I was lost.

I’m not sure how it happened; one moment I was on the transport to … wherever they were sending me, the next moment, I was swallowed by Chaos. Did the ship fall apart? Did the Navigator turn? It’s happened before, I know. But that didn’t matter. I had bigger problems to worry about.

I was on a rock, bleeding and out of breath. My chainsword was stowed, my bolter cold. The blood must be my own. I could see nothing, but my senses tingled, as though I knew there was something out there hidden from me. Something dangerous. 

‘God-Emperor, grant me strength.’ My words sounded strange, as though the air was thick, like the echo of a yell in a foggy mountain crag. They valiantly fought the suffocating atmosphere, fading to nothing briefly before being returned to me. The Echo, however, was no longer my voice. I refuse to believe they were. The Echo mocked my words, as though they found my faith in the Emperor amusing.

Or pitiable.

‘Why would I grant you strength?’ The Echo again. ‘What has this sad wretch of a Sister done to deserve my blessing?’

This voice was claiming to be the God-Emperor? Heresy.

‘You think I lie?’ The Echo either read my heart or made a good guess. ‘Worm.’

I was driven to my knees. I don’t know by what. Images flashed before my mind’s eye, the Emperor, in life, bringing down judgement on the xenos and the heretic. I went backwards, with the same figure unifying the peoples of Terra. I went back further, to a quaint village, Terra, before the unification. The Emperor spoke into some kind of vox, his voice booming throughout the room. 

Anger.

Denial.

Doubt.

‘He is the Messiah!’ My own throat called out the words I heard. ‘He is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, and the God of Gods! He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last!’

The Echo cut me off, angrily. I could no longer speak.

‘That creature was no Messiah,’ it growled. ‘Gods fall, and nations rage. Counting me among them is the greatest sin.’ It pointed one finger accusatorily at me. ‘Now fall.’

By the Throne, I could see it now. A figure, broad, crowned in thorns. Hair was matted, skin marred by a thousand battles. It carried no sword, no shield. It wore but simple robes and walked like a defeated general marching to the execution block. 

And I was falling. Not into Chaos. Chaos were gods too, bloated and embellished by their followers, twisted from a concept into a devil. Two Ork faces, shining upon a green world, clamping their fists down around the planet like a vice. Not gods, but charlatans, charismatic cravens too afraid to die, and too insignificant to pass into obscurity.

This was not my Emperor; it couldn’t be. Right?

I’m on the rock again. The blood is gone. The Echo is silent. I can’t remember anything before this, nothing of the world before meeting the god I worshipped for so long. He still stands there, sometimes. He has to; his fire can be seen from anywhere in the galaxy, and he must continue burning. 

I feed the flames with the corpses of the thousands who sacrifice themselves for one they took to be a god. I can see outside of the Warp, outside of the residence of a forgotten man, swallowed in the shadow of what he should have been. I can even touch that world, on occasion. I amuse myself, ending lives. Sometimes a man, desperately trying to care for his family. His children will surely starve. Sometimes an important dignitary, a Tau conservationist, an Ork warboss, a Human Order Mother. Today, I carved reality from a shard of some great force of nature, turning a prison into a tomb. The Mechanicum will surely scratch their heads with that one for centuries to come. 

A footstep. Not the Echo’s, he makes no sound with his passing.

A prayer. A light in the dark. Another Sister? 

I must welcome this Sister into heaven, past the veil of what is known and into the reality of truth. I must show her the Echo, I must have a fellow soul marred by the burden of knowledge. 

I must corrupt her.