Locum Ignotum Chapter 28

The bridge of the Thunderchild was clamouring with noise, serfs shouting at each other as servitors chattered. Crew ran to and fro, desperately struggling to awaken the ship while the secondary weapons fired constantly. Amid that bedlam three Space Marines were fighting for control, struggling to get the ship organised.

From the Enginarium pit Bylan called, "+Plasma Reactors are awakening, the enginseers report they will be ready in ten minutes+"

From the command dais Chaplain Wethan barked, "Too slow, they must hurry!"

Bylan shouted, "+Blessings take time, they say haste will offend the Machine Spirits+"

Wrethan growled, "Then tell them that the guns cannot hold the enemy at bay for long, soon the foe will be in here with them!"

Bylan complied and Wrethan turned to shout, "Librarian, what is the delay?"

From the corner Arvael said, "I must make preparations."

"We have no more time," Wrethan bellowed, "Whatever you're going to do, get the hell on with it!"

Arvael swallowed nervously but knew he could put it off no longer, he had to do what he dreaded above all else. Arvael slipped his mind free of his flesh and sent his vision flying out into the world. The metal and armour of the Thunderchild were no obstacles to him and he passed by as easily as a dream. Outside the hull the world was filled with immaterial horrors, even more obscene in ethereal form than the physical. They flapped everywhere and teemed all over the land in a sea of foulness.

Arvael's soul should have drawn attention but strangely the Daemons held back. Between them lay the darkness of the pit and they were unwilling to cross over it. Arvael knew all too well why they were so reluctant but it was a feat he would have to attempt regardless. He gathered his courage and then took the plunge, diving into the yawning pit.

The grey stone walls flashed by, the inscribed glyphs blurring as he descended. Arvael could sense immense empathic energies flowing through those arcane runes, a torrent of power no human could produce. It must be a compensation for the lost menhirs, he thought. The loss of stability would necessitate more energy to hold the matrix of this place together; sadly instability was exactly what he sought.

Arvael dived ever deeper sensing an immense pressure building, throbbing pulses of power and pain emanating from a tight knot of consciousness: the Pain-engine. It was breath-taking to witness, like standing in the rafters of some immense Manufactorum and watching the mighty machines below. The ethereal pressure was immense and Arvael dared go no further, lest he be destroyed.

Arvael gazed upon the vast knot of energies, trying to understand what he saw. The flows of thought and energy were intertwined in ways he couldn't comprehend, merged and woven together so that he couldn't tell what was psychic machinery and was living thoughts. He couldn't even tell if he was looking at one mind or many conjoined, but then perhaps it no longer mattered. What he beheld was a fusion of device and mind into a greater whole, the last remnant of the Old Ones.

Arvael studied the heart of the pain-engine and came to a realisation. He had been baffled as to why the Old Ones had not reacted to the Daemonic incursion yet but these minds were vast and eternal, thinking on a galactic scale and back into the eternity of Deep Time. A single thought could take longer than a human lifetime to complete and the incursion had barely pricked their awareness yet. The scale of it was immense beyond his comprehension and its potency stole his breath away. Arvael could tell the pain-engine was straining, labouring to hold the empathic matrix together. The loss of the Menhirs would surely provoke a reaction but there was no way to tell how long the Old Ones would take to respond. Unfortunately Arvael's needs were more immediate than that and he would have to hurry them up.

Arvael drew upon raw Warp energy and formed a telepathic spear, a shining lance of purest thought. It was barely more than a stinger compared to the mind before him but he only had to get their attention. With an impulse Arvael launched his spear to penetrate the mind below. Arvael watched as the mind recoiled, shocked by the unexpected sting. A morsel of attention turned his way, like an eye rolling over to study an insect, buzzing nearby. Then a vast surge of power arose, engulfing him in raw energy. Arvael struggled for a moment, thinking he was about to be destroyed, but the energies shaped themselves around him, becoming a cage.

Arvael struggled not to beat frantically against the bars of his cage, letting the Old Ones hold him still as they examined him. Suddenly a psychic probe lanced into his mind, tearing his mental defences like tissue paper. Arvael screamed as the probed ripped through his psyche, not hostile or malevolent, merely built to a scale beyond his tolerances, beyond human comprehension. The Librarian was helpless to resist as his thoughts and memories were picked apart, turned over and examined with no more effort than a child pulling the legs off an insect. Feedback throbbed through him, filling him with impressions of the Old One's psyche. He felt everything as the Old One's coolly dissected his existence, studying his life and knowledge with clinical disdain.

Thoughts of his childhood and belief system were dismissed out of hand, of no interest to them. Memories of his training and gene-forging drew a modicum of curiosity, the Old One's examining his enhanced frame and mental architecture as one craftsman would another's handiwork. A flash of interest passed by but then moved on, like a skilled artisan feeling the work was functional but flawed and hastily done. Not a bad attempt but not in any way a viable species. Clearly the original craftsman had been content with a job half-complete.

Then the Old Ones found what they sought, Arvael's memories of the wider galaxy and he screamed as his knowledge was devoured. The Old Ones drank in his understanding, taking everything he knew and assimilating it. His mind ached as mental feedback thundered through him, the Old One's deliberations resonating in his very soul.

