"He finally went. I thought he could hold out for another couple of days." Liu Zhipeng stood and stretched. "Come on, Little Claw. It's time we met that legendary 'ancestor' ourselves."
"We're going too?" Little Claw sounded nervous. "That's sacred ground. Without the priest's permission..."
"From today onward, I make the rules." Liu Zhipeng's tone was calm, but the authority beneath it made Little Claw straighten involuntarily.
"Go fetch Bishop Kaz and the leaders of all four 'divine halls,'" Liu Zhipeng added. "Tell them... we're going to witness a miracle. The end of an old era, and the birth of a new one."
The Patriarch's lair lay in an abandoned geothermal shaft in the deepest reaches beneath Viridia's Third Mining Zone.
The air was scorching and thick with the smell of sulfur. Huge organic conduits, like blood vessels, covered the rock walls, pulsing faintly as they carried energy drawn from deep within the planet's core to the center of the lair.
At the center of the lair stood a throne made of half-congealed biomass, and upon it sat an enormous figure.
That was the Patriarch.
He was larger and more monstrous than any of his hybrid descendants. He had four powerful arms: a pair of blade-like primary arms, and a smaller but equally lethal secondary pair. Hard, deep-purple carapace covered his body, studded with bony protrusions that spoke of ancient power. His enormous head, filled with alien intelligence, hung slightly bowed, as though he were lost in eternal contemplation. He was the genetic source of every cultist on this planet, the core of the broodmind, the first-and deadliest-seed the Tyranids had planted on this world.
Vaughn knelt before the Patriarch's throne, trembling all over. He opened his consciousness to the Patriarch without reservation, reporting everything that had happened within the cult, the heretic called "Peng," and the four blasphemous false gods to this ancestor.
"O great Patriarch! Your descendants are being beguiled by heresy, and your brood is plunging into the abyss of division! Please bring down your divine punishment, purify our minds, and guide us back onto the righteous path!" Vaughn prayed through choking sobs.
The Patriarch slowly raised his head.
His pupil-less eyes, like black gemstones, gazed at Vaughn. A vast psychic power, as profound as a sea of stars, engulfed Vaughn in an instant.
Vaughn felt the Patriarch reading and analyzing his consciousness. Then he felt the Patriarch's will begin to extend through him as a conduit, reaching into the entire broodmind network.
Yes... that's it... purify them! Wild joy surged through Vaughn.
Yet in the next instant, his joy turned to horror.
The "purification" he had expected never came. When the Patriarch's will encountered the ocean of Chaos formed by faith in the "four gods," it did not suppress and destroy it as Vaughn had hoped. Instead... it displayed an unprecedented... curiosity?
Like an apex predator, the Patriarch's consciousness cautiously extended a slender tendril, touching the power of faith that represented "Khorne," brimming with rage and glory.
To a Genestealer, "combat" and "slaughter" were instincts etched into its genes. This power felt familiar and welcoming to him.
Then he touched "Nurgle's" resilience and cycles. The Tyranids themselves were the most tenacious life-forms in the universe; they devoured, evolved, and adapted to everything. This concept of seeking new life amid decay aligned perfectly with their biological instincts.
Next came "Tzeentch's" change and wisdom. A Tyranid Broodlord was himself among the universe's finest strategists, weaving vast conspiracies across star systems and luring civilization after civilization toward annihilation. This manipulation of fate inspired in the Patriarch an appreciation for a kindred spirit.
Last came "Slaanesh's" sensation and perfection. The Tyranids devoured all biomass with the ultimate goal of experiencing and absorbing every piece of a species' genetic information and every possibility for its evolution. In a sense, this too was a pursuit of "ultimate experience."
The Patriarch discovered that these four powers were not heresy at all. Rather... they seemed to be an unconventional yet extraordinarily profound interpretation of four different aspects of the "Great Devourer's" divinity!
This discovery left the centuries-old alien briefly frozen in something akin to "philosophical contemplation."
Vaughn, meanwhile, felt the Patriarch's will waver. To his horror, he realized that far from becoming a conduit for "divine punishment," he had become a "router" through which the Patriarch could "learn about new ideas." Worse still, that ocean of chaotic faith began flowing backward through him as its node, toward the Patriarch.
Vaughn's consciousness was being torn apart.
He felt like a small boat sailing through four different storm-tossed oceans at once. On one side lay a sea of rage burning with blood and fire, its towering waves roaring with endless slaughter; on another lay a stagnant green swamp teeming with germs, every breath drawing in spores of despair and resilience. Above him stretched an eerie, ever-shifting sky, where the lightning of fate twisted into incomprehensible runes; beneath him churned a whirlpool of sensation that dragged him down, ultimate pain and pleasure interwoven into a deadly symphony.
At the center of these four storms hung an enormous eye, cold and merciless, filled with hunger and curiosity-the Patriarch's will.
The Patriarch did not "purify" these heretical faiths as Vaughn had wished. Instead, he was like a gourmet sampling unfamiliar dishes. His will reached into that chaos, carefully savoring the qualities of every thread of power within it. Rage, resilience, wisdom, pleasure... these concepts flowed ceaselessly through Vaughn's mind as their bridge, pouring into the unfathomable depths of the Patriarch's consciousness.
No... it wasn't supposed to be like this... Vaughn's soul wailed.
More terrifying still, he felt a torrent flowing in the opposite direction. After "tasting" them, the Patriarch began to "reinterpret" them. With the pure instincts of a Tyranid predator, he reshaped the four powers.
"Rage" was interpreted as more efficient "harvesting"; "resilience" as more perfect "adaptation"; "wisdom" as deadlier "hunting strategies"; and "pleasure" as the ultimate "joy of evolution" after devouring genes.
These four aspects of Chaos divinity, now "Tyranidized," were like four red-hot branding irons, passing backward through Vaughn's mind to burn themselves into the broodmind network.
"Aaaaargh-!"
Vaughn let out a silent scream. He felt his faith-that pure faith in salvation through the "Four-Armed Emperor"-being utterly overwritten, corrupted, and torn apart by these blasphemous yet powerful new concepts. He had become an "amplifier" for heretical ideas.
Just as his sanity teetered on the brink of total collapse, a heavy metallic scraping rang out at the entrance to the lair.
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