Using the Silent King's information, Datch used the Infinity Stones to cross countless light-years in an instant and arrived in a vast void that no galactic civilization had ever recorded.
Looking around, there wasn't a single familiar star in sight. It seemed to be far from the Local Group, where the Milky Way was.
The undying race had been asleep for more than sixty million years.
After giving that order, the Silent King had left the galaxy and set out on his journey of exile.
The Local Group was only a little over ten million light-years across.
With the Necrons' faster-than-light technology, the Silent King could easily leave the Local Group and explore far-off places.
The stars in this unknown galaxy were completely different in color from the warm yellows and whites, like incandescent light, common in the Milky Way.
Some were deep purple, some flared with dark-red halos like congealed blood, and some gave off a faint, cold, pale light.
The galaxy's structure was different from the Milky Way's too. Most of its stars weren't arranged along fairly regular spiral arms.
Instead, they were scattered chaotically through the void, almost at random, as if some gigantic outside force had stirred them over and over.
This place had a Warp as well. Datch summoned the T'au goddess and sent her into the Warp to explore.
Unlike the Milky Way's turbulent Warp, the Warp here was very primitive, with no particularly powerful beings. It was like a dream, or the world after death.
Perhaps this was the Warp's original form.
The reason the Milky Way's Warp had fallen into such a miserable state was entirely the ancient Old Ones' overexploitation.
After the War in Heaven, the Warp had spun out of control and finally become the chaotic place it was today.
Datch explored the entire galaxy and found that the Tyranid swarm had left its mark on every habitable planet in it.
Their atmospheres were thick with green miasma, the remnants of repeated assaults by the swarm's spore clouds.
The ground was covered by a living fungal carpet that still crept slowly along on its own.
Through that erosion, entire planetary surfaces had been turned into biomass stockpiles for the swarm.
According to the Silent King, he had been here before.
After first sensing the Tyranid threat, he had followed the swarm's invasion route to this unfamiliar galaxy.
In this galaxy, he had seen a mother-hive of extraordinary scale.
Working from the Silent King's information, Datch traveled through countless star systems and finally found his target in the vast, endless void.
Every galaxy is always in motion, and even with accurate space-time coordinates,
tens of millions of years had passed, and the place had long since changed, so he could only search bit by bit.
The Tyranid mother-hive floated at the edge of the starry sky, and its shape was truly strange.
It was covered in a hard, smooth carapace of special bio-derived chitin.
It could not only withstand meteorite impacts but also endure the extreme cold of space and prevent the loss of moisture and air.
Vivid flesh clung to its many-layered protective shell, constantly writhing and forming all kinds of complex structures.
The mother-hive was gigantic, as large as an entire star system, and seemed to stretch on endlessly.
Strange, fleshy structures towered over it, like an organic city of meat and shell.
And at the heart of that city lay a gigantic burning star.
Inside the mother-hive, countless thick, still-writhing fleshy tubes were strung like a web.
They converted the star's light and heat into all kinds of usable substances, carried them to every part of the hive, and kept it alive.
According to the Silent King, the mother-hive stored gene sequences that its splinter fleets had collected from countless races wiped out across many star systems.
Every race that came up against the Tyranids, whether it fought back or not, had been absorbed.
Unique DNA shaped over millions of years had been carried off by the swarm and permanently stored as biomass code in the mother-hive's core gene bank.
The hive city was not short on life. If anything, it overflowed with vitality.
All kinds of organisms lived here, but every one of them had been cloned from base stock spliced with DNA sequences from the gene bank.
They came and went through gigantic organic passages dug specially for the purpose, passages wide enough for Imperial battleships to sail through freely.
Some patrolled and stood guard, some maintained the hive's outer shell, and some simply lay quietly secreting the hormones the hive needed.
These organisms looked bizarre.
Some had six legs and four claws, their backs covered in dense living armor that still writhed slowly.
Powerful bone spikes were embedded in the tips of their forelimbs, strong enough to pierce ceramite power armor in an instant.
Some had several pairs of semi-transparent, membranous wings and elongated bodies.
Each beat of their wings shook countless tiny, glittering bioluminescent particles from the membranes,
leaving a fleeting trail of light in the void.
Others didn't resemble ordinary living things at all. They were simply huge lumps of thick green protoplasm that constantly writhed and changed shape.
They were riddled with holes of every size, which opened and closed on their own, each giving off an eerie light from within.
Any damage they caused while moving was promptly repaired.
These varied insect-like organisms each had unique appearances and abilities, and together they were proof of how terrifying the Tyranid swarm was.
No one knew exactly how many races' gene sequences the Great Devourer had absorbed to build such a vast gene pool and gain the ability to shape countless life-forms at will.
After quietly circling and observing the mother-hive, Datch finally decided to go in and take a look.
Perhaps he could find important information, or even the Great Devourer's whereabouts.
As expected, Datch's intrusion triggered the mother-hive's defenses.
He was discovered the instant he entered a passage strewn with scraps of flesh and bone on the hive's outskirts.
The surrounding living tissue kept trembling, warning other areas of the intruder.
The Tyranid guardians scattered throughout the hive were instantly summoned by the hive will and rushed from every direction toward the intruder.
Datch was soon attacked by thousands of insect-like creatures of every shape and size.
Their forms varied. Some grew out of the fleshy walls on both sides of the passage, and some emerged from the fleshy tubes in the ceiling.
These swarm guardians all looked different.
Some had sharp bone blades growing from their arms and shoulders, and some had long-range symbiotic weapons that could spew plasma.
These symbiotic weapons were all living things, usually with mouths and eyes of their own.
They were sharp enough to cut steel with ease, and they could also shriek to disrupt a target's movement and thinking.
