AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay. I'm back. Well, sort of. The bulk of this story was written between eight and eleven years ago. I was a different man back then, but this story... this behemoth... keeps on calling me back. It was intended as an homage to Ben Counter's Grey Knights, which is the first 40K novel I ever read and which stunned me with its scope and bizarre baroque strangeness. I wanted to do something similarly ambitious - an intergalactic Lovecraft-infused conspiracy which nevertheless tried to say something meaningful about the horrific nightmare universe of the 40K setting. As ambitions go, there are worse, I suppose. (No small countries were harmed during the making of this story, after all.) As is fitting, given the festering fecund richness of the setting, once I started ideas began to grow like weeds in my head and occasionally burst into mad hallucinatory fruit in my fevered imagination. Some of them even made their way onto the page. A lot of them did, actually. Probably too many. The problem with writing fan fiction is that there isn't an editor to curb your excesses and straighten your story out. There's just you and, if you're lucky, a handful of good, supportive readers. And I was lucky. This story first appeared on a fan site called The Bolthole and benefited greatly from a number of incredibly helpful readers, a few of whom stuck it all the way through to the very end of Book One. My thanks to them. They know who they are and I hope they know how very much appreciated - and loved - they are too.
Oh, pants. I've let it slip, haven't I? Yes. What you are reading is almost the end of Book One of an intended trilogy. Not much of Book Two exists but what there is I'll post up here soon. Whether it and Book Three ever get to be released here I cannot honestly say. The story's still in me, but it doesn't have quite the same urgency it once had. We'll see.
For now, though, I hope you enjoy the mad denouement of this bloated epic. To those of you who have been reading, thank you. To those of you who have been reading and taking the time to leave a review, bless you. I'm very grateful.
Love,
JDD
The thing that had been Varnis Slack waited, his muscular form utterly still, in the shadowy recesses of the sub-control block's ceiling. Night had fallen in the time since he had arrived and fed upon the thin-blooded servant of the Machine-God. Powerful arc lights outside cast a yellow-white rectangle into the building through the open doorway and shadows moved and merged in it, as the two humans he had heard pulling up outside raced towards the building.
He sniffed and growled hungrily. The lead human smelled of anti-septic plastic and deodorant-masked sweat. He was a creature of city and hive, a man who thought himself a hunter secure in his ceramite and plasteel, but he would die easily enough for all his armour and weaponry. Slack was touched by the Gods of the Howling Dark; he was the predator here. The second man, though. He was different. No creature of concrete and steel, this one stank of earth and the forest. Slack smiled. This one might just be a challenge…
The first human entered quickly, then pulled up short, his mind no doubt needing a split second to comprehend the significance of the sundered torso to the left of him, of the metallic tang of blood in the air. Predictably his hand went to the las pistol at his hip.
He never got the chance to draw it.
Bellowing in triumph, Slack fell upon him like a thunderbolt. The man's legs gave way, one of them cracking under the sudden weight. Slack bore him to the ground, feet crashing into the man's chest. His claws slashed out to tear at the joints in the armour, finding weak points at shoulder, groin and throat.
The human tried to scream, but only managed a wet spluttering. Slack leaned in and licked the blood from the would-be hunter's lips, as his last breath bubbled up from ruined lungs. It had taken him less than four seconds to kill him.
Snapping his horned head round, he turned to face the second human, the one whose scent had so intrigued him.
And a high-charge las shot hit him in his shoulder, spinning him around.
Bellowing once more – this time in pain – Slack leapt towards the human with the intention of closing the gap between them and rendering the las pistol useless. The human coolly fired again and again, but Slack was ready for the pain now, embracing it, using it to fuel his killing rage. No matter how different this human might seem, he would die just as quickly as his friend.
Slowly, Brecht edged his way around the bulbous outcropping of rock.
There was a figure sat against it, hunched forward, tousled hair plastered to its scalp. It wore a formal suit, navy blue or just black – it was difficult to tell in the bright glare of the double-sun. The figure wore black boots on its small feet. Their laces were thick golden thread.
Fingering the hilt of the dagger in his pocket, Brecht stepped forward.
"Hello," he said.
The head lifted to reveal tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes that were a pale, fragile blue. It was a boy, perhaps eight or nine years old. He sniffed and his bottom lip quivered.
"H…hello," he said.
"It's alright," Brecht said, warily. "I won't hurt you."
The boy smiled sadly, his pale eyes glistening. "Yes you will. In the end." He sniffed again and turned to look out across the vast, barren plain and its rounded, polished boulders. "In the end, you'll have to."
