Ahur-Kai's eyes widen at the creatures words and Khayon appears to be agitated.
"Each of you has a verse and a chorus in the Song, sung from the throats of the Emperor’s Choir. Warnings of rising, of awakening, of murder and fire among the stars. Is this who you would be? These instruments of destruction? The Damnation of Mankind?"
"Mankind has already forgotten who we are," said Telemachon. "We’re exiles. Just tales to frighten children into behaving."
"I ask you to turn back," the Solar Priest repeated. Its golden face was smeared with reflected light from the bridge’s red illume-globes.
"That will not be happening," Khayon replied. "Weapons, my brothers."
Telemachon hefted his bolter rather than drawing his swords, It crunched to his shoulder-guard as he took aim. Lheor’s chainaxe gave a quick whine. Saern’s was instantly in Khayons hand.
initiative?
"You finally speak some sense."
"Stop this aggression!" Ashur-Kai said. "This is a creature of prophecy. We must bind it. We must learn from it."
"This is my ship, Ashur-Kai. I do not heed the whims of ghosts." Khayon replied
"No?" His bitterness was almost a plea. "Just the whims of daemons and aliens." Ashur-Kai shot back.
"You would destroy us if you could," Khayon challenged it, "but we are past the Firetide. All you can do is hurl burning Neverborn against the hull, resorting to begging when that fails. Now you appeal to our morality? You are preaching temperance to the wrong audience, shade. Why should we turn back? What awaits us here? What is it you seek to stop us doing?"
In a slow ripple of robes, the spirit rose from my command seat.
"Ashur-kai is right. We have no idea what we face. Heed his wisdom, Khayon. Do not allow your anger to doom us all. Do not erepeat the mistakes of the past that you have obviously moved beyond."
Deathraven made no move to activate his power fist, instead merely replacing his helmet, locking it into place.
"Shade of the Emperor, why does the Singer want Horus Lupercal restored?"
Lheor’s pistol kicked with a resounding boom. The bolt took the revenant in the chest, blasting stained cloth and viscera against the throne.
"No!" yelled Ashur-Kai’s from his observation balcony above you all. "You bloodthirsty wretch!"
"Sit back down," Lheor snarled at the spectre.
The Solar Priest didn’t fall despite the hole bust open in its chest. A tremor showed in its thin fingers. Veins grew dark beneath the skin of its arms. The metal of its face began to tarnish and corrode, ageing before your eyes.
Deathraven spins and looks at Khayon.
"What is the Singer?"
Ulasht does not dispute the wisdom of Ashur-Kai but says nothing further in the tense situation that has been created.
Ulasht holds his actions as well as his tongue.
"I assume it speaks of the Emperor." Khayon said to Deathraven
"You are the death of empires," the spirit told you as it rotted on its feet. "You will be the end of the Imperium. Is this what you wanted for yourselves when you first looked up to the night sky as children on your home worlds?"
It pointed with a hand that dripped rank fluid from beneath blackening fingernails. The pristine white robes were soiled by blood and excrement, the stains appearing in slow spreads. Cracks cobwebbed across the gold face.
"I want Truth, as I always did. They showed me the truth when they selected me, and I have served the pursuit of Truth for half a millennium, and shall continue to do so always. The Imperium is built on lies, and shall fall as it must."
Deathraven guffawed at the mentioning of Truth.
"You lie and yet you want the Truth? Amusing. Obviously, Truth depends on one's point of view."
Deathraven turned and looked at Lheor.
"You just destroyed the best chance we had of recovering Falkus Kibre and the others. Makes me wonder what side of this compact you are truly on."
Deathraven turned and walked from the circle of the command dais. He chose to join Ashur-Kai on his balcony.
Lheor lets out a gunshot laugh at Deathravens comment. "If Falkus wanted the beast removed from his body he would of asked Khayon, this spirit thing is here to stop us from completing our compact we agreed to help Falkus with."
