Epitaph by Kelly Gay

Author:Kelly Gay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2024-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

A popping sensation rang in the Didact’s ears, the derelict Builder ship exploding somewhere beyond him. He’d been pulled away, somehow, in an instant, encased in blinding white light, which slowly began to gray, growing darker, colder, until all that he could see was blackness, all that he could feel was bitter, stinging iciness, and all that he could smell was stale, musty, iron-tainted air.

He was suspended, caught in some kind of energy field. A grappler, perhaps. Seeking confirmation, he threw out a fist. The grappler’s energy returned the force a hundredfold, leaving him gasping from the reverberating backlash.

As his eyes adjusted, faint shadows and the dim ambient track light of a ship’s flooring became visible. The space around him had a cavernous feeling, suggesting the space might be a hangar or storage bay.

He felt the Gravemind before he heard it.

A little nudge. A soft tap, tap, tap on the fleshy surface of his brain.

A worm and a slither.

Tremors skated up his spine, and he shook his head violently against the intrusion, fighting, writhing like a captured fish. His heart leapt and began a quick, panicked beat as the air turned thick and difficult to breathe.

Shadow-of-Sundered-Star…

The deep, gravelly voice clicked and rumbled, each forced syllable resonating through him like a drum.

Didact. Protector of the Ecumene… The Gravemind paused, then spoke in ancient Digon, the ritual language of the Warrior-Servants.

We meet again.

A bolt of recognition erupted, lighting through the nerve centers in his body. Denial quickly followed. How could the Primordial be here, of all places? Last he knew, the ancient creature claiming to be the last Precursor had been taken from its timelock on Charum Hakkor and imprisoned on one of the Master Builder’s ringworlds.

Could it be?

The one you first met on Charum Hakkor.

It seemed to lift the question from his mind like tugging out the smallest blood vessel and slowly unraveling, stretching it taut. It—“he”—spoke directly to the receptors in his brain.

We are the same. That one. This one. Others.

The one he’d met on Charum Hakkor, however, was nothing like this monster emerging now from the darkness. Like an expanding nest of thick serpents pulling a glutenous mound of Flood victims, it came tentacles first, feeling its way along. No eyes to see, only a few mouths and tongues in differing stages of mutation.

Despite counseling himself to stay calm, the Didact’s survival instincts responded. Panic threaded its way into the primitive parts of his brain. He struggled against the grappler, barely noticing the blow it sent back, trying desperately to look away as tentacles glistening with secretion and blood and gut-turning growths reached for him….

It was already in his mind, sinking into his memory, his subconscious, his essence. There was no small corner it did not invade; it completely absorbed… everything.

The violation sparked a flare of outrage.

How could this horror and humiliation be his end? His species, and all species, were hovering on the precipice of annihilation, and for what?

“You have damned the entire galaxy for revenge ten million years old!” he raged.

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