"Come on Jev, there is nothing here." I heard my colleague's voice bouncing off the ruined walls that surrounded us. He might not think there was anything worth looking at here but I knew that he was wrong. I could feel it. Somewhere within this ancient building was what I had come hunting for, a glimpse into eons past, a past before the Imperium. The thought thrilled me, what had existed before the Emperor? Not just before his Imperium had been formed but before he had even existed, before the nuclear holocausts that scarred Terra, before the diaspora of humanity. I had studied the xenos known as the Eldar, such a pretentious name, as if they were the first race to walk the stars. It had taken me years but I had managed to piece together something of the truth. They, like man, were not the apex of creation, merely another in a line of races that claimed rule of the swirling void. They hid this well, to read their works one could not but be struck by the panoply of history that comprises their culture and yet between the lines of their greatest myths I could detect the hints of something older, something unfathomably older, that even the Children of Asuryan feared.
That idea, it caught me. I tried to escape, tried to pray to the Emperor as I used to but it was too late, I knew he was no god. How could he be when such creatures existed millions of years before he was even born? I had to know more. I was possessed, I left my professorship, my family, my world even, all to follow the clues that had been laid out eons ago. Every step I took only increased my hunger to find the truth beyond the veil and after decades of searching I had at last come to the death world of Thanos Prime. Aglas and I were racing against the clock to try and unearth the find of a lifetime, even through the stonework I could hear the constant rain of this beginted world picking up pace. I knew we only had a few more minutes before the waves would start crashing again and we would be flooded. I quickly checked my rebreather, almost full, I had time still.
The corridor was dim, illuminated only by the azure light of my flair. I didn't answer Aglas, he knew I wouldn't anyway. I was too busy scanning with my auspix and venturing ever deeper into the darkness. The auspix wasn't detecting anything, no surprise there. Temperamental technology at the best of times and this planet was shrouded by an energy that was particularly injurious to electrical systems. I stowed it away and put my old eyes to work instead. The farther I walked the more I could taste the change in the atmosphere. Up above it was dank and humid, here it was dry despite the fact that this portion was totally submerged only an hour before. It would have been unnerving had I not been so excited, I took this as a sign. I wasn't wrong. It was only a few more minutes before I started to see marking upon the wall, strange geometric symbols that I had only seen in the most arcane of manuscripts. It was a language that was old when the stars were still young. I ran my hands over them, only shaking slightly, they were real. I could not decipher them of course, that would have to come later.
"Aglas! I've found something!" I didn't get a response, he was probably too far away to hear me. It didn't matter, I had to go on. I was so close. I kept walking and was soon surrounded by more of the glyphs, some in stone others in a strange blue green metal. The corridor snaked on and on, I broke into a run. I had to see the end of this, I had to see what secrets this tomb, for what else could this be, held. At last I came upon what I sought, the passageway opened up into a massive cavern. It was empty save for an obelisk in the exact center which was emblazoned with hundreds of interlocking runes. My eyes were locked onto it, my breath coming in ragged gasps. This was more than I could have possibly hoped for, an artefact! What secrets of this unknown culture might it reveal? What hidden knowledge might be locked within? I was drawn to it, I could not but stumble and trip my way forward as if pulled by a leash. Falling onto my knees before it I could almost hear it whispering to me, begging to be unlocked from its interminable slumber. My hands flew across the runes as if of their own volition but I was not the one moving them. I didn't care anymore, all that mattered was what lay within and the culmination of years and years of searching. As if in answer to my unspoken desires my hands manipulated one last sigil and then….
I saw God. Not a face like the images of the Emperor, nor the blasphemous markings of the Lost and the Damned, nor even an avatar like the Eldar's war god. No, I saw GOD. It had a form, maybe, but not one that was fixed. It was divinely mutable but not a creature of flesh. It was pure, elegant, horrific in its impossibility. Madness was its face, power its cloak. It reached out with the smallest tendrel of itself and we connected. I SAW. It lived and died every moment, it was and never could be yet somehow always had to be. In epochs past it had supped on stars as I would have on my mother's milk, it travelled in the twisted space between warp and reality as easily as I might walk across a room and for millennia uncounted it basked in the nuclear inferno of red giants, played with its brothers and sisters amongst quasars and black holes, and reveled in its might, a power nothing could ever challenge.
Something had happened though. Instead of flying free across the universe as it had since time immemorial it had been brought low by some kind of trick. Its kin suffered a worse fate. They were shattered and each piece of them contained only a part of their limitless knowledge and power. Some were less fragmented but alone of all, this weakest of the Star Gods, was kept intact. Chained underneath layers of eldritch science and entombed with its followers, never to rise again. But while it slumbered beneath living metal and arceotech it dreamed. It dreamed of the waking world and the crawling insects that now ran riot across the holy calm of the cosmos that had existed in the time before time. Eldar, Ork, even Man. We were beneath contempt, an infestation that vexed this being's dreams and slowly shaped them into nightmares. Yet we were the key to its release. Its legions lay dormant, held in eternal rest like their master. In its slumber it reached out. A call so weak that most could not hear it. Those that did, well, most were driven mad by the whisperings of a being as old as time itself. Some listened, seeking out the source of their unrest. All had died. Until me.
