Tales from the Boer’s Head

(A Warhammer 40k Short Story)

Written by P.H. Boer

“They said the Emperor provides for the faithful. I believed them. I still do. But they never said what He’d make us give in return.”

~ Testimony of Subject Delta-11Recorded under containment, Cycle 473.M42

I wasn’t looking for a miracle.

Miracles are loud things, blinding lights, holy proclamations, the righteous roar of thunder hammers or Saints born in flame. We weren’t the sort to earn such favor. Our family was more the forgotten prayer in a crumbling chapel, whispered with cracked lips and no reply. So no, I wasn’t looking for a miracle.

I was just hungry.

The harvest had failed three cycles past, and the last of the dry stores turned to mold in the bins. Mother tried boiling the mold once, hoping to scare it back into food. It only made the little ones sick. We scraped lichen from the edges of the well, crushed vermin bones into paste, even steeped boot leather for broth. Nothing held long in the belly.

Still, Mother made stone soup every night.

She’d boil the same round stone in a pot, add what scraps she could find, a bit of root, a flake of rusted groat, a fingernail’s worth of grox marrow, and tell the same story: “The stone feeds us because we believe it can.” That was the trick. Faith, she said, was the strongest seasoning. “The Emperor hears hungry prayers best.”

I believed her. Even when my guts turned against me in the night and my brother coughed blood like it was conversation. I believed her.

It was on the fourth day of the ash storms that I went digging. Not for anything in particular. Just… digging. With fingers gone red and raw at the knuckles, in the strip of dust behind the shrine ruin, where the old irrigation channels once fed a basil-root field.

I don’t know what made me stop.

Maybe it was the way the dust shifted, like it was breathing, shallow and slow, or maybe just the pain in my nails catching on something dense and unyielding beneath the surface.

It looked like a rootball. Round, knotted. Not soft like a proper tuber, but firm. It hummed, almost, beneath my fingertips, like the generators used to when they still had power, just before the sparks turned blue.

It was heavy. I had to brace one foot against a broken aquila tile just to wrench it free, and when it came loose, it made a sound I still don’t like remembering. A wet pop, like meat torn from bone. But it smelled rich. Like something that had once been alive and sweet.

I brought it home cradled in my tunic.

Mother frowned when she saw it. She’d been sharpening the soup stone with a rasp, to make it feel “new again,” she said, but she stopped mid-stroke and stared.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Found it,” I said. “In the field.”

She turned it in her hands, rubbed a thumb across its strange veined skin. It didn’t bruise like food should. Instead, it shimmered faintly where she touched it, like light catching oil on water.

“You didn’t eat any, did you?”

“No. Thought it might be worth a try.”

She set it on the cutting board and whispered a prayer before slicing into it. The inside was pale, but not white. Not like starch. More like flesh. But thin slices browned in the soup nicely, and the smell… saints preserve me, the smell. It filled the hut. Rich, savory. Like feasts from the old tales. Like something we weren’t meant to remember.

We ate until our bellies ached. Even the twins, who’d gone quiet these past weeks, let out little laughter-choked cries when the warmth spread through them. For a few hours, we were more than poor. We were full.

I remember lying on the floor that night, beside my sister, and watching the glow of the coals flicker across the rafters. The hut creaked. The wind howled outside. I felt something brush my ankle, probably the cat, but when I looked, nothing was there.

That was the first time I heard it.

A voice, not loud, not cruel. Just… close. Too close.

It whispered in my ear like it had always been there. Like breath and blood.

It said my name. Just once. Drawn out slow, like a mother waking her child.

And I smiled.

The following morning I woke with my hand in the dirt.

Not on it… in it. Buried wrist-deep in the dry-packed earth behind the hut. My fingers were numb, and my breath steamed in the predawn cold, but I didn’t shiver. Didn’t panic. I just stared at the shallow hole I’d dug in my sleep and the shape peeking up from within it.

Another one.

Slicker than the first. Warmer, too.

I pulled it free with less trouble this time. It came easy, like it had been waiting. Like it wanted to be found.

The skin was darker, richer in hue, patterned with faint ridges like old scars. A second “potato,” though that word felt less fitting now. This one pulsed slightly in my hand, not visibly, not enough to see, but I could feel it. A slow, patient rhythm. Like something dreaming, and not yet ready to wake.

I brought it to Mother without a word. She didn’t ask. Just nodded, wiped down the board, and sliced it into the soup with reverent precision.

We ate again. Ate until the pot scraped dry. Ate until the little ones giggled themselves sick and Mother wept into her bowl and whispered prayers with every swallow.

It tasted even better the second night.

That evening, we didn’t huddle apart like we usually did. We sat close, shoulder to shoulder, warmth rolling off us like shared breath in a hymn. For the first time in longer than I could remember, no one mentioned the cold. Or the ache in their joints. Or the strange red bruises blooming beneath their skin.

