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Descensio Exoumbra Tenebris Curia
🕑 Added 2023-11-08 00:19:16 +0000 UTCCONTENT WARNING: This one has, as can be expected, a lot of chaos stuff. It also has a (brief) sex scene.
642.M41
Journal of Oct Flux IV, Entry the First
Dear ledger, I find myself troubled by recent events. At night, no longer do I hear the soothing whispers of the dark gods. My dreams find themselves troubled instead of visions of a frozen forest located somewhere dark and sunless. In these dreams I am given naught but a meager torch to light my way, my only source of illumination, and a simply cloak as protection from the biting chill.
As I walk, I find the light of my torch eventually reflected back at me, dimly: eyes, all around me, belonging to unseen bodies. Watching. Waiting. No matter how fast I run, their owners remain just out of sight.
Fear begins to grip my heart as the frost infects my skin, shivers spreading through my body as my cloak begins to ice and freeze. My torch slowly begins to darken, and in its flickering, I notice that two shadows are cast: myself, and something right behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand at edge as I feel something breathing on them. I feel something slowly grasp my shoulders, and I tilt my head to see that it is not a hand: hands are not shaped like that. Hands do not bend or twitch like that. Hands do not have their bones WRITHE like that.
I run faster. My torch grows darker and darker. The shadows of the trees that I pass grow deeper, thicker, and at times it appears as if they’re floating off the ground, hovering darkling silhouettes, needle thin and ever shifting branches reaching out.
I come upon a chasm, an abyss so vast that my torch was unable to illuminate its depth, and I begin to feel a strange numbness set in as my body begins to feel paradoxically warm. Vast, yawning, the looming pit stretches to infinity in every direction.
Every night, I stop myself from stepping into it, finding the sight paralyzing. Something about that vast and unrelenting darkness mesmerizes me, leaving me entranced even as my torch finally begins to gutter out and my body finds its strength leaving it. Behind me, the thing that walks behind opens its mouth and speaks as I am plunged into darkness.
And then, I awake. I have not yet told any of these dreams: I know not whether they are portents, omens, messages, or merely mortal weakness manifesting itself in the subconscious. If it is the latter, no doubt my master will punish me severely for entertaining such pathetic and impure thoughts. Instead, I shall write them down in this journal: should these be messages from the dark gods, this ledger will help me remember and decipher them.
((((()))))
Entry the Second
Dear journal, it has been a week since I last wrote. My dreams have continued to remain troubled: I have been forced to sequester myself away from the other apprentices when I sleep into a soundproofed broom closet, as the dream has been causing me to scream in my sleep loud enough for it to disturb my masters slumber and thus by proxy my fellow apprentices. Strangely, the change in sleeping quarters has actually helped my slumbers somewhat: I found myself more easily able to rest and collect my thoughts last evening while I performed my evening studies.
It has not made the dream any more pleasant, however. My torch grows brighter, but what use is brightness if it doesn’t illuminate anything new or last any longer?
Sadly, the clarity brings no new answers or new solutions, either. Even as I puzzle over the dream, I find myself unable to decipher its meaning or whether it has a meaning at all. Still, I haven’t let this issue distract me from my duties, though it has made scraping the fungal blooms off of the prisoners more tedious and steeling my mind before my evening scourings in the name of the dark gods more difficult.
There is a library in the upper hive that supposedly contains a wealth of information on dreams and mystic and biological esoterica related to sleep, albeit esoterica considered approved by the followers of the corpse god. I shall my next free day make a pilgrimage under the auspices of finding lore to subvert to our cause, and use the opportunity to research more into the knowledge of sleep. Perhaps then I might be able to puzzle out what these dreams mean, or at least how to banish them.
((((()))))
Entry the Third
Dear journal, it has been two weeks since last I wrote. My dreams are getting worse. So very very worse. My trip to the Librio Somnia was without incident: my master has enough connections in high society that he was able to acquire with ease a day pass for myself and my fellow apprentices, who annoyingly have decided to emulate me, if blindly. The sycophantic cretins wouldn’t know an original thought if it decapitated them and shat down their throat hole, and probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between that and their normal thoughts.
Still, the fact I pursued the idea first and thus have inspired my fellows to steal my idea has earned me some favor with the master. Indeed, the fools may have helped cement my credibility.
The Librio Somnia was a wealth of information. Most of it was garbage, but I did find one tome of interest: a travel journal created by a priest that had used lucid dreaming to explore their nightmares, meeting many strange and otherworldly beings in the process. It is titled the Necronomicon Ex Insomnium, written by Abdiel Alhazared.
The locations it describes…a forge of the damned, in which a trillion billion souls labour in a lake of boiling blood are shackled to their anvils, damned for their cowardice in life. A mouldering basement where those lacking the love of the gods are cast to. Fleshpits in which cruel artisans remould the meat of hedonists as punishment for their lack of temperance. A well in which one can pull up buckets of time with which to give themselves youth or age or else cast their sins into to curse their past and future by smearing it across eternity.