"The end of the Imperium," said Telemachon, musing. "My fate is my own, little ghost, and I have no love of prophecy." He kicked the decaying priest in the side, forcing the apparition to roll onto its back.
"Fools," the White Seer whispered. "To destroy a thing of such import... A manifestation of the Emperor Himself... Fools, all of you."
The Solar Priest couldn’t speak. White mist wisped from his open metal mouth. One of the cracks across his cheek split open, shedding half of the mask’s faceplate and revealing a skinless face beneath. The thing sought to stand again on shaking, stick-thin legs. Telemachon’s boot drove it back down to the deck.
Ashur-Kai looked ravaged. "Fools," he said again, softer yet fiercer.
The Solar Priest collapsed, coming apart the way sand falls through loose fingers. Where it had stood lay a fluid-soaked robe and a spread of ash across the deck. Nearby mutants coughed on the dead ghost’s dust.
Ashur-Kai crouched, brushing his hand through the ashes. "The Astronomican is weak here, Khayon. Even projecting its image must have required immense force. And out of spite, you silenced it with a single shot fired in ignorance."
"It had delivered its warning," Khayon replied.
The fight went out of Ashur-Kai as he sifted through the ashes. "This dust will be an invaluable reagent in my ritual work. I will harvest it, with your permission."
"Its remains are yours," Khayon replied. "Use them well."
Deathraven helped Ashur-Kai collect as much as possible. Maybe something could be salvaged from this debacle.
"He should have been informed that another option had presented itself."
He turned to Ashur-Kai.
"Brother, may I take a token?"
"Humans live in squalor with only the wealthy and the bureaucrat free to enjoy the fruits of the labor of the teeming masses of trillions on worlds we helped subjugate. The dream that was the Imperium was stillborn as the man that birthed it spoke with a silver tongue. One cannot create peace and justice through blood and violence. It is our role to return to Terra and tear down the Golden Idol. Then man may live as he was intended to, by the force of his own will. I agree with Khayon, there is nothing we need from this spirit of an already dead false God". Ulasht says addressing Ashur-Kai and Deathraven as they gather the ashes.
Ulasht turns to Khayon, "But Ashur-Kai is correct about one thing, placing faith or trust in the "Gods" of Chaos is an even more foolish endeavor".
"The lessons of the Great Crusade are quickly forgotten, it seems. Nothing has been prevented here. This was the Emperor's Open Hand. His Closed Fist is yet to come."
Aldegund stands watching it all feeling nothing for the image, but then again denied some kind of closure his words. Aldegund brushes the thought away as he approaches it to save some ashes in a pouch, as the robe , might be someone else claim or he would take it for himself.
"The Emperor was never a God, it is the weakness and the fear that has created this image over the centuries. Yet here we are still harrowed by such image, like Deathraven said, this was his open hand, we are yet to see the fist and his underhand."
Ashur-Kai nods to Deathraven.
"I do not put my faith in any gods nor prophecies. I choose my own path and this specter was not going to sway us from our path. Perhaps we would of gotten a bit more information from it but it is as it is now and that is all we continue forth into the Radiant Worlds and to the Eleusinian Veil. We still do not know our true destination as Sargon is gone but with luck we may find it." Khayon said to everyone as he sat back down on his command chair.
Deathraven takes the robe. He uses the fluid to draw a sigil on his pauldron. At this point, he leaves the bridge to return to his arming chanber. He will apply a coat of sealant to make the sigil permanent.
Akkad shakes his head at the blasphemy of the sorcerers. "To hear such things from men blind the the warp is merely a celebration of ignorance, but from you? Such hubris is like a bird abandoning the skies to wallow in the mud. The gods of the warp are cruel, capricious beings, but are nothing compared to the horror of the gods of the materium. There is no reprieve from entropy, no bargaining with time, and no way to fight the light barrier, or rather, no way bereft of the immaterium. I will cast my lot with the only way to keep our from extinguishing pointlessly in endless night.
"Enough theology. This is a good omen. The manifestation of evil fears us, and the true gods are with us. Rejoice!". He leaves the bridge to return to his quarters.