"I don't know what…"
The boy looked at him. "No, you don't, do you?" There was something different about the boy's voice. It was stronger, perhaps even a little bit deeper. "It's your job to know, isn't it?" There was something about the boy's voice. Some thread of… experience running through it. Just a hint, a trace. But it was there nonetheless, a piece of grit in Brecht's mind, uncomfortable, irritating. "And here you are… at the end of your long long journey… and you still don't know."
The voice was not a boy's voice anymore. There was something twisted and savage in it now; it creaked and cracked like the shifting timbers of an ancient house. It was hoarse and aged, groaning and straining under the weight of the words it carried.
"How many have died because of your ignorance, Inquisitor?"
Despite the blazing suns, despite the cumbersome clothing plastered to his skin, Brecht began to shiver.
"What do you want to know?"
The boy's eyes were no longer blue. They were black; light glittered and died in their inky depths. Before he knew it, the dagger was in Brecht's hand.
The boy chuckled.
"Go on, Inquisitor. Tell me what you want to know!"
Brecht thrust the blade at the boy's neck.
"No!" the boy screamed.
The blade stopped a few millimetres from the boy's skin; the shadow cast by the boy's head fell upon the scarred steel.
Brecht swallowed, began to sweat again.
The boy's eyes were pale blue, staring at Brecht. Pleading.
"He comes," the boy whispered. "He comes in the night." Brecht kept his whole body perfectly still, listening. Thinking. "I don't want him to, but he does anyway." The boy swallowed, his gaze fixed on Brecht. "And when he comes, I hide away. I have a place where he can't find me. A place just for me and…" The boy glanced away, blinked. "I can still see. I can see the things he does. I can…"
"Who is he?" asked Brecht.
"He has a name." The boy's eyes were quivering. He was shaking – with effort or fear, Brecht couldn't tell. "A secret name. Sometimes I hear it. Like a whisper in a crowded room. I hear it, but I can't remember…"
Brecht licked his lips. "I can help you."
The boy smiled again, his expression knowing. "No. You can't. I know you want to, but you can't. All you can do is…"
"Kill."
This time there was no warning, no gradual transformation from boy to… something else. Black eyes glittered with cruel amusement.
"Your knife is at my throat, Inquisitor. Why won't you push it home?"
"Who are you?" whispered Brecht, his throat tight.
"I have so many names. So many titles."
"Who are you?"
"And your empire, built on the blood of billions… It is the breeding ground for me and my kind. We swim in the currents of your tears; we soar on the breath of your despair…"
"Who are you?"
"And what use does your Emperor have for innocence? What weapon can be forged from a young child's love?"
The hand that held the dagger was shaking. Brecht's face was a snarling mask of concentration.
"Quiet, daemon!"
The boy chuckled, his black eyes boring into Brecht.
"But, you wanted to know, Inquisitor! You wanted to hear!" The voice was growing louder and louder, the keening of millions upon millions of souls carried in its relentless rhythm. "I am the Prince in Waiting; I am the Child in Darkness; I am the Seething Cup; I am He who is Coming…"
Under the baleful glare of the twin suns above him, Brecht shuddered. The boy was standing now, smiling, darkness glittering from his dead, black eyes. Brecht shook as he felt a wave of nausea pass through him. His shadows wavered on the dead ground.
The boy looked up at him.
"Tell me, Inquisitor," he said, quietly. "If possession is nine-tenths of the law, what do you suppose should happen to that last remaining part?"
Brecht tasted bile in his mouth; his vision swam. The boy's eyes seemed to grow and swell, an all-encompassing darkness reaching out towards him. There was death in that darkness. And worse than death. Madness, suffering, an eternity of debasement and terror. He swayed and stumbled. The landscape was an ochre blur, a haze of colour without depth or perspective. Only the dagger, its rubberised hilt solid in his sweat-slick hand, felt real to him. The dagger. He knew what he had to do. He was Inquisition. Even here that hadn't changed.
"Emperor!" he screamed. And plunged the blade into the boy's chest.
With a tiny grunt, the boy fell to the barren ground, blood flowing in a torrent to soak his clothes.
Brecht stumbled towards the body, heart pounding, shaking his head to clear his vision. One of his shadows edged its way up the boy's chest and over the hilt that protruded from it.
"It's alright…" murmured the boy. "Not… your fault…"
Blinking, the Inquisitor stared at the boy's face, feeling a horrible numbness creep up his arms towards his chest. The eyes that stared sightlessly up at him were a pale fragile blue.
