I could see. I don't know how, but I could see, even when my eyes were closed. Despite being on that terrible throne covered in my own vomit, I was now a majestic golden bird flying through a lush forest. It was very windy, but I was a skilled flier, and simply used the currents of the wind to aid me along. The wind of mortal emotions ruffled my feathers pleasantly, and I enjoyed myself. It had been awhile since I had experienced flight in the Warp, and it was nice to finally get some exercise. The gusty breeze even gave me a good challenge, which I enjoyed after my long sleep.
This was a dark, dense coniferous forest, like the ones that were filled with night birds singing their songs in the nighttime when I used to go camping. While everything was dimly lit, like twilight, I noticed that I had a layer of radiance shining off of me. My light wreathed me in a protective halo, making me very visible to anything watching in the forest. No monster or daemon could pierce my glow, but they would all see me. I didn't mind that so much, since I was so majestic.
I passed around the low hanging branches of trees, diving through heavy leaves of thought and time. This was nice, and for a time, I simply enjoyed myself on the wind. There was a place I had to go to, and I felt my direction pulled toward it, so I went there. There was a golden path laid ahead of me, and I navigated ethereal currents as they playfully bent and swirled to stay close to it. Follow the yellow brick road, I thought, the mantra coming from somewhere deep within me.
My passage did not go unnoticed, I saw as I dipped and dove through the trees. That was to be expected. My brightness caught curious reflected eyes from strange creatures lurking in the hollows of trees. I even saw a few human-looking shapes as they pointed at me as I flew by. They were very tiny, and a couple of them wore strange armors and robes. To my right, a flock of tiny but radiant blue green birds appeared, watching me with curiosity. They flitted alongside me for a few moments before vanishing back into the forest. I continued on my way, toward where I needed to be.
My senses prickled with danger as I then saw all the occupants of the forest begin to flee. Small creatures dove within the heavy leaves, taking shelter, while other birds flew rapidly away for safety. I thought that they were running away from me until I felt something terrible happen.
I was jolted awake in the throne, and I screamed. The throne held on to me tightly as a tsunami of emotion and strange images passed through my mind like a talon through the belly of a rotted corpse.
Alys was no more, and then, neither was Levant, and across the galaxy, other places fell in simultaneous agony. A primal scream reflecting the pain of a reality tortured by war and death rang across time. It was a rare calamity of unusual strength, one rarely felt by beings both real and unreal. This terrible scream fed into a grand seizure gripping the tortured collective unconscious raging through the souls of sentient creatures of the galaxy. Some agonies were slightly displaced in time, occurring hundreds of years before or after. The damage spilled out into the Materium, breaking unfortunate worlds within its reach. Such was the case of the happy farming planet that was simply too close to a fleet of Imperial Black Ships. Guilty only by proximity, the world had ceased to exist when an old man, plagued by psychic nightmares of seeing a little girl named Tailsn psychically drained to death, decided that the Imperium would never take anything else away from him ever again. His white-hot indignation caused a break in reality which killed every single soul on the Black Ship sent to take him and his grandson away. The cascading hate and fear from all the caged and dying psykers echoed in the Warp, and every world within one hundred light years of the unfortunate vessel was unmade. The old man himself was torn to screaming but sentient shreds by hungry daemons in the Warp as a reward for his anger. The boy became a chaos fury, and through the eternity of the Warp, helped to rip his grandfather to pieces with glee, over and over again, forever.
The echo of the old man's anguish arced hundreds of years backward in time toward a vessel named the Limitless Grasp just as her crew members heard the chorus of billions of screams wail in terrible revelation on the planet Verronus. The requiem of the old man and his grandson joined the infernal song, pushing the music to a final crescendo. The great scream of Verronus caused the very laws of time and physics to break their chains, aiding the One who sacrificed everything to know All through time. A single depthless moment before He Knew, He saw the Eagle.
Magnified through the godlike mind of the Sanguine Oligarch in his last moment made eternity, the rush of displaced energy from these past events advanced rapidly forward like a serpent of liquid helium, racing to find its termination in the future. It was drawn to the brave cries of righteous warriors and the bellows of foul daemons near the Eye of Terror itself, an area of weak reality. A symphony of emotion sang with dissonant perfection as the Cadian Gate fell along with its brave planet, blackstone pylons falling to crumbled planetary debris. All of this pain carved a mortal injury across the galaxy. The Great Rift formed, tearing space in twain. The terrors of the Eye met the agonies of the past from the Hadex Anomaly, hundreds of years before. The galaxy had broken!