We were happy.

And the voice was louder.

It spoke again that night, not just to me. I know because my sister sat up straight in the dark and said, “Yes?” like someone had tapped her shoulder. The twins muttered in their sleep, mumbling words not their own. Mother sat beside the empty pot, hands folded in her lap, staring into the ash-glow of the coals, her lips moving with a prayer I didn’t recognize.

The voice said other things this time.

You’ve done well.

There’s more to find.

There is still hunger.

I didn’t sleep after that. Just stared at the ceiling and listened to the soil shifting outside like it was breathing again.

By the third day, I knew where to dig.

I didn’t choose the spot. It chose me.

My feet carried me past the old irrigation trench, down toward the collapsed root cellar, the one we sealed off when the walls crumbled and the rats claimed it. I knelt before it like a pilgrim at shrine altar, hands trembling with something that wasn’t fear but ran close beside it.

I scraped at the dirt. Not with tools, my hands. Bare fingers, ragged nails, even my teeth once when the stone proved too stubborn.

And there it was.

The third.

This one bled.

Just a drop when I cracked its outer skin against a stone, but it hissed in the air, like breath released from a clenched fist. The smell was… sharper. Not spoiled, not rancid, just strong. Earthy, sweet, and tinged with metal. Like grox blood, but richer.

I didn’t tell Mother about the blood. Just handed her the thing and watched her nod, watched her slice it up and stir it into the pot with the others.

We had meat that night. Real meat, or close enough not to care. The soup thickened like it had bones in it. Marrow-thick and spiced with something that none of us could name, but all of us knew in our bones. The youngest said it reminded him of when the Ecclesiarchy came through town with rations two years back. He called it “Saint’s Stew.”

We laughed at that. Laughed too loud. Too long.

The voice laughed with us.

That night, the twins got up and danced in the dark, their limbs twitching like they were puppets yanked by strings. Mother didn’t stop them. She just hummed along with the voice, yes, with it, I know she heard it now, and stroked my hair like she used to when I was small.

“You’re doing good,” she whispered. “The Emperor provides for those who listen.”

I wanted to ask her what that meant. I wanted to scream. But the taste of the soup still lingered on my tongue, and it was the only thing that felt real anymore.

I went to bed full. That’s all that mattered.

On the fourth day, I didn’t dig.

I didn’t have to.

The ground was soft when I woke, like fresh-turned loam after a spring rain. Damp, warm, and pliant. My bedroll was covered in it, clumps of dirt pressed into the folds like a blanket tucking me in.

And nestled beside me, half-buried in the soil, was the next.

It looked different again, more refined. Smoother. The skin shimmered faintly with fine gold filaments, and when I picked it up, I swore I felt it sigh. Not audibly. Not in the air. In me. Like a pressure easing in my chest, a quiet voice saying yes, this one… this one is yours.

I didn’t show Mother this one right away. I kept it with me, cradled in the crook of my arm as I walked the edge of our little farmstead. The cat, our only real livestock now, followed me for a while, eyes fixed on the thing I carried. She mewled once, low and mournful, then bolted into the reeds. We haven’t seen her since.

When I brought the offering in, Mother didn’t even look up.

Just held out her hand.

The knife she used wasn’t our kitchen blade. It was Father’s old field knife, the one he left behind when the tithe took him. She said it was sharper, cleaner. But I don’t think she sharpened it.

I think it knew how to cut.

The slices bled more this time. A thin, silvery fluid that hissed where it hit the hot stones, and let off little curls of scent that made our heads spin. The younger ones giggled until their noses bled. I stared too long and found myself swaying in place, eyes watering, my stomach growling like an animal in heat.

We didn’t wait for the soup to finish cooking that night. We ate straight from the pot, tongues burned and blistered, but none of us cared. It tasted like old memories. Like hope. Like the Emperor Himself had wept into the broth and left behind His light.

Afterward, we were warm. So warm.

The kind of warmth that blooms behind the eyes and in the marrow. The kind that makes you forget the cold, the hunger, the truth.

Mother’s lips were cracked and dark, but she smiled like the old icons, eyes half-lidded and radiant. The twins’ teeth had started to blacken, but they clacked them together like song chimes, giggling through the pain. My sister’s fingers had grown thin, too thin, but they moved fast now, fast and graceful, like she was weaving something only she could see.

We all heard the voices then.

Not as whispers. Not anymore.

They sang.

Not with words, but with… shapes. Colors. Feelings. I don’t know how to explain it. The sound was wet and warm and wanting. It filled the corners of the hut, danced along the rafters, bloomed from our mouths when we laughed.

That night, I looked out across the field where I’d first dug and saw the ground rippling.

