And the daemon engine roared into realms beyond existence.
Uriel screamed.
Space folded, the currents of the warp vanishing: the arena, the daemon engine, the firebox, Pasanius. All disappeared, ripped away as everything around him turned inside out and became meaningless concepts. He felt himself simultaneously explode into a billion fragments and implode within himself, compressed to a singularity of hollow existence.
Faces floated before him, though as a dense ball of nothingness and a fragmented soul he knew not how he recognised them. Worlds and people, people and worlds, flashing past in a seamless blur, yet each as clear as though he examined each one in detail. Time slowed, yet rushed, splintering crystals sounding from far off as fractured realities ground and shifted like tectonic plates.
He saw the daemon engine spiral through the cracks between dimensions, snaking a path that wound through the shifting glass shards of reality, existing outside of everything, travelling in the slivers of null-space between all that was and all that ever could be.
He saw worlds of choking fumes, people in walking comas shuffling from one banal day to another, grey and dead without even the awareness to scream at the frustration of their pointless lives. Worlds where twisting numbers fell upon mountains of implausibility before running in molten rivers of algorithms to a sea of integers. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by a towering world of mountains and seas, white, marble and gold. Flames roared and seethed from every surface as the world burned, its people ashes on the wind, all life extinguished. Uriel, though he could no longer be sure he even knew who that was any more, saw with mounting horror that he knew this world. He saw the Fortress of Hera cast down, her once proud walls splintered and broken, the Temple of Correction no more than a shattered ruin. Daemons made sport in the Shrine of the Primarch, gnawing on his holy bones and defiling his sacred corpse.
He wept at such vileness, furious at his helplessness and incapable of wreaking his vengeance upon those who had visited such wrath upon Macragge.
Black, howling things closed on the daemon engine, unseen, slithering guardians of nothingness worming their way through the cracks to close on them.
The daemon engine had travelled the bloodtracks for millennia and knew that these blind sentinels were no threat to its terrifying power. Such guardian creatures fed on the souls of those unwitting fools who breached this realm by accident: madmen who pored over forgotten lore and forbidden magicks to unlock the gates between dimensions. Mortals who dared to travel to realms not meant for souls were devoured and made into yet more of the dark worms. The bloodtracks carried the daemon engine away from the toothless, questing mouths of the guardian creatures, its evil and power burning those that managed to approach too close.
Clockwork worlds, worlds taken by evil, worlds of elemental madness, worlds of chaos, worlds of insanity and worlds of arcing lightning. Everything was here. Every action that spawned a new realm of possibility could be found here and Uriel felt the knowledge of such things fill him as he hung from his hook, bleeding and raw.
The glue that held his fragile mind from sundering into pieces began to come undone, awful knowledge of me insignificance of being and the pointlessness of action tore at his sense of who he was and he desperately fought to hold onto his identity.
He was Uriel Ventris.
He was a warrior of the Emperor: sworn to defend His realm for as long as he lived.
He was a Space Marine.
His will was stronger, his purpose and determination greater than any other mortal man. He was in the belly of the beast and he would fight its corrupting touch.
He was… who…? His existence flickered and despite the protection of the daemon engine, he knew the madness that claimed the minds of the ignorant fools who sought such places out was enfolding him. He struggled to hold on as shards of his life began spiralling away from him, each spawning fresh realities within this terrifying multiverse.
Visions of potential and unwritten pasts floated past Uriel's eyes and he gasped as he saw alternate histories…
slide past his eyes
He saw himself as a wrinkled ancient,
He saw himself as a young man,
Lying prone on a simple cot bed and
but one who was no longer a
surrounded by grieving family members.
Space Marine. He was a lean,
Here was his son, dark haired like him,
muscled farmer, toiling in the
but taller and with the look of a warrior.
cavern farms on his homeworld of
Uriel's heart swelled in pride and regret:
Calth. His features were soft and
pride in his son and regret
tinged with great regret
that this vision of his life could never be…
that this vision of his life could never be…
Both faded from his mind, though he craved to see more of them, to know the consequences of his life having travelled the road not taken. But such was not to be and other visions intruded on his sight.
Pavonis.
Black Bone Road.
Tarsis Ultra.
Medrengard?
What were these? Names of places or people? Memories or invention? Had he journeyed to these places? Was he from them? Were they his friends? He could taste the meaning on every jagged syllable, but none made sense, though he knew he should recognise them. Except… except there was one that did not have the subtle flavour of recognition. One that tasted of dark iron, that reeked of ashen pollutants, burning oil and echoed to the hammer of mountainous pile-drivers and pistons of hellish engines.
This world, that reality, was alien to him. Why now should it then intrude on his fracturing consciousness? It swelled in his perception, growing and filling what remained of his mind before it too vanished and his mind began to collapse inwards.
Nothing made sense any more: all was… dissolving in tamorass of information. He could no longer hold onto anything coherent, feeling his thoughts blur and soften, running like a hundred tributaries of a thousand rivers that emptied into a sea of oblivion and he welcomed it, knowing it would end this screaming madness in his head. An eternity or an instant –passed though he could not tell which time was now a meaningless concept, bereft of meaning and reference.
A voice sounded amidst the insanity and what little remained of Uriel Ventris clutchedat it, as a drowning man grasps for a life line.
'Fear not, Ultramarine,' it said. 'This journey is like all mortal life.'
The daemon engine roared back into the realm of existence.
'It ends…'
Uriel drew breath, his hearts hammering fit to break his chest, his blood thundering around his body and his face streaked with crimson that wept from his eyes and nose. He had bitten his tongue and his mouth was filled with a coppery taste.
He spat, tasting the reek of fumes and the acrid, iron stench of industry. He lay still for long seconds as he tried to work out where he was. Above him was an unending vista of white, without depth or scale, and he blinked, reaching up to wipe the congealed blood from his face. His hand passed before his face and he was struck by a lurching sense of vertigo. He had a sudden sensation of falling and cried out, scrabbling around him for purchase.
His hands closed on a fine shale of metallic shavings and his vertigo vanished as he realised he was lying on his back and looking up into the sky - a dead sky, featureless and vacant without so much as a single cloud or speck to blight its horrid emptiness. He ached everywhere, his muscles weary to the point of exhaustion and a searing pain in his back from where his flesh had been gouged by the hook. His thoughts tumbled over themselves as he tried to piece together what had just happened.