Summary:
In the shadowy depths of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, where the Emperor's light scarcely reaches, one young woman stands at the precipice of destiny. Isha, a prodigy bound by the oppressive traditions of her world, is caught in a web of intrigue, betrayal, and cosmic horror. As the first book in an epic three-part series, "Dark Visions: The Awakening of Isha" plunges readers into a world where faith is tested, alliances are shattered, and the line between reality and nightmare blurs.
"Dark Visions: The Awakening" is a gripping tale of courage, sacrifice, and the unyielding human spirit, set against the grim and perilous backdrop of the 41st millennium. Prepare to be enthralled by a story of profound transformation and relentless action, as one young woman's fate becomes inextricably linked with the future of her world.
Notes:
This is an original fiction part 1 of a 3 parts that make up the entire first book.
Chapter 1: Prologue: Meeting the Witch
In the ever-gloom of the cavern the headlights of the silver stretch reflected painfully off the swinging rosette.
"I refuse, what part of that do you not understand young man?" Gregarian repeated, his ire beginning to show through the veneer of polite hospitality. He hooded his eyes against the reflected light, searingly bright after a long car ride in perpetual darkness.
Three arduous weeks, he thought to himself, ignoring whatever response the interrogator had just given. Three weeks of delays, disruptions, and derision, about to come to an end, literally, if the Mur'kul witch could be trusted.
The headlights reflected off a second item, a bolt pistol, compact but powerful, more than capable of taking Gregarian's head off his shoulders, a fact he was well aware of.
"My lord interrogator," he intoned, bowing deferentially, and making the sign of the aquila. "I believe as firmly in the light of the emperor as I do in the finality of my end should I venture beyond this very spot. I would be derelict in my duty to the emperor to forfeit my life and leave the running of Mur'kul Gregarian Mining to lesser men. What drop in output may occur? What bureaucratic red tape may arise? What impact on relations with the natives? What loss to your own, holy ordos?"
Again, he prattles, and again Gregarian ignores his words, threats, curses, promises to write the most scathing report. Had a planetary governor ever been removed as the result of an inquisitor's report? Probably, Gregarian mused, but dead men can't write reports. He found his mind drifting to the veritable mountain of paperwork that had been accumulating on his desk these last few weeks as he'd been babysitting this incipient dullard.
No, not a dullard, a very sharp, very shrewd man. An interrogator of Lord Inquisitor Angstrom, but, unless that witch Djanette was setting him up for immanent execution… the thought had crossed his mind more than once and even now he felt his otherwise healthy appetite beginning to leave him… the man before him was about to simply become the most recent naivete to vanish into Mur'Kula's tentare.
Gregarian was snapped out of his considerations by the soft voice of his daughter, echoing out from the backseat of the car.
"I can guide him, father."
Both men, their respective guards, and the driver turned to look as the car engine coughed to a halt and a slight, grey head of long, ashen-white hair peered out at them from the gloom of the backseat. Black goggles lifted from shining white eyes with irises as pale and grey as her skin. Bare, pedicured feet stepped down into the cave-dust that gathered everywhere the Gellar field touched as though the field itself were somehow burning away at the planet's crust.
The next few minutes were the makings of pure fiction. Concerned father, begging for the life of his adopted daughter; daughter insisting she go in her father's place and save both him, the mines, and the governorship from certain doom. That part may have been a bit over-the-top, Gregarian considered as he forced tears to his eyes and begged the interrogator one more time not to go into the tunnels and certainly not with his only daughter.
"No! No my Isha, you mustn't go!" Gregarian dropped to his knees, certainly ruining his second-best robes as they scraped over the soot-covered stone.
The slender six-year-old placed a single, small finger on her father's pudgy brow. She was almost a ghost in the simple pale dress Gregarian had picked to emphasize her innocence and make her appear younger and smaller.
"I must go, papa," Isha replied, a small, carefully rehearsed quaver in her voice.
She turns now to the interrogator, and Gregarian mentally crosses his fingers as practiced acting transitions abruptly into ad-libitum.
"I, Isha Gregarian, holder of the keys of Poorva'gyaan, and heritor to the house Gregarian offer myself to you, Lord Interrogator Reuel, the Shin, as guide to the Sanskaar and the path that leads to all places."
Gregarian mewled pitifully in the background as Reuel questioned the girl as to her suitability as a guide, knowledge of the way, and familiarity with the ritual site. Privately Gregarian felt fierce pride well up in him as Isha answered the man with just the sort of cryptic half-nothings and local Domus myths that seemed to so fascinate the ordos lackey and his ilk.
In the end he watched as they departed, Isha holding Reuel's hand like a child still learning to walk, his men sweeping barrel-mounted stab-lights left and right as they drifted further away into the gloom. They turned a corner and vanished.
"Shut off those emperor-cursed lights!" he hissed, rising to his feet, his defeated, sniveling countenance replaced by a cold, hard confidence bred from decades of political maneuvering and power mongering.
The driver hastened to comply and for a moment they stood in complete silence.
"You are wise not to leave your reality sphere, Shin'kula," Djanette, materialized out of the gloom in front of them as though she'd just come from the way the interrogator had left. Thin, pale flesh draped over stick-like bones quivered as she gesticulated. "The ordos lackey, not so wise. Mur'kula takes him to his own, special Sanskaar."
