I hope this isn't too abstruse, but what the heck...
The Last Witness
(1,150 words)
Drefan brushed the dirt and rubble off his legs, thankful he was still alive and able to move. He wasn’t sure how far he’d fallen – several metres at least – but nothing seemed broken. It was hardly the first time he’d taken a nasty fall while scrounging around in the deepest tunnels below Hive Edessa, and thankfully it wouldn’t be the last.
Re-igniting his lumen stick, Drefan peered around the gloomy chamber in which he now found himself. From the rough rock walls, it was clear he was deep within the bedrock, several kilometres below the spires of Holy Terra.
He chuckled at the thought: Holy Terra. He’d been born here, amid the ancient splendour of the capital of the Imperium of Man. Drefan was blessed, or so he’d been told. Scavenging through the dreck and detritus of the underhives, dodging mutants and gangers, and living off scraps hardly seemed like a blessed existence, but it was all he’d ever known. And occasionally he stumbled across some pretty object or ancient artifact worth something to the great and the good living in the world above.
As he peered around by the dim light of his lumen stick, a horrible visage loomed out of the darkness: a maw filled with horrible fangs and a whipping tongue. Drefan stumbled backwards, tripping over debris, while he frantically reached for the stubber he wore stuffed into his belt. He kicked out, hoping to catch the creature, but his feet met with unyielding stone.
Taking a second look at the monster, Drefan realised that it was nothing more than a crude statue, carved into the side of large stone slab. Holding up his lumen, he could now see that there were carvings of strange beasts and animals all around, some barely more than faint low-reliefs. He laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of his reaction to the stony threat, relieved that there were no real monsters waiting for him in the dark.
‘It’s been so long since I heard laughter,’ a voice said.
Drefan froze, the laughter dying on his lips. He felt for the stubber at his waist and his fingers grasped its comforting grip.
‘I’m armed,’ he said, his eyes scanning the darkness for the speaker. His words were met with silence.
Slowly, gingerly, he stood back up, the stubber held out before him. Drefan held the lumen aloft; by its feeble light he caught sight of a figure hunched in the lee of a carved stone slab. He cautiously approached the figure to get a better look.
It was man, or least the mummified corpse of a man. Withered, wrinkled brown skin like leather was stretched over its haggard frame, and only the barest hints of rotted, tattered clothing clung to its skeletal frame. Surely, this couldn’t be who spoke.
‘It’s been so long since another has been here,’ said the voice in the darkness. Drefan spun around, frantically searching for the source of the words, but he couldn’t tell from which direction the sound had come.
‘Show yourself,’ Drefan demanded, brandishing his weapon. ‘Show yourself or I’ll shoot!’
To his horror, the mummified figure lying before him stirred, its skin creaking like old leather as its head twisted to face him, dust falling from the dirty wisps of hair clinging to its skull. Stone blind eyes turned in his direction, but blind as they were, Drefan could feel their gaze on him.
‘Who…who are you,’ Drefan stammered.
‘I am the Last,’ the decrepit figure said without words, the thoughts entering Drefan’s mind without sound. ‘I am the Ancient. I alone refused, and I alone am condemned.’
Drefan stumbled backwards, tripping over the debris in his haste to get away from the skeletal man.
‘You’re a witch,’ he said. ‘A psyker!’
‘Once I travelled the depths of the Great Ocean, yes,’ the mummified man said, his thoughts invading Drefan’s mind. ‘But no more. I am afraid to go there now. Terrible things await me. So here I remain, where he left me.’
Terrified as he was, Drefan was even more afraid to turn his back on the thing. He considered unloading his stubber into the frail figure, but a strange curiosity compelled to discover how the ancient, desiccated skeleton before him could possibly be alive.
‘Who...who left you here,’ Drefan asked. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘The child born of a thousand fathers. He that my brothers hoped would lead Mankind through the darkness. Ten thousand generations have passed before my mind’s eye, and countless are the wonders I have beheld from this place. He shows them to me, and I am doomed to bear witness for all eternity.’
Drefan knew he should leave, he should run as fast as his legs would take him. Yet, he had to know more about the thing lurking here in the darkness.
‘I don’t understand,’ Drefan said. ‘How did you come to be here? How can you be alive?’
It seemed to Drefan that the mummy sighed, a soft plume of dust exhaled from between its cracked lips.
‘I alone refused to be joined with my brothers,’ the voice said in his head. ‘When they rejoined the flow of the Great Ocean to be reborn one last time, I refused to drink the draught prepared for me. I was afraid. Afraid of losing myself. Afraid of the things that lurked in the Great Ocean. And when the New Man came into the world, I was not of him – I was not reborn with my brothers.’
An image formed in Drefan’s mind: a man, radiant and burning with brightness of the sun.
‘He sought me out and he condemned me for my cowardice. He placed me here, never to move, never to die, only to see. I saw him journey across the Earth and among the stars and through the Great Ocean. I witnessed his ascension, his triumph, his defeat and his apotheosis.
‘Now his body is ruined, as withered and broken as my own. He is dying, yet here I must remain until the end, to bear witness.’
Even as the words formed in Drefan’s mind, so too did images, a history of Mankind unfolding in mere moments. It was too much to bear, too much to behold. The weight of fifty millennia overwhelmed his every sense and filled his consciousness.
* * *
My Lords,
I am happy to inform you that the heretical cult known as the Witnesses of the Divine has been suppressed. Sisters of the Order of the Ebon Chalice stormed the cult’s compound in Hive Edessa and killed their deviant prophet, a man known only as Drefan the Enlightened. The cleansing of the lower hive has been completed and suspected cultists from the upper spires await interrogation and execution. Rest assured, my Lords, there will be no more heretical teachings concerning the origins of His Divine Majesty. The Emperor Protects.
Inquistor Tirion,
Ordo Hereticus