They started with what they were familiar with and Arvael felt a sensation he could only articulate as disappointment. Most of their projects were extinct, this had been predicted, but the Orks had rampaged beyond any measure of control and become a blight upon the galaxy. The Eldar had also survived the War in Heaven, a most surprising turn of events, but they had failed to achieve their potential. They had fallen to their own inherent flaws and now stood upon the edge of extinction. A pity but then they had never been intended to last.

The dawn of Homo sapiens was passed over with bland disinterest, what Arvael knew of proto-history, the colonisation of the galaxy and the rise of the Imperium being of no real consequence. Humanity was a small and faltering thing, barely a blip on galactic history, its passing would leave no lasting impression.

Arvael gasped as his memories of the state of the galaxy were played out like a pict-reel. The Horus Heresy and the pantheon of the Dark Gods, which to the Old Ones was merely the latest iteration of an eternal cycle of destruction. As if that wasn't enough he saw the return of the Undying enemy and the arrival of the Great Devourer from the emptiness between galaxies. The galaxy was on the brink of annihilation, nothing could stop it.

Arvael felt the probe withdraw but could still sense the Old One's thoughts, cold, passionless and vast. The plan had failed, the galaxy had not been cleansed as predicted, instead the threats had grown worse. The attempt to ride out the devastation had been inherently flawed, there would be no going back, no return to how things had been.

From a human Arvael would have expected anger, a terrible rage and defiant cries of denial but the Old Ones were in no way human. There was no shaking of the fists, no screaming at an uncaring universe. The Old One's thoughts were distant, uncaring and remote, their decisions based on factors a human could never understand. The ancient kin had been right, Arvael sensed them conclude, the time of the Old Ones had passed. Attempts to rebuild were futile, there was no point in even trying. This galaxy was lost and it was far too late to flee. Unto all things there was a season, the Old Ones understood that better than any. The time had come to let go, the time had come to die.

Arvael felt his cage dissolve as a decision was made, the Old Ones releasing their efforts and their grip on life, letting their essence begin its slow dissolution. Arvael felt the great pain-engine slowing down, its mechanisms shutting off as the living minds disengaged from the arcane devices. The flow of empathic energy slowed then stopped entirely, severing the matrix from its source. Cutting off the very power the Menhirs needed to sustain this land.

Arvael felt utterly weary, ragged and bruised to the core. He began his long ascent back to the surface but then paused. He looked back down at the pit where darkness was growing as the Old Ones let their essence dissipate into death. With his last morsel of strength Arvael sent them a thought, a human concept that the Old Ones would never have conceived of on their own. One word that encapsulated human nature: Revenge.

The Old Ones paused, examining the notion. It was short and brutal and passionate, and yet somehow utterly appropriate. Yes, there was anger that had to be expressed before the end. The universe should shake at the passing of giants.

A terrible thunder arose in the depths of the pit and a light, harsh, terrifying and potent beyond measure was born. Arvael fled before it, racing back to the ship and the welcome safety of his bones. He opened his eyes and saw the bridge exactly as he had left it. Wrethan saw his open eyes and cried, "At last, its been minutes!"

"Cast off," Arvael called, "Cast off now!"

The Thunderchild rocked as it broke away from the docking tower, slipping free to sit oddly in mid-air. All around Daemons flapped and brayed but they had far greater concerns. Arvael could feel it, the empathic matrix was collapsing and without that structure this whole land was breaking apart. Its dissolution had already begun. Thunder rolled and black lighting fell everywhere, casting a strange strobing effect. Vast cracks began to run across the earth and sky, splitting wide open to reveal the shimmering madness of the Warp beyond. Enormous tentacles thrust through those gaps, reaching out to consume everything they found. These were the mightiest and hungriest of Daemons, sending their lesser kin fleeing in terror.

Then from off the port bow Arvael saw it, a shimmering portal that billowed like a black sail, the tiny doorway through which Chaos had entered. Without the matrix to hold it back the portal was expanding, from a tiny doorway it was reaching up until it stretched from ground to sky. It was spilling out in all directions, becoming big enough to swallow an army or a city or a starship.

From the Enginarium Bylan called, "+The Navigator... he can see it, he can see the Astronomicon. The Astronomicon is back!+

"That's our signal," Arvael called, "Go now!"

Wrethan didn't hesitate to shout, "Point us at that portal, raise the Gellar field and power the main drives. Close the Oculus, then give me all head full, we are leaving!"

Inexorably the Thunderchild slid forward, blazing a path straight towards the rippling portal. Daemons scattered out of the ship's path as the Gellar field sprang into being, a tiny bubble of sanity in an ocean of madness. Slowly the ship closed and then at last the great prow sank into the blackness of the portal, disappearing into the Warp proper.

Arvael felt the last convulsions of the land from afar and amid that a terrible sensation of wrathful power. Erupting from the pit was a fountainhead of raw might, vengeful, angry and powerful. The Old Ones were rising one last time and their fury was akin to an exploding volcano. Arvael had time for one last glimpse and he knew that any left behind would be subject to their terrible ire.

Then the Thunderchild dove into the Warp, leaving this land to the contest of warring gods.