ALL MUST END
Gav Thorpe
 
THEY HID THEIR fears well. They were Space Marines, trained and gengineered to fear nothing, yet Harahel could sense the discomfort of his companions. Psychic powers, matters of the warp, from astropaths to Navigators to the Imperial Tarot, were forces beyond understanding for them, and there was no amount of Chapter orthodoxy or mental con¬ditioning that could completely eradicate that dread of the unknown and the unnatural.
Their fears were laid bare to his othersense, as plain to the Dark Angels Librarian as their physical features. To his psychic awareness everything was visible, infused by immaterial energy from the warp. Some scholars in the ancient past had believed the warp was a separate realm, exist¬ing alongside, but divided from, the material universe. They had not been psykers. They did not see the power of the warp, the empyrean of dreams and emotions, leaking back into reality through even the dull¬est mind. It was little more than a smudge of power, but its presence was enough for Harahel to see into the souls of the others gathering in the brightly lit chamber.
Even as the glow of the candles highlighted the faces of the assembled Dark Angels officers, so the miniscule trickle of soul power gave curves and edges to their thoughts. The patterns were ever-changing, as moods varied and concern rose and fell, but Harahel could see the shapes within and discern their meaning.
Sammael, Grand Master of the Ravenwing, was the calmest of them. Or perhaps calm was not the right word. He was the most prepared, for he had seen Harahel perform these divinations at least a dozen times previously. Excitement touched on the underlying nervousness; they were close to capturing one of the Fallen, and as Master of the Hunt Sammael could feel success edging into view. His thoughts were the brightest, too, glittering and golden. Perhaps too bright with optimism to survive much longer in his current role, but foolhardiness was fre¬quently the deadly stalker of the Masters of the Second Company.
Harahel carefully stepped to the centre of the room, taking care not to disturb the hexagrammic wardings he had drawn onto the deck¬ing. The principal alignments were denoted by candles at the points of a twelve-pointed star enclosed within a circle, in turn encompass¬ing a hexagonal device with runes he had marked in molten lead. He sat directly under the candelabrum - made of meteoric iron from the remnants of destroyed Caliban - in a large, plain chair.
As he lowered himself he considered Grand Master Belial, commander of the First Company, leader of the Deathwing. Belial's thoughts were sharp and precise, controlled to the point of obsession, like masonry carefully chipped and smoothed by a lifetime of experience, rather than something organic and grown like the others. The Deathwing command¬er's thoughts barely changed as he stood with arms folded, surveying the others in the room with a wary stare.
Harahel was not surprised to see that the most closed thoughts of all belonged to Asmodai, the Master of Repentance. His mind was a steel shell of utter conviction. Only the tiniest glimmer of his soul shone through the defences, brutally and efficiently stifled by centuries of prac¬tice and a natural closed-mindedness that Harahel found remarkable. Had the Emperor encountered Asmodai ten thousand years ago when he was perfecting the gene-seed of the Dark Angels, it was possible that all Space Marines might have ended up with such single-minded zealotry.
That free thought was still possible for the Adeptus Astartes was evident from the roiling display of Sapphon's emotions. They pulsed green and blue and red, almost at random, the sign of an active, creative mind at work. Sapphon's soul was well protected, like the others, but his thoughts were quite readable. Currently the Master of Sanctity was thinking it strange that such a ceremony should be conducted in the light, when so many of the Dark Angels' inner mysteries took place in darkened chambers.
While Harahel's mind-sight regarded his companions, his regu¬lar senses took in other features of the room: the scent of the candles mixed with a hint of oil and a touch of rust; the heat of the other Space Marines and the flickering flames that lit them; the creak and murmur of the starship's bulkheads and decks; the undercurrent of the plasma engines throbbing through the vessel from aft to prow.
He allowed it all to become one, merging physical and psychic as he closed his eyes. As his eyelids descended, the two worlds - the real universe and the warp echoes - became as one in his thoughts, so that even though he no longer looked upon the chamber with his physical sight he was well aware of what transpired around him.
Harahel placed his hands in his lap and allowed the psychic power to flow. He could sense the apprehension of the others increase as they noticed flickering light from beneath his eyelids. The Librarian rested his head against the back of his chair and exhaled smoothly, pushing away the last of the trepidation he had felt when he had proposed the ceremony. Any warp delving was risky, and in this place, so close to the Eye of Terror, the risks were greater than usual. But Harahel was strong and had trained for three hundred years. He was ready.
The Librarian was about to release his mind into the warp, but dis¬turbances close at hand held him back. The thoughts of the others, so disparate, so at odds, made this initial navigation harder. Harahel needed to smooth their troubled emotions before he could perform the transition.
Sapphon was considering the nature of psykers and daemons, wondering if the reason they were so terrible was because they inter¬acted directly with unconscious senses of the soul. He was not far from the truth, as Harahel saw such things, but now was not the time for such speculations. Thinking about the warp and its inhabitants stirred the stuff of the empyrean in a cyclic effect, so that it gained power even from idle speculation.
'Do not fear for my soul, Brother Sapphon,' Harahel said quietly. 'Every hour you spend reciting the hymnals and catechisms of the Chapter, I spend hardening my spirit against temptation and possession.'
At the mention of such things Asmodai, standing to Sapphon's right, shifted his weight, perturbed. The steel of his mind became a dagger, flames of righteousness flaring along its length, directed towards the Librarian. A single thought blazed so strong the psyker could not avoid it: If Harahel shows the slightest sign of possession, I shall kill him.
A smile crept onto Harahel's lips.
'Please, Brother Asmodai, draw your pistol if it would make you feel more comfortable. I assure you, the wards are intact. The only person at risk is me.'
Regardless of the assurance offered by the Librarian, Asmodai drew his bolt pistol and aimed it at Harahel's head.
'Do not be too quick to use your weapon, brother, for there may be strange occurrences that are simply part of my delving into the warp.'
'You seek to send your soul to a world upon the edge of the Eye of Terror,' said Asmodai, his aim unwavering. 'I will take any precaution I feel necessary.'