You passed worlds burned clean of life even down to the molecular level, annihilated when the Eye of Terror first opened. You passed worlds with oceans of boiling liquid gold or clouds of impossible fire-vapour. You passed worlds where civilizations of blind things sensed your passing and shrieked at the ship with ten million weakly psychic voices. You passed worlds where the ghosts of dead eldar waged eternal war against what few daemons manifested in the Radiant Worlds, as well as against spirits that resembled men, women and Space Marines twisted almost beyond recognition. Every planet was bleached in the manifest light of the Astronomican as well as suffering the oppressive touch of the Great Eye.
It took another stretch of days to reach the Eleusinian Veil itself. The Veil was a great red-black dust cloud choking several long-dead star systems on the edge of the Eye. Scans failed to penetrate deeply and revealed nothing worth mining. Ships that went in – few as they were over the centuries – rarely returned, and when they did they relayed nothing worth returning for. What few reports you had seen did not even mention encountering any worlds. It was possible they had been swallowed whole when the Youngest God was born.
Your months of sailing had brought you to the Veil’s edge, and the Taloc drifted with its auspex scanners cast far and wide. The Anamnesis heard nothing, sensed nothing, felt nothing from within the shroud.
The Tlaloc entered the Veil, scanner-blind and shrouded in darkness. You had no destination. You had no true direction from Falkus, nor from the fragmentary descriptions given by Sargon. You simply sailed into the dust with shields raised and weapons armed.
Menstras stands on the bridge gazing out at the darkness beyond the Oculus. The months prior replaying through his mind, filling the blank before him.
He stood before me. Weak. Vulnerable. Yet I could not move. I could hardly speak. How could I be so weak? How could I allow another to steal my vengeance?
No. This was but a test. The Emperor remains beyond, bound to his throne. So long as his corpse remains so does my vengeance. What Lheor destroyed only weakened him. But why would he allow this?
Menstras paces a short distance to his right, staring at a new point in the shadows.
Does he seek to save his loyal cub? To drive him from my blade? Or does he truly wish Horus to be reborn? Surely even he could not be so foolish.
His hand drifts to the worn hilt of his blade, finger tracing the smoothed pommel.
Falkus claimed to have other allies in this cause. No doubt they would suceed in the absence of half a dozen warriors and Khayon's blanks. Why warn us?
Deathraven waited and watched.
Nothing on the first day. The same on the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. On the sixth day, you drifted through an asteroid field that we could scarcely see. Its size and density was a mystery. Ashur-Kai reached forth with his senses and guided the ship as best he could in the cloying dark.
"This was once a world" Ashur-Kai said after a few hours. "I felt it, when one of the rocks crashed against the void shields a moment ago. I felt the echoes of life. This asteroid field was once a world."
"Gravity haul," called one of the servitors slaved to the helm. The pull of gravity meant a large astral body nearby. The remnants of the broken world? The largest chunk?
After several days traveling in the breach you rested and dreamed.
You dreamed of rain. Rain that burned your skin in prickling stings. Rain falling from a dirty marble sky, down onto a frozen expanse of glassy white rock. When the rain washed over the ground, it hissed with steam as it bit into the ice. When it ran over your lips, it tasted of engine oil. When it ran into your open eyes, it ate your sight in itching bites, turning all you saw from occluded white to clearest black.
Ulasht wakes and seeks out Ashur-Kai.
"Seer, I have had a vision I wish to discuss with you".
Assuming he agrees, I will relay to him what I saw.
Ulasht
"It appears you have received a somnus-cry from an astropath. We will look for planets that match your description in the area." he says to you interested that you received the vision and not himself.
############
The command desk buzzes with activity as he orders the crew to read all auspex scanners as he also reaches out with his senses to find anything that matches the description given to him.
After several hours something finally comes up.
"Aas’ciaral," Nefertari said, giving the world its eldar name.
Telemachon chuckled at that. He spoke the alien's tongue.
"Heart’s Song is the low gothic name for the planet." Khayon said.
