Lotara had never been in nature before, and it reeked. There was an all-encompassing foulness to the whole place. It was pervasive but it wasn't like the putrid filters of the bio waste facilities on her ship which always had the same familiar unpleasant odors. This stench... the putrid smell was in competition with itself, the different fauna and flora emitting musks and spores in their bid for air superiority. She heard a voice towards the center of the garden,

"He is The Beginning, Change is The End, The Split soul will kill his father, and his patron too. He will part the sea of souls."

Lortarra perhaps should have feared, but to her the situation was so surreal, and outside of her previous realm of familiarity that she would not have known what to be afraid of. Fear after all is a rational response to a potential threat, and nothing here was familiar at all.

"By the Throneworld, what did Lorgar bring me to?" she wondered.

The Emperor's son was a strange one, but she had no reason to distrust him, especially in matters regarding the unknown. The answer to The World Eaters was here, she was told, and if so she must brave the unknown. She owed it to The Conqueror, to Kharn, To Angron.

She allowed herself to be drawn towards the center of the swamp, taking in more of the overwhelming sights and smells that made this place. Such variety in colors and shapes, an explosion of Fibonacci spirals and fractals to be taken in. A hauntingly soprano sung inside her head,

"Worlds eaten, vengeance repaid in full, an eglet of blood hatches gold."

As she approached a giant tree in the middle of the marsh with great vines and branches teeming around the tree, outside of her gaze, around the tree was what looked to be an Eldar.

"Wolves without Packs, Angels without Halos, Cast from The Parliament, the Raven becomes a Crow."

The disheveled and unkempt creature muttered a madman's song. What was likely once-regal robes and garments were in ruins. Barely hidden by her matted and disheveled hair was a golden collar, the chain of which stretched to the great tree in the center.

The Captain felt drawn to the tree in the center, despite something in the back of her mind warning her from going farther. She had no idea who the beautiful xenos creature was before her, but perhaps she too was lured in by the tree. The poor xenos creature echoed in her mind, her beautiful instrument-like voice was tarnished with some sickness inside, but the corruption only served to underscore sorrowful tragedy, like a master performer playing on a broken instrument.

A new voice appeared in her head, "What brings you from the hive, Insect?" Lotara recoiled from the new voice, it spoke with a strange syrupy ichor. "I am no insect, show yourself!" She barked. The chained creature whimpered, or did it cackle? The trees and swamps bubbled and bobbed. The voice continued, "Insect is no insult, little larva. You bring death to sow new life. A great insect you are, indeed." Lotara searched the bog for the origin of the voice. Speaking with trepidation as her eyes searched the surroundings. "You are mistaken, I am a Captain of The Imperial Navy, and Commander of The Death Conqueror." The xenos woman cackled:

"The Two Thirteens makes one Thirteen, Five. Thirteen is Three, Thirteen is Five Hundred, Five Hundred is Two-Thousand, Two-Thousand is None."

Lorarra realized it was the Tree speaking to her, The Great Tree had no human-like features, but seemed to somehow meet her gaze in recognition. "You destroy and level cities, take bloated peoples and let new life grow on top of their corpses. You organize decay for life to grow. Life is hostile to new life, you know this, and you fight it. My insects and creatures engage with life unwilling to accept its term."

"You.." Lortarra struggled tired to phrase the word, falling back on long forgotten superstition. "You are a god?" She looked intensely at the tree, what she thought was merely bark revealed itself to be intricate symbols and runes she couldn't hope to understand. Insects, fungus and foliage spread around the tree, colonies and microcivilizations all coalescing into a single organism. "A god of death?... Am I dead?" The branches and bog laughed warmly. Lotara's skin was surrounded by an unconventional warmth. It did not feel like the heat of the ship, it was more...organic than that. Pollen and particles tickled the hairs on her neck. The xenos ignored the dialogue, muttering the things to herself.

"A table will be set for devours, but your children will starve. Food will be presented which you will not eat. But others will eat your fill. The Crows will plague the Gardens, and feast it barren."