Gregarian kept all hint of surprise from his voice and stance though his driver jumped and had a holdout pistol halfway out of his coat before Gregarian grabbed him and pushed him back into the driver's seat of the car.
"It's only just started, witch," he growled. "Information travels, even out here amongst the halo stars, his master will come looking for him within the decade, mark it so."
The driver flicked on the headlights again, revealing a solid wall of blackened rock to the immediate front of the vehicle where the tunnel had once been. The old woman chuckled and waved a gnarled hand, black fingernails like talons flashing in the headlights.
"Mur'kula is not concerned," she replied with a dismissive wave that caused her arm flesh to sway and jiggle. Her skin was so thin as to be translucent, and Gregarian imagined veins and bones just visible in the harsh glare of the high-beams.
"Well, I'm so glad my planet is unconcerned about the potential wrath of the Ordos Hereticus," Gregarian snapped back, his usually diplomatic demeanor frayed by weeks of dealing with the interrogator and far far too many hours spent venturing into the dark at the very edges of the Gellar field. "You might remind Mur'kula that cracking planets is practically child's play to the ordos and this far out I doubt Holy Terra would even notice the boom."
Djanette laughed, a croaking, gurgling unpleasantness and spat phlegm against the stone wall that had so recently been a tunnel. "When the golden one and his angels came Mur'kula bade us heed them, when the psychic scream destroyed all we knew, Mur'kula lead us underground. When the angels returned, twisted and broken, Mur'kula hid us from them. When you light-dwellers, you Shin'pervivo arrived, Mur'kula opened the way for you and sheltered you from the storm."
The priestess reached out a gaunt hand and stroked it across the air. In that moment Gregarian swore he could see the edge of the Gellar field light and flicker under her fingertips.
"Even now Mur'kula patiently bears the pain of your reality spheres," she withdrew her hand and pointed at the large, black aquila hanging from Gregarian's neck, "Mur'kula offers up her tva'cha, her iridescent, iron skin, as a tribute so valuable that no ordos inquisitor would ever dare harm her. No," Djanette smiled a toothless black peeling of cracked and ancient skin, "Mur'kula is not concerned, my dear lord governor."
The witch gave a half-bow and turned to go, a tunnel, subtly different in both size and grade than the one that had swallowed up the interrogator, having appeared in-between blinks of Gregarian's hooded eyes. "But you are not concerned for Mur'kula," she replied over her shoulder as she stepped away into a gloom that even the headlights were hard-pressed to penetrate. "As ever you are concerned only with yourself, yet there is no need. Mur'kula likes you, Titus."
Gregarian bristled at the use of his given name by the self-proclaimed Mur'kul priestess, the heretical witch that was both his ally diplomatically and ever-present thorn in the side of his planetary mining empire.
"She will keep you… safe…" the words echoed from the black void of the tunnel mouth as Djanette vanished from view.
Gregarian harumphed, "you'd better have Isha home by schola tomorrow, safe, or I may be less generous in my efforts to smooth your backwards belief system over with the ecclesiarchy!" He called after her, "or to keep the black fleets from taking sole control of mining operations!? Don't think your little cult would survive their scrutiny without me!?"
The only response was for the tunnel to vanish into a wall again, mid-blink, as ever. He glowered at it, resisting the irrational urge to leave the Gellar field and spit on the cursed, shifting planet.
"Thrice-cursed witch," he grumbled, returning to his seat in the car. "Drive!" He snapped, pulling out the vehicles voxcaster and keying in his personal code. "Lord Ecclesiarch!" He exclaimed in a jolly tone, "My gravest apologies for the early hour but I've just had the most wonderful dream, no, a vision! The emperor, a shining golden light banishing the darkness, a great feast of heroes. Yes. Yes! You as well? Then it's a certainty, today must be a day of lights, feasting, and celebration! Light the city! Let His word and light shine forth that even the lowest level of the Tentare might hear it."
He switched the Unit over to a new pre-set frequency and leaned back. It was petty, really, riling up the populous to raucous celebration and bathing the city in golden light. It would greatly annoy Djanette and probably incite a near panic amongst the skittish, dark-dwelling, Domus in the city's outer-hab blocks, to say nothing of the impact it would have on those who lived in the tunnels themselves, outside the radiant protection of the Gellar fields. Good. Planetary Body Halo 338 might be a backwater dump on the ass-end of nowhere space referred to by the natives as Mur'kula, but it was the Emperor's backwater dump on the ass-end of nowhere space. It was time to put some reminders of that fact in place, permanently!
"Lord Marshall! No," he chuckled dryly in false humor, "I am quite alright, though I was just awoken by his excellency, Lord Habito. It seems our beloved Ecclesiarch has concerns over the relative gloom in which we dwell. Yes, of course, who isn't? As Lord Governor, however, I am obliged to the faithful and the Throne to act and I feel a new set of ordinances is called for. Yes, quite. Join me for breakfast this morning and invite his honor Lord Magister Kramer to attend as well. Splendid. I have no doubt that your unflappable arbites commanders will relish the opportunity to enforce the light of the emperor so literally. Yes, of course. We will discuss this at length, over sausages. Good day."