need to make haste to save this world. Rise sisters, we have much to discuss.'
With that, the canoness reluctantly stood up, followed by the rest of the sisters. I handed back the nameless sword to the canoness, symbolically passing the leadership role for the Order back to her. She seemed to understand this and received the sword reverently, but could not hide her disappointment completely as she watched the blue light slowly disappearing on the blade.
'Now, before we speak further there is an important thing I have to verify with you all, the accursed thirteenth Black Crusade is in full swing, is it not?' I asked. Diadinah nodded grimly at my question. 'What was the last major news you received before communication was cut off from the rest of the Imperium?'
Diadinah thought for a while before replying, 'Nothing much, last we heard there was some really heavy engagement happening around Cadia, we were bracing for any eventual spillovers before getting caught off guard by the local uprising.'
That was it, I had confirmed that the news of the fortress world of Cadia falling never reached here. Naturally, I had tried looking it up on the fortress' database with no results but I had to be sure. How would they take the news?
'Listen well sisters, you might wish to not believe what I am about to tell you. But let the Emperor be my witness, what I am going to say is the truth.' I said while I started digging into my memory of the lore on how Cadia was destroyed, I had the thick cover campaign book in my collection back in my geek life after all.
Knowing the extremely heavy nature of the story, I had the sisters seated before telling them about how at the climax of the Black Crusade. Abaddon the Chaos Warmaster had dragged and dropped a Blackstone Fortress onto Cadia, breaking the planet apart; how Cadia was housing the mysterious Necron pylons that had been controlling the Eye of Terror, how this resulted in the Great Rift known as Cicatrix Maledictum being unleashed unto the Imperium, breaking it into two and it probably was the reason why the light of the Emperor had stopped reaching us.
The sisters were still while listening, but their faces grew visibly more serious as the story progressed. Foreseeing all this, I had used the calmest tone possible when telling the story as I was quite sure if this information were to be told by any other person it would instantly be labelled as heresy.
The only other sound other than my voice in the room was by Welminah's auto-quill as she diligently scribbled down stuff onto her dataslate in a valiant effort to record down what I had said. Not sure why she bothered unless voice recording was prohibited due to security reasons.
After I finished talking, Diadinah asked the obvious question. 'Pardon me, but I had to ask where did you get all that first-hand information?'
If I were to tell her the truth that I read about it from a gaming campaign book and saw the Black Stone Fortress dropped on Cadia in a cutscene of a video game even the canoness with all her mental fortitude might have gone insane.
So I conjured as much sincerity as possible and told them with a straight face, 'I got them from the highest source possible before arriving here. Whether it was by design or fate, for reasons I myself could not fathom that part of my memory is intact.'
Which was technically true, there were no higher sources than the publisher themselves, unless they retcon it later but that would not be my fault.
The room was dead silent after I finished briefing the sisters on the fall of Cadia. They could use some time to absorb the shock, so I waited.
The sister who had a small Fleur De Lys tattooed under her left eye was the first to break the silence. 'So, how do we move forward and what is the Emperor's plan for us?'
Happy that someone had asked the critical question to move forward, I turned to the sister, which prompted her to quickly bow and introduce herself, 'I am Celestian Superior Markeylla Merett, honoured to make your acquaintance, Lady Syrine.'
Markeylla was a fierce but fine-looking lady with short length copper blonde hair just reaching the bottom of her neck, the right side of her ear was covered with a sophisticated looking vox device. While all the members of the Sororitas I have met so far seemed very capable, from my hunch Sister Markeylla tops the list of being the most dangerous of them all. She would easily be a champion of the Order if such a position exists. Looking at her serious face, I felt a tad bit uncomfortable for such a lady showing me this degree of reverence.
'If my predictions are correct, little to no reinforcements will be coming. I had worked with the last astropath on this planet the whole of yesterday night and we only ever managed to make contact with the imperial worlds within the sub-sector.'
There was little response so I continued, 'our main goal for the moment should be ending this uprising as soon as possible with minimal casualties. As for the Emperor's will...' The very mention of the Emperor had all the sisters perked up but I had nothing to offer. My mind drew blank but looking at the sisters I knew some directive was needed for them to chew on, no matter how vague it was.
Then I recalled an opening cut scene from a certain grimdark video game, after a brief moment of thought acceleration to organise the script, I looked them in their eyes and recited the opening scene dialogue with some modifications.
'Sisters, the Imperium has always been besieged by aliens and monsters, attacked from within by heretics and rebels. For ten thousand years it has endured... because of the faithful like you all.'
'By His will and with me by your side, we shall stand against the coming darkness and see to it the light of humanity is not lost in this part of the galaxy.'