The Divine Rite: A Warhammer 40,000 Fanfiction

Part 16

Yet I went on, for there was one final revelation for me here. At least for now.

When I emerged this time, I knew there would be no more journeys to those pillars. Not for me. I had walked the pilgrim’s path four times now, and at last my personal reward awaited. Driven by instinct still, I drew my new sword, and slashed the rock with it. A series of steps appeared, leading to the top, and I took them without hesitation. A cleft sat in the center of the stone, the same size as the blade I now wielded, and I knew without having to see that this was the spot my blade had been birthed from.

Overturning it, I stabbed the blade downward, and it slotted perfectly into the rock.

The very planet shuddered beneath me.

And then the stone unfurled.

It flowed across the crater like water, coating every surface and then rapidly solidifying. Where rough stone was before, now there was smooth black glass, divided into perfect tiles that coated the floor without leaving gaps, yet were somehow identical and stretched unbroken around the entire circle. They flowed up the sides of the crater, and then became a smooth dome that curled overhead, no longer tiles, but a single pane that was slightly transparent. The stars overhead were the merest of glimmers through it. But the most drastic change was to the four pillars.

Each became a towering obelisk of black rock, perfectly formed, perfectly upright, and the symbols carved into each were no longer crude scrawlings. They were now wondrous calligraphy that glowed with an inner light. Royal purple, deepest indigo, emerald green, and scarlet as blood. As they ignited, row after row of pews burst up from the tiles, merged seamlessly with them, leaving aisles down which ran the fissures to the obelisks, and other aisles halfway between for supplicants to enter. At the end of each was a simple gateway through the dome.

Then the rock shuddered beneath me, what remained of it crumbling away until only a spiked wheel remained. It drifted upward, the spokes sliding around me. Eight of them, with four spikes pointing outward from the rim, all meeting in the middle at a small circle of onyx. It was the eight pointed star of Chaos Undivided, the symbol of freedom without caveat. It was glorious and I watched it rise to hover beneath the dome overhead, bathed in black light.

Before me rose a stone table, and rumble from behind had me turning. An altar of simple stone rose there, unadorned, for the pulpit did not matter. What it contained did, though it too was deceptively simple.

The title was in plain gothic, no other words adorning the leather bindings, and all it said was The Book of Lorgar.

Those words meant nothing to me. Yet. But soon they would mean everything.

As I gazed out at the rows of pews, seating enough for hundreds of thousands, I was filled with awe and satisfaction in equal measure. This was my place, where I belonged. This altar is where I could make a difference, where I was needed and welcomed. I put my hand upon the book, these words the ones that would shape my future. This I knew even then. And as a smile graced my lips, my sharpened teeth gleaming, I saw the flicker of indistinct figures seated among the rows of benches. Horned, fanged, scaled, tentacled. Putrescent, sensuous, terrifying, bizarre. I knew then that my words would not just reach mortal ears in this place, they would stretch across the very heavens into realms unknown.

And that their echoes would continue into eternity, long after I, and all I knew, was gone.

No words spoken within the Basilica Exsolutus were ever silenced.