Oriacarius nodded to the serf that had entered his office to drop off the newest package of finished reports and protocols that the various Wardens requested in the past days. He knew that this serf was actually part of Crescum Auro's spy-network and was responsible for the gathering of ciphers for their hidden master. Perhaps others would be puzzled about his lack of response to this knowledge, but it was due to that inaction that he had been able to build contingencies and discover the rest of his brother's network in the serf ranks. Of course, only the simpler ciphers were left around where a serf might be able to find them, and as such, he knew that Crescum would never truly be able to break his higher ciphers.
In the end, leaving the serfs alone kept everything running smoothly and kept Crescum from building a new network that might be harder to discover. He noted the serf's actions in a log and nodded as everything proceeded as usual, and the door closed as the serf left.
Unknown to Oriacarius, he was not the only person aware of the truth of the matter, and Crescum Auro had long since been playing this silent game between the pair of them, and while Oriacarius believed he had discovered the last of Auro's secrets, he had failed, and the proof of this was a note in the package labeled as from Auro himself.
*Cipher sequence alpha one zeta beta gamma 10095a is roughly 30.51% stronger than the previous version from the deployment of regiment delta one, 2.67 solar years past. Provided sequence in package.*
The short message stated, and Oriacarius fumed as he knew that somehow his contingencies had failed to keep Crescum from getting access to one of his higher ciphers. Without a thought, an entire page was removed from the book on his desk as his mind idly began creating new permutations of the base cipher and methods of obscuring it from Crescum. Just another day in the silent war between two elders of the 11th.
After Kesar was found and the Legion renamed it into the Eternal Wardens, much changed and did not change. Missions were done and completed, brothers died, and scouts arose to take their place. But through it, all the silent war continued. New faces and new strategies were employed on both sides to keep up with each other. Oriacarius devised ever more ingenious methods of hiding his work behind countless layers of obfuscation and protocols to ensure that it would be untouchable and his younger brother silently and tirelessly worked away in the depths of the Legion to find the loopholes and flaws in the security of the other to continue their codebreaking.
Oriacarius, in a new office, without any surveillance and guarded by Wardens, saw a serf come in and knew that his brother was trying again to gather the latest cipher. He sighed, hoping that his younger brother would eventually stop this silly waste of resources and simply make their own ciphers instead of constantly stealing his own.
The serf, under the eyes of five Wardens and Oriacarius watching for any sign of suspicious movement in cloth or skin or even microexpressions for deceit, found nothing, while a package was delivered and the serf left the office. On the top of the pile of reports was a simple and firm square of metal with words carved into it, and Oriacarius knew in an instant that somehow Crescum had discovered his newest cipher and fumed as he considered just how that would be possible.
Crescum Auro had always been a strange character for Oriacarius to ponder, for they were so alike but also completely inverted in action and personality. The little he knew in full showed a Warden that was committed to the ideals of logic beyond even that of most tech-priests, and yet, this very silent war was the height of illogical action. Perhaps a bit more study on Crescum would shed light on this strange silent war of theirs that no one else seemed to even realize was occurring.
Decades pass, and the silent war continues, both fighters becoming ever better at beating the other, yet in divergent methods. Oriacarius knows that his stratagems are rooted in versatility and the bizarre; never remaining the same changing things up, confuse the board is his method of victory. Hide behind increasing layers of metaphorical and literal walls, turn it into a siege and let the foe grind itself down upon them. On the other side of the board, Crescum works tirelessly to find the faults and cracks in the seemingly perfect shells constructed to halt his inexorable advance.
Sometimes, Oriacarius wonders how things have reached a point where he has to spend entire minutes deciding how to counter new pushes from Auro to preserve his cipher library. Countless codes have already been discovered and broken apart, and new forms returned to him, but that is the problem in and of itself. For without the source code, how could one so effortlessly break his codes, and he knew that Crescum was gathering data from him directly in some manner.
If the codes that had been broken were only used in public dispatches, he would understand. The source of information, but even some of those that he had only used once or twice, had been broken apart by his counterpart. The years trundled onward without end, and the war did so. There was no deviation. Crescum was as predictable as orbital mechanics; he was without subtlety in his actions, everything was held to a pattern of logic, and Oriacarius knew that logic.
Yet, somehow in defiance of logic, he still failed to see the true core behind the holes in his security. Protocols were completed ever faster, and codes were broken ever quicker, and some days, he wondered if it might come to a point where Crescum would complete his protocols faster than he could invent new ones.
Oriacarius sat at his desk, reports from countless worlds scattered across it, and he shrugged, beginning to work on the paperwork again. As he worked, something began to niggle at his mind, and he turned to the clock and noticed that it was time for one of Crescum's serfs to enter and do whatever it was that allowed him such perfect access to the ciphers. Yet, the door remained closed, everything was silent and unchanged, but that changed everything. In all the decades, Auro had been as constant as a clock, never missing a meeting in their strange form.
The war had been raging for decades and for it to stop so abruptly was strange. Oriacarius pushed his mind back to work and filled out forms and paperwork again, keeping an eye on the door, and yet it never opened; no one sent a package to him, and there was no harsh truthful statement of victory; just the silence of nothingness.
A day turned into a week, a week into a month, yet there was no sign of any of Auro's tablets. Even when he could not break a code, he had inevitably sent reports on his progress with snippets of assistance towards improvement, yet that was now absent. Something had changed, and Oriacarius did not know what it was and so turned to the old standby, the countless flow charts he had made for all eventualities.
The first action was to confirm that Auro was not among the dead in the Ritual War, which was confirmed easily enough with a single astropathic call. With survival confirmed, Oriacarius turned towards the last time he was seen and found that soon after the war ended, he had vanished into the void of space in an unmarked vessel.
Only a handful of options remained for what could have befallen Auro, and he ran through them all in his mind. He could have Fallen, been recruited, decided to leave the Legion and the Imperium, or perhaps suffered possession or mind control.
Of all his brothers, Auro was the last one to Fall; every report confirmed that Auro was among the most stable of the Librarians. If he had Fallen, then others would have as well, and yet there were few if any Fallen of note, and so that chance was quickly stricken from the list of effective options, it would remain on the board, but the probability was low. Same for deciding to leave the Legion, Oriacarius knew from his reports and profile on Auro that he would be at higher risk for desertion than most, but he was still loyal to the Imperium if only of a fatalistic drive, and so another option was removed from major consideration. Possession and/or mind control were easily dismissed for much the same reason Auro Falling was; if one of the most stable was so quickly taken out, then others would have been as well.
In the end, the most likely event was that Auro had been recruited by another Imperial group for some clandestine reason. One that had been hidden from even his authority.