Not shaking. Not quaking.

Rippling.

Like skin.

And from the middle of that field, something rose. Slow and lazy, like a yawn in the earth. Not a creature, not really. Just more of the same, roots or organs or maybe both. A crown of tubers, half-formed and slick, oozing from the soil like birth.

I didn’t go out to meet it. I didn’t have to.

In the morning, there was a new one waiting by the door.

This one was shaped like a hand.

That day, we didn’t boil it.We roasted it.

Set it atop a spit of scrap metal, basted it with melted lard we’d saved from the last rat we found. The smell was unbearable, like incense at a shrine and the scent of blood on warm stone. We sat around the fire, singing hymns we hadn’t known we knew, voices rising together, the harmony taught by something deeper than memory.

When it was ready, we carved from the wrist first. The meat split easy. No bones.

Everyone took their portion.

When mine hit my tongue, I wept.

It tasted like purpose.

That night, the voice finally spoke through me.

Not in thought. Not in whisper.

Through my mouth.

I felt my jaw open without asking it to. Felt my tongue rise. My breath steady. And I said, with a voice not my own, words that made Mother fall to her knees and press her forehead to the soil:

“Your faith is the seed. Your flesh is the root. The Emperor grows through you.”

She sobbed with joy.

And I knew, without knowing how, that we would never starve again.

Not as long as the soil remembered us.

It was on the fifth day that Mister Hallen stopped by. He wasn’t kin, just a neighbor, one dome over. He’d heard the singing. Said it carried across the field like choir song.

We told him we’d had a small blessing. That the soil had given back.

He didn’t believe us at first. Said he didn’t smell a feast, just metal and smoke. Said we looked strange, pale and smiling too wide. He started to back away, said he’d return with help. I asked him to stay for supper. I begged him.

He said no.

I told him the Emperor had sent us food, that he should show gratitude.

He left anyway.

We ate without him.

The sixth day was colder, though none of us felt it. The fire barely burned, and the smoke curled strange in the air, trailing shapes that lingered longer than they should. One of the twins coughed up something black and laughed about it. My sister’s hair began to fall out in long, neat clumps she arranged into spirals on the floor.

Mother said they looked like Litanies. Holy signs.

I started finding the offerings already cut. Clean. Arranged in bowls beside my bed.

Sometimes still warm.

I don’t remember digging anymore.

Only waking up and seeing them waiting.

They came at dawn on the eleventh day.

Not Mister Hallen. Not neighbors.

Them.

Men and women wrapped in white and red. Sealed helmets. Gold-trimmed purity seals flapping like dead leaves. They came without knocking. Without prayer. Their weapons weren’t drawn, but they could’ve been. Their eyes glowed behind their masks. They smelled like burning oil and incense, like authority, like endings.

They didn’t speak when they saw us.

Not at first.

Just stared.

Mother stood in the doorway, holding a bowl out with both hands. Smiling.

She said, “He provides.”

They didn’t take it.

They didn’t take anything. Not then.

They just called for backup and told us to sit.

We did.

I don’t remember much after that.

Lights. Cold steel. A voice above me shouting for restraints. Another weeping. Then nothing.

When I woke, I was here. In this room. These sheets. These stares.

It’s bright here.

Too bright.

The walls hum. Not like the soil did, this hum is sharp, clean. Sterile. No taste to it. No smell, save for antiseptic and burn cream. I miss the dirt. I miss the weight of it beneath my nails, the way it clung to my skin like memory. The cot here is too smooth. The sheets don’t stain. They take them before they do.

I asked for a candle. They said no.

I asked for soil. They said nothing.

They haven’t said much, the men in white. They watch through glass, lips tight and knuckles tighter. They whisper behind masks and clipboards. They ask questions sometimes. I answer when I can. They don’t like my answers. I can tell because their pens stop moving when I smile.

But the Emperor provides. I tell them that every day.

I still believe it. Even now. Even like this.

My hand is gone.

The left one, missing at the wrist. It was the one I used to feed the fire. To stir the pot.

And my legs. Both of them. Gone from the knee down.

I asked what happened.

They didn’t answer.

They never answer.

One of them dropped his clipboard once. I saw the notes. Just a glance. Just enough.

Words like:

“Auto-consumption.”

“Neuro-suggestion.”

“Heretical biomass propagation.”

“Imitative gastro-regenerative ritual.”

Then scratched out.

Replaced with:

“Confirmed Warp Influence. Requesting Exterminatus.”

They haven’t said it aloud.

But I know what’s coming.

I don’t fear it.

The Emperor provides.

They can’t understand. Not yet. But they will.

They call it corruption. Infection. Madness.

But I call it mercy.

Because I remember the cold.

I remember the emptiness.

And I remember what it felt like to finally be full.