The connection snapped and I was thrown through the air like a doll to land upon the rocks twenty feet away. I could feel that several ribs were broken, I coughed and blood marred the mirror-like surface of the cavern. My head swam with thoughts and emotions, some my own, some not. I knew only that I had to run. All that I had desired was before me and only now, seeing the truth so long sought, did I understand. I had been used, duped. All promises of knowledge, all hopes for a greater understanding of the universe, were hollow. This being cared nothing for me, nothing for my kind. It was free for the first time in millions of years and it awoke to what it saw as its domain beset by parasites and vermin. Calmly it would rise, and with it legions of death, it would cleanse every world of the taint of life. It might take decades, it might take millennia, it might take eons but what does time matter to a god?
I could see better now though my torch had been crushed by my fall. A grotesque light pulsed from the ark as the being within was still somewhat contained. This was but a temporary impediment however, in a few moments it would rip its way free. I pulled myself to my feet and took to my heels. I could do nothing here save die alone on an alien world. The corridor that I had walked to a short time ago was much changed as I limped and scrambled through it this time. The sigils gleamed with a livid green and blue light, casting my form in shadows that seemed to claw after me with umbral tentacles. I had almost made it back to the place where I had separated from Aglas when I heard what I had, in my understandable fear, totally forgotten about. Water. The tide was coming in. I only had a few seconds to hastily put on my rebreather when a tidal wave of foamy water smashed into me.
What happened in the long minutes (perhaps hours?) that I spent fighting for my life I can barely recall. I swam without direction, buffeted about by currents and smashed again and again into the walls of the ruin. It was only with great difficulty that I in time found a semblance of direction and swam towards the surface. When I reached the gravel of the shore I was shaking with exhaustion, my very bones as chill as the void of space itself. I managed to drag my feeble body towards a hollow in the rock face that I had climbed down scant hours ago. As I lay there, laboring to breathe and feeling every broken bone I had suffered I saw something out in the storm floating atop the turbulent water. I squinted, trying to make it out but it was too far away to see clearly. It didn't matter anyway, I had to get back to my lander, had to flee this cursed place and bring warning. IT was coming. Water couldn't stop a being that had eaten stars. I was just about to move when I felt something, a tremor. I took it for the waves picking up pace but it repeated at perfectly regular intervals. I was frozen in trying to place it when the mystery, to my horror, was revealed.
Rising from the water in front of me came first one, then two then ten, and finally hundreds of forms. Each moved in perfect unison, each seemingly oblivious to the waves which hit them with every step. They marched as one, as only those who share one mind can move. There was no deviation, obstacles were simply walked over. They gleamed in the pale light of the perpetual night, glinting with angry dullness. Instinctively I pulled myself into my hollow and did not move, a common mammalian reaction that I honestly credit for saving me for right before me the object I had spotted so far away was at last unveiled. It was Aglas, most of him anyway. He had been skinned and was wrapped around one of the beings that walked out of the waters. As terrible as it was to see a friend so treated I was transfixed by what had used his discarded husk as a form of clothing.
It was skeletal in form, impossibly thin and cadaverous. Its skin was the same metal of the sigils in the ruin far below. Through my fear a new and terrifying thought grabbed hold of me. It was not alive. It was mechanical, something our human ancestors forbad as too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Its eyes burned with hateful emerald brilliance and its face was in the form of a elongated skull. Its arms ended in fingers crafted into lethal blades, no doubt what it had used to flay poor Aglas. It stalked forward followed by its kin and when it met the rock face it simply walked up, its terrible claws easily digging into the stone and propelling it upward. All around the scene was recreated by its fellows. Most bore archaic looking weapons that glowed with the constrained potential for destruction. I didn't move, couldn't even had I wanted to without alerting them to my presence. The sight of Aglas proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that their intentions were less than pleasant.
This continued for an interminable amount of time, the only watch I dared consult was the frantic beating of my heart and it was no true timepiece. Only one event broke the frantic monotony, long after the first creatures had walked from the depths I made out a distant disturbance in the water. From so far away that it was at the edge of my vision I could just make out the sea parting at the will of something. From it came the terrible god I had beheld, contained no longer. It rose carelessly into the air and I averted my eyes, certain that to gaze upon it would bring its attention. I was vaguely aware of it hanging in the sky for a second, its luminescence greater than the feeble light of the moon. Then it was gone, to where I cannot say. I myself waited until the last of the metal men had walked from the ocean, then I waited longer still. Only when I could tell that my strength was nearly at an end did I carefully climb the cliff (using the rope I left) and sought the comfort of my lander. It stood untouched, clearly beneath the notice of the warriors. I immediately launched it towards the welcoming arms of space, to the ship I had sought passage on, and I wasted no time in demanding that we make haste to the nearest Imperial World. As we departed I utilized a full ground scan of the planet. Through the haze changes could already be detected. Energy was flowing like blood across it, strange ships flew in the skies, and, while no life was detectable, millions of unidentifiable energy signatures could be found and they grew in number every moment.
I leave this testament in the hands of the authorities that they might take action and safeguard the children of man from the storm that is coming. I do not know what I saw, I do not know how to combat it, I know only that an old one has awoken. God-Emperor Save us all.
Final journal entry of Jevar Wolstof- Professor Emeritus (Deceased, M.41.930)