#i know its cliche to write about lorgar and monarchia

[the-archpriest-and-the-outcast]

Until They Are Forgotten

He never quite knows where he will wind up wandering when he casts himself out into the Warp. Instead of merely listening to the melody, he allows himself to become one with it. To feel the thrum beat within the fiber of his being. To hear the choirs of endless voices cry and scream, blending into song.

This time, an odd note of melancholy is what drives him onward and in. Something has been gently needling at his conscious mind, and so he has gone out to investigate what it may be. Such journeys could take minutes, hours, days, years, or longer. He never knows and has not cared.

Following the note, sustained and faint like one held too long upon a violin, he finds himself reaching his destination. Within the realm of thoughts and dreams, he feels dust and ash coating his feet. He tastes the dry, acrid air. Smells the smoke, thick and billowing, filling his chest.

But what he sees is not the desolation he feels. No, he sees thousands of souls, all gathered, weeping, pleading, roaring...

An endless tide of them. As far as he could possibly perceive. Thousands. Millions.

He recognizes them. He knows them. He remembers weeping for them. The pain in his chest that refused to leave him for weeks. The same pain that twisted and coiled and almost turned to indifference. He feels the ash between his fingers. Feels the grip of cloth, the struggles of a feeble man, speaking what he thought to be heresy, and what he now understood as a form of the Truth.

He looks at the sea of souls. He listens. He hears their melodious suffering, how it blends with the background hum of the universe itself. He reaches out to them all with hands made of radiant gold, and feels as they reach back. He feels the small hands of children, grasping at his long fingers; the rough, firm hands of honest workers; the delicate hands of artisans and writers; the grasp of those feeble in body, yet strong in mind and will; how some grip his hand as though desperate for something to cling to, and others as though they are greeting an old friend.

He sees them. Sees their eyes, their minds, their hearts. Sees them as they once were, and now are. Sees the fear. Desperation. Conviction. Anger. Grief. Friends, families, lovers, all still together despite how time-ravaged they all are. Some barely remember what they were. Others remember well.

He listens. Hears the tales parents once told children. The jokes once passed between friends. The arguments once held between lovers. The jabs between rivals and enemies. The mundane hum of existence, maintained in this one space.

This space could be anywhere, he knows. This place could be a chasm, a palace, a city square, a forest, a field. It matters not. All that matters is that all of them are here.

His eyes close. He tightens his grip on their hands. He allows himself to remember the bone-deep ache that pursued him from this moment onward. He allows himself to remember the anger that burned in him so brightly before it smoldered. He allows himself to remember the act that set him down this path. A quiver of the lip. The feeling of dry ash coating and covering beautiful golden skin, revealed by thin tracks that glistened in the low candlelight. Skin that earned him his name.

Aurelian.

He hears it now, being whispered through the gathered souls. He hears all his titles, murmured with reverence or spat with hatred.

He feels their grips all tighten with his own. Something builds within all of them. It is an overwhelming tide of emotion. It is sorrow. It is grief. It is pain. It is fear.

And strangest of all, it is understanding. His time here is impermanent, as is theirs. Soon he will leave, and they will dissipate. They will become one with the endless song, and he will find a note to untangle anew.

Some are scared. Some are too weary to feel fear, and simply wish to move on once more.

His eyes open. The gathering before him flickers between packs of formless and nameless daemons, and the forms of the humans they once embodied. He sees their souls. He sees who they once were. Sees their hunger. Their pain. None see the Neverborn quite as he does. None take the time to have these moments with them, for them to remember who they were, and for them to remind the pilgrim that he, too, was human once.

Slowly, he uncurls his hands from the crowd. The scent of ash, the feeling of smoke, the view of the gathering all begins to fade. Back into the melody they vanish. He remembers the eyes that stare at him mere moments before they are swept along. Remembers the feel of the smaller hands that tried to hold on for just a few moments longer. The whispers and pleas to just remember them.

And, as swiftly as he found this place, he leaves. A single tear trails from him, falling, forming itself into a wisp that fades after a few fickle moments of existence.

He returns to his confines upon a world of madness and horror. Within a chamber, with walls covered in a language never meant to be uttered by physical beings, he sits. He folds his legs. Feels the cloth against his gilded, tattooed skin. Reaches for a stylus and ink with only one pair of hands. And for the briefest of moments, he sees eyes that he had not stared into in millennia reflected back in that dark pool of ink.

With a shuddering breath, he reaches for paper, and begins to write. Allows his emotions, his thoughts, his memories to flow onto the pages. He sits like this for hours. For days. For weeks. He writes names. Writes what he felt. Writes what he saw. He writes and writes and writes.

When his hands finally still, pages fill the room. He feels the tenseness and soreness that should not be there. He feels all the physical limitations he swore he had shed long ago. As he stands, it all falls away. The facade of anything human flees, leaving behind a strange little god-thing. A perfect representation of Chaos Undivided, wrapped in the gold of its most powerful enemy.

But deep within its chest, there is the dullest of aches. A promise. A reminder. Remember why you are here. Why you quest so hard for the Truth. Why you stare into the abyss and have become one with it. Remember the blood, the tears, the suffering that formed each step to this pathway. Remember the sorrow. The stares.

The pages are organized and compiled with naught but an idle thought into loose bound tomes and journals to be studied later. He feels the tug again. There is a note out of alignment, and it demands his attention.

He wonders where the song will take him this time.