I screamed as I experienced Hell. I screamed and I screamed and I-
"Who are you?" I was then standing in a dark city apartment. A bright light was aimed directly at my face. A man in his 20s stood shining a flashlight in my eyes. He appeared absolutely livid. He shook his head in disbelief. "Not again, not again! What are you doing here? Get out!" He appeared distressed and, and his accent betrayed him as English.
I couldn't even answer him, but at least I wasn't screaming anymore. "I-I..." I tried to speak, but the words were caught somewhere in my throat.
"Did you think you could trick me? Come into my flat when you think I'm sleeping? You think I wouldn't be up?" He roared at me, still shining that light in my eyes. I shook my head. I started to cry as I began to uncontrollably shake.
This caused the man's angry face to immediately melt. "Oh, no. Wait. Don't do that. No," said the man. He placed the flashlight down, and dimmed it as he placed it on the sofa. "I-I hate it when pretty girls cry. I thought you were someone else. Hey, hey, sit down. I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean to scare you. I've been under a lot of stress, and I've been where you are! I right walked into old lady Cameron's flat when I was pissed with me mates just a few nights ago. Were you the girl who just moved in down the hall? I'm sorry, we've had a lot of break ins. And-and I think I'm just under a lot of stress. I'm sorry for yelling. I just, I just need to relax here."
I still couldn't move, I couldn't speak. The man walked over to a small table in what appeared to be the kitchen, and poured two small glasses of what smelled like... bourbon? I-I liked bourbon, didn't I? I think? The Englishman turned on a small lamp, and revealed old-ish furnishings that made the place look like it was from the 90s. He was an average-looking man, with hazel eyes and messy hair in a ponytail. He wore a black shirt and dark brown trousers.
Maybe this had all been a dream, I exhaled. "Here, it's the fancy stuff," he said as he offered me one of the glasses. I sniffed it, and took a sip. It tasted familiar. The man exhaled heavily, and sat heavily on the couch, putting his head in his hands. A small pause.
"Um, so, sorry, I don't have any wine. I-um, so," He sputtered with his words. He looked up at me, holding the glass of bourbon, his appearance pained. Quickly, he downed his drink, and took a few deep breaths. "Please, sit down," he patted the cushions next to him, and as I looked around, I was able to see that this looked like a bachelor's pad. I carefully sat down, still not exactly sure what was real.
"This-uh, this is good stuff though, right? Bourbon from America, Kentucky! Really posh stuff!" he said, pouring himself another drink. "Are you alright? Here," he topped off my glass, which I held tightly in two hands. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"
"I think I am," I said, gathering myself. Was I a ghost? I took another small sip of the bourbon. It was pretty tasty, at least. I saw the man's expression relax. I felt like I had tasted this very same drink before.
"Oh, you're an American? My goodness!" He said, sipping his drink. "I'm, I'm so sorry for being so jumpy. All the break ins, they have me on edge, you know. And I just- I was in the middle of writing this story. I don't know if you write or anything, but sometimes you can get lost in it, right? And, you know its the damndest thing, I had just written a part where a woman comes to-" there was an aggressive knock at the door, and the man's composure immediately evaporated. He froze, and looked at me. Fear began to race across his face as the knocking continued. He looked at me, and whispered, "They found me. H-how..."
"Sebastian!" An older authoritative voice yelled as the knocking continued insistently. The voice had a mocking malevolent quality. The man looked at me with great sadness in his eyes. The loud knocking continued. "We know you're in there, Sebastian. We just want to talk. You have company, don't you? A young lady, maybe? She won't be hurt. Not too much, at least."
I didn't move. This situation suddenly felt very dangerous. Sebastian leaned in to my ear, and hissed, "Listen to me, alright? You have to listen to me! Don't make the same mistake I did. As soon as you can, as soon as you find an out, run away from here. Do not stay here! Don't let them take you! Don't let them keep you!"