The Great Tree continued, "I am new life, Pupae, not death. Life without death is exhaustion, death without life is no death at all. All life must be allowed to rest, I protect life, for life must have its balance and cycle. But there are those who exhaust life, force it to burn. Your Emperor gives death without life, he leaves planets barren and lifeless. Just as he gives life without death. Your treatments and longevity, they burn your body with exhaustion. The cells who serve you have not been allowed to die. They cry to me for release from their life. New life within you is stillbirthed. Life without death and death without life. He is a god of Death."

"The Emperor is not a god! There are no gods!" Lotara snapped back, though her disciplined response felt foreign to her as it escaped your lips. "You are right." it chortled, "No one is a god, insect. God is act, not being. Your emperor takes command of your race, and acts as god. But in doing so he also acts as god of death. He acts as god of life, and as such he demands death. He demands death from your planets, from your crew, and… from your World Eaters. His life demands that all die." The Xenos psaltered on:

"Malice everywhere. Beasts and Iron awaken. Man's two lights snuffed out. A mad son prepares for sanity to die. One hydra devours another, Heaven and Earth in war."

Lotara was taken aback. "What are you speaking of. Cease with the riddles." The forest rumbled and gurgled, and Lotara felt the swamp change temperature, the bog began to rise around her. Lotara struggled to move, the swamp and mud covering her knees and ankles. She was terrified but somehow the mud was comfortingly warm. As though the rest of her body was cold and miserable. She should just lay down and let the mud consume her.

The xenos cackled, sobbed, and cackled again. Then stooped to drink from the mud. Lotara stood with her mouth agape, trying to process the circumstance around her. Long enough for a single bee to fly into her mouth. Lortarra choked. The Tree continued. "I have so much to teach and reveal to you about your Queen, pupae. Your queen threatens your colony. I will feed you my knowledge." The Mud continued to rise, now to her waist, the brown water crawling up her white tunic and Red Handprint. The Xenos moved towards her. "I will make you a queen, little larva, but you must grow. Let me help you grow." Lotara, was now up to her shoulders in mud the towering xenos almost standing on top of her. Out of fear she reached out her hands to the Aeldari woman. "You ask your god about "Molech'' let him show you his true designs. And consider the gifts i have to give you." Desperately reaching out the Xenos grabbed her hands, bent down, and opened Lotara's mouth. Bending over as though to kiss her, the xenos vomited into her whatever bile she had drank. The mud was inside Lotara now she could feel it caking and hardening both outside her skin and inside it. The mud was now above her neck, her knees still planted in the mud. Lotara gagged and choked. The last she heard was the Great Tree, "Consider your colony, little queen."

Lotara gasped for air, breathing in the sterile purified air of her ship. She awoke to a sweat-drenched cot in her spartan quarters. Lorgar's Amulet cold metallic gathered sweat and chilled her bare flesh. She clasped it with both hands, hoping to normalize the temperature, it didn't.

She looked around the Captain's quarters, completely dark save the few emergency lights, and the soft glow of her dataslate. The plainness of her living space made the bottles of Lorgar's concoction more apparent. The scar that went down her face felt as though it was bursting, and reinfected. She quickly snatched the bottles and hid them away, sweat drenched hands nearly causing the bottle to slip. The Bottle was stuffed away in a private safe, not even thinking to remove the amulet. She put her hands to her right eye, expecting to feel the pus and blood ooze out of a reinfected wound. The lights came on in her quarters, and she looked at herself in the mirror. The runes Lorgar had instructed her to place around her heart had melted and smudged into unrecognizable pools and blurs. Her pale, clammy skin, with visible beads of sweat, and matted hair made her look sickly. However she suspected, or perhaps hoped, this unflattering sickliness was from the harsh lighting. Other Flag officers and even those of lesser stations had ornate, if not lavish quarters. She did not, and the cold shadowless lighting that illuminated her living space was the same used in work corridors. The only change she noticed was her scar, once travelling the right hand side of her face, had completely vanished. Or at least visibly, she could still feel it, and feel as if it was infected. She quickly cleaned herself and prepared for her shift as though nothing had happened, covering the amulet over her undershirt and tunic.

Before leaving, she grabbed her dataslate but looked at an encrypted message. It was from one of the Emperor's other sons, "Alpharius" the message held several files labeled with a simple message. "Sigilite:Autopsy_XII." She thought of the dream, and the word of the Tree, "Molech." She had to know, her crew's life depended on it. Angron depended on it.