Great change is coming to the 41st Millennium and none suffer quite so keenly as the unfortunate Imperial citizens in the path of a resurgent Hive Fleet Leviathan. We turn our gaze to the planet Regium in Leviathan, the new companion novel by Darius Hinks – where the Ultramarines stand between the ravenous hordes and the innocents whose biomass the Hive Mind covets.
Even before the swarm makes planetfall, its malign influence is felt in the minds of their prey – as seen in this snippet from the opening pages of the novel.
You might have seen this on the Games Workshop webstore while you were queuing to purchase Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan at the weekend – but here it is for you to read at your leisure!
By the end, when there was no hope of escape, people turned on each other, tearing at the ones they loved, blind to everything but the terror.
Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
It meant nothing.
In their final moments they were just animals. Shivering and screaming. Flailing at the dark.
Fighting for life.
Tharro howled with them, begging for mercy as though the monsters attacking them might listen. As though they might care.
‘Please!’
Then he tumbled to the floor and gasped in surprise. He looked around and saw that he was at home and it was still night. His wife, Valacia, was in bed, sleeping quietly. There were no wings. No bestial horrors. No screams. None of it was real.
He was so relieved that he laughed. A dream. That was all.
But it had been so vivid.
He could still feel the desperate hunger clamouring for his heart and his bones. He stood there for a while, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to think of other things, but he could not rid himself of sickening images. He dressed and headed outside, drinking in the cool night air and looking up at the stars.
Just a dream.
He could not remember ever being so affected by a nightmare, even as a child. Glimpses echoed round his thoughts. Fractured scenes centred on a huge figure. A four-armed colossus. Godlike in size, taller than the trees, skittering and scything, a face too dreadful to look upon, bone blades jutting from a ridged skull. It was repulsive. The flesh on one side of its face had been burned, leaving charred sinew. But it was more than its appearance that filled him with dread, it was something deeper: an understanding of what it signified. It was not merely bringing death. It was bringing the final death. It was the Harbinger.
‘Emperor protect me,’ he whispered as he hurried away from his hab-unit, following a narrow path through the rocks, hoping the night air would calm him. He entered a small wood and the trees leant over him as he walked, forming a tunnel. When he emerged on the far side, he was surprised to see lights glittering further down the mountainside. Who would be awake, now? He headed towards them and saw that despite the late hour, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people had gathered in the darkness. He recognised a few of them, but most were strangers. The sight of so many people huddled together in the middle of the night was bizarre and somehow dreadful. They were all looking out from the mountain, staring into the night.
No one was speaking.
They looked terrified, all of them, their faces pale and rigid, like skulls draped in the darkness. The knot in his stomach tightened. It made no sense, but somehow he knew what had scared them. He knew why they had gathered here, at the edge of the forest.
‘The dream,’ he said quietly, as he reached a young woman.
She gave a short nod, trembling as she looked across the forest.‘The Harbinger.’ The name felt strange in his mouth, heavy and cold. He immediately regretted using it.
She refused to meet his eye.
Tharro remembered the sounds of his nightmare: the scraping of claws, the creak of chitin. Blood rushed in his veins. He imagined talons paring him, rooting through his abdomen. ‘How could we share the same dream?’ he asked.
‘It is a portent,’ the woman whispered.
‘Of what?’
‘The end.’
The citizens of Regium have a bad time in store – but will the Ultramarines be able to stem the tide and save the planet from annihilation? Leviathan is available to pre-order right now from the Games Workshop webstore. You will be able to grab the massive boxed set that shares its name in stores from June 24th - find your nearest stockist at our store finder.