More knocking. "We'll break the bloody door down if we have to, Sebastian! Come on out now!"
"What is this? Who are you?" I was able to ask in a small choked voice.
He didn't answer, and kept warning me, "Don't let them keep you! Don't be like me! Run away!" His tone was desperate, as he looked at the door. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said. I saw him begin to cry as the frame of the door began to buckle. Whoever these people were, they were now trying to break the door down. "This is all my fault! All of it! I-I'm just so sorry. I'm sorry I never got the chance t-"
I came to after a slap to the face. I was sitting on a chair that hurt me. It was pulling something from me. "Erika!" A splash of water hit me. I sputtered awake.
"The metal man says we are drifting. We are being pushed blindly in this storm! Snap out of it!"
It took me a few moments to bring myself back to composure. I could still see the mortal terror in Sebastian's eyes. It was burned into my psyche. But I knew the man slapping me. The blue bird man.
"Alberich?" I asked. He nodded.
Oh, I was on a spaceship flying through Hell, I remembered. And this bird mutant here was a Nazi. Haha, funny where life takes you.
"Divine Retribution, where are we?" I asked, half aware, forcing myself to consciousness. The ship shook slightly.
Location: Warp eddy surrounding rogue planet Nemesis. I looked up, and saw Divine Retribution's helpful holographic map of an outline of a planet against a background of swirling winds. We were caught in some kind of heavy current buffeting a dark place labeled "Nemesis." Once again, hazardous areas blinked red or other colors, and I could see that there was an overwhelming wave of wind blasting in from one side, and now, also from the south. Pulling the map back and retracing our steps, I could see a mess of blinking reds and violets around what looked like a jagged line right where we had come from. A new rift had broken open. I pulled back outward, looking for our plotted course. It appeared that we had been blown somewhat south of our target path, and were now swimming around the leading edges of the Malefactus Warp rift. Almost like an ocean, we were caught between the tidal forces of both Malefactus, and Levant's new rift as they converged. When I zoomed back out, Kolch finally appeared, far to the northwest, in a safer area.
"How far are we away from Kolch, Divine Retribution?"
"Estimated 909 light years from current approximate location. Translation to realspace not recommended. Heavy Warp activity."
A shudder rocked the ship. This did not feel like a safe place.
"Where the fuck is Nemesis? I don't remember that on Null's map," I said, teeth chattering. "Null?" A video channel opened to the engine area again, and the tech-priest immediately jumped to attention. The ship trembled a bit, and the violet lighting in here made it look extra spooky. I noticed that while Wolfie was still around, he wasn't his normal energetic self, but was curled up next to the throne at my feet, and not moving.
"You're awake again! I thought we'd lost you!" His voice actually sounded quite frightened. "I thought that mutant had-"
"Null, shut up about that and tell me about the planet Nemesis. The ship says we're in some Warp eddy around it. I think something bad happened in the Warp, something bigger than Levant's rift. Like, something happened with Cadia, I think. It's real bad out there," I said, still dazed. I couldn't get Sebastian's frightened eyes out of my mind. A sense of heavy dread washed through my body. Swallowing, I realized I could even feel the taste of bourbon on my tongue. Oh, this was scary.
It was even scarier when I thought back to seeing Null's star map back on Levant, and I suddenly realized that there was no Great Rift bisecting the galaxy. Did...did I just feel Cadia fall? Did the Great Rift just happen?
"Let me see here. I have a map with me," he said. Through the channel, I could see that he was going through a list of planets, after some time, he finally said, "Here we are. Archaic name for..."
"What? Tell me."
"Obsidian Reach," he said, his voice breaking a little. "How close are we? Don't translate there! That is a daemon world!"
"Divine Retribution, current distance to Nemesis," I asked from the throne.
"Estimated 275,410 kilometers if translation occurs presently. Translation not recommended." Holy shit, we were right next to a daemon world. Did it pull us here?
Through the channel, Null had heard that, and quickly said, "No! Do not translate! Run away from here! Do not stay here! Omnissiah's sake, get far away!"
I didn't have to be told twice. Fuck. Here we go again.
"Divine Retribution, plot a course to Kolch."
