Deranged Necron Destroyer
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Everything was white.
Staggering in its paleness, the walls of the room yawned in dizzying brightness, the whiteness more than simply an absence of colour: the burden of colour seeming to have never occurred in this place. The walls were also maddeningly devoid of texture or hue, and simply rose in snowy immensity high above his head. He did not know if they rose to a ceiling high above as above was also cruelly, unsympathetically white.
He did not know how he had come to be in this place, and peculiarly this notion did not trouble him. He had no memory of before, and felt wonderfully liberated by such freedom.
He looked at his hands, unsurprised by their appearance: strong, tanned, deeply lined from toil. He knew intimately that these were indeed his hands, but knew not who he was or how he had come to forget something as inimical as self. Again, whilst he imagined such a circumstance should invoke some kind of panic or even fear, he felt only cool and welcome detachment.
The room was empty save for him and stretched for many leagues in all directions. The distance fled from him in its bleached immensity, and he knew that even if he chose to pursue the white horizon he would never reach it. How he knew this he could not say: it was to him simply known.
But the room was not silent despite its aridness: there lay just out of reach a tiny din, a whining, hissing buzz scraping outside his perception. It was a mewling pathetic sound that fled as soon as attention was diverted to it. In the absence of all else it was hard to ignore.
He turned and noted that the whiteness behind him was suddenly jarringly close, no more than an arms-length from him. And upon the wall, at about the height of his chest was a hole.
No bigger than the flat of his thumb, the hole was the first thing in this place to give him pause. His eyes watered slightly to look upon it, and his muscles tensed at its sudden appearance.
It was black, as shockingly black as the rest of the wall was not, and around it small cracks had formed in the otherwise formless whiteness. It was not perfectly circular, more oval, as if a thin and sudden force had struck the wall and left a deep indent.
Looking closer he noticed hair-like cilia around the edges of the whole, waving in the cold air, reaching, beckoning. They waved in organic randomness, following a breeze that was not there. Where they connected with the wall tiny red droplets formed, miniature webs of bloody roots sunk deep around the blackened centre.
The tinnitus-like drone was issuing from the hole, and when he looked within it he was met with a crawling darkness, a deep-crimson too dark to discern but very definitely inhabited by form. An ammonia reek hung from the dark, and he rose up slowly, his brow and nose wrinkling in distaste.
He wanted to be away from the hole, to never look upon it again. He could not say why he disliked it so, it was as unknown to him as himself and the white room, but on some animal, gut level he knew it would bring him nothing but misery.
He turned form the bloody indent, intent of walking far from it.
He was unsurprised to find that again the horizon had rushed in to greet him once more, the white walls now merely several feet from him. And before them sat a table of dark, lacquered wood. Aged but well loved, its sudden appearance somehow felt right in this place, as if it had always been there.
It was flanked by two benches made from the same darkened wood, and he approached the one closest to him. He let his hand run across the top of the table, relishing in the physicality of it, the rough, uneven texture making him smile. He knew the tree that made such a fine item would have been mighty in life.
He pulled the bench from the table, a gentle rasp as the wood ran across the floor and sat gently, the wood creaking slightly beneath his broad frame.
Straightening, he placed his forearms on the table and faced the figure he knew would now be sitting across from him.
Tall, taller than him with an equine, lined face that had known the toll of many years, the figure was swathed in heavy robes almost as white as the surrounding room. Cascades of straight black hair which hung down to broad shoulders framed the figure’s face, and his eyes were a warm brown flecked with icy grey.
The strangers appearance did not shock him as the hole had done, and he smiled when the figure spoke.
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to all mankind, and you will not be tempted beyond what you can bear”
His brows furrowed in good humour at the phrase.
“What is that?”
“A quote I read recently, form an old, old book. I found it particularly apt”
“In what regard?”
“That is what we will find out”
The stranger’s voice was deep and learned, just beyond quiet - a voice used to both speaking and being listened to. It radiated familiarity, authority and something else he could not quantify. It possessed a sadness, hidden from sight in the hopes of not being noticed. What such a clearly powerful figure had to mourn he did not know, and he found that this specific ignorance bothered him, more so than any other unknown he had encountered so far.
He decided he must illuminate himself.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The stranger smiled warmly, expecting the question.
“Who I am is less important at this moment than who you are”
He laughed at the obvious deflection, and the stranger smiled at his laughter. He may not know who the stranger was, but he decided he liked him.
“Well I am as equally ignorant of my own identity as I am to yours, how ridiculous I must seem”
The stranger shook his head softly, parental in his demeanour.
“We all lose ourselves at one point or another, the real test is to find oneself afterward again.”
“And is that what you are here to do? Help me to find myself?”
The stranger nodded his head, his hair shifting silkily. The same sadness flitted across his features again, like a white moth flying in a snowstorm, there then gone again. He never raised his voice, or hardened his tone, but he knew that every word the stranger spoke was weighed with the knowledge of ages.
“I can help you find the path, but you must find yourself alone.”
A sudden, brittle whip crack, like a gunshot sounded behind them, appalling in its suddenness.
He turned around in his seat, back to the hole in the wall. A series of fine cracks spread from it upward and the hole itself had almost tripled in size. The hissing increased in volume, and now seemed like the failing breath of the morbidly wounded. The pulsing redness was beginning to push its way from the hole, bulging and quivering obscenely in the cool air. A thin dribble of some unidentified foulness dripped downward from it, soiling the perfect white floor below.
His gorge rose, bile rising to burn the back of his throat. He couldn’t say why, but the hole filled him with a queasy fear, a red storm cloud that would not leave him. Turning back to the stranger, he gestured to the hole with his head.
“What is that? It sickens me”
The stranger smiled his peculiar, sad smile.
“It is not important. You should ignore it. You should focus on the real question.”
He was suddenly angry at the casual dismissal, and was shocked at the intensity of his annoyance.
“Who am I?” he scoffed, his tone mocking.
“Exactly” the stranger agreed.
“And how exactly will we do that?”
The stranger gestured with both hands to the table between them, were there now sat an immaculate gleaming board of silver and gold. Perfectly square, around twenty inches on each side; it was divided into sixty four squares of sequential silver, golf, silver, gold. It was immaculately crafted and well loved, much like the table it sat on.
Recognition dawned on him at the sight of the board, and he raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“Regicide? We’re going to play Regicide?”
The stranger nodded indulgently as he started to take playing pieces from a small pouch on his belt. The pieces were immaculately forged, metallic and gracefully thin. Unhurriedly the stranger placed them, first the pieces on the farthest away side and then his. They mimicked the colours of the board, and he noticed that the stranger had set the silver pieces before him, giving him the first move.
He looked from his own pieces, arrayed like an invading army in dazzling fish-scale silver to his opponents which burned the same starry gold as the sun. He noted the pieces were identical, all save the Emperor piece, the piece that defined victory or defeat.
The silver Emperor wore his face, and the gold wore the strangers.
A sudden fear gripped him. A tremor entered his voice.
“And if we play, we will know who I am?”
The stranger looked intently into his eyes, a flash of gold augmenting their usual brown.
“More than you know”
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