The Divine Rite: A Warhammer 40,000 Fanfiction

Part 15

My journey to the last was not accompanied by the kind of excited eagerness one might expect. All of the previous three had been amazing, compelling, and an experience I would have happily allowed to linger. Only the beach of bone had driven me outward, and not from disgust, but because it contained revelations I was not prepared for. This was also the last, the final step of a journey that had caused a transformation that started as a physical one, and would end with the spiritual. My anticipation was tempered by knowledge that came instinctively.

For this was not in fact the final temple. I knew now that each of these was just a stepping stone, one facet of the truth. Typically one temple, one face, was all someone saw. Their own perspective. But as with the pillars on the surface, with the stone in the center, I was blessed with the burden of seeing them all.

For there was a fifth temple, and soon it would open to me.

This realization dominated my thoughts as I descended once more. The time passed quickly, though whether that was due to the strange properties of this place, or to my distraction, I couldn’t say. All I know is that mere moments seemed to pass before I reached the bottom, and stepped out among towering, endless shelves bursting with books. This was far from an ordinary library though.

The shelves were all circular, towering columns of books that stretched up dozens of feet. All were precarious, tilting and swaying, for the beings that held them up were both alive and active.

Beneath some of the shelves sat flat disks of blue and silver flesh, bony spikes protruding around the circumference, the occasional eye peering out. These floated about sedately, their shelves swaying out of all proportion with their careful movements. Others were supported by a multitude of sapphire, magenta, and saffron limbs, arms and legs both, scurrying about in an entirely disorderly fashion, their shelving curiously secure. The landscape they carried their burdens across was as infinitely varied as the creatures themselves. Rock, desert, forest, mountain, swamp, grassland. The ground changed drastically from one to the other, a clean line between them.

The ceiling overhead was illuminated by jars, familiar motes of light trapped within them. I got the sense that they forever peered out at the endless knowledge, unable to reach it, and that many had been driven to madness long since.

My own eyes gazed upon all the knowledge that existed, or ever would, and I was uncertain where to even start. My mind went immediately to my world, to my home, and one of the disks floated over with sudden urgency. Slender tentacles emerged from the fleshy object, drifting up and grasping several thick tomes, presenting them to me with a childlike eagerness to please.

A few were written in familiar language, the Gothic tongue that had been brought to Latigia IV from offworld. Latigia IV: a Feral World Exemplar, Undeveloped Worlds of the Eastern Fringe, Catalogue of the Explorator Vessel CK67-9078, Ecclesiarchy Mission Beneficent Reach. Titles that meant little to me, and have little significance even now. Other books were written in alien languages, each distinct, some clearly ancient beyond words. These, I did not touch. Instead I grasped one of the Imperial tomes, opening it eagerly.

As soon as I selected a book, the others were returned, and the moment I began to read, the creature who had brought them to me started to whisper. Each line I read was underscored by cultural context, by the biases of the author, by translational aid between dialects, and even warnings when outright lies were written in those pages. It spoke many times faster than I could ever read, but all the information poured into my mind and was absorbed equally.

It wasn’t truth I found in those pages, though it was knowledge. I came to realize how skewed simple truth became the moment a human viewed it, and how it got more and more contorted when passed from one to another. Bare facts are changed by us observing it, when we apply our perceptions, beliefs, delusions, limitations. When more people are told of that knowledge, they then apply these anew. And so on, infinitely, until the end product may in no way resemble the original.

When all truth is finally absent from it entirely.

It was not as soothing as the other shrines, for this one taught me a most uncomfortable lesson. Faith was misplaced when one expected truth from others, or from themselves. I read for hours, and with every word came to treasure this place more and more. If I had only perused the written information, I would know nothing at all of value, for Undeveloped Worlds of the eastern Fringe was hopelessly slanted. Only the whispers made it worthwhile, gave it context, importance.

Turned fallacy laced propaganda into invaluable veracity.

This time when I was called to leave, I fought against it. How could I leave this place? Outside of it there was nothing but lies. Every word twisted into something false, as they forever, inevitably, would be. It was not something that could be escaped, or altered. This was a fact of the universe far beyond my ability to change, and the thought of being immersed in treacherous falsehoods forever was impossibly daunting.

Yet I replaced the book, and I returned to the stairs, the imprisoned motes overhead watching me go with jealous resentment.

And so I ascended, filled with trepidation that the galaxy existed only to mislead, only to lie. Here there was truth, and nowhere else.

Here in the Chapel of Silent Lies.