Perhaps we would turn out to be like those ships’ crews who had been lost between the stars for centuries and returned to find out all their descendants were dead. I had heard tales of those who had entered ancient, haunted vaults for what they thought was one night and emerged to discover a century had passed. Had they entered a place like this?
The way ahead started running through larger chambers. It remained a massive roadway, paved and marked with ancient runes. Sometimes, off the road, we would see robed skeletons lying there. Macharius would not allow us to depart from the trail, but the little I saw of them suggested something inhuman to me. They were too long, too thin, and something in the way they sprawled was not the way a human body would have lain.
The roof of the chamber started to shimmer and change, and sometimes pictures came into view there, gigantic images of god-like beings who seemed to be looking down on us, or into the area through which we walked. Sometimes they were scenes or parts of scenes, broken images with no pattern that I could see and only one common theme. In all of them were tall, beautiful creatures, in surroundings similar to the ones in which we were walking through.
They were eldar, like the ones we had fought physically. Their expressions had nothing in common with the cruelty of Bael and his kindred, though. These people looked peaceful and pleasant and full of love. Of course, who am I to judge whether they were or not. We are taught to be wary of the xenos, rightfully so. Perhaps this was just a deception or a trap, but some deep seated instinct told me that this was not the case.
We marched on. I prayed to the Emperor that we would find the eldar and get this over with. There was something about this pathway that frightened me more than death.
This place has been strangely altered, tainted by She Who Thirsts or her followers. The path looks like many others I have travelled, but I can see that it is frayed, that the very fabric of the powers that make it up is unravelling. It is only a matter of time before the whole structure is swallowed and another of our ancestors’ creations is devoured.
Of all the things they made, this is one of the few I would regret the destruction of. The webway allows us to travel between places and worlds, but this is not like that. It is a vault, a secure place, a protected place. It was intended to keep safe things of value to our ancestors. It was intended to be a refuge when their universe went mad. In their weakness, they sought not to confront and overmaster what threatened them but to hide from it. Their own spinelessness betrayed them.
They thought they had dug themselves a hole to hide in, a burrow where they could hide from the predators that pursued them. It is obvious they were wrong. They brought what they sought to avoid with them, and when they sealed the doors behind them, they trapped themselves with it. The irony is enough to make me laugh. My guards do not understand why I do, but they echo my mirth. Even here they look to me for leadership. They are not afraid but nervous.
So far none have audibly expressed any criticism of my leadership, nor are they likely to, for they know that I will not stand for it. Yet I sense their doubts. I have my own. Memories of the last few minutes of the battle on the surface keep coming back to me. Who would have thought mere apes could have fought so well? My followers are inclined to attribute the setback to the presence of those known as the Adeptus Astartes, and there is some truth in that. I am the only one who knows that is not the whole story.
There is an intelligence guiding the humans, commanding them, a mind of subtlety and great tactical gifts. I have seen it in the traps it has laid for our forces. Every time we thought we found a weakness, it was a snare. We have taken far heavier casualties fighting the humans than even the presence of Space Marines would have suggested.
Warrior for warrior, they are the equal of any of my force and the superiors of most, but they represent the merest fraction of the enemy’s number. Those with them should never have been able to withstand our swift and merciless attacks. Their weak spirits should have been broken, their slow minds incapable of understanding the speed of our assaults. Yet somehow they not only stood their ground but inflicted devastating losses on us. Many noble bodies will need to be rebuilt after this. Many fragments of flesh reclaimed.
If I return now, without that which I seek, I will be a laughing stock. My enemies will whisper about how I was defeated by an ape. I will lose face and my enemies will not fear me as they should. I begin to suspect that perhaps I have been lured here by those very enemies. Perhaps it is no human mind that guides them but something else.
I push such thoughts to one side. I must concentrate on my goals. I must find the reality engine.
Twenty-Five
We marched and we marched and we marched through that timeless, sunless place, knowing that the eldar and Grimnar were still ahead of us. I looked at my chronometer and found out to my surprise that it had been twelve hours since we had set off. We had already been up for most of a day before that, and had fought and fled. Some of the men looked weary. I could see that Macharius was reluctant to call a halt but understood the need to do so.
He raised his hand, and said, ‘We cannot march forever. We shall sleep for a few hours and move on, rested and ready to face the Emperor’s enemies.’
He himself looked capable of marching on then and there, but like all good leaders he knew it was unwise to push his troops beyond their limits, except when it was absolutely necessary.
The path passed through a large parkland in a huge chamber. We were surrounded by forests of strange looking trees with feathery leaves. I had never seen anything like them before. There was something unnatural about them. I doubted they had ever been planted in the soil of any world colonised by men. They looked a perfect backdrop for the eldar, though.
Macharius divided us into watches and we threw ourselves down, using our packs for pillows. My head no sooner hit the ground than I was asleep and my dreams were weird and haunted.