'As you see fit, brother. Now I must beg silence, and to assist me it would be beneficial if you all focused on a particular thing, to stop the turbulence caused by your disparate thoughts as I enter the immaterium.'
'The Canticles of Nazeus?' suggested Sapphon. He received a nod in reply.
The Master of Sanctity began the invocation and the others joined in after a few seconds. Their combined voices rose and fell as they chanted, the sound shaped by the chamber, fading into the distance as Harahel prepared again to let go of his conscious thoughts. The Librarian was silent and still, withdrawing from his body, entering a trance so that his soul, or a portion of it, might lift his thoughts from their physical vessel to the turbulent eddies of the immaterium.
The chanting, the focus on the hymnal to the exclusion of other thoughts, stilled the ripples and echoes that had been disturbing Harahel's concentration.
'Sanctus Imperator protectorum,' the Librarian whispered. 'Be free.'
There was a feeling of detachment as his spirit lifted away from his mortal form. Always he was connected to the warp and the physical, a conduit for the unreal to enter the real, but with practised precision Harahel slipped away from himself like a ship departing its mooring.
Heat, light, sound, all worldly sensation dropped away from his aware¬ness. Instead, the weft and weave of the empyrean, the warp-sound and psychic thrum that he usually relegated to background noise became central to his universe. The real faded and the unreal solidified, still connected but transposed within his mind.
All around the Librarian was the tumult of the warp, but here, in the immediate space around him, was a calm pool, soothed by the devo¬tional intoned by his brethren. They knew nothing of the effect it had, but the benefit remained.
Harahel tugged himself free of his body, loosing part of his conscious¬ness onto the waves of the empyrean, allowing the pressure of the warp to carry him a short distance from the mortal host of his mind. He turned, not literally but in focus, to see his body sitting in the chair, surrounded by the wards and his battle-brothers. A trail like a golden cable snaked back to his body, tethering soul to flesh. It too was a construct of many years' training, allowing him to find his way back to his mortal shell.
Pulling back, Harahel watched the starship dropping away, deck by deck, until he saw it from outside, floating like a bubble on a stream, encased within the shimmer of its Geller field. A pulsing, irregular and powerful, drew his attention away from the warship and he focused on the source.
Distance was physically meaningless in the warp, but his brain could not cope with a dimensionless state, no matter his training. It was impossible to shape thoughts without a sense of up and down, near and far, in and out.
The pulsing came from somewhere close by, in galactic terms at least. A storm swirled on the edge of Harahel's perception, both sucking in all things like a vortex whilst simultaneously spewing forth tides and currents of warp power.
The Eye of Terror.
The greatest warp storm in the galaxy, so huge it covered dozens of light years of real space, an overlap between realms where material and immaterial were interchangeable. In the real universe it was perceived as a pulsing purple or red orb in the heavens, but from the warp the Eye of Terror looked less like an abyssal gulf and more like a deep window onto stars and planets, nebulae and comets that all glittered with energy.
The Eye of Terror fluctuated constantly, and in its heaving Harahel could see that which existed between worlds, neither warp nor real, giv¬ing glimpses of the realms of the Chaos Gods. Such sights would drive lesser men insane, unable to interpret the swirling energies and tempes¬tuous eddies. The training of the Librarius allowed Harahel to impose order onto the disorder, in a limited fashion, contorting his senses to imagine towering iron fortresses, tides of crystal waves, gleaming mirrorscapes and rotting forests.
He was dimly aware of his body reacting back on the starship. Out of instinct he narrated his journey, passing on what he experienced to the others. It required no more effort of thought than to keep his hearts beating and his lungs filling, a genuine stream of consciousness.
'Boundaries falling, walls breaking, the tumble of worlds and civili¬sations,' muttered Harahel, his lips barely moving. His eyes continued to move, as though in recognition or mockery of the warp-visions con¬jured by his othersense.
The power of the Eye of Terror was all-consuming. The Librarian felt it drawing him, pulling him into the maelstrom at its heart with irre¬sistible force. Harahel was nothing but a mote on a raging ocean and his golden tether spooled out behind him like a lifeline connected to a warrior ejected into the vacuum of space.
Faster and faster he was pulled towards the inevitable crushing forces that raged through the Eye of Terror, and though Harahel diverted every thought and effort to fighting the inward tide there was nothing to stop his descent to the bottom of the opening pit of darkness.
He tried to make the tether go tight, to turn it into a golden rod that would hold him in place, but the force from the Eye of Terror was too strong. He felt the attention of intelligences vaster than any living crea¬ture, save perhaps the Emperor Himself. They momentarily regarded him in the same way one might notice a fleck of dust settling nearby. Harahel feared for a moment that one of those malign consciousnesses might reach out and examine the speck in more detail, or perhaps flick it away without a thought, but the sensation passed and he remained alone and adrift on the flooding power of the warp storm.
Ulthor was located upon the very edge of this insane landscape, and to learn more Harahel knew he would have to venture into the unpre¬dictable fronds of energy that licked about the outskirts of the Eye of Terror. His mental tether, the golden thread of his life, held firm, but he had no way to navigate. He had been turned inside-out, upside-down and back-to-front, and was so caught in the raging torrents that charac¬terised the Eye of Terror that he was no longer sure how he could forge his way back to the others.
And then he glimpsed a solitary silver star.
He knew exactly what it was, and let his soul reach out towards it, latching on to its light as a drowning man seizes upon the lifebelt thrown to him. As he let the silver gleam fall upon him, Harahel was invigor¬ated, filled by strength and warmth and a sense of belonging. The glow from the star melted through the raw Chaos, turning aside storm and wave, calming the warp around the Librarian even as it calmed his rac¬ing thoughts.
The beacon held true against all the buffeting of the Eye of Terror, strong and unwavering even here near the heart of the pulsing flow of energy. More than a beacon, it was a rock upon which to settle for a moment, a bridge to cross, a fortress against the madness and uncertainty.
The Astronomican.
The Guiding Light.
The Soul of the Emperor.
Harahel murmured his relief.
'The barrier sweeps aside, revealing the light beyond, the silvery path.'
