Maxim Kalanja, princeps of Legio Tempestus, was a staunch Teleologist, one of the currents of faith within the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Incense curled upward in rings of varying diameters, layered one over another, interlocking at different angles.
Each ring of gears had a different diameter, but each contained twelve gears.
That was the sacred number of the God of All Machines.
Teleology was, in essence, a mystical numerology. Kalanja believed the future could be divined through the past, and the end glimpsed through catastrophe most of all.
Kalanja's body was buried within the Mechanical Throne, its mechanical interfaces plugged into the machine arrays.
He took the past of Legio Tempestus, including its "Ultramar Expedition" alongside Guilliman, and especially the war in the Pusili Binary Cluster—
Finally, there was the "Mars Civil War."
Click, clack, click, clack—
One gear after another began to move, driving the surrounding gears into successive rotation, striking against one another.
Kalanja's gaze followed the gear array. The position each gear presented to him represented sacred binary code:
A tooth was 1. The gap between teeth was 0.
At every moment, what the gear array displayed was binary code that symbolized the future.
[1011101—]
Twelve seconds later, a new code formed.
Kalanja branded every code into his mind, recording the apocalyptic conclusion revealed by Teleology:
The doom of the Storm Lords was soon to come.
Kalanja severed his connection to the gear array.
"Cavaliero, you chose the wrong path."
"The Warmaster is destined for greatness, and you have taken your stand against him."
Mill World, Artificial Food Complex No. 25.
The iron foot of the Reaver-class Titan Odyssea slammed down onto the ash plain.
Princeps Nero Curtis was linked with his God-Machine, sensing the other Reaver of the Furious Hunt Formation, Laxvalia, as well as the War Hounds