Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-211.26.90.117-20130630032754/@comment-9047822-20130821130913

Take a moment and read this. (from halo:primordium)

"Have you found what we came for?" the didact asked the primordial.

For a moment, I doubted it had the means to answer in any language we could understand, but the sounds from the symmetrical, vibrating mouthparts slowly began to produce words

something like speech. At least, I hear speech.

"No. Life demands," the primordial said, "It clings and is selfish."

"why did you come here at all?" the didact asked.

"Not by choice."

"Were you brought here—or did you command the master builder to bring you?"

The beast now chose not to answer. Except for its mouthparts, it barely moved.

The Didact persisted as we drew closer to the mech cage, despite his obvious rebulsion. "Are you again hoping to take vengeance upon Forerunners for defying your race and surviving? Is that why you bring this plague down upon us all?"

"No vengeance," the primordial said. "No plague. Only unity."

"Sickness, slavery, lingering death!" the didact ssaid. "We will analyze everything here, and we will learn. the flood will be defeated."

"Work, fight, live. All the sweeter. Mind after mind will shape absorb. In the end, All will be quiet with wisdom." the didact gave a small quiver, wether of rage or fear I could not tell.

"You told me you were the last precursor."

The primordial rearranged its limbs with a leathery shuffle.

Powder siftted from torso and legs.

"How can you be the last of anything?" the didact asked. "I see now that you are nothing more than a mash-up of old victims infected by the flood. A gravemind. Were all the precursors graveminds?"

Another sifting shuffle

"Or are you after all only an imitation of a precursor, a puppet

—a reanimated corpse? Are all the precursors gone—or is it that the flood will make new precursors?"

"Those who created you were defied and hunted," the primordial said. "Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued."

"Defied! You were monsters set upon destroying all who would assume the mantle."

"It was long ago decided. Forerunners will never bear the mantle."

"Decided how?"

"Through long study. The decision is final. Humans will replace you. Humans will be tested next."

Was the primordial giving me a message of hope? Doom for our enemies... Ascendency and triumph for humanity?

"Is that our punishment?" the didact asked, his tone subdued—dangerous.

"It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the mantle.

Humans will rise again in arrogance and defiance. The flood will return when they are ripe—and bring them unity."

"But most humans are immune," the didact said. then he seemed to understand, and lowered his great head between is shoulders like a bull about to charge. "Can the flood choose to infect, or not to infect?"

The wide, flat head canted to one side, as if savoring some demonic irony.

"No immunity. Judgement. Timing"

"Then why turn mendicant bias against its creators, and encourage the master builder to torture humans? Why allow this cruelty? Are you the fount of all misery?" The didact cried out.

The primordial's strange, ticking voice continued. "Misery is sweetness," it said, as if confiding a secret. "Forerunners will fail as you have failed before. Humans will rise. Wether they will also fail has not been decided."

"How can you control any of this? You're stuck here—the last of your kind!"

"The last of this kind."

The head leaned forward, crimping the torso and front limbs until one leg actually separated and fell away, shooting a cloud of fine dust. The primordial was decaying within. What sort of cage is this? The misty bluelight seemes to vibrate and a high, singing sounds reverberated throught the hemisphere, shaping razor-sharp nodes of dissonace.

But the primordial still managed to speak.

"We are the flood. There is no difference. Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in folds... No end to war, grief, pain. in a hundred and one thousand centuries... unity again, and wisdom. Until then—sweetness."

The didact stepped forward with a sharp grunt. He lifted his hand and a panel appeared in the air. shaping controls. The Primordial's head squared on its torso, as if bracing for what it knew was about to come.

"It is your task to kill this servant," it said, "that another may be freed."

The didact hesitated for just an instant, as if trying to understand, but anger overcame him. He made a swift gesture like a swinging sword. The controls flared, then vanished, and the mesh around the captive's platform spread between them a far more intense blue-green glow.

"Let your life race ahead," the didact said. "You were made to survive deep time, but now it wil arrive all at once. No sweetness, no more lies! Let a billion years pass in endless silence and isolation..."

he choked on his fury and doubled over, contorted with his own agony, his own awareness of a great crime about to be committed—and another crime avenged.

The mesh held the inverse of a stasis field, the preverse of a timelock. Above the platform, the light assumed a harsh, biting quality.

The captive's mouthparts vanished in a blur, and then, abruplty stilled. Its gray surface crazed with thousands of fine cracks. Limb after limb fell away. The torso split and collapsed, puffing out a much larger dusty cloud—all contained within the perimeter of the mech and its field.

The head split down the middle and the two faceted eyes lay for a moment atop a pile of shards and cascading gray dust, then slumped inward until only broken facets remained. They glinted in the dead blue light. The dust became finer and finer, and then—everything stopped.

We watched in silence.

Total entropy had been reached.

The didact knelt and pounded  his great fist on the hallway. It is never easy to judge and execute a god.

I know.

"No answer!" he growled, and his voice echoed around the great dome. "Again and yet again—never an answer!"

This is the answer, the lord of admirals said. suddenly rising from his silence to share the didact's emotion—but judging it from our coldly lifeless state.

''No immunity and no cure. There is only struggle, or succumb. Either way, the primordial will have its due, We have met our creators, they have given us the answers we sought—and that is our curse.''

the didact got to his feet and gave a long, bitter look.

"Nothing is decided" he murmured. "This isn't over. It will never be over."

For the didact, the ultimate meaning of upholding the mantle was never to accept defeat. I sensed that the primordial had expected as much and as it decayed over the artificial fleeting of millions of centuries—as its extraorinary lifespan played out in blind silence—it had gloried in it.

All is sweetness for its grinding mill.