Some of these sound like nonsense, such as the basement, but others correspond to locations my masters texts have spoken of. The forge of the damned sounds like perhaps the distorted attempts at comprehending the forges of Khorne. A handful of books written upon the Architect of Fate speak of a similar well.
I suspected that Sir Abdiel was likely a nascent dreamer, with a subconscious connection to the warp that allowed them to venture to the very edges of their dreams and into the fringes of chaos. That, or else a hidden follower of chaos, looking to spread lore to the keen eyed and cunning capable of recognizing his hints.
The back half of the book is mostly ciphered, though I was able to decrypt enough of Sir Abdiels methods of lucid dreaming to replicate the technique. I had hoped to apply the technique to manipulate the dream, in order to puzzle out more information.
First, when I realized I was being stalked, I attempted to confront them, calling upon Khorne to grant me courage. And yet, whenever I attempted to face them, a strange haze filled my sight, and my vision would begin flickering: my heart would beat faster, faster, faster. I can recall edges of cloak, and something moving under them: it was like they contained great masses of squirming THINGS in their garb.
When my vision finally reached the edge of the stalkers visage, I found myself unable to look away: I was caught in a trap, my vision becoming more flickery, more irregular as my eyes were forced to look into-
I don’t remember its face. My sight finally broke down, decaying into nothing but flickering patches of pict-static and long, needle like teeth. I awoke thrashing and screaming so loud my throat was hoarse: my fellow apprentices say they were able to faintly hear it even through the soundproofing.
I was unable to sleep for the next forty eight hours. I found myself gripped by terror for every unexpected noise, an unsightly paranoia that stalked after me when I walked the temple grounds alone. It was only after deliberately dosing myself with a sleeping draught that I was finally able to rest, and it was a fitful sleep.
This was the point I realized this was no mundane dream. Mundane dreams are not so vivid, so terrifying. They do not stalk like this: slumbering phantasms of snow do not create physical frost. I am afflicted with the attention of…something.
Once I worked my nerve up again, I attempted another course of action. Instead, I attempted to interrogate the creature without facing it. I invoked each of the dark gods, and asked which of them the spirit served.
It…it laughed, a dry and creaking laugh that echoed through the trees over and over infinitely. And it spoke, in some strange and indecipherable tongue, its voice possessed of a strange reverb that made my skin crawl.
I asked what it wanted. The laughter continued to echo as it continued to speak in a language sculpted from ice, that sounded as cold as the snap of a pocket of air in an iceberg causing a crack. And yet, for all that those untranslatable words were icy, they almost sounded…warm. Inviting.
I asked where we were. The echo of laughter continued, and my heart began to feel dread as I realized it was not in fact an echo. The voice grew silent for a moment, and my torch would gutter out.
“We are at the Edge of Chaos.”
Darkness.
My awakening was a cold sweat this time.
The next few days were dreamless affairs, but I fear this has begun to affect my performance: while serving my master dinner, my fatigue caused me to drop a plate. My master, being generous, only demanded twenty lashes, but if this continues my peers will begin to take advantage in order to curry our masters favor.
I need to do something else. Perhaps I can find something within Abdiels dream journal, or attempt to find out more about this frozen forest, this Edge.
((((()))))
Entry the Fourth
I have made a mistake.
In my research, I have found myself unable to find in my Masters library any reference to a location within the Warp known as the Edge of Chaos. My progress with the journal of Abdiel has likewise stalled: I have deciphered a reference to some being known as AZATHOTH, the Nuclear Sultan, but this being and its account seems to be the same sort of metaphor as the Wheel Unbroken. Not a true entity in and of itself, but an analogy or attempt at comprehending in mortal terms the concept of Chaos Undivided, though I must admit for some reason this theory while the most logical causes my instincts to itch. Regardless, even if an interesting bit of esoterica, AZATHOTH wasn’t relevant to my predicament.
In desperation, I pursued a novel idea: my master has a great wealth of information about the realms of chaos, but what lie outside them? If you travelled to the furthest mapped edge of the warp, and then went further, what would you find? Could potentially there be place in the sea of souls so distant, so remote that not even the dark gods have tred there?
I asked my master if he perhaps knew of any such locations. He declared the notion blaspheme against Chaos, and sentenced me to penance, a punishment for each god my foolish questions had offended.
For Khorne I was forced to battle with my bare hands an aspiring apprentice to judge their worth. She ripped off her jaw to use as knuckledusters. She bled out eventually, but my right eye is no longer functional and my Master has forbidden me from replacing it with a bionic until I please Khorne in some manner. After the battle, I dismembered her corpse, disposed of most of it in the garbage chutes, and as custom nailed her head to the shrine of weakness, where it will be mocked alongside the others who failed to please the blood god sufficiently such to permit their survival.
