Published in 2020, the novel follows two Necron lords, Trazyn the Infinite, a collector of ancient artifacts, and Orikan the Diviner, a powerful chronomancer. Trazyn and Orikan have been enemies for millennia, but when Orikan steals the Astrarium Mysterios from Trazyn's collection, believing it to be the key to unlocking an ancient power, the two are dragged into direct conflict. Over the course of ten thousand years, they go from competing over ownership of the Mysterios, to working together to unlock its secrets, to stabbing each other in the back over it. Their feud reshapes timelines, dooms planets, and threatens to either destroy or restore the entire Necron race.
This novel provides examples of:
- Adventure Archaeologist : Evil Overlord version, but Trazyn will always be a treasure hunter first, ruler of an interstellar kingdom second.
- Badass Boast: Trazyn get two very good ones during the final battle:
- The first is right as it is about to begin, when he and Orikan are contemplating their chances:Orikan: I hope you brought an army.
Trazyn: You think so little of me, dear colleague. I brought five. - And then, as they realize that their foe is more durable than initially thought:Orikan: It is, after all, a god.
Trazyn: Lucky for us, we kill gods.
- The first is right as it is about to begin, when he and Orikan are contemplating their chances:
- Bait-and-Switch: A little while after the strong implication that a Genestealer cult has infiltrated Imperial-colonized Serenade, Trazyn and Orikan are attacked while traversing the city's stormwater sewers by a monster that displays religious behavior, has extremely sharp claws and some sort of exoskeleton, and registers as partially human. But it's not a Genestealer, it's a Flayed One covered in human bones.
- Black Comedy: A lot of the story is centered around the titular duo's age-old feud, which is unimaginably horrific to the mortals caught in the crossfire and an infuriating annoyance that's proving more costly to their fellow Necrons... but to them, it's almost a Tom and Jerry routine of cosmic proportions.
- Painting the Medium: The same scene at the tribunal is repeated multiple times with slight differences, to show Orikan's attempts to Save Scum.
- Jerkass Gods: Millions of years ago, the C'tan callously enslaved and imprisoned all of the Necrontyr, twisting them into the Necrons they are now. Also, the entire plot of the book, from the very start, was orchestrated by Mephet'ran the Deceiver in order to escape his prison and wreak havoc on the galaxy once more.
- Mistaken Identity: One of Trazyn's exploits ended up this way, as a world he accidentally wound up saving from an Ork invasion ended up seeing Trazyn and his Necron legions as a chapter of oddly-adorned Space Marines, christening them as members of the Silver Skulls chapter and the planet erecting statues in their honor. Trazyn recounting the whole endeavor to Orikan somehow manages to make the Necron's Perpetual Smiler nature even bigger in delight by the absurdity of it all.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Trazyn and Orikan have a civil talk while cloaked inside a cafe between their antics, deciding to reflect on humanity around them while they are there; despite being a vastly inferior, younger race that they should be scoffing at compared to their might, Trazyn's time around them (especially in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy) eventually shown him a side to humanity that resonates with him enough to have interfered with their history from time to time, something that even catches Orikan's attention as they continue to talk before recognizing that Trazyn is actively comparing humanity to when they were still the Necrontyr in that, despite their weaknesses, mankind like the Necrontyr managed to claim a name for themselves in a cruel galaxy and could have even ruled the galaxy unquestioningly had adversity not threaten to shatter them like it had the Necrons after the War in Heaven. In the end, the question is asked that has both of them stop to contemplate: "would humanity, in their shoes, have agreed to the same deal the Necrontyr made with the C'tan that cost them their souls"?
- Save Scumming: An actual power of Orikan, with his Time Master abilities. the first time we see him make use of it in the book, he's in the process of unlocking one of Trazyn's locked museum doors, rewinding whenever the security system is about to desintegrate him. He later uses it to try and get a favourable judgment in court, but even can only manage to tie rather than win against Trazyn.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: The feud between the titular duo. Either this, or Arch-Enemy, as their antics range from comically petty to horrifyingly cruel.
- Space Battle: A lengthy one at that. When Orks invade Serenade and threaten the Tomb, Trazyn defends the planet's surface while Orikan destroys their ships.
- Superpowered Evil Side: At the book's climax Orikan achieves full apotheosis and delivers a Curb-Stomp Battle to the shards of the Deceiver — and discovers that in this state, he is essentially a C'tan himselfnote , bottomless hunger and godlike contempt for all life included. When the battle ends, Trazyn finds Orikan hunched in a corner, terrified, asking to know if "the other one" is gone. The epilogue shows him resigning himself to this as a necessary cost of ascension.
- The Stoic: Played With. Necrons as a whole are soulless husks of living metal. Any emotion they once felt is long gone and all that remains is a memory of it at best. They have no need to smile. Yet, as Orikan remarks at one point with great annoynce, Trazyn does smile. A lot.
- Time Dissonance: As immortal Necrons, Orikan and Trazyn speak casually of centuries and even millennia. It's mentioned that Necron stage plays can take over a decade to be performed in full, and Orikan regularly spends whole centuries in meditation and thinks nothing of it.
- Time Master: Orikan is the most skilled chronomancer of all of his kind, and it gets him out of more than a few tight situations.
- Time Skip: Played with. Most of the book concerns Trazyn and Orikan's repeated visits to the planet Serenade over the course of thousands of years, and each time the planet has changed markedly. To the two of them, however, their Time Dissonance means their experiences are more or less continuous.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Trazyn and Orikan are not skilled warriors (although Orikan did briefly train to be an Immortal when he was alive, making him decent at grappling small foes), but they have bodies that are incredibly durable, immensely strong, and can react much faster than most things in the galaxy, so they are seldom in actual physical danger.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: Some Necrontyrs did not want to undergo bio-transferrance, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the furnaces by their peers, which Orikan remembers all too well, especially since Trazyn was the one to force him. Except Trazyn remembers himself as being the one that had to be dragged off by Orikan. Interestingly, when they confront the matter of their conflicting memories, they speculate these memory alterations were done deliberately by the C'tan to stoke rivalries among the newly forged Necrons in an effort to control the more intelligent ones. Regardless, Trazyn preemptively apologizes to Orikan in earnest for what happened, even if he remembers the circumstances differently.
- Wimp Fight: Barely Averted. The first physical clash between Orikan and Trazyn is noted to avoid being this only by virtue of both having had their mind transferred to extremely strong and durable bodies millenia ago and that the sight of an old spindly nerd fighting a hunchback librarian would have been comical otherwise, and the guards and soldiers watching them fight would have laughed if they could.