Its face was cataracted by turgid storms covering the entire world in milky clouds. Lightning wracked the occluded skies in random dances.
You all stood on the bridge, watching the grey-white world on the occulus. What was left of the planet could not exist anywhere else but in the Great Eye, where the laws of reality were enslaved to the whims of mortal minds. Your naked eyes told you nothing of what lay in wait on its surface. The scanners told you nothing. A sensor probe launched into its curdled atmosphere told you, as you might imagine, nothing.
Ulasht has his own thoughts as to why that may be but says nothing to the Seer.
---------------------------
Ulasht turns to Khayon, "It appears that if we wish to discover what this world has to offer we will need to see it with our own eyes".
Lheor spat onto the deck, "The signal definitely came from here?"
"It was an astropathic message. It guided us here, and though I cannot be certain of the message’s source, this is the world in the somnus-cry." Khayon told Lheor.
Khayon turns to Ulasht "Yes it would seem so. We will send gunship sweeps and fighter reconnaissance across the planet’s continents. The atmosphere too dense to allow for reliable scanning. I do not wish to land random in case it's a trap."
"Nefererti, what can you tell us of this world?"
"It was once a world full of life and vegetation but since the birth of She Who Thirsts it is shattered." Nefertari replied.
The world looks almost like a half eaten apple. The asteroid field is definitely from this planet that you passed through as many of them appear to be acting as the planets moons now.
Aldegund does not worry himself with the comings and goings of the ship, he is more concerned with his craft, but he will eventually go to the bridge to rest his eyes from his work if not to sleep before starting again.
No, you lost contact with them about two months ago. All your attempts to find them have been futile. Ships are huge and the area they were designated was very large. They aren't responding to vox.
Draex stares at the planet on the occulus, its shape making him hungry. Standing behind one of the ship's crew members reading the auspex scanners read back nothing watching him frantically to bring news of some worth
"pppssshhh, worthless" by not fully elaborating, the crew member stops abruptly frozen in fear but never turning around the feeling the unease as if the comment was directed at him
Draex walks toward the center of the shipping address Khayon restless as usual
"when are we going down there? you know that is the only option we have left to find out what's going on this planet. this would be a great time to get off this ship and into some action"
the nails sink their teeth into draex`s mind and a wicked grin splits his face with a sinister look of madness and insanity One of the ladies operating a computer screen starts wimpering in fear upon staring into draex's eyes
Aldegund wants to stretch properly "Draex, would you mind meeting me in the gimnasium for proper stretching, while we wait for the reconnaissance to be done?" as Aldegund smiles caressing his thunder hammer, knowing full well he was doing it more to allow Draex some respite from his eagerness than Aldegunds own need to blow of some steam and change the monotony of his days.
v 39
Menstras studies the readouts from the scans searching for any lead to expound upon. An anomaly in the storm cells. Any odd readings. Shadows in the sensor pattern.
"When this world lived, where was their seat of power?"
The planet shouldn't even be alive based on what you see. The damage it has sustained should have destroyed the rest of it but the eye and it's infinite ways is keeping it together. The interference from the acid raid and clouds do not allow the scanners to see very far.
"Khayon, I will take a landing craft and have a look around. Anyone who wants to come along for the ride is welcome, but we aren't going to find out why we were called by sitting here."
Several ships were deployed to find any sign of life on the planet. You sought anything at all: a settlement, a city, a downed vessel, anything that could have been the source of the astropathic cry. Descending below the cloud cover made no difference to your instruments. The tormented world wreaked havoc on every auspex sweep.
After sever days at last one of the servitor-piloted fighters docked back aboard the Tlaloc, exloading grainy pict captures of a downed ship, half buried in the snow at the bottom of a deep ravine. From the worthless image quality, there was no way of telling what the vessel was, nor how long it had been there.
Ashur-Kai examined the images "To give you an example of scale, that canyon could house a city of nine or ten million people." he said those words as you gathered around the command deck’s central hololithic table, trying to coax detail from the poor quality images.