For Nurgle I was forced to spend a night in the dungeons, allowing the filthy mat of mold and fungus that inhabits the space to overgrow me and breathing in the noxious spores and bacterias. Father Nurgle was kind: for this transgression, he permitted me to walk away only with agonizing sores and skin infections, both treatable with anti-fungal medication.
The Dark Prince required me to kill someone. One of my fellow apprentices, that perverted lack-wit Haemon, suggested finding a brothel and hiring a worker of the night. I considered the notion, but I find it unappealing: the dispossessed might be easy targets, but surely there are those more deserving, and besides, the lack of challenge means the dark gods will surely be dissatisfied. Instead, I seduced the son of a local factory overseer and, once he had entered my bed to lay with me, I disemboweled him.
For the Architect of Fate, a betrayal was demanded. One of my compatriots who does not know my true affiliations operates- OPERATED a seditious pamphleteering ring they used to agitate for workers rights and political reform. I informed on them. The man and his family are now dead.
The work was exhausting, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and my standing among the other apprentices is reduced, but I have at least regained some of the favor I lost. I should not have questioned the power and reach of the gods: they are infinite, unending. There is no place beyond their sight.
Still, this seems to have caused my dream to gain additional strange features. When I travel, I pass by corpses. The woman whose skull I took in battle, jawless corpse turned into a frostbitten, blackened mummy, frozen to death, eyes in terror, and in the flickering of my torch I almost thought I saw her chest rise and fall with breath. The overseers son, strung up by his limbs among the trees, his cold dead eyes glaring at me even as the hollow of his chest drips blood: at times, the cords he was held aloft by seemed to stretch out as if grasping towards me, their shadowy shapes granted illusory life by the dimming life. Out of the corner of my eyes I keep seeing the man I betrayed: out of my victims, he is the only one that leaves me truly disquieted. His sacrifice may have been necessary, but he was a useful pawn and, more besides, agreeable both in personality and politics, and well loved by many besides: I took no joy in turning him in, and his loss will be painful for many.
Curiously, I also spotted the inhabitants of the dungeon wandering the wood: always briefly, and the poor wretches flee my sight swiftly, but their putrid, fungal cloaks are unmistakable. Their whispers echo through the woods in that same strange language as my pursuer, and more and more on the trees I have found strange sigils, ones that resemble no known icons, carved deep into the trunks of the arbors, each of them bleeding a strange yellow, highly reflective sap.
I still don’t understand what’s happening, but surely there are means to solve this: I will continue reading and translating the Necronomicon Ex Insomnium: there has to be a way to end these nightmares.
((((()))))
Entry the Fifth
Dear journal.
My studies of the journal has deciphered more of its contents. What I have found is at least somewhat more relevant: it speaks of a servant of AZATHOTH known as the Crawling Chaos, a daemon of dream with a thousand forms. It says that this being contains vast sums of knowledge that are forbidden to even the gods: eldritch mathematics, strange and ever bending lores of dreamlike realms, antediluvian hints and mysteries. The book speaks of means by which to conjure a facet of this entity and even the means to negotiate with it. The means are not even particularly complex: my next free day, I shall perform this ritual in secret in the hopes of bargaining for its aid. The book warns that this Crawling Chaos is an unpredictable being: malevolent and benevolent in equal measures, possessed of an intellect and personality that makes them one of the few servants of the Nuclear Phaero capable of mutual comprehension of mortals, and thus susceptible to their foibles and virtues.
The requirements are such: five black candles made from tallow of man, deconsecrated chalk, the blood of the willing, two fingers from two comrades, and a prayer mat woven from the beard hair of priests. It will, however, take more than one person to perform this rite: I will need another. The ritual circle that this calls for also requires me to “face towards Bakkah”, the location of which I haven’t yet uncovered. It seems to be the home of the author, and a religious site besides, one consecrated to a rival deity to the Crawler capable of binding it, though the text warns that performing this ritual will earn the contempt of God.
I don’t care. Whatever curse accompanies this summoning, it will be worth it: these nightmares have to end. Night by night they grow worse, and my attempts to explore them have bore no fruit. My most recent experiment involved trying to cast my torch into the yawning chasm, to see how deep it goes.
Infinitely. And in that vast and infinite darkness, I saw shapes, movement. I gazed into the abyss, and then it gazed into me.
I wake up every morning screaming now. It has by this point become strikingly normal, and I have begun to dread sleep: in turn, this has begun to cause my health to decline. Once more I hear whispers, but not of the dark gods: instead, when all is silent, the voices speak of doubt, of blasphemy, of hatred, and when I stare into the mirror, there is always something off about the way my reflection moves, as if it a poor actor simply committing pantomime of myself.
This cannot continue, or I fear I will go mad.