At first I remembered my early life in the slums of Belial. I saw my father, old and worn out by work. I saw the guild factorums in which Anton and Ivan and I had laboured. I was chased through them by gangsters. They were going to pull off my fingers with red-hot pliers. There was something daemonic in their faces.
Somehow they followed me into the camp where I did my basic training for the Guard, but now they were instructors, always threatening with the pliers if I did not learn fast enough, and I knew I could not.
They were officers howling commands at me in the jungles of Jurasik and the lava flows of Karsk. They pursued me through the airless tunnels of the asteroid fortresses of Mahagan and the dimly-lit streets of Hive Skarthius, where skull-masked priests led armies of grey-skinned men.
As the dreams progressed I became aware of changes in my surroundings. I was still being pursued, sometimes through familiar landscapes, then through places that resembled the valley above – but around its edges were the streets of a city, which extended down into the tunnels below.
At first the streets were empty, but as the chase continued they were crowded by those thin-lipped, fine-featured xenos we had seen modelled in the statuary. They watched me being pursued and they made no move to help, although they seemed interested in a vague and distant way.
I dived into the middle of a crowd of them, determined to lose the things that hounded me. Suddenly there were more of the xenos and they no longer noticed me, crowds of them went about their business, got on with their lives. Somehow the urgency of the pursuit fled and I knew I was, for the moment, safe.
I paused and studied my reflection in the mirrored window of a shop, and I saw now that my form was not human but eldar. I was taller and thinner and far better looking. With the strange logic of dreams I did not question the transformation. My own life as a soldier of the Emperor was the dream now. Memories crowded into my head, of my life as an eldar, of a family and a house and an existence that felt as real as my waking career as an Imperial Guardsman.
I looked up and once again my surroundings were changed. I
was in the valley above, but now it was entirely occupied by a prosperous city of stone and crystal, of egg-shaped buildings and oval towers with minaret spires. I strode up a long curved walkway and looked down upon the valley. There were temples there, huge and ancient and familiar. The gods looked down on their blessed followers. Looping over everything was a massive roadway reminiscent of the one we had walked through the gate. It floated over the buildings and vanished into the surrounding mountains.
I noticed in the streets that there was a preacher, robed in gold and purple and green. He smiled beatifically at passers-by and preached words of love and charity and hope. He told of the coming of a new god, that would lead the eldar once more to greatness of soul and spirit, who would provide guidance to the lost, hope to the dejected, peace to the troubled. He would lead the eldar to a life of simple, endless pleasure.
The priest spoke, and folk listened to the sweetness of his voice and words. I listened too, and I was troubled without knowing exactly why. My people were at the height of their greatness. There was no poverty, no hunger, no hatred in our hearts. What could such things mean to us? There was a sense that all problems had been solved. The only things that troubled us were of the spirit; we faced the boredom of a serene, happy existence. There were troubling reports of great wars among the other races, but we took no part in them.
Things shifted once more. Time had passed. The city no longer looked so clean and clear. The lights seemed dimmer. There were more shadows everywhere, but not because of catastrophe. It was because the people of the city wanted it this way. They wanted shadow now. They wanted quiet places where they could move apart and smoke their pipes and lie in each other’s arms and pass their time most pleasantly. The priests in gold and purple and green moved among them, smiling approvingly, speaking their words of tolerance and comfort, encouraging the folk in their pursuit of pleasure.
Life was sweet, and desires were to be embraced. Experience of any sort was good. I heard sermons preached that soon the bright golden god would appear and speak his word and the universe would be transformed in the light of his presence. Listening to the words I felt a sense of falseness and was disturbed, but I took another puff from the narcotic hookah and reached out for my lovers and found peace.
More time passed. The people had turned their faces from the old gods and swarmed into the temples of the new god, who was yet to be born. Shrines lay neglected. Offerings went unmade. Life had altered strangely. People ignored their daily business now, lost themselves in sleep and the consumption of narcotics and hallucinogenics.
Few people went about their business by day, but emerged only at night, to revel and indulge in orgies of love-making and drug-taking and the consumption of hallucinogenic wine. The priests led the revels now and preached the word of the imminence of their god, and people watched and waited, sensing that soon the world would change forever. In the tunnels below, new statues were erected to the god. It was not like the friendly beings of old.
Not everyone approved. Not everyone took part in the revels. Other preachers appeared, saying that something was amiss, that some great disaster was imminent, that soon there would be a cosmic crisis that would destroy eldar civilisation. Few paid attention. Sometimes those who spoke out were found beaten to death or overdosed on narcotics. Sometimes I saw priests in gold and purple and green standing over their corpses.
Some packed their families and belongings and left, taking flight to new planets or setting out for the great world-ships. Some built a great vault, a safe place into which they could retreat within the webways. They began to experiment with devices that would tap the flows of power, let them restructure reality.
Most stayed, too drugged to move, too overwhelmed by the pleasures of life to do anything other than take part in the day-long rituals in the temples of the new god. I sensed a mighty presence looming over everything, biding its time, waiting its moment. I was not alone in this. The sense of presence, of being at the end of something, gave the revels a desperate fury. People turned to darker pleasures. Blood flowed in the streets, and not all the victims of violence were unwilling participants. All sense of proportion, of restraint, departed.
