A peaceful life is something mortals in the Warhammer galaxy dare not hope for.
Ajali was once no exception. She used to be a member of the Astra Militarum. After undergoing brutal and agonizing training, she became a member of the "glorious" Imperial Guard. However, that process was filled with pain—painful training, and even more painful combat. There was never enough food, never enough ammunition, and people who shouldn't have died vanished every single moment. Even now, she would dream of the artillery fire on the front lines whistling past her ears, nearly tearing her eardrums apart.
Back then, she could only huddle in a trench, shivering, while her Commissar waved a bolt pistol, demanding she charge into a hail of enemy fire. She was almost executed by that very Commissar—until the Fire Caste warriors liberated her.
Yes, liberated.
Ajali didn't use to use words like that to describe her capture. In the beginning, she felt she had betrayed the Emperor and the Imperium. But when she realized that the treatment she received in the Tau prisoner-of-war camp was better than the best conditions she had ever experienced in the Imperial army, she felt she had been lied to. The Tau believed in the Greater Good, but they never forced her to renounce her faith in the Emperor. When she thought of the deeds of the Ecclesiarchy, this feeling of being deceived grew into a frenzy.
Later, she was sent to a new colony to pioneer the land. Technically, she was a slave laborer, but the Tau gave her a plot of her own land. She now owned a small house, paid no tithes, and the xenos around her were not as abominable as the Ecclesiarchy preached. On the contrary, she noticed a glimmer of fear in the eyes of her neighbors when they looked at her.
Ajali was certain she had been lied to. She joined the Tau's auxiliary forces, serving to defend her new home. The Ecclesiarchy claimed that the devotion of mortal soldiers was to repay the Emperor's sacrifice, but she had never experienced the Emperor's love for herself. Now, she had a reason more powerful than those ethereal concepts: she had to protect her home.
"The armies of the Imperium of Man are approaching."
She saw her companions looking at her with suspicious eyes; this was unavoidable.
"For the Greater Good, we shall serve a higher cause."
Training had intensified recently. The Tau's combat gear was far more sophisticated than the Imperium's. Ajali couldn't understand why the Tau didn't simply continue to expand.
"Emergency notice! Emergency notice! Enemies detected nearby! Enemies detected nearby!"
Ajali was still lost in thought as she sat in the transport vehicle heading to the battlefield, until her xenos lover interrupted her.
"It's time to fight."
Yes, she had even found love here—something unthinkable in the Imperium. Ajali had never encountered so-called "corruption"; it was all just a conspiracy by the Ecclesiarchy to control people.
"Thank you."
They arrived at the battlefield. No enemy warships had appeared in the sky; it was speculated that a small unit of the enemy had infiltrated. She stood on the soft earth, thinking, though for some reason, the ground felt exceptionally hard today.
"Watch out!"
A massive Mawloc erupted from beneath the earth, effortlessly swallowing several xenos warriors, including Ajali's lover.
"?"
She froze. This was... Tyranids? Weren't these just stories fabricated by the Ecclesiarchy to scare people? How did they suddenly appear on this planet?
There was no time for thought. Ajali immediately drew her weapon and fired, but the high thickets behind her suddenly came to life, coiling around her. With a slight surge of strength, her arm was torn off.
The intense pain made her scream. As her limbs were systematically torn away, her consciousness began to fade. In her dying moments, she remembered the warnings of the Ecclesiarchy: those who do not believe in the Emperor will surely suffer torment in their souls after death.
No, it's absolutely not like that, she screamed in her heart. The Greater Good is the truth. The Greater Good will—
Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt.
Death was not the end, but the beginning of endless torment.
Ajali's luck was "good" in that her soul was not instantly devoured by the gluttonous appetite of the Hive Mind. However, her luck was also "terrible," for she was immediately cast into the violent, chaotic Warp. Within the infinite whirlpool of chaotic energy that spanned time and space, her remaining consciousness was like a tiny spark, instantly submerged by the raging waves.
She saw it—countless points of soul-light similar to or different from her own. Many were guided by a warm, majestic golden light, converging toward a magnificent and distant presence. That was the final destination for the Emperor's loyal subjects.
She, however, was simultaneously targeted by several distinct, malicious, and hungry lights.
The minions of Slaanesh found her first. They did not grant her the ultimate pleasure she had once dreamed of. Instead, they took the physical pain of being torn apart in her final moments and amplified, extended, and twisted it into an eternity. The sensation of every inch of her soul being "ripped" was vivid and repeated endlessly, yet there was never a moment of true "destruction." There were only ceaseless peaks of sensation—peaks of agony.
Next, the brutes of Khorne dragged her into an eternal battlefield. Her soul was forced to wield invisible weapons, fighting against other tortured souls and even demons themselves. There was no victory, only constant "death" and "rebirth." Every "death" repeated the agony of being torn apart by the Tyranids, and every "rebirth" was only to face the next, more cruel destruction.
The "Grandfather" Nurgle gave her a decaying "life." He allowed her to clearly "feel" every part of her soul slowly and irreversibly rotting and stinking, festering with eternal pain and despair. It was the most miserable end her physical body, already devoured in the real world, could have experienced.
Tzeentch's power was the most cruel. Within her chaotic consciousness, it constantly replayed and analyzed every choice in her life—especially the moment she turned her back on the Emperor to believe in the Greater Good. Countless "what if" possibilities unfolded before her eyes, each pointing toward a seemingly reachable path of salvation that could have avoided this eternal torment, only to be ruthlessly crushed a second later, all to make her understand the absolute nature of her mistake and the inevitability of the consequences.
Her soul became a plaything for the Chaos Gods to amuse themselves in their leisure. She rotated and wailed within four distinct yet equally terrifying eternal torments. The "Greater Good" she had once firmly believed in brought no salvation here; not even a glimmer of light appeared. There was only endless pain, proving how cruel a truth the Ecclesiarchy's warnings—the ones she had once dismissed—really were.
In this eternal torment, she finally understood that a peaceful life was indeed something a mortal in the Warhammer galaxy dared not hope for. And what was more terrifying than death was the fact that, after dying, even praying for complete annihilation became a luxury.
However, the only "good" news was that she finally found her place, left to rot slowly in a corner of Nurgle's Garden, forever.