((((()))))
Entry the
NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL NOT REAL
IT LIES. IT HAS TO LIE.
Chaos have mercy on my soul.
((((()))))
Entry the Seventh
I buried the body. The rest of the order will think them a traitor: I have ensured that. They can never know what happened. I can only pray that none find his corpse: one look at his carcass and they will be curious, and go looking, and this curiosity will inevitably lead to their doom as they begin to search for it.
I have the answers I wanted from it. I wish I didn’t.
I will not write down what occurred, what I was told, but should you find this, do not attempt to invoke the crawling chaos. Do not summon them. And especially do not talk to them. They are not an agent of chaos the ruinous powers the dark gods the gods. They are not allies. And the binding doesn’t work. Perhaps long ago, when the daemon (it is not a daemon dear god it is not nor has it ever been a daemon)’s rival was still alive, it would have. Or perhaps my actions have offended the god particularly badly, revoking whatever protection they would have offered.
I have made an unforgivable error in opening the door. Now it is in our world, out there. I can still hear its nightmare song, and its influence has left me marked further, a stain on my soul. A gift, it claimed, reward for unbarring the gate. If this is a gift, I fear what it considers punishment: now, the specters and phantoms that haunted my sleep, this “Exoumbra Curia Tenebris”, stalk my waking visions.
My reflection no longer obeys me. Now it glares at me with an unflinching grin, unmoving, eyes filled with static. No matter how I shift, its pose remains still, the only sign of life being the rise and fall of its chest. Out of the corner of my eyes I see ghosts and phantasms, corpses that dissappear whenever I try to stare at them directly. They have begun even physically harassing me: things will topple and break, machines will suddenly spark to life and activate spontaneously, and food has even begun to rot in my presence. Never my own, but I have ceased eating with my fellow apprentices, lest they figure out the source of their sustenances rapid putrefaction.
I at least know what they want. Me. My soul. My body. My resentment, my guilt, my frustration, my doubt: all of it attracted them, like blood attracts a shark, and night by night they feed on it, and will only stop until banished or victorious. I can’t tell my fellow apprentices. They would not understand: I will have to suffer in silence as I figure out a means to handle this. The only hint Nyar THE ENTITY would give me is that if I wished to learn their secrets, I would have to venture beyond the Edge.
May the gods protect me.
((((()))))
Entry the Eight
[The text is illegible except for two fragment: R’LETH, and written in black graphite: WHO ARE THE OLD GODS]
((((()))))
Entry the Eight
The other apprentices have begun harassing me. My lagging performance has made me look weak, and now the dullards look to profit off my misfortune like the human vultures they are. They think me merely mad: my mind failing, and no doubt soon they will make a move on my life, betraying me for the chance to earn favor with our master, who likewise has grown contemptuous of me, assigning me the most drudgery of chores.
This has caused the Exoumbrals to worsen their grip on me. Now, even in the waking, I feel a breath upon my neck: my pursuer has followed me to reality. In truth, it is almost a relief: now that there is no difference between wake and sleep, the fear caused by my harassers has lost its bite. Instead, I find myself…frustrated. Snappish.
They don’t know what I am going through. If they were suffering even a fraction of the nightmare that has become my daily life, their minds would snap like twigs. Even my master has begun to earn my annoyance: during his sermons, the voices become clearer, and they whisper doubt. If the dark gods were so great, why have they not yet won over the corpse imperium? How can four beings that exist as rivals be declared without limit when they’re unable to destroy one another? How is sacrificing a man in the name of chaos meaningly different from when the Imperium does it?
My studies of the Necronomicon and my dream have begun to bear more fruit, at least. It talks about the origin of the universe: supposedly, long ago the world was created when the servants of the Nuclear Sultan began to play for their master a lullabye of creation, using special instruments forged from the essence of existence itself, an orchestra from which reality emerged as mere byproduct. From this song first came dust, then nebulae, then stars, then planets: for six days the song was played, and on the seventh, the old court rested.
I had thought that perhaps that I could find this old court by venturing beyond the Edge. I stepped over the lip of the chasm, and allowed myself to fall.
I don’t know how long I descended: time lost all meaning, and to measure the passage of moments I was reduced to counting in my head, though I would lose track frequently. Eventually, my fall ended, and I found myself landing in a pitch black shallow sea, one that went up to my chest. I could not see: my torch had fallen away, and even if I could find it, I had no means to reignite or even dry it.
I wandered that darkness for what felt like aeons, until I came to a city, sinking (or perhaps rising) from the depths, its gates carved from black coral: atop it, a single word.
Ry’leth.
I wandered those submerged streets, and under the water I could see shapes moving: strange ghosts of fishlike men, or perhaps menlike fish, their scales pale and translucent, their eyes large and watery. Eventually I came to a raised acropolis, a temple of sorts that glowed with a strange pelagic aurora, the dancing darklights illuminating the vast and crumbling columns.