There was a pause as the ship shook again. I closed my eyes, willing myself back to the forest, and to the path of the golden road that would light my way.
Instead of the pleasant forest I had been flying through before, I was now flying through a very heavy rainstorm over a black sea of oil. The swirling winds were keeping me in one place as I struggled to free myself. It was difficult enough to keep myself from falling into the black morass below me. Through my shining skin, I could feel that this black ocean was somehow both hungry and angry that I existed, and it wanted to drown the annoying light that was stinging its surface. I made another push through the swirling winds, and found myself nearly smacked out of the sky by a sheet of rain that resembled a skeletal claw many times the size of the Retribution. Distantly, I heard someone say "Woah!" and a dog whining in fear.
As I desperately righted myself, one of my wings grazed the surface of sea, and instead of flying, I found myself floating in a dark, featureless space.
I forced my eyes shut, but I could still see shapes. There were shadows that moved in this black tapestry, and I could feel their eyes instead of seeing them. I felt as if they gripped me in impossibly huge ropes of black obliteration. Whatever it was watched me. My radiance was being quashed by this terrible thing. Thinking quickly, I remembered that when I was in the forest, I had a protective golden glow around me, and I willed it to brighten like a bonfire against this black tide, not allowing it to consume me. I felt the ship pull at me directly, but its grip lessened as I became brighter. As quickly as the darkness had seized me, I felt it unravel, parts of it burned away to ashes. I felt a light burning from my three eyes now, scalding any sort of darkness ahead of me. The evil sea below me screamed in pain.
"Heading Beacon activated," the Divine Retribution said distantly.
"Erika, push harder! You're breaking through!" I heard someone say. The dark eyes never stopped watching me as I found myself blazing through the forest again at a breakneck speed. I caught some kind of wind at my back, and felt myself rapidly pushed along. Once again, I was treated to a handful of unexplainable images as I rapidly sliced through the rainstorm toward the place I needed to go. I was going so fast that I felt flames lick at my hull.
"Don't let them keep you..." Sebastian's words echoed in my mind.
"Run, run, run..." I breathed.
There was an armored knight in a castle watching a shooting star, and a young man in robes placing glowing cards on a table. A scraggly man with an unkempt beard and long hair lay meditating in luxurious quarters with a beatific smile across his face, and a maddened blonde-haired woman wearing a suit of gaudy colors was preaching something on a bright street corner in an urban area. She reached up and screamed, "behold!" just as I found myself back on the throne again.
My vision was blurry as I lifted my head. I felt like I was down a few liters of blood, and my mouth was very dry. Alberich was standing by my side, looking at me with concern.
"Alberich," I said, before closing my eyes again. He looked at me in the violet light, and kneeled down to my seated level. "I need water. How long was I out just now? Are we still over Nemesis?"
"Twenty minutes, at most. We are free from the eddy, I think," he said, producing the flask from his pack, and holding it to my mouth. I took a long drink. In the corner of my eye, I could see the 77-X servitor standing unbothered and motionless near one of the eyes. The ship wasn't shaking anymore at least. Wolfie still laid by my feet, curled up.
"Divine Retribution, where are we?" I asked.
"Warp. Kolch system periphery," the ship said impassively. I looked at the big 3D map ahead of me. A tail wind was gliding us along, slowly entering the orbits of where the outer planets would be.
"You're kidding? That can't be right," I said. "Wasn't Kolch like, 900 light years away ten minutes ago?"
It was Null who answered, "The Warp is often undefinable in its passage of time. I believe we found a favorable wind, but all that matters is that we're away from both the Malefactus rift, and Levant's rift."
"Oh, so we're here? That's cool," I said, dizzy. I felt fucking terrible. "Divine Retribution, translate out of Warp. Make toward the orbit of Kolch."
"Before you pass out, ask it to land, Traveler. I've transmitted coordinates to the bridge. Land there, it is suitable."
"That too. Land where the tech-priest says, Divine Retribution..." I was having trouble keeping my eyes open now.
Don't let them take you! Don't let them keep you!
"Divine Retribution, when you land, unhook me from this throne too. Don't drain me to death for dinner, thanks."
Don't be like me! Sebastian's warning rang heavily in my mind, and the last thing I could feel before passing out were the tears on my cheeks.