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.’
Chapter 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.
Sometimes I saw a single figure, an eldar who resembled someone I had seen in my dreams. Once it was one of the ghastly priests of the new god smiling and nodding at me encouragingly. Another time it was the haunted face of one of the xenos who had walked the city streets. I never saw them directly or for very long. I caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye, had the merest flicker of recognition, and then they were gone as if they had never been, disappeared like shadows when a candle is snuffed out.
It was maddening. I could not be sure I was seeing anything. They were as real as the colours you see when you close your eyes and massage your eyelids and just as temporary. I glanced to my left at Anton and I could see he was queasy as well. Sometimes he looked swiftly to his right or left, as though he were trying to catch a glimpse of something that was not there, or which moved too quickly from his line of sight.
He saw I was looking at him and he turned to me and said, ‘I don’t like this place.’
For once, he was not whining or complaining, simply stating a fact. Normally I would have mocked him, but now I could only agree.
‘So you’re seeing them too,’ said Ivan quietly.
‘Seeing what?’ I asked.
‘The ghosts or dreams, or whatever they are.’
‘Maybe.’
Drake dropped back to march along beside us. He was troubled, and it was a measure of exactly how troubled he was that he chose to talk with us. ‘They are echoes, imprinted in the very fabric of this place, echoes of the people who were once here, of events that once happened, of things that once were.’
He sounded utterly convinced of that and very afraid. He glanced towards Macharius doubtfully. He clearly believed the Lord High Commander was leading us towards disaster.
‘We’ve been in worse places,’ I said. ‘Faced worse foes. He’s led us through all of it.’
‘Where is the foe he can beat here?’ said Drake quietly. ‘What is there for him to out-think, to out-fight. If there was something to defeat, he could, no doubt about it, but what we face here are shadows and memories, and not even our shadows and memories but those of deviant xenos. This is a place of ghosts.’
Despite the quietness of his speech, Macharius heard him. Without turning his head, he said, ‘We have an objective and we have an enemy ahead of us. We will face the enemy and we will achieve our objective. Of that, have no doubt.’
‘And what then?’ Drake asked.
‘We shall cross that bridge when we come to it,’ said Macharius. ‘One thing is certain. We will not give up now.’
The corridors darkened. The road swooped downwards, descending for what felt a very long way. We kept marching. Every now and again we spotted a mark in Fenrisian runes that let us know that Grimnar had been here before us. It was strangely reassuring.