Khayon turned to Deathraven "You will fly us down there along with Lheor, Telemachon, Ulasht, Draex, Akkad, Menstras and Aldegund. Prepare yourselves we leave in 1 hour."
Nefertari protested as she wanted to come but was shot down by Khayon as the trip is for void sealed travel only due to the atmosphere.
Ulasht walks with Deathraven accompanying him to the ship as he is already prepared, he has all that he requires.
"As you wish, Captain."
He headed to the hangar bay, examined a landing craft, preparing for launch.
Akkad spends much of the voyage at observation portals as the ship cruised through the afterbirth of Slaanesh. He had never liked looking to the stars, the vast spaces between them a reminder of the frailty and meaningless of physical life, but these sights moved him deeply. He remember the reports of the first enlightened, recorded for posterity, and how at the brink of ascension the eldar failed and were effectively destroyed, the inevitable fate of those who obsess with this life and ignore transcendent mysteries.
The dead, broken world they come to fills him with silent awe, and he readies himself to join the expedition.
Menstras joins Deathraven in the craft's preparation, taking care to check the copilot control's calibration should disaster arise forcing him to intervene. Much as the acid storms foreshadowed.
v 48 Operate
v 39 Tech
All systems look good. There are a few servitors aboard as well to assist with the flight.
"Let us move out then" as Aldegund picks up his weapons and readies for the fight there is to come. "There is always something lurking in the unseen"
Deathraven will launch as soon as everyone is aboard or at the appointed hour. Whichever comes first.
Landing the vessel was trivial and Deathraven placed it at a good spot where you can easily get back to it but not easily found if enemies were looking for it. As you walked the surface of Aas’ciaral the burning rain bleaching the pain from your armour's.
The snow crunched beneath your boots, hissing beneath the rain’s acidic kiss, refreezing as soon as it dissolved. The world was truly trapped in time, locked in a moment years or centuries before now. Temporal distortion is hardly unknown to the Eye’s worlds, but the place still made your skin crawl. Aas’ciaral was broken unto death, yet it still lived. If time ever laid its touch upon this planet again, what would happen? Would it fly apart in a storm of asteroids, finally surrendering to cataclysm?
You did not bother to scan the snowy landscape with a hand-held auspex. It would only read as a hundred different frozen elements, or nothing remotely recognizable, in keeping with the maddening environments of all daemon worlds in the Eye. Physics didn’t apply with any consistency here, only the whims of whatever sentience shaped the Eye’s worlds to their own desires. Aas’ciaral felt like a world uncontrolled, a sphere with its guiding mind lost.
You couldn’t communicate with the Tlaloc. The vox was scrambled by atmospheric interference.
You pressed on through the rain, beginning our descent into the canyon. By the time you were halfway down the ravine, your armour had been acid-washed to dull, metallic grey. Gyre, the daemon wolf, walked in and out of the shadows, her black coat soaked in the stinging rain, though she was unharmed by the storm. The lightning storm flashing above the ravine cast an abundance of shade for her to melt into and rise out of elsewhere. Occasionally, she used you shadows, cast as elongated silhouettes against the iced rock.
Below you, the ship was submerged in the ocean of grey murk that filled the canyon’s depths. Ashur-Kai’s summation had been accurate – the canyon could house a metropolis hive-city and its ten million souls. The sight of the drowned ship’s tallest spires along its spinal battlements thrusting defiantly above the mist chilled your blood.
Lheor made the same leap of logic in the very same moment. He swore in Nagrakali.
"You were right," he said at the end of his maternally offensive tirade. "That thing’s the size of..." he trailed off. "Something huge."
Deathraven began looking around for signs of life or a way aboard the vessel.
Aldegund remains silent, amazed by the view of such magnificent vessel and looking for a way to restore it or salvage it, but first he must find a way in and fly it out.
Menstras surveys the peaks of the craft in silence, his mind unable to comprehend how or why one would abandon such a weapon to so ignoble a death.