Chapter Text
"Why in the Emperor's name are we the ones doing all of this?" Naomi Delacroix, Lieutenant-Savant, Psyker, and one of the few psykers on the entire planet qualified for the task the governor had laid out before her, sighed as she heard one of the PDF grunts complain again behind her, bringing her head to her metal cranial augmetic and wishing she was somewhere else. "Shouldn't this be the Inquisition's job?"
"Maybe," she cast a look over her shoulder, "but the Inquisition isn't here, which means we're the ones to do it. Now, shut up and keep focused."
The forests of Terenatos were filled with creatures, large reptilian beasts and canid and felinid beasts that would kill them faster than just about anything else. They were worried about ghosts and spirits, but she knew that there were things far scarier than Warp manifestations that roamed those forests. She glanced back at the Scholar Empyrean behind her. Lynel was his name, as genius as they came, but madder than a bag of cats. He had been twitchier than usual since they set out, muttering to himself and looking around like something was going to jump out of the shadows and rip his head off. She had known him for decades, but she had never seen him so worked up.
She dropped back a little and settled in-step beside him, taking his hand with a smile as he jumped and looked at her with his half-sightless, wild eyes. "Hey, old man... You doing alright?"
"There are so many whispers, Naomi... So many whispers inside my skull..." He shook his head, gaunt face turning away from her again as he rubbed his thigh with his free hand. She felt for him. Truly. He lived longer than most psykers, and the result was that madness that so often claimed them. Still, despite how odd he was, he was, to a degree, rational and calm most of the time. He spoke oddly and would speak of things weeks before they happened, and he would speak to a person who he called his "Old Friend" that did not exist, but he was never a paranoid mess like he was right now.
Then again, she figured with a sigh, nothing on this planet had been normal. Ever since she had been assigned to help with the relocation, strange things had been happening to them. Psykers were venturing into the forests and going mad, screaming about "gods" and "priests" and "lost children" before usually blowing their brains out or having to be executed when their outbursts turned lethal. The whole place felt like it needed to be marked as hostile for psykers, but the governor doing that would have actually made sense.
And that was something that he never did.
They had been sent out to investigate some ruins that the PDF had found on patrol, and they were getting closer and closer the longer they followed the old, unused paths that were wound through the overgrowth. The scattered, destroyed statuary that littered the forest floor was alien, pockmarked with damage and weathered from exposure to the elements, and the faces of whatever they had been once were worn away by age and time. The forms were beautiful, that much she could admit if nothing else, and she wondered who had been there before them and what had driven them away. They had found what seemed to be old settlements in addition to this megastructure, and there were odd places that were impassable by any means that they could conjure up. This place was odd, and she was concerned that the governor hadn't been as adamant in contacting the Inquisition as she felt he should have been. The structures were xenos. They had to be, and he was refusing. He was sending out his personal guards to collect random pieces of xenotechnology and artifacts to add to his perverted collection, and she had half a mind to jump the chain of command and contact her contacts in the Ordo Hereticus and Xenos to come and take a look at the man.
They rounded one of the bends and laid eyes on what the scouts had found for the first time, and it took her breath away. Built into the forested cliffside before them was a massive temple of some kind if the iconography meant anything at all. There were still intact statues of towering xenos figures, one holding a staff and the other a sword, the former's countenance wise and gentle while the other snarled and bared fanged teeth to any who would come before them. The stone dais before them was made of the same pale stone as the surrounding structure, and everything about it screamed of some kind of ritual sight.
"Spread out!" Naomi ordered. "I want this entire place canvased! You see anything strange, you come to me. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Naomi gave her head a shake as she grunted, bringing one hand to her temple as she had an influx of pervasive whispers enter her head all at once.
You are not...
Welcomed...
She froze as she raised her eyes to the statues, frowning as she strained to understand what she was hearing.
Interlopers...
Trespassers...
Unwelcomed... guests...
"What...?" She looked up and swore that the statues were speaking to her. "What kind of sorcery is this?"
Behind her, she heard a scream.
She pivoted around quickly, staff raised and ready for a fight when she saw several of the PDF trying to calm Lynel down. The old man's eyes were wide and frenzied as he was staring up at the statues like a man possessed, pupils shrunk down to pinpricks in sheer, unadulterated terror. "I am sorry! They are sorry! They do not know what they do!"
"Lieutenant-Savant! Help!" One of the scouts called over as the old psyker slung them aside in a frenzy as he dropped to his knees and reached up to the statues.
"They are naive children! Have mercy! Have mercy! Please!" Lynel screamed as he reached for the figures of stone before him.
"Shit!" Naomi rushed over to him and seized him by the arms as she lifted him up. "Speak sense, old man!" Naomi grabbed Lynel as he shook his head and fought against her, trying to push himself away. "Lynel! Calm down! Look at me! Tell me what is going on!"
Lynel snapped his head to her, milky eyes wide, "Gods! Long dead gods that lie broken and dreaming in the Warp! They wake! They wake! Fragments borne by lost children and coveted by slumbering priests! Slumbering! Lost in the Webways dreaming impossible dreams! It cannot be stopped! We have started it and now we cannot stop it! Doom! Doom! All they bring is doom!"
"Who does? Lynel," Naomi took him by the face and turned him to look her in the eye, some of the terror leaving him as he met her gaze, "who?"
"The Gods... The Gods of this planet. The Gods long dead... The Gods born again... We are not welcome here, Naomi," Lynel shook his head and seized her hands as tears welled up in his eyes. "We must leave! We must leave..." She watched in a mix of awe and horror as his face totally shifted, the frenzy leaving it and replaced by a thought look, "No... Old Friend...? Angels... We... We must wait... Wait for the Angels... the Angels and Ancient One of Long-Sight... Yes..." As quickly as the frenzy came to him, it was gone, and the placid look that Lynel usually possessed was returned, and he gave her a close-lipped, amiable smile as he turned around, and just...
Walked away.