Warhammer 40k: Ours Journey

Chapter 54: The Great Devourer?

Pitter-patter... pitter-patter...

A shower of rain clicked against the viewport. Unseen, the recessed sections of the Dawnlight's outer hull began to collect a significant amount of water.

How terrifying. It was actually raining in the vacuum of space.

Arthur stood before the window, staring out at the star system, which was shrouded in a dense dust cloud, and felt a sense of dislocation.

'Are we still in the Warp?' he thought. He turned and glanced at Aglaia beside him. The Inquisitor was also staring out at the scene, lost in thought.

Arthur was bewildered. He was curious as to what kind of cosmic phenomenon this could possibly be. Did the laws of physics have such a wondrous side to them?

"Aglaia."

"My Lord?" Aglaia pulled her gaze back from the window. Her expression was grim.

"This phenomenon," Arthur said, pointing at the rain outside. "Could you please explain it to me?"

"This is a special phenomenon that occurs when the Warp and realspace overlap," Aglaia replied, quickly taking out a small notebook and jotting something down. "It usually appears at a Mandeville Point and indicates that a great power of the Warp may be watching this area. It is a sign that the Mandeville anchor point is collapsing into a reality-ulcer."

After so much time traveling through the Warp, she understood that these ancient warriors valued efficiency. While they were not lacking in the necessary politeness, they didn't care much for convoluted ceremony.

"How many?" Arthur asked.

Aglaia's quill pen pierced the parchment. The ink trembled, reflecting a faint shimmer under the starlight, as if tiny, silver parasites were swimming within it.

"Multiple," she said. The gaze of each great power of the Warp was sharp and terrible. The molten iron rain from the Brass Citadel could burn through void shields; the blood-crystal hail from the Palace of Pleasure could implant parasitic, mind-altering visions. If not for some other force constraining them, it would not be manifesting as harmless rain. They wouldn't be standing here so calmly; they'd be down on the lower decks clearing out plague zombies.

"However," Aglaia added after describing the cause of the rain in detail, "the effects of this anomaly are far less harmful than what is recorded in the archives."

"..."

Bad news from the moment they entered this region of space. The gaze of great Warp powers... who else could it be but the Four?

Averting his gaze, Arthur noticed that the holy sigil pendant on the Inquisitor's neck was spinning frantically.

Screeech—

A tooth-grinding sound echoed through the ship, which suddenly tilted forty-five degrees.

Arthur immediately grabbed the hilt of his sword, the runes upon it flaring to life. With one arm, he steadied two crew members who had fallen. Through the now-inverted observation window, he saw tens of thousands of raindrops weaving a glowing neural network in space. Each droplet reflected a different nightmarish vision: some contained a burning, perfect city; others held the grotesque form of a four-armed, gluttonous beast; and still others were crystallizing into the tombstone inscriptions of the ancient Eldar empire's history.

Aglaia tore a servo-skull from her belt. The skull, which had no vocalizer, was now screaming, its electronic eyes endlessly replaying execution footage from some unknown era.

"Order all fleets to seal their viewports! Immediately! Violators will be executed!" Aglaia said, drawing her bolt pistol and blasting the servo-skull, which had already begun to sprout flesh. She silently thanked her habit of keeping backup data.

"Seal the blast doors! Resume Warp-transit status!" Romulus reacted instantly, ordering the ship to maintain its sealed, Warp-travel configuration and relaying the command to the entire fleet. The ship's astropaths were now under Ramesses's management; with the safe house, the security of their communications was guaranteed.

The moment the viewports were sealed, the entire warship seemed to be completely cut off from the outside world and began to stabilize.

"Were those images from the past?" Arthur asked, looking at the slightly drained Aglaia.

"Huh?" Aglaia looked back, completely confused.

"..."

It seems others can't see it.

Arthur turned his head and looked at the others on the bridge who had averted their eyes from the start, but were still looking drained, and at his fellow transmigrators, who were deep in thought.

Or rather, only those unaffected by the Warp can see it?

"I saw the Word Bearers," Arthur said. The Word Bearers. Those fallen Chaos Space Marines always appeared in conjunction with various heretical rituals.

"Are you certain, my Lord?"

"Legion-era color scheme. I couldn't be mistaken." To be honest, Arthur hadn't recognized the burning ruins at first, but seeing the Word Bearers had jogged his memory. It was most likely the city of Monarchia.

"This is not good news, my Lord," Aglaia said, rubbing her temples after hearing Arthur's account. She didn't question him. After all, she was well aware of the... issue with these lords' identities. If the images projected in the rain were from history, it meant the Grand Inquisitor's ritual had already begun. And the enemy the joint fleet would be facing would likely include the Word Bearers, and others besides. Unfortunately, her own lifespan was limited, and she was not knowledgeable about the cult of the four-armed xenos or Eldar history. From an occult perspective, it meant there were corresponding individuals within the ritual's area of influence who had made a connection with the Warp, which was why those historical images were being displayed.

Aglaia stared silently at the projected course on the hololith, her fists clenched in tension.

The joint fleet had received the Dawnlight's timely warning. The ships that subsequently emerged at the Mandeville Point all maintained their sealed configurations, avoiding direct contact with the outside and thus mitigating the influence from the Warp.

As the entire fleet exited the Warp and moved deeper into the star system, gradually pulling away from the empyrean abscess, the absurd rain finally stopped. The laws of the physical universe reasserted themselves. The water began to freeze into ice. The ship's vibrations shattered the ice, which then drifted away.

But the event had still left a heavy weight on everyone's hearts.

"Can we contact Pierdra Prime?" Romulus asked.

"Negative," the Vox-Magos reported. "Since entering the Pierdra Sector, the vast majority of astropaths in the fleet have lost their ability to function, becoming extremely unstable. At the same time, Pierdra Prime has not responded to the identification codes we have broadcast."

"Unstable?" Romulus was confused. How could these psykers, who had been screened and tested by the Emperor, be falling into instability en masse? "Specific symptoms."

"Mental instability, madness. Based on his ravings, we have made a preliminary judgment that his soul encountered something in the Empyrean. He keeps repeating that he can no longer see."

Romulus pursed his lips. This didn't sound like the prelude to a Chaos invasion. He turned his head and looked at Ramesses.

"There's something in the Warp. I can't see the Astronomican anymore," Ramesses, who had been helping the Emperor fish souls out of the Warp, stated bluntly, having just withdrawn from the Immaterium. His psychic projection, which had been roaming outside, had just been dispersed by who-knows-what. He now had to buy a new one and hide it in the safe house.

"It's not Chaos," Arthur said with certainty.

In fact, this phenomenon was very familiar to the transmigrators.

(End of Chapter)