Empowered by the grace of the Emperor's light, Harahel turned his attention to locating the world of Ulthor, hidden within the fronds of warp energy leaking from the Eye of Terror. He drew upon his psychic strength to manifest a form within the warp, as a daemon might cre¬ate a false vessel in real space. Fuelled by the light of the Astronomican, Harahel appeared as a knight of silver and white fire, blazing with the cold purity of his cause. In his hands he held a blade of dark green edged with pale flames, the crosspiece fashioned with splayed wings to match the Chapter symbol emblazoned on the chest plate of his imma¬terial armour. A cloak of deep blue hung from his shoulders, the colour of the Librarius.
Back on the Dark Angels ship, the Librarian's body straightened on the chair, his power armour whining with movement, limbs trembling slightly as his muscles became rigid for a moment. He relaxed again, frown softening, mouth opening with a gasp.
Fully formed, Harahel's immaterial avatar delved into the rifts of the warp, racing for the fringes of the Eye of Terror. The silver light of the Astronomican was left glittering in his wake.
Time flowed in curves and circles, passing and not passing in relation to real space, so it might have been a fraction of a moment or a thou¬sand years before Harahel caught sight of that which he sought. On the very edges of the Eye of Terror stood a huge edifice, part crumbling cliff face, part immense stone tower, cracked and overgrown. A palpable miasma of decay surrounded the decrepit structure, a dark cloud that stained the warp and real universe in equal measure.
As the cloud parted for an instant, split by some random eddy of the warp, Harahel saw that the crumbling, monolithic keep was itself dwarfed by a far greater expanse. It was nothing more than an out¬house to a truly dread-inspiring mansion with a thousand broken-glass windows and countless sagging, cracked roofs. The tower of Ulthor lay in the shadow of the titanic manse, enveloped whole by the darkness and corruption spilling from great rifts and blasted holes in the structure of the mightier building. Harahel flinched, taken aback by the monstrous apparition, but the vision passed, swallowed by the warp currents a moment later, leaving Ulthor standing like a bony, upthrust finger surrounded by yellowing mists.
Still the silver star of the Astronomican shone overhead.
'On the border it stands, neither here nor there, real and yet unreal. Claimed but still free, the world of decay, a blossom in the dead garden. Upon the brink of hope and despair it stands. Death and rebirth, the spi¬ral of decline, until nothingness…'
His words brought reaction from the mortal realm, vague and distant.
'He is losing his mind,' he heard Asmodai say. 'Or something is tak¬ing it!'
'Hold your fire and your tongue,' said Sammael. The Chaplain laid a hand on his companion's bolt pistol. Asmodai's annoyance at the Grand Master flared like a plume of fire in the warp, but it was met with ice formed from the determined thoughts of Sammael. 'Do not think your reputation and rank greater than mine, Asmodai. Lower your weapon, Brother-Chaplain.'
'I cross the border, unseen by the many eyes, and the garden wilts around me,' whispered Harahel, unheeded by the others.
With reluctance, his ire dimming, Asmodai dropped the bolt pistol to his side. He glared at Sammael and returned his gaze to Harahel.
Harahel could feel the filth of Ulthor trying to leech his power from him. It was simple enough to siphon the rank warp energy into the hexagrammic wards, protecting his soul from corruption. On the star¬ship, the air began to fill with shadows outside the hemisphere created by the warding signs.
Harahel moved his warp-self closer to Ulthor. He found that he could not approach the tower directly, but was forced to alight in a vast over¬grown garden that clustered about the broken rocks at the bottom of the immense cliff.
As he explored, the Librarian allowed what he encountered to filter through his thoughts, shaping the shadows and light into representa¬tions of his warpsight. He could project visual images, but these were a flat caricature of what he felt coursing through his warp-self.
The garden was grown upon a foundation of misery and hopelessness. The twisted, stunted trees delved deep into the soil of despair, drawing up sustenance from broken dreams and shattered hope. As Harahel's feet sank into the mire he could feel the leeching effect trying to suck away his resolution, but he was able to resist the melancholy draining, the ground hardening beneath his tread as white fire burned the tainted mulch.
The air was thick with buzzing flies and the boles of the trees were rampant with many-legged creatures of all descriptions. They jumped about the sagging branches and leaves and regarded the intruder with glittering, multi-faceted eyes. Fungal growths vomited spores as Hara¬hel passed, while microbes consumed everything with slow decay.
A fog of sadness laid droplets upon the foliage like the tears of the lost and abandoned. The sultry rustle of the leaves was filled with murmuring laments, of loves past and opportunities squandered. From the mulch underfoot jutted stones that would trip the unwary, jagged rocks upon which ambition was broken and pride bruised. Low-hanging vines moved like serpents, ready to catch the unwary in the grip of self-pity. Arachnids with pale and bloated bodies spun webs of self¬doubt between the tree limbs, the souls of the damned writhing within, wrapped more and more with loathing and despair as they struggled against the vile threads.
But not all was dismal. There were bright fronds and blossoms of rain¬bow hue hiding in the gloom. Caterpillars with striking tiger stripes and neon hairs gambolled amongst ruddy petals and nestled in leopard-spot cocoons, from which burst forth bulbous moths with death's head wings.
Here and there a chink in the canopy allowed a precious ray of light to fall upon the forest floor. In the fitful gleam of this nourishment, frag¬ile flowers of hope pushed their way clear of the rotting carpet of insect corpses and leaves.
Yet the garish colours and joyous patterns could not hide the true nature of this place. By such phantasmal attractions were the unwary lured into despair.
The moment of freshness and clarity following recovery from a long sickness.
The joy of seeing a loved one after prolonged absence.
The swell of pride and fulfilment at the birth of a child.
These were snares of the emotions, moments of weakness to be exploited, for only those truly accepting of the eternal pain of exist¬ence and the inevitable corruption within were proofed against the heartbreak of disappointment and setback.
Not in endless drudgery, the thankless toil of everyday existence, was the Lord of Decay present, for in monotony was a base sort of comfort. It was the high notes, the tantalising promise of better, the scattered moments of elation, that were the cruellest weapons, for they set the mundane and pointless into stark contrast and plunged the soul into true despair. For every speck of light and colour, the forest and shad¬ows seemed all the darker and more forbidding.
