The Emperor's Gift (Warhammer 40,000) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Author:Aaron Dembski-Bowden [Dembski-Bowden, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

III

I was the first to rise. The purr of my armour joints was a reassuring touch of familiarity after Torcrith’s enforced disembodiment. Blood flowed back into my fingers, setting them stinging.

Torcrith had no need to rise, for he hadn’t collapsed as we had. He remained sitting on the contemplation mat, watching us in meditative silence. When I met his dark eyes, he answered with a nod.

‘You saw it,’ he said.

I helped Malchadiel rise, hauling him to his feet as I answered. ‘We all saw it, though we each saw something different.’

‘That’s not unusual, when confronted by an entity of such strength. Just as reality warps around its presence, its form is so bound to the realm behind the veil that it remains in flux. In the truest sense, it is whatever it wishes to be, having ascended past the limitations of a physical form.’

‘How did it see us?’

This time, he deigned to reply. ‘It smelled our souls.’

‘Could it have killed us?’ Malchadiel asked.

‘Of course. It intended to. That’s why I pulled you back.’

Dumenidon waved me aside as I moved to help him rise. Galeo rose on his own as well.

It masked its own existence.+

‘Indeed so,’ Torcrith agreed.

‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ I admitted. ‘Never once, in all my time amidst the archives.’

I looked to Galeo for enlightenment, but it was Dumenidon who replied. ‘The Conclave Diabolus.’

Galeo nodded. +I concur.+

The Conclave Diabolus was as close to legend as our archives could come: a record of the most reviled, most ardently pursued Neverborn our order had encountered in its ten-thousand-year history.

Even an eidetic memory has its flaws. Having never expected to confront any of the Conclave Diabolus in my lifetime, I’d paid little heed to their existence beyond the barest mentions in historical texts.

‘Even so,’ I said, ‘there are fewer than ten among the Conclave Diabolus capable of such mastery over reality. It cannot be one of them.’

Torcrith smiled, though I wasn’t sure why. ‘It cannot be one of them, Hyperion? Right now, the Imperium suffers through countless worlds enduring daemonic incursion across the vastness of space. In the last few days alone, I have sensed the portents and written prophecies on many of them myself. I have sensed an inhuman voice whispering words into the mind of a three-year-old girl almost three-quarters of the galaxy away from where we sit at the moment. Yet I sensed nothing of Armageddon – not the winds of the warp that brought the Devourer of Souls to the world, nor the horde of abominations that are butchering their way across it.’

He ended with a tired shake of his head. ‘So tell me, brother, how it cannot be one of them. It can be nothing else. Nothing else has the strength to mask its presence. The Dark Gods themselves hid this invasion from us. They would never act for a lesser being.’

Galeo made the sign of the aquila over his chestplate. +You were right to call the Chapter to war, Torcrith. We must commit to a crusade.

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