The question echoed not in the air, but in the soul. It was a query from a mind so vast and so shattered that it was like a dying galaxy asking a single star for its name. Guilliman and the Custodes stood frozen, witnessing an event that defied ten thousand years of history: the Emperor was communicating.
Rimuru stood in the eye of that psychic hurricane, his own mind a silent, orderly island. He met the impossible question with the only answer he had: the simple, unadorned truth.
He did not speak. He did not need to. He simply opened his mind.
He showed the Emperor everything. Not as a boast, but as a statement of fact. He showed him the life of Satoru Mikami, a short, unremarkable existence in a world of peaceful, ordered prosperity. He showed him his lonely death and his bizarre reincarnation as a blind, helpless slime. He showed him the first meeting with the Storm Dragon Veldora, the giving of a name, and the forging of a bond that transcended their different natures.
He showed him the building of a nation. The naming of the goblins, the forgiveness of the orcs, the alliance with the lizardmen. He showed him the core of his philosophy, a truth this galaxy had long forgotten: that giving a being a name, a purpose, and a community could turn a monster into a citizen, a horde into a people. He showed him his own evolution, a power gained not through conquest, but through the desire to protect those who had placed their faith in him.
He showed him his companions: the proud Kijin, the fanatically loyal Demon, the boisterous dragon. A tapestry of individual wills, all unique, all different, all bound together not by fear or doctrine, but by a bond of mutual respect and loyalty to him, their king.
And finally, he showed him Ciel. A perfect, logical intelligence, born not of forbidden science, but of a skill's evolution, a mind untainted by the madness of the Warp.
The chaotic roar of the Emperor's consciousness seemed to quiet for a fraction of a second, a moment of lucidity in an eternity of pain. A new thought, laced with a sorrow so profound it was a wound in itself, reached out to Rimuru.
<...A builder... not a conqueror... A different path...> The thought was a whisper of ancient regret.
The Emperor's mind then showed Rimuru what He saw. He showed him the screaming, ravenous face of the Warp, not as a sea of energy, but as a predator chewing on the soul of humanity. He showed him the Great Game of the Chaos Gods, an eternal, pointless war fought with the damned souls of mortals. He showed him the future, a million possible timelines, all of them leading to darkness, to the victory of Chaos, or the cold silence of the Tyranids, or the return of the Necrons. A thousand different apocalypses, all held at bay by His single, focused, unending scream of defiance.
Then, the focus of the vast mind narrowed. It showed Rimuru the Golden Throne itself. Not the golden shell, but the arcane, impossibly complex machinery within. A masterpiece of forgotten sciences, a technology that dwarfed even the understanding of the Necrons. And it was failing.
He showed Rimuru micro-fractures in the primary conduits, decaying energy relays, a catastrophic feedback loop in the psychic matrix. After ten thousand years of constant, unimaginable strain, the machine was breaking down. And with it, the last shield of humanity.
The Emperor, the Master of Mankind, the God of the Imperium, had shown his deepest secrets to this anomaly. And then, for the first time in millennia, he asked for help.
The thought was not a command. It was the plea of a prisoner on a rack, asking a passing stranger for a sip of water.
<...The machine... fails. The darkness... gathers. The path... ends. You... who understands the building of things... you whose mind is not of this reality... Can you... mend... what is broken...?>
It was a request of impossible weight. He was being asked to repair the soul of a dying god, to fix the engine at the heart of the Imperium.
The psychic contact shattered. The roaring, agonizing pressure of the throne room returned to its full, crushing weight.
Rimuru stumbled back, his perfect composure finally breaking. He wasn't physically harmed, but the sheer weight of the information, the sorrow, the regret, and the impossible burden of the request, was overwhelming.
"Rimuru!" Guilliman was at his side in an instant, his demigod's face filled with a desperate, son's hope. "What was it? What did my father say to you?"
Rimuru looked up, from the skeletal, broken figure on the throne to the sorrowful, powerful face of the Primarch. He took a breath, his mind struggling to translate the cosmic tragedy he had just witnessed into simple words.
"Your father..." he said, his voice quiet and heavy with a new, unimaginable burden. "He asked me for a favor."
He paused, looking back at the colossal, failing life-support machine.
"He wants me to fix his chair."