A masquerade of glittering jewels hid the dark truth that all things fal¬tered and failed, a facade of happiness and fulfilment erected by the ego of all sentient creatures to persuade them there was a meaning within the interminable pointless cycle.
Slowly, across aeons of time, the decay grew stronger. Entropy picked apart all that existed, turning civilisations to dust and suns to clouds of cooling gas. Nothing could escape the grip of the immortal destroyer: time. Life became death and, in turn, death became life. Everything was sustained by this simple cycle of existence.
The Librarian let his companions see what he could see, showing them drooping leaves turned by autumn to russet and gold, mist streaming between the trunks tinged with green and black, a diseased smog. In the distance an immense edifice soared above the woods, indistinct, giant and grotesque.
Something was approaching. He heard buzzing from a distance, which swiftly became an incessant droning converging from all directions. The shadows seemed to merge and deepen, thickening, if that were possible, becoming tangible like a pool of oil. The noise drowned out the flutter¬ing of dried leaves and the drip of foggy tears.
From everywhere, fat-bodied flies spilled from beneath the gloom of the decaying forest. The swarm engulfed Harahel in moments, pressing closer and closer until a layer of furry blackness covered him, constantly moving. They found gaps in his armour to settle on his skin, not biting, but squashing their bloated bodies into his flesh, oppressive through virtue of their numbers. They sought the visor of his helm, thickening on his face, pressing through to cover his eyes and blot out the light of the Astronomican.
He tried to sweep them away with his gauntleted hand, but they were too thick, too numerous. Like a drowning man thrashing at the waves, his blows moved slowly, the thickness of the swarm itself so dense that it was suffocating. Where he crushed them, vomit-yellow smears stained his armour, bubbling and blistering like acid. The droning was intoler¬able, making his head throb, burning his eardrums with its monotony.
Harahel flailed, gritting his teeth, but parting his lips simply allowed more of the flies to push in, skittering along his gums, trying to squeeze their soft bodies between his incisors. His nostrils were blocked by squirming insects forcing their way up into his sinuses, seeking the warm passages down into his lungs. The Librarian attempted to dislodge the swarm with the leaves hanging lank from drooping branches, crashing through the trees, almost tripping on the rocks of folly that appeared beneath his tread. Blood-like sap spattered his battleplate, sticky fluid seeping into the joints and hardening to a paralysing resin.
It was as though they were buzzing inside his head now. He could feel thousands of grotesque bodies pushing into his organs, crawling along nerves and arteries, clogging his lungs and heart.
This was how all things ended. Even the mighty Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes. Even the Astronomican. Even the Emperor.
It was all so pointless to struggle. What if he were to prevail today? There would be another battle tomorrow. Each day brought fresh threats against mankind. The Space Marines were pitifully and ridiculously few.
Fewer than one Space Marine per world in the Imperium. The forces of the Imperial Guard numbered in the countless billions, but their souls and hearts were weak and in time even that bulwark would crumble like a wall battered by the constant wind and rain. Courage would fal¬ter, and what then?
Why did it matter? To die today was no better and certainly no worse than dying tomorrow. That was the nature of the inevitable, the unavoidable. Orks could be slain, eldar craftworlds destroyed, tyranid fleets scattered, but there was no way to defeat time or death. It was folly and pride to believe that anything made a difference.
Harahel's courage suffocated even as imaginary lungs were starved of breath. He felt the darkness consuming him. No, not consuming, wel¬coming. He had but one chance to rid himself of the curse of life. It was simple, to accept that the Lord of Decay was his master. In doing so he would become one with decay, its ally, not its victim. No matter how superhuman his mind and body, only acceptance of the ascendancy of the Master of the Dead Manse could save Harahel.
A distant voice, a connection to the real world, brought him back from the void of oblivion. He reached out with his thoughts, drawn back to his body by the contact.
'Ulthor, brother,' said Sammael, stepping closer to the Librarian. The black of his robes seemed to suck in what little light remained, leaving his face a pale mask floating in gloom. 'Cast your mind to the world of Ulthor. It is close, brother.'
Sammael's faith was like a cleansing touch, his brotherhood a source of infinite strength. Harahel did not fight for himself, for his eternal soul or his mortal body. He fought for his brethren in the Chapter. He fought for mankind. He fought for the Emperor.
In a moment, refreshed by the contact with his physical form, the Librarian found that the fly swarm had gone. Not dissipated, but burned away by silver flames crackling across his body, their daemon-essence absorbed, their power neutralised by a psychic surge, leaving nothing but wispy husks flying away on a strengthening breeze of his renewed will.
Though he had fended off the flies, Harahel knew his trials were far from over as he pressed on towards his goal. Storm clouds swirled and thickened overhead, the sky turning from grotesque yellow to black, as though bruised by the battering of some huge fist.
The rotten canopy of the dead forest swayed as the gales came, bring¬ing with them a tumult of broken branches and tattered leaves that crashed against Harahel's armour as he advanced into the tempest. Step by step he forged forwards, jaw clamped tight with determination.
Back aboard the Dark Angels starship, Harahel's body flinched and tensed again. His breathing came more quickly and his fingers moved from his lap to grip the arms of the chair.
With Sammael's words driving him, he fixed on the shadowy tower atop the distant cliff, taking one slow step after another, leaning hard into the gale. The storm did not wholly obscure the light of the silver star. Harahel could see the paler gleam like a path in front of him, occa¬sionally being blotted out as darkness swirled, sometimes turning into forked lightning that split open the storm and lit the road ahead.
Coming to the foot of the cliff, Harahel paused and looked up. From this perspective the edifice seemed almost endless, the city-tower out of sight, the heights of the cliff lost in the gloom of distance.
He reached up and took hold of a jutting rock. Pulling himself up, he found a foothold and raised himself off the ground. Harahel fixed his stare at the vaguest line that delineated clifftop from sky and climbed. His thoughts shaped the cliff face so that wherever he sought a hand¬hold for fingers to grip or a niche for toes to set upon, there was always something there.