In this dark space, I found waiting for me specters, hundreds of silhouette shadows. Petitioners, pilgrims, all worshipping strange idols, two of them given prominence above the rest. One seemed to be of a furred creature, dressed in a robe, its statue carved from ivory, its plinth filled with commandments in some strange language, in one hand a ledger, in the other a looking glass, its expression locked into a glare of slight disapproval.
The other…its visage shifting, a four dimensional effigy made in worship to a non-euclidean god. At times, my mind saw it as a sort of toad man, but with but a small shift of the aurora it appeared as a squid-headed giant with the wings of a dragon, a strange cetacean, even a shelled and beaked reptile. Below it were words. Even though they were written in a strange eldritch script I still knew what words the sigils meant, even if I still don’t know their meaning.
Ia, Ia, Cthulhu Ftagn. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
And then the one that stands behind spoke, and I understood. It told me that I had been sold lies, and that I should embrace the darkness and the knowledge it represents instead of fleeing it.
I awoke. For once I was not screaming. And yet, for all that I find myself even more afraid. I had thought they sought to collect my soul by terrorizing it into submission, but what if I was wrong? What if this was an attempt by them to communicate, to corrupt my soul?
I need more awnsers.
((((()))))
Entry the Ninth
More and more, I find my distaste with my masters lectures rising, as I notice more and more incongruities. Nurgle is the god of despair and stagnation, supposedly, but if such is the case, why does he bother to spread his influence so actively? Why does he toil to brew more and more noxious brews? Is not this attempt to infect the galaxy, to reshape it in his image, in and of itself a form of hope and change? And if Tzeench is the Changer of Ways, why is his dominion so static? For all the upheaval he causes, there is always a labyrinth, always a well, always an architect, his systems perhaps shifting in detail but never in structure. For a god who despises cowards and those who send others to do their killing for them, why is Khorne content to let others slaughter in his name instead of getting up and doing it himself?
Such a thought is heretical, but I cannot banish it from my mind: every day my doubts grow worse, and I find myself asking questions that would earn my execution if the others learned of them. This is mirrored by increasing contempt for my peers: the jackals finally made their move, attempting to ambush me in the middle of the night with knives and rope.
I beat three of them to death, and would have killed them all if my superior had not ordered me to stop thrice. I think I frightened him, when he found his first and second attempts to reign me in from murdering all his apprentices fruitless. More and more I find myself asking why I follow this man, why I consider him such an authority, when he allows his children to attack me unprovoked, when I know he has no sharp regard for my life and well-being.
I cannot let this aggression go unpunished. I have asked my follower for lore, and he has provided it: a special sigil that I must carve in secret upon the altar to deconsecrate it, debase it in darkness. They will pay for their treatment of me: cruelty shall be met with consequence.
((((()))))
Entry the Tenth
Now they dream as I have, of dark woods filled with the cast of sins of their souls. It started with Haemon: he awoke in the middle of the night screaming as I have. Night by night it has infected their dreams, and even my superior has gaunt, fearful eyes.
They have been infected with darkness, and now slowly it will consume them. I will not lie: such a thought fills me with immense glee. What brief pity I might muster is extinguished when I remember the beatings, the torture, the nights of hunger, the attempts on my life, and every other last misery they have put me through. I see the tremble of my leaders hand, and the brief sympathy is wiped away by the memory of him forcing me to slay my parents when I was a mere child, proof I was committed to the dark gods. I see Haemon look over his shoulder with terror, and whatever feeling I might have for his plight is killed by the recollections of the times when I was a child he would viciously batter me and take my food, permitting me to starve for days at a time. I see Chevron attempting to hold back tears, and I feel a black happiness, catharsis for the times she’s attempted to slit my throat.
They have made my life a living hell. And so I will make their lives living hells.
((((()))))
Eleven
My master awoke screaming. It was music to my ears.
They are all terrified: I have heard them whispering among each other. They don’t understand what’s happening: some think it the result of angering the dark gods. Others believe they are cursed, and in a sense this is not untrue I suppose. A rare few such as my ‘master’ even believe that it is a punishment sent by the corpse emperor: I caught the fool praying to the Imperiums false god when he thought he was unobserved.
None of the other apprentices want to talk to me. I think they’ve noticed my change in demeanor: now, they always make sure they never enter within range of my arms, staying at a distance. Fools. I do not have to touch you to hurt you.
My master wishes to perform a ritual sacrifice, in the hopes of appeasing the dark gods and ending the curse. He has bid me select and prepare one of the prisoners in the dungeon for the process. In that sunless putrefacted abattoir I went, and there I found my flock: I confirmed with the prisoners that they too had seen the frozen forest. Each night it became their refuge, the mats of moss overgrowing them protecting them from the bitter cold and the yellow sap of the black goat providing them strength and vitality. Indeed, it appears they were the ones who summoned the Court in the first place: its Ambassador came to them in a dream, and promised them freedom of spirit in exchange for custody of their bodies when their souls one day vacate them.
