Dan Abnett - The Beast Arises

He paused. Turning about, he looked back at the skein towards the present. He had outpaced the now by some days, but the origin of the split was only hours ahead of the present, and it approached swiftly, a boiling wall of yellow light that rushed unstoppably towards the future. When it encountered the What Might Be, it solidified it into the glimmering of What Is, a moment so short it could not be measured. When the present passed on by the skein was still and clear as glass, the dead times of What Was.

Ulthran looked down at where the split had occurred, now no more than a slight kink in the skein. He raced downward, into it, passing through the endless threads of individual lives, his powerful mind inadvertently tasting their short-lived joys and lasting pain. So many billion human existences, twined mostly with their own kind, but touching here and there against the fates of other creatures including the eldar, often disastrously.

He hunted to find the cause of the change, his practised astral eyes darting from deaths and births to the explosions of suns.

The rumble of the approaching present grew louder as he located the source of the change. One thread, one death.

Drakan Vangorich, master of the Imperium, was about to die.

Ulthran rapidly examined all possible futures for the Grand Master’s thread, but though they began as many, they all converged on that one point, when a Space Marine in yellow armour would put a bolt between Vangorich’s eyes.

Racing back to the surface of the skein entire, Ulthran looked ahead, to where the ghost of the dead futures yet lingered as a dying swarm of particulate maybes. That had been a bad future, the slow decline of the human Imperium, the resurgence of Chaos, the probable death of the eldar, but woven in amongst the doom were gleaming threads of salvation. These Ulthran had resolved to pursue, and he had been confident of success despite the grim nature of the predominate fates. But all of that had gone.

Behind him the present rushed on. Ulthran looked to the new future. Less certain, more fraught. The chances of survival were more numerous, the opportunity of restoration far more remote. Time stretched away unbrokenly. Ulthran saw his own fate weaving in and out of it until it was lost to sight among the uncountable tomorrows. The roar of the now thundered, waterfall-loud. A great shock hit his body and Ulthran was engulfed, carried along upon the wave of actuality towards futures he had not yet assimilated. It was time to leave, before he was consumed.

Eldrad Ulthran opened his eyes. His runes slowed their spinning in the air and sank to the crystalline floor around him. There, one by one, they came to a wobbling halt, fell and clinked to a standstill.

‘Drakan Vangorich is dead,’ he said aloud. His voice echoed weirdly through the forest of crystal trees of Ulthwé’s Dome of Seers.

His death was foreseen, replied a disembodied voice.

The skein is changed, said another.

Among the groves of trees were half a dozen silent, vitreous statues of eldar farseers, those psykers whose bond to the craftship’s heart had become too much to ignore, and whose spirit fled their flesh to join the infinity circuit while still alive. Their voices were hard to tease apart. Though they spoke individually, their words blended into one another’s speech. Male voices became female or something inbetween. They might speak all together, then split as they disagreed. Eldrad Ulthran knew all their names as he had known them all in life, but without joining in direct psychic communion with them it was impossible to identify which soul spoke.

‘We go on,’ said Ulthran. ‘The mon-keigh are aware of the threat of Chaos, they will continue the struggle.’

One thousand five hundred cycles ago you sought their destruction, and through it the extinguishment of Chaos, said another voice.

‘The Cabal did. I did not. I only ever sought our survival,’ said Ulthran.

The Cabal are gone. The Cabal did not have the best interests of the children of Eldanesh at heart. We were used. The trees pulsed with dancing witchlight, their boughs raced with the thoughts of the dead.

‘Yes. The only way our species is to survive is through the support of humanity. Our fates are inextricable. If they fall, so shall we.’

You chase ever-diminishing possibilities of salvation. We should depart this starwheel and begin anew elsewhere.

‘Even were that possible, and we are not assured that it is, then what? The Primordial Annihilator knows no limits. Time and space mean nothing in the Othersea. If we travel to another starwheel, we will take our daemons with us. She Who Thirsts will be waiting wherever we go. Our fate is here, with this place, for good or ill. Many fates are possible. If we guide them wisely, we shall prevail.’

You do not have the power of the Acuity. You do not have the foresight of the Cabal. We stand alone. Your actions could doom us all. The mon-keigh have proven again that they will not be manipulated. They will see us all dead before the end. Already it is two thousand cycles since the fall. Every pass brings us closer to extinction. The lights in the crystal danced with agitation. A period of instability awaits the humans’ empire, and they may not recover. If they do, they shall hunt us to destruction.

‘Not all threads say this is so.’ Ulthran picked up his helm and held it under his arm. ‘Humanity is our best chance, but it is not the only one. There are many more worlds of the krork,’ said Ulthran. ‘Beasts never die, they are only banished. The cry of “Mag Uruk Thraka” echoes still in the Othersea. Should one rise again, the greenskins may yet fulfil their original purpose. New races may evolve in time. There is hope while we live.’

You are arrogant. You are but one alone against eternity.

‘One mind is sometimes all it takes to change fate,’ Ulthran said defiantly.

The lights dwindled. The dead farseers retreated into the core of the worldship. The crystal dome took on its dark, marmoreal air again. Other craftworlds had lighter aspects, but Ulthwé never forgot, forever in mourning for an empire lost.

Eldrad Ulthran would not mourn. He would see the days of greatness return, no matter how long it took.