His was not the only will that guided the formation of the dark rock. Roots split the stones, jabbing like spears into his body and legs, scratch¬ing across his armour. Others writhed like tentacles, trying to grasp wrists and ankles, seeking to wrench him from his precipitous advance. The more he ascended, the more violently the cliff struggled against him, lashing whips of roots trying to dislodge him, to send him plummeting back to the hungry forest below.
Wasting no energy, not even to snarl or groan, Harahel pushed upwards, his thoughts enclosed behind a barrier of steel as his imma¬terial form was shielded by the silver of his armour. The labour was nothing, a test of will more than muscle, and no sooner had he come to this realisation he found himself grasping a fistful of rock to haul him¬self onto the clifftop.
It had seemed to him before that the tower of Ulthor had been almost upon the edge of the great drop, but he found that it had been a lie, a trick of hope rather than objective perspective. The tower had disap¬peared and in its place he saw an immense ebon-petalled flower.
'The black rose, a thousand flies crawling on the petals. The stem bends but does not break, swayed by foetid winds carrying pollen of despair to the bright flowers of hope. A choking presence, cloying.'
He could see the tiny pollen grains pouring into the sky like the fumes from a fire. If he focused he could see that each miniscule dot was in fact three globes attached to each other, and each of the globes was a grin¬ning skull. The smog rose higher and higher, whirling about in a vortex of wind until it reached the storm clouds, where it drifted down across the whole of the foetid garden and the dead woods beyond.
Like black snow the pollen fell, and though he brought up a corner of his blue robe to cover his nose and mouth he could feel the tiny par¬ticles passing through the weave, settling about his tongue and throat.
He thought they might bring pain, but instead he felt numbness stretching from where they alighted on membrane and muscle. His jaw felt slack and his airways opened, allowing more and more of the black pollen beads into his body.
Individually, the tiny intruding specks were inconsequential, but as they grew in number Harahel felt them melting into his body, trying to become part of him. Like the flies before, the pollen set itself in his flesh, looking to become a seed, to send out roots into his thoughts.
He staggered, mesmerised by the apparition of the gigantic black rose. There was purity in its blackness, hidden colours and depths that he had never imagined existed. The pollen was not a poison, it was an elixir of truth, granting him the ability to see the universe as it really was. Through eyes stained grey he saw the atoms at the heart of suns perishing to produce heat and light. He saw the dust of dead novae col¬lecting over the ages to form new worlds, new stars. In bacterial sludge he saw energy transferring from one state to another, never disappear¬ing, simply finding new forms, infused with immortality.
The sludge expanded and grew, became higher life, sentient and self¬knowing, and the innocence faded. The blossom began to wilt with the pain of knowledge. To see, to hear and feel was to deceive oneself. The mind existed only as a barrier to the reality that all was transient and nothing was permanent.
He wanted to help the flower, to sustain its beauty, but already he was guilty of the sin of knowing. Harahel's resistance was a poison in the bosom of the earth, seeping into the roots of purity. It was his adher¬ence to falsehood that was causing the bloom to sag, the petals falling away one by one, each loss accompanied by a wrenching pain in Harahel's heart.
The Librarian gasped loudly and flung a hand to his face, covering his eyes, though they were still shut. The darkness around him was abso¬lute, the vista of light-woven scenes playing about his head and turning like a kaleidoscope, coming in and out of focus.
For the first time since besting the cliff Harahel noticed the soft ground underfoot, welcoming and golden. He wanted to lie down, to be sub¬sumed into the layer of fertile earth so that his essence could give life to new creatures. In accepting his role he would purge the toxins he had brought forth with his presence. His conversion to the truth would be nourishment, enriching the bloom of death that he desired so strongly. Sacrifice would water the roots, his blood and soul fertiliser to make the stem stand strong again, to push forth new flowers so that the great pro¬cess of reproduction could spread the pollen of truth across the galaxy.
Though Harahel's conscious thoughts wanted him to surrender, his instincts - his inner mind protected by centuries of ritual and prac¬tice - pushed him on towards his goal. Where the mind was weak, the soul remained strong. Though he could no longer see the silver star, he could still sense its presence, lighting his way to his objective. He fol¬lowed it blindly, trusting to the Emperor to deliver him to his purpose.
He stumbled on, fighting the sensations, trying to stay awake. He was so tired. His legs were leaden, and he had long since given up trying to shield his face with his cloak. Every breath drew in a thousand more pollen globes. Harahel was almost at the last of his resistance, numbed and exhausted.
The Librarian turned as he fell, looking back the way he had come. Before his eyes closed forever he caught a glimpse of the silver star.
Forcing his eyes to remain open he allowed the light of the Emperor to stream into him. Its presence drove out the black pollen, purging arteries and veins, heart and lungs, guts, hands and feet.
As the pollution within him cleared, so too did the sky. The storm receded, revealing a beautiful azure heaven untroubled by cloud or wind. A silver sun touched him with warmth. The armour that was his second skin absorbed the strength of its rays, abating the numbness to fill him with fresh vigour.
The tower was close now and Harahel knew that it had been there all along, concealed by the glamour of the black rose. He could almost reach out and touch the moss-covered, pitted stone walls. Tendrils of plant life covered the crumbling brickwork, obscuring doorways and windows, twisting around the skeletons of those that had attempted to climb them before. The wind returned, now chill and laden with the scent of death. As the vines stirred, skulls chattered to the Librarian, their rictus warnings wordless but strangely comprehensible.
Only the foolish followed in the footsteps of those that had perished. Only the prideful dared to think themselves strong enough to overcome the obstacles that still lay ahead. Arrogance would be Harahel's down¬fall. Better to return in failure than never return at all.
The snickering of the death's heads fuelled the Librarian's doubts. His companions would never know - could never comprehend - the risks he had taken already. It would serve no purpose to die here, ensnared by the evil of this broken keep. How could he protect humanity from beyond the grave?
Despite these misgivings weighing down every step, Harahel resolved to push on. It was the destiny of every Space Marine to ultimately offer up his life for mankind, and it was not for Harahel to decide that one day was better than another. This was the task at hand and he would apply himself to it with all his strength and will until he succeeded, or died.