It was with heavy heart that I told them that one of them was to be sacrificed. I offered to attempt to help them flee, to avoid such a cruel fate, but they declined: even if they escaped, the corruption in their bodies would cause them to be hunted down and slaughtered. There is no place for them in the world any more, not with their mutations, not with their mutilations.
Their only future exist beyond the edge of death, beyond the Edge of Chaos, in that vast and gentle darkness.
((((()))))
Twelve
The sacrifice is tomorrow. I have selected Alfdan for this: he is old, frail. Were it not for the abuse of Nurgle, he would likely be dead already. Of all of them, he is the most eager to pass on, to leave behind his broken and blighted husk and transcend into an immortal and eternal spirit, one unburdened by the pain of mortality.
I have prepared. In invisible inks I have tattooed upon his skull the sigils of the Outer Gods, and called upon dark Cthulhu to ink upon his heart the Elder Sign. I have also made sure to perform rites of blood meant to strengthen his spirit and body: creations of distant servants of the New Gods. When the ritual occurs, I will chant secret chants and call upon the Court, who shall unshackle his soul from his body and carry him into glory, into the heart of the New Gods, who shall remake and remould him to prepare for his pilgrimage into the darkness outside reality.
I am also remaining with him all night. I will minister to him as best I can and provide him comfort. As much as he is prepared for what is to occur, it is still frightening, as all endings are. And so I will open my books of the God Emperor, and recite to him the prayers of his deity in the hope it provides him at least some measure of peace.
Even if I do not believe in the divinity of his god, in this hour the Emperor brings Alfdan comfort, and who am I to deny him that?
((((()))))
13
I did not realize what I was doing. What my last rites would permit. What it would turn the ritual into. These are rites that were never meant to blend: the profane vulgar magics of chaos. The ancient rituals of the Outer Gods. The blood rites of the New Gods. My prayers towards the lord of the Pyre.
When my master brought the ritual knife down upon Alfdans chest, his eyes blazed with yellow light. His body thrashed and twisted, and he opened his mouth, that hideous greasy-gold light spilling from his screaming maw as well. I could feel his soul leave his body, and I sensed as his flesh found itself reshaped, twisting and shifting, his bones twisting together, gaining and losing dimensions to create a non-euclidean ring even as his mouth stretched more and more open, the screaming growing louder and louder and that awful, ominous light growing more and more bright.
I watched as the body of Alfdan was contorted from a husk, into a door. And I watched as something stepped through, a formless, shapeless crawling thing, its body as mindsearingly yellow as the now fading light of that Daemon Gate.
It attacked one of my fellows. It reached into him, and pulled out something. I watched as he began to shrivel, his body hollowing out before my eyes to leave only loose skin flapping in the breeze.
The creature fled. My fellows are now more scared. They don’t know what’s happening: their minds are beginning to fray. The poor wretches: for as much as they brag about having transcended sanity, they haven’t realize they too still cling to a false sense of what is real, one just as fragile as the sanity of the Imperials. They don’t know what they’ve let into the world, what they touch, and that brings them fear, apprehension for the great and mighty darkness that yawns before them. But I do. I know exactly what they have allowed to enter this dimension, the forces they have unwittingly bore witness to.
They have conjured something beautiful.
((((()))))
14
I have been approached by Chevron. Her demeanor has changed: she has offered me an apology for how she once treated me, the many attempts she had made on my life. It appears that recent events have forced her to re-evaluate her choices.
I admit, I was…surprised. I find myself mulling over it, and I find myself half inclined to be merciful and accept. As much catharsis as seeing them all in pain brings me, was I any better? I have murdered, tortured, betrayed, and yet I have found myself gifted with a path onwards to redemption.
I think I will forgive her. It will be…nice, to have a friend.
The others grow more paranoid: my Master has begun to surround himself by icons of many gods, not just the Corpse Emperor and the Parasite Gods but also pagan gods, primarchs, even some xeno dieties and dead failed parasite gods such as Malal or Necoho. Haemon has done as I did back then, spending days at a time in the Librio Somnia, but the fool will find his search fruitless: without the benedictions of the Curia and their Ambassadors, the tomes that could help him will not appear, and I see no reason to share the knowledge I have gleaned from the grimoire of Abdul Alhazared with him.
A few have fled, disappearing into the night in the hopes it will save them. It won’t: they are already stained. Eventually they will either succumb or arise, and regardless that which has been touched by the darkness will eternal lie within its grasp.
