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.