All that remained was to traverse the mire that surrounded Ulthor like a moat. Bubbling tar pits and sucking marsh lay between him and his goal. Fronds of rushes stood out from the boggy ground, rattling in a dry wind. The noise of escaping gases and the movement of some¬thing sinuous and large beneath the surface caused Harahel to pause at the swamp's edge.
There looked to be pathways through the mire, but the Librarian was not so easily fooled. He was beginning to get the measure of this place. The false hope was the foundation of everything that passed in this immaterial reflection of Ulthor. All that seemed achievable was sim¬ply a ruse created to drag the interloper further into the web of despair, drawn so far from their normal path that they could not find their way out again. The seemingly secure route would doubtless peter out, leav¬ing him stranded, succumbing to isolation and despair.
Then he remembered where he was. He did not have to toil across the morass, he could simply extend his will and make it something else. Just as its light had resurrected his flagging strength, so now the heat of the silver star, guided by his power, baked the corrupted earth dry, turning marsh to packed dirt, tar to hardened puddles of blackness. The plants withered under the harsh light of Harahel's power, drying and cracking beneath his psychic glare.
The energy of the writhing grasses and towering rushes seeped into the ground to escape the glare of the Librarian's assault. Here the warp power swelled roots and tubers, which in turn leeched more nourish¬ment from the dirt, continuing to grow to enormous proportion. Harahel could sense them bulging like seed pods, the latent power within puls-ing and churning. As he scanned them with his mind he felt that he was being regarded by malign beings in return.
The roots started to move, burrowing towards Harahel, metamor¬phosing from vegetable matter to something else, something not quite animal but sentient and aware. White-bodied, feeling their way towards the Librarian by latching on to the scent of his soul, the loathsome slug¬like beasts closed in.
'A field of maggots, laid beneath the bosom of the world, full of vitality, waiting to burst forth. They hear me. The blind worms see me.'
Beads of sweat were running down the psyker's physical brow and the light leaking from beneath his eyelids took on a rusty hue.
'The warp is claiming him,' he heard Asmodai snarl as the Chaplain shoved Sapphon aside to stand at the very edge of the psychic circle. 'Something is burrowing into his mind.'
'Do not break the field,' warned Sapphon, taking a step closer. 'We must trust to his assurances, brother.'
On the edge of awareness, Harahel noticed Asmodai dart a look at Sap¬phon that conveyed his contempt for the assurances of psykers more clearly than any words. The psyker flinched, feeling the lash of contempt striking his soul. Sammael moved up beside the Chaplain, eyes flash¬ing with anger, but he did not lay a hand on Asmodai.
Breaking into a run, Harahel forged his way past the dead and dying blooms of the marsh-plants, heading towards the base of the Ulthor tower. His armoured boots left imprints in the dust that filled with grey ooze from below. The slime puddles took on a bulbous shape, turning grey from green, budding grasping hands and beady eyes. Clawed fin¬gers and antlers sprouted from fist-sized daemonic minions. Snarling and giggling, they tumbled after Harahel, forming a carpet of vicious, grinning faces and red eyes.
The Librarian focused his powers ahead, trying to see into the tower that represented the world of Ulthor. Much was barred to his sight, encrusted with vile mould and lichen that blotted his thoughts, but he was able to pierce the foundations of the city, which stretched deep into the rotten earth.
He sensed mortal souls for the first time since leaving his compan¬ions, tainted by the touch of the Lord of Decay. In the roots sprawling from the city he saw icons and livery known to him, and warriors clad in ancient, decay-ridden suits of war-plate: the Death Guard. He sought more information, hoping to glimpse their dire primarch, the dread Mortarion, but there was no sign of the daemon-cursed leader of the Traitor Legion. Instead, Harahel witnessed row upon row of ghastly sar¬cophagi housing bloated, pale warriors, while an endless line of young slaves were herded into dark cellars, trailing implants that twitched and sputtered with their own life.
The mites of decay were on his heels, scrabbling and grasping, threat¬ening to trip him. Harahel knew he had to stay upright. If he fell he would be engulfed by the daemonic creatures, cut off from the silvery light that yet remained his guiding star.
Broken nails scratched at his armour and tugged at his cloak. Chitters and sniggers followed him, just a step behind. Harahel sensed the over¬whelming nature of the foe behind him, but he could not stop himself from turning to see the extent of the threat.
The carpet of daemon-things stretched far and wide, in places form¬ing hummocks as scores of the plague-mites scrambled over each other to get at him. He needed just a little more time to probe the secrets of Ulthor.
Drawing a silver blade, he carved a flaming furrow into the mass of daemons, bursting their bodies with concentrated waves of loathing and disgust. He formed his hatred for the creatures into bolts of fire that leapt from his eyes, and as he did so he stretched the rest of his thoughts into the tower, trying to hunt down its secrets.
'The pods, all in a row, dangling from the tree of death like the hang¬man's fruit.' Harahel's body was feverish now, skin ashen, limbs twitching like a palsy victim.
On the surface, gun towers and fortifications of rusted metal jutted from the ground like broken teeth. The fortress spread like a cancer, infused with the will of the Death Guard, raised by mortal servants and daemonic conjuration given form as shuffling mobs of mindless vassals. He pulsed a warning back to his companions in the only way he could.
'Little skins of metal, peeling back, revealing the maggot within the womb. The thorns drip with blood, coiling about the city, snaring all that will enter.'
A ring of white fire exploded outwards from his knightly form, incinerating the decay-daemons by the thousands, leaving him in a charred circle, unmolested for a few moments. The curtain protecting the innards of the city parted. Harahel did not hesitate, but plunged in, throwing his soul into the breach to see what lay concealed behind the tower walls.
Something stirred in the heart of the city, swollen and monstrous, yet in its centre Harahel saw something else - a window back into the reality of the material universe. He thought he recognised the stars somehow, a vision of a system imprinted on his memory but one he had never visited in his long years of service. The shattered ruin of a world slowly orbited the star, a billion chunks of rock and vacuum-scoured ice. Now and then he glimpsed something impossible: the evidence of human artifice. The face of a statue, the broken remnants of a wall, a piece of power armour or bolter.