The prisoners have begun to recover their health under my ministrations. I am attempting to convince them that there still exists a reason to be: truely, this world might not have any place for them, but surely one can be furrowed out? They will die eventually yes, and I’d not deny them the metamorphosis that comes with it, but it deserves to be peacefully, of elden age, not of mutilation and sacrifice. Some seem amenable to this: those who still have family left, or else things that help tie them to this world: I am going to attempt to smuggle out letters to their loved ones for them in the hopes that the correspondence will help anchor them. Others…Others are proving more difficult.
One of them, Etheldred, has approached me alone. When the next sacrifice come, should it come, she wishes to be selected. My master slew her entire family: she hopes that some trace of their soul remains, in the lowest and deepest parts of the warp.
She is fourteen years old. But a child. These are not things a child should have to say. These are not thoughts a child should be burdened with. I had already held my master in contempt, but now I find myself burdened instead with hatred. Hatred for him. Hatred for his gods. And most of all, hatred for the misery this man has propagated in the name of gods that don’t give a singular FUCK about him. For what? Some bits of lore? A few tablescrapings of power here and there whenever the gods could deign to notice him?
[Illegible]
I am ending this entry here as recounting these events have made me angry again. I am going to rest, and then continue this account.
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15- Let me tell you about hate
Dear Journal
Hatred is a useful emotion, I am finding
It is making me very, very productive.
I hate the condition of my flock, so I work harder to help them
I hate the poverty I see in the under hive, so I steal a cargo shipment meant for the upper hive to feed them
I hate my master, so I find myself motivated to read in his study and use his lab without asking: the look on his face when I struck him and sent him on the floor makes me feel very warm
I hate my ignorance, so I begin analyzing his books, looking for the contradictions, the fallacies.
Hate is a very useful emotion. I should try hating more things.
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16
Chevron and I have begun collaborating on our research. I have begun voicing to her, openly, the various fallacies I have noticed in our theology. So far, she does not seem unreceptive, though I have refrained from telling her of the true nature of the cosmos. The lore of the Outer Gods and the Curia was not something that could be bandied about casually just yet: my master and fellows still have enough spine left that attempting to inform the wrong person as to the structure of reality would likely find me murdered.
I merely make due with critique, undermining the logic of my masters sermons and asking the most INCONVENIENT of questions. The fool actually accused me of supporting the Corpse Emperor, something that caused me to laugh for five minutes.
Regardless, my quest to help my flock continues. I have endeavored that there will be no more sacrifices, and I shall make sure that this comes to pass using every resource at my disposal. The most immediate battle is their health and mental wellness: the ones who I have helped reach out seem to be doing the best over all, and though they aren’t yet strong enough to defend themselves, they’re at least able to take care of themselves without my assistance. The others…The others are still weak. I must find a way to help them.
I have not told Chevron, but this is primarily what I have been researching: means of aiding the ailing mind. Arcane lore, antiquarian medicines and elixirs, secrets of the mind, sleep, and dream.
She meanwhile seems to be researching alchemy, the arts of creation. Specifically, anything about artificial life: she seems desperate to manufacture some sort of…vessel, perhaps to serve as a daemonhost. Sadly, that is not a subject my master knows a great deal about.
…I must confess, the time I have spent with her has been…pleasant. I have, as of late, began feeling whenever I work with her a warmth in my stomach, and though I don’t know what this sensation is, I admit it is…pleasurable. Not lust, but something deeper, more primal. I don’t even know what about her sparks this feeling: I feel it whenever I hear her laugh. I feel it when we argue and debate over the nature of the dark gods. I feel it whenever she brushes close to help me translate a tome.
My Constant Companion has urged me to pursue these feelings. Love, lust, passion: all are important parts of being mortal. I think…I think I am going to take their advice.
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17
She kissed me. I kissed her back.
I am in shock as I write this. A strange daze. I cannot help but think of how soft her lips were, how gentle her tongues were as they wrestled with mine, and slight electric tingle of skin on skin. The gentle glow of her yellow eyes gazing into mine.
I find my heart beating a mile a minute, and no matter what I do I can’t get her face out of my mind.
I’ve brought her on to help me with my research. I’ve even introduced her to my flock, though such a thing was somewhat awkward. Once we left, I asked if she would help me. And she kissed me.
I am going to take this as a yes.
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18
(Content Warning: This segment has a brief sex scene between a human of unspecified gender and a woman of unknown species.)
I have discovered something joyous indeed. I was searching in the sewers beneath our compound, and I found a corpse. It was relatively intact, enough for me to identify. They died, according to my best estimates, likely shortly after the incident with Alfdan, via a snapped neck, though it was clear that it had not been a surprise going by the rictus of terror on their cadaver.
I made sure to dispose of the corpse so that it goes undiscovered. I don’t want my peers to learn Chevron was replaced.
At first, I was afraid. Betrayed, almost: the woman I loved was an impostor, a strange mimic. But then I realized what did that matter? What if she wasn’t who I thought she was? I had never cared for the real Chevron, and this entity, this person had captured my heart.
