The Divine Rite: A Warhammer 40,000 Fanfiction

Part 14

Freed into the night air, I swallowed lungfuls of mountain chill. Once again I was urged onward, shuffling steps taking me to the west pillar, and once again back. The third descent was as remarkable as the last, but I was weary now. My tired mind barely registered the marvelous lights, shuddering into wakefulness only when I reached for the next step and found the base of the stairs instead.

Before me stretched a forest, or it did for a few moments. It was lush and vibrant, green and alive, but it shriveled before my very eyes. Leaves withered, turned brown, fell, and then decayed in seconds. But rather than fading away, the leaves turned into a black sludge. Water began to seep up from the ground, mixing with the fetid ooze. Trees became crooked, bark pale, taking on a gnarled appearance. The marsh was as lifeless as the forest had been vital.

I stepped forward into the water, up to my knees in death, in decay. I recoiled from the smell, my stomach rebelling, but I kept walking, drawn forward as I had been twice before. And though I walked through a world bleached of color, one filled with rot, I began to see something unexpected.

Life sprouted everywhere.

Green shoots sprang up from the marsh all around me, growing into brilliant tufts of grass. Trees exploded with green vines, with colorful flowers. Life returned from the death, fed by the decay, and before my eyes the swamp slowly became a blooming forest once again. Even then I knew enough to see this was not the world as it truly worked, but was symbolic of something much more important.

Death may be the end of life, but rot and decay were the foundations of it as well.

I stood there among the rapidly cycling plantlife, going from swamp, to new growth, to aged forest, over and over again. It stopped being jarring, was no longer frightening, in fact it was a comfort. Death was inevitable, but there would be new life. There always would be. If the galaxy was wiped clean, eventually life would return, and the cycle would begin again. There was no real end when it came to life, for nothing was more tenacious, and it was possibly the most reassuring realization I’d ever perceived.

I began to walk again, the forest reforming before me into a cleared pathway. I walked along a corridor framed by ever shifting branches, a stone platform rising before me, the edges high enough to prevent the marsh water from flooding it. Simple furnishings carved from the rock sat in scattered groupings around the platform, and however welcoming their shape, I didn’t see how these seats could be comfortable, especially upon my bare skin. Even as the thought crossed my mind, moss began to grow, every single seat quickly developing a cushion.

Intrigued, I found a divan and took a seat.

The moss wrapped around me, let me sink into it, the comfort deeper than any I had experienced, or ever would. At the time, I had slept on furs and cloth, and later I would rest on the most luxurious mattresses that exist, and still nothing matched that comfort. It was more than just a physical sensation. First the marsh welcomed me with the bed of moss, then impossibly soft leaves as a new forest grew. I was alive, and for this place, that was enough to make me kin. There was an unconditional love here deeper than any I had experienced.

Even greater than before, reluctance filled me as I was called onward. This was more than just beauty and comfort, this was belonging, and not because I had conformed to some requirement. It was unconditional welcome, absolute adoration, without requiring I change at all.

Still, I trudged back to the stairs and then up, the rapidly cycling scents and sights dearly missed. Even the rotten stench of the marsh had become linked to the idea of home. It was a long journey up and to the east pillar, my heart longing for that place as it would for a loved one long absent.

For the Chapel of Kindred Souls.