Harahel could not shake the feeling of familiarity as he spied the rem¬nants of a window spinning through the ruin, the glass stained with green in the shape of a white wing.
This was the warp and he knew that what he saw was not real - not a physical place but an idea. These were symbols, not literal objects, but Harahel could not decipher their meaning. He tried to take in as much as possible, staring into the open abyss in the hope of seeing something that would decode the message.
This train of thought took him to another level of understanding. A message, perhaps? An astrotelepathic projection? If it was an astropath's missive, it carried none of the usual markers and templates. But then, what was one to expect this close to the Eye of Terror? The mes¬sage could be from ten thousand years in the past, or even the future, it was impossible to say.
Rather than trying to riddle the source, Harahel concentrated on absorbing all of the elements, so that he might deconstruct its mean¬ing at leisure once he was back in his body.
It seemed to him that somehow the massive inhabitant of Ulthor was communicating with something else, outside the Eye of Terror. But that didn't strike the Librarian as quite right. The hole opening up between the real and unreal was a conduit, formed of a mass, a singular entity.
The thing in Ulthor and whatever it was communicating with, or had communicated with, or would communicate with, were one and the same in some fashion.
Hidden deep amongst the asteroids was something else, a part of the beast that lurked in Ulthor. Just as the shining knight was Harahel's presence in the warp, the daemon-thing of Ulthor had a guise in the real world. A perfect matt-grey sphere amidst a cluster of asteroids glinted against the starry void.
He saw prison bars falling away and felt a surge of release. Some¬thing longed to escape the warp. Something that had already imparted a piece of its essence into the material world but had been thwarted in the past. Was the time coming when it would escape completely? The thought filled Harahel with foreboding, a sinister sensation far deeper than simple horror. The scene foreshadowed an event of great impor¬tance, and he had been fortunate to have glimpsed this warning. His psychic sense was like a shrill alarm, telling him that great disaster was about to befall his brethren.
He knew this place but he could not bring himself to believe the truth of it. The time had come to leave, so that he could take what he had seen to the others. He had not been able to project the vision-within-a-vision, so he would have to tell them first-hand of the connection between Ulthor and the broken world.
The window closed as the city-beast sensed Harahel's presence. Like a blast door closing, the vision disappeared, unreality slamming down into the Librarian's psychic view. Lashing out with rage, Ulthor's unnat¬ural ruler summoned forth the daemons of despair and decay and within moments Harahel was surrounded by a horde of grotesque apparitions.
They fell upon him without a sound, and though he lashed out with his flaming blade, he was soon overwhelmed as more and more of the daemons piled onto him. For every cyclopean creature he cut down, two took its place. For every handful of bulbous mites he destroyed, a welter of fresh daemons surged into the breach. The ground itself, once obedient to his will, now rebelled. The mire started to bubble up around his feet again, becoming softer and softer with every passing heartbeat.
Finding himself up to his thighs in the marsh, Harahel's movements were woefully hampered. He twisted to look at the Ulthor tower but couldn't see it properly, as though it was somehow deliberately avoid¬ing his gaze.
He looked up, hoping for a glimpse of the silver star, but nothing but black clouds filled the heavens. With a choked cry Harahel real¬ised that he was cut off.
Outnumbered and engulfed, he was borne down to the ground, which opened up beneath him like a grave.
He felt maggots latching onto him, gnawing at his psychic body, bur¬rowing and prying at his armour, peeling away his defences even as the other daemons battered and tore with their fists and claws and prised at the joints of his armour with rusted blades and broken horns.
Their touch withered him. Armour became rust and flaked away. Skin slewed from flesh, and flesh rotted to the bone. Bone became dust as the convulsing earth of the grave consumed him. Only the core of his soul remained, guarded by the precious silver light of the Emperor, an impenetrable shield of faith and determination forged over decades of inculcation into the defensive rites.
A worm slid into the remnants of a decaying eye, slipping along the optic nerve into the meat of his brain. Others followed, passing along neural pathways, slithering and sliding between synapses, seeking a route into his mind, taking control of the flesh.
They heard what he heard, saw what he saw. He had sought to spy on them, and now they looked to turn his own body against him, to wield it as a weapon against the Dark Angels.
'The city, Harahel, what of the city?' asked Sammael, eyes flicking between Asmodai and the Librarian. 'Think of the city.'
Ulthor was just a memory now. It collapsed into nothing in his thoughts, flowing over him like a sandstorm, blowing away the last vestiges of his psychic construct. Yet it was also still there, impermeable, eternal, made not of brick and mortar but hopelessness and woe.
'The majesty of decay, towering and fallen, standing solid upon the shifting sands.'
He reached out to the hidden silver star, a prayer in his thoughts, seek¬ing the strength of the Emperor to free him from the grip of the foes leeching his will, tunnelling into his thoughts. Across the warp divide he could see back aboard the starship and felt something else looking through his eyes as more worms dug into his flesh.
He had to get back, but for the moment he was no longer in control.
Suddenly the Librarian stood up, knocking the chair to the ground. He noticed Sapphon feeling a moment of dread as Harahel opened his eyelids, revealing milky-white corpse eyes. A rope of saliva drooled from the corner of his mouth.
Harahel saw Asmodai raise his pistol and silently thanked the Emperor for the Chaplain's unflinching dedication to duty. He wanted to tell Asmodai to shoot, but his lips were no longer his own, his tongue a limp slug rotting behind his teeth. He wanted to beg the Chaplain to fire, to end the life of his mortal form, to cut the golden thread that linked soul to physical body, a golden thread that was now the route of intrusion used by the daemons.
The worms were now burning at the silvery light of his last defences, etching a path like acid on metal, while their companions slinked down through sinew and vein, energising muscle and organ with warp energy. They were preparing the body for full possession, infusing it with their own power so that they could reshape it at a whim.
'No!' shouted Sammael, tackling Asmodai to the floor.
Harahel's body was becoming a portal. Their control was not yet abso¬lute. If he wanted to resist physically he had to extend his will from beyond the moat of pure energy that kept the daemons at bay. Better to die body and soul than surrender the physical and spend an eternity trapped inside his own thoughts, impotent and ashamed.