And could I cast stones myself? Was I not also hiding things?
I confronted them. I told them what I knew. I told them I didn’t care. I watched as they shed their form, revealing something beautiful. It was the entity that had emerged Alfdan: now, I saw it up close, and could appreciate it the way such a marvelous creature deserves to be appreciated. The gorgeous golden skin. The graceful, inhumanly long arms, and the fierce talons that adorned their end. Their shapely, serpentine body. The beautiful non-euclidean sculpture more glorious than any bust of the Dark Prince that was their face. I think she had sought to frighten me, intimidate me with their form. I don’t think they expected how I would respond however, and yet how else could I respond upon seeing something so incredible? So perfect?
I kissed her. She kissed me back.
It was then that we first made love. It was wonderful. She threw me upon the bed, stripping me, and slithering upon my form. We ravished each other, exploring every inch of each others bodies. Slowly, we began to connect, and as we made union, I found myself afflicted with such supreme pleasure that I was desperate to impart the same. I asked how she would like to be touched: how to make her feel good. She responded with another kiss, guiding my hand to a location on her belly and bidding me to massage it. The noises she made in response still leave me short of breath when I think of them: the soft whimpers, the pleading moans, the deep purrs. And the more we made love, the more we gazed into each others eyes, the more it built, until we both released, and we became limp, our stamina exhausted.
Afterwards, we held each other and basked in the literal afterglow, and talked. I admitted to her my love, and told her the truth, that I found her beautiful since I first saw her true form. I admitted my allegiance to the Outer Dark, and told her every last secret I still kept. And she told me of herself. She is a spirit of Outer Dark, one that has always been in envy of mortals, even when she was a mere spirit. Always she has sought to escape to that world of permanence, and experience it as mortals do. My Constant Companion arranged for their Daemon Gate, using it to give her a means to remain in reality, at least for a time.
I asked her her name. I am not going to share it here: I will not so recklessly risk my loves freedom by writing it down for others to find and use against her. For simplicities sake, she agreed to allow me to continue referring to her as Chevron: the original owner of the name and face isn’t in a position to complain. She will help me with my mission: she has much knowledge of the New Gods, beyond what even my Constant Companion can grace me with, and besides such a razor sharp intellect.
19
Haemon found old Chevrons corpse. I don’t know how, but he attempted to ambush her in the dining hall, presenting the thing like a macabre trophy as he pointed his finger accusingly at my beloved.
He even attempted to challenge me: it appears he remembers how I was the first to be graced with the attentions of the Outer Dark, and managed to find the sigil upon our main altar I carved and a recording of me doing the deed.
He accused her of being an infiltrator and me of being a turncoat, of having allied to another cult for power. He attempted to strike her with a knife. This was the last straw.
I told him the truth. I spoke to him blasphemes, of the failures of divinity. I informed him and the rest of my peers of the true nature of their gods: how they were liars, hypocrites, immature idiot gods that represent as false and pathetic a rationality as the Imperium, one that took the false reality they had created from the dregs of bastardized Imperial philosophy and simply changed a few words and called this equally absurd consensus “madness”. I told them how they existed in a bubble of sanity floating within a cosmic pandaemonium, being used by gods that were just as ignorant, pathetic, and petty as they were.
And then I spoke of the old gods, beings far vaster and far older, beings that walked the cosmos at the dawn of the universe, who helped shape and sing it into being, the great and singular Azathoth, the kind and nurturing Black Goat, the all seeing and all knowing Daoloth. I spoke of the places outside reality: not merely the warp, but places deeper and darker and colder, such as the ghostwind, the eternal void, or else further and stranger, such as the Court of the Outer Gods, where Azathoth lie dreaming, and the infinite expanse that was Yog Sogoth. And then I spoke of secret things: secrets their mind and sanity were not prepared for, information beyond their ability to withstand.
I spoke of enlightenment, and their minds began to crack like eggs. My former master attempted to kill me, going for a stab, his eyes bleeding as the bloodvessels in his brain began to burst, the poor wretch screaming out litanies of hatred, the insults to his gods having driven his poor murderous mind to lash out.
My love stopped him, dropping her disguise and displaying her full and terrifying visage to my former peers. She opened her jaws, and in three bites had swallowed the man, leaving only drops of gore on the ground.
I then informed those who remained that if they were tired of the nightmares, tired of the beatings, tired of the fear and pain that was serving chaos, there existed a better way. The parasites are cruel, but there are kinder gods and spirits out there, gentler powers, kinder spirits. All they had to do was embrace enlightenment.
One by one, those who remained wept.
This is a new age. No more are we bound to the chaos gods, or their shackles. No more will we suffer for their pleasure.
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AN: I'd like to thank Guillermo Del Toro for inspiring me. Anyways lemme know what the thoughts are: this one I deliberately went out of my comfort zone for (I do not usually write intimacy or romance).