Even facing an overwhelming enemy, Datch stayed calm and composed and summoned the Void Dragon, the Dominator, the Burning One, and his other C'tan pals.
"Go exterminate all those damned bugs."
The instant Datch gave the order, the C'tan attacked.
The Void Dragon roared and unleashed a beam of pure void energy that pierced from the top of the dome down into the depths of the floor.
That terrible power killed every swarm guardian in its path, leaving piles of scorched, charred flesh that gave off an acrid stench.
Zarhulash followed right behind, spreading living-metal tentacles to either side.
The tip of each tentacle took precise aim at the weak points in the swarm's defenses.
The destructive beams it released carved through the hive's internal structure with surgical precision.
The other C'tan joined in too, their terrible power crushing the Tyranid swarm's forces with ease.
Even the large bioforms were no match for them and were wiped out in a single clash.
Rumble…
Rumble…
Just a few minutes later, the mother-hive was rocked by a series of terrible explosions, and fire raged inside it.
Flames jetted from every crack in the torn carapace, and the charred remains of countless corpses were strewn across the ground.
Under Datch's command, the C'tan easily broke through to the heart of the mother-hive.
As Datch pressed on toward the center, a sudden mental disturbance struck him.
It wasn't any kind of psychic energy or chaotic whisper, but a pure, fundamental mental will.
That will communicated with Datch and the C'tan, appearing as a voice in their minds.
Stop this madness. You are being rude, outsider. Perhaps we can talk.
The voice was very ancient, like an echo from a distant age.
Datch raised a hand to signal the C'tan to stop.
The Void Dragon and the other C'tan obediently halted, floated beside the Nameless One, and waited for further instructions.
After a while, a gigantic brain-bug floated up and appeared before Datch.
All of its limbs had withered away, in stark contrast to its highly developed brain.
Its surface was covered in a dense web of interwoven nerve fibers and sensory organs.
At the end of each nerve fiber was embedded a tiny point of light that constantly gave off a faint dark-red glow.
Those tiny lights kept blinking across the surface of its head, and with every blink, extremely complex biological information flowed into its interior faster than any mechanical communication device.
Clearly, this brain-bug represented the collective will.
"Outsider, I am glad you have stopped your destruction and listened to me," the brain-bug said.
"So you can actually talk," Datch said, a little surprised.
According to official records, the Tyranids had made virtually no attempt to communicate with the Imperium of Man and had only ever waged war to destroy it.
From the first contact in the border systems, to the all-out defense of the outer sectors, to the bloody battle with the main force of the Blood Angels at Baal,
the Tyranid swarm's invasions had been nothing but pure devouring. The hive will had no need for communication.
Because communication presupposed two independent consciousnesses.
The Great Devourer's will, at its core, was to assimilate every independent consciousness it could absorb into the torrent of its own biomass.
In its eyes, there was no such thing as "dialogue." There was only "absorbed" and "not yet absorbed."
Perhaps it was because Datch was a player that they could communicate.
"The swarm is not mindless. It is you who the outsiders are," the gigantic brain-bug said.
Its mental voice rang slowly and heavily deep in their consciousness, its tone surprisingly calm.
There was an indescribable ancientness and composure in it, and no trace at all of the panic or rage one would expect after the bombardment of the mother-hive.
"If you stop your destruction, we may be able to reach a peace agreement. Tell me, what do you want?"
"I want to know where your true form is," Datch said frankly. "There are a few things I'd like to talk about."
The purpose of Datch's trip was to pinpoint the Tyranid core consciousness, start a war, turn the enemy into his pal, and finally end the chaos of the Warhammer world.
"You misunderstand our nature. We are not a single being. Each mother-hive is independent. Only when we draw near do we merge into one."
The brain-bug's mental waves were steady and even, with no trace of a lie.
But there was no real intention at all of revealing the core information.
Datch stared at the gigantic brain-bug in front of him, the dense web of nerve fibers on its surface still writhing slowly.
After a brief silence, he snapped his fingers.
The sharp snap echoed through the hive's central hall.
Behind him, the Void Dragon and the other C'tan took up combat stances again.
"Then there's nothing to discuss. This mother-hive holds every gene sequence you've collected from countless galaxies over the ages. And now it's about to vanish."
"Why would you do such a thing?" The brain-bug's mental waves rang in everyone's minds, carrying indescribable confusion.
"Destroying the hive is meaningless. All you are destroying is the biomass the swarm has stockpiled through countless battles. Sooner or later, new hive fleets will replenish it."
"But if you burn them up along with this mother-hive, those races' genetic codes and memories will vanish from the universe forever."
"Nothing will be able to restore them. Not even the swarm's power. Even if you try, nothing will be gained."
"What's the point of keeping them?" Datch shot back. "You wiped out those races, turned their planets into bare rock, turned their living things into biomass sludge, and destroyed everything those civilizations worked so hard to build."
"Isn't it ironic that you're now worried about their genetic codes and sequences being lost?"
"That is different." The brain-bug's mental voice rang deep in Datch's consciousness, as calm and slow as before.
As the words came, the dense web of nerve fibers on the surface of its gigantic head contracted very slightly and gently.
It was probably the hive's physiological way of expressing a kind of "helplessness."
"We devour those races only so that they may gain immortality."
"Within the swarm's gene pool, every absorbed race continues to exist in another form."
"Their genetic codes are written into new swarm warrior-forms, their biological advantages are built into more powerful weapons, and their most precious evolutionary achievements are permanently preserved by the swarm and used again and again in every battle."
"What you call 'annihilation' is not an ending for the swarm, but integration. The true annihilation is what you are about to do, and it can never be undone."
...