He allowed a sliver of his mind to extend back into the real universe, burning along the golden thread of his existence.
'They are here!' snarled Harahel.
Sapphon drew his pistol while Asmodai wrestled himself free from the grip of Sammael. The Master of Sanctity aimed at the Librarian's left eye, knowing the shot would punch through into the psyker's brain and slay him in an instant, cutting off the conduit for whatever was try¬ing to use his soul as a bridge into the mortal world.
He was about to pull the trigger when Harahel collapsed with a shriek.
Harahel looked at Sapphon, trying to plead with his eyes, urging him to shoot as he had urged Asmodai to shoot.
There was nothing left. The daemons possessed his form to the inner¬most fibre and smallest atom. It was just a shell for their power, a puppet whose strings had been taken from the Librarian. He tried to wrest con¬trol again, opening up more of his thoughts to the psychic assault of the daemons in return for just a few seconds of corporeal influence.
Their response was instantaneous and agonising. Shards of vital pain coursed through Harahel, and he fainted, relinquishing even conscious¬ness for a moment.
The Librarian lay still, face down. The light flowed back from his body to the candles and the strange shadows faded back to normal. The lead symbols of the floor had turned to indistinct blobs, sizzling, spitting and steaming as though on a hot plate.
Sanity and sensation returned, but it was with despair that Harahel saw what had happened. Only the most slender thread of energy con¬nected him to his body, overwhelmed by formless slime and writhing maggots. He was a silent, inconsequential witness to his own actions.
Harahel pushed himself slowly to all fours and looked at his compan¬ions. Trickles of blood marked him from ears, nostrils and eyes, quickly drying and clotting on pallid skin. Sapphon looked into the Librarian's eyes, dark brown with disappearing flecks of gold, and saw the warrior he knew looking back. Asmodai was not yet convinced, his pistol once again aimed at Harahel.
Harahel screamed, but the scream was voiceless. He could see the tiny flickers of warplight that were the souls of his brethren and he wanted to touch them. An instant of connection, a moment of intuition, to urge them to kill the thing that was waking before them.
He had no strength left. All that remained - his body, his thoughts, even his memories - now belonged to the daemonkin. The Librarian had no power to throw his warning into the mind of another, no energy to spark revulsion or suspicion with a glance.
'What are the three Abjurations of Assiah?' demanded the Chaplain.
The daemons plucked the knowledge from Harahel's brain. His tute¬lage by the Chaplains, session after session in the Reclusiam alone and with the other initiates, flashed through his existence. He could not stop the words rising unbidden to his thoughts, and from there the daemons carried them to his lifeless lips.
'Despise the mutant, abhor the heretic, loathe the alien,' Harahel replied, voice hoarse.
Despair. It was total, enveloping Harahel with its darkness. The Lord of Decay had known this would happen from the moment Harahel had parted the veil of the warp and looked upon the entropic garden. It was folly, arrogance, to believe that anyone could escape the clutches of the immortal destroyer.
Not even a Librarian of the Adeptus Astartes, one of the most highly trained psykers birthed by humanity, could resist the slow turning of the aeons. Naive pride had sent him into the empyrean realm, hoping to undo the plans of the Lord of Decay's mortal followers. This had pro¬vided a gateway for the daemons, and through misguided intent Harahel had doomed his companions and the others aboard their starship. Lies would bring them into the warp and there they would be consumed.
If Harahel had possessed a body he would have convulsed with weep¬ing, torn apart by the grief of what he had done. Total, all-devouring despair tore ribbons from his mind, casting out sanity like streamers of thought that dissipated on the waves of the empyrean.
'And name the six principal Lords of the Keys,' Asmodai insisted, the muzzle of his pistol following Harahel's head as the Librarian righted the chair and, with much wincing and grunting, forced himself upright.
Again the daemons delved into his brain, bringing back the scent of freshly lacquered wood, the droning of Chaplaincy epistles, the growl of his masters prowling along the benches ready to exact retribution for one misspoken word, one heartbeat of hesitation in intonation.
Harahel lunged at a memory, frantically latching on to it, trying with all his strength to stop it surfacing but the daemons pried it from his grasp and traitorous lips spoke the words.
'Nessiad, Direstes, Thereoux, Mannael, Dubeus and…'
With one last agonising effort Harahel reached out, blossoming like a flower, revealing everything to his core as he grasped the silver star, letting it burn through him. He could not destroy the daemons, but he could hold them at bay.
For what seemed like an eternity he drove them back, feeling their teeth and barbs tear at his soul. Every effort to purge himself inflicted more pain and misery upon body and spirit. In the real world less than a heartbeat passed, but for Harahel it was an immortal age of mind-shredding agony as he made himself a conduit for the power of the Emperor, turning his psychic-self into a pyre, the flames igniting the energy of the daemons.
They scrambled to fight him, to blot out the silver fire with their dark¬ness, to expunge flame with grotesque slime. In the moment of conflict Harahel stopped fighting. Rather than striving to regain control, Harahel withdrew from himself, for an instant forcing the daemonic presence to reveal itself.
For a brief moment the silver fire consumed Harahel, cowing the dae¬mons. He wrested control of his body.
The Librarian hesitated, a twitch in his eye. 'And…'
Asmodai fired.
The bolt took off the side of Harahel's skull, ripping through the intri¬cate wiring of the psychic hood, spattering gore across the rune circle.
Harahel watched his body dying, the slow ebb of life from heart and lungs. He was satisfied. The daemons fled the falling corpse and the empty shell of his mortal self crashed to the deck.
For a moment more his soul lingered in the warp, surrounded by the vengeful, ravenous daemons. The Librarian felt no fear. Sanctuary was close at hand, for his mind was a fortress once more, if only for an instant. Not for him the mindless eternity awash with the tides of the warp, a mote in the whorl of greater beings.
The silver fire of the Astronomican consumed the last of him, turn¬ing the last vestiges of his soul to a flicker of fire that was absorbed by the greater light.
And then Harahel was no more.