Now, day after day, night after night passed to the beating of great drums, and dancing and revelry to the sound of hellish, discordant piping. Eldar ran naked through the streets, bodies covered in
tattoos written in blood, or woven from scars. Sacrifices were made everywhere to the new god as all vestige of sanity seemed to be extinguished. The priests in gold and purple and green cavorted lewdly in the streets, leading the revels, consuming the potions with the greatest enthusiasm, speaking mad words of revelation that eager-eared listeners drank in. The day of embodiment was fast approaching.
The sermons grew ever less restrained, ever more vehement. The priests led the population in ritual chanting, in the defacing of the statues of the old gods, in the creation of newer and less wholesome idols. Under cover of night things began to appear, that looked like people but whose limbs ended in claws. They danced in the moon-lit streets surrounded by clouds of intoxicating perfumes that drove all those who breathed them in to greater and greater heights of hedonism.
The day arrived. The sky split. On a thousand worlds, the god appeared and looked down on his people and smiled. And they screamed for they saw at last the visage of the being they worshipped, and they were afraid. Their screams lasted but an instant for the newborn god breathed in and their souls were sucked from their bodies and drawn into his maw.
With every soul devoured the god grew in power and strength. It became harder and harder for those who resisted to endure. Starting with the weaker souls, he gained strength until not even the mightiest could stand against the strain. The worst of it was that even as they died and were devoured, their screams of terror turned to screams of ecstasy. Hearing these, those who resisted, resisted no longer and the mad scramble to escape doom became a willing submission to it.
Bodies fell in the street, drained of spirit and animation, as the daemon-god fed. The streets of the city became filled with corpses. Ships fell from the sky, no longer piloted. Vehicles slewed off roads as their drivers were absorbed into the presence of the newborn deity. In moments, stillness settled on the city as all of its inhabitants died and were transformed into part of the new entity.
Lights still flickered, signs still flashed, but there was no one there to stand witness. An end had come to the city, and I knew that all across the galaxy, on every world the eldar had inhabited, it was the same. A new evil had been born, weaned on the souls of an entire people, a creature of cosmic power and malevolence, a new Power of Chaos destined to strive with the others for dominance of the universe.
In my mind I saw thousands of suddenly empty worlds, and I felt the new god’s presence. A single titanic word echoed through my mind in the aftermath of its birth, a name: Slaanesh. I woke screaming. I was surrounded by men doing the same.
Macharius stood staring into the distance. His face was grim. He had not been among the sleepers. He looked down at Drake who had been. The inquisitor’s face was very pale.
‘This is an accursed place,’ he said. ‘We should leave here. Our souls are in peril.’
‘We have not found the Fist, and I would not surrender it to our enemies.’
‘It avails us not if we find the Fist and lose our souls. We would merely be bringing a great spiritual peril out into the Imperium.’
Macharius stared at him, hard, obviously considering his words carefully. ‘I have come a long way to find the Fist and I will not turn back now. I will not let so sacred a symbol of the Imperium fall into the hands of those eldar scum.’
‘They are corrupt and they are suited to this place. We are not. The longer we remain, the more in peril our souls are.’
‘I saw nothing save men whose sleep was troubled.’
‘If their dreams were like mine, they were more than troubled. Lemuel, what did you dream?’
Both
of them looked at me. I told them.
‘I saw the same,’ said Anton.
‘And I,’ said Ivan.
Other soldiers chipped in. Their descriptions were similar to ours. They were not exactly alike in detail but in broad strokes were the same. They had witnessed the destruction of worlds and the birth of an evil god. It was the sort of knowledge that Drake could quite probably have had us put to death for possessing, if he’d so desired.
‘I will not turn my back on this quest because of a dream, no matter how frightening or how many people had it,’ said Macharius.
‘The fact that so many men had it is a sign,’ said Drake. ‘And not a good one. It is a warning.’
‘It was a dream.’
‘There is something about this place,’ said Drake. ‘Some echo of distant terrible events echoes through it. The further we go, the stronger those echoes will become.’
‘I am not turning back,’ said Macharius and it was a simple statement of fact. He was not afraid, and he would not allow us to be either. ‘Nor is any man under my command.’
His eagle-keen gaze swept over us, and we all felt the force of it. I stood straighter when he looked at me and so did every man present. All of us believed that if we showed the slightest sign of fear we would be personally betraying him, and none of us wanted to do that. The matter was settled with that one look. Not even Drake had the stomach for argument after that.
‘We’ve rested enough,’ said Macharius. ‘We must push on.’
Twenty-Six
The further we marched, the stranger it became. The walls of the tunnel became lighter and lighter until they were almost translucent. The ghastly multicoloured fog that had marked the entrance to this place was visible through them. Occasionally it cleared, and I saw snatches of scenes that were shockingly familiar.