Suffer Not the Witch (Warhammer 40k Psyker Quest)

This is terrifying, horrifying, an assault on your very sanity and understanding of the world, but it isn't the first time. When first you awoke to your nature, when your curse made itself known, you had much the same response. An awareness that you did not want, powers you could not control, the danger of losing everything you were or could be beneath an onslaught of agony. When that happened you fell back on training and routine, burying yourself in the comforting embrace of the familiar long enough to understand what was happening and what to do next, and confronted with the screams of an entire nation falling into oblivion you resort to those same instincts. Miraculously, it works.

The Carrion maintain an arena in their territory, a crude pit filled with bladed traps and deadly obstacles, easily connected to cells where the prowling servitors can be penned and unleashed at need. You're not sure what they think when you turn up on their doorstep, clutching your head in one hand and the hilt of your sword in the other, but they don't get in your way and that's all you really need. You find your way to the centre of the chamber, barely conscious of anything more than a yard from your stumbling feet, and with a roar that is lost beneath the screams you set about driving yourself to the very edge.

Those who think that they know the way of the sword say that the blade should be an extension of your arm, and think themselves wise. For you, it is an extension of your soul. The Menagerie did their best to damn you, but among their poisoned gifts was a sword designed to work with the mind of an awakened warrior, and in this time of trial there is no greater comfort than to align yourself with its razored edge. You sink into the steel, lace your will throughout its core, narrow your world to the gleaming edge of the blade, and with the ease of practice and desperation you make yourself one with the sword.

(The sword isn't made of steel. It was forged from purified alloys and laced with psycho-active circuits, as far from steel as steel is from a hunk of stone. And yet, it remains a sword, and swords all taste of steel.)

The sword doesn't care about the screaming, for it has no ears to hear or heart to quail. It does not fear tomorrow and the nightmare realm of the Screaming Vortex, for nothing exists save that within reach of its edge. The sword does not feel guilt about its own damnation, or the deeds committed in defiance of imperial judgement, for its purpose is to cut and all else is but a tool to achieve that simple end. It is you, you are it, and together you make that dank hold in the middle of a crippled ship a museum of the finest art. You cut and you slice, you dance and you weave, you slaughter your way through training dummies and bloodthirsty corpses and the few among the Carrion willing to step into the ring with you, and though your lungs burn and your limbs tremble you are, at last, content.

How long you practice for, it is impossible to say. There is no day or night aboard this ship, and what rhythm there was has been thoroughly disrupted by the warp jump and the screaming in your mind. You work yourself to exhaustion and collapse into dreamless sleep at least thrice that you can track, only once managing to stagger back to your assigned quarters first, and though you are dimly aware that you are something of an attraction for watching carrion none see fit to approach you. Your audience merely watches as you sink further into your fugue, as time blurs together and the world loses its meaning, until you exist at the very threshold of thought itself.

It is the ring of metal against metal that brings you out of it, the sudden shock of motion arrested, the presence of another that somehow slipped straight past all your instincts and stepped into your shadow without so much as a qualm of doubt.

"Shadow sparring is a fine pastime," Ciro says with a genial smile, a crude axe made of refurbished deck plates trembling slightly in his hands, "But I have always found training more worthwhile when done with a partner's aid."

He's huge, looming over you like a mountain, and has the skills to slip straight through your perception until literally within arm's reach. Any other time you would be intimidated, nervous, twitchy with conflicting impulses, but not now. Now you are exhausted in body and exultant in mind, the cold touch of steel against your thoughts steadying your nerves and dimming all fear and hesitation. Now you step back and nod, accepting the implied invitation without a word, and watch as Ciro begins running through a series of simple drills to get used to the weight and balance of his borrowed axe.

He's not wearing his armour, and save for an errant scrap of fabric twisted into a loincloth wears nothing to hide his perfect physique from the world. You're intimately familiar with the human body by now, with its strengths and weaknesses, the way it parts beneath your blade and changes beneath your mind, yet even so you cannot help but stare. Ciro's body is obviously artificial, his muscles sculpted to perfection and his skin marble-pale and polished of any blemish, but somehow there's none of the instinctive disquiet you feel from vat-grown servitors and other works of the biologist's craft. He looks like a medical diagram as sketched by an artist, a stylised representation of the perfect human form, and part of you wants to pin him down and examine him in full. Why are there plugs along his spine, how do those muscles feel when they flex, what did they do to his chest and throat to make his voice so deep and smooth...

"So," the angel says, snapping you out of your daze, "how do they score such bouts on Malfi?"

It is difficult to talk, your preoccupation with his form and the lingering chill of steel in your thoughts robbing you of wit, but you work your jaw and force the words out in a rasping voice.

"They count coup," you say, slowly and painfully, "marking touches. It is a mark of skill, to control the battle."

Ciro nods, and by the time you register the motion he is already lunging, his axe swinging around to hack at your neck. You won't get your blade up to parry in time, so you don't try. You stay perfectly still, perfectly calm, and let the astartes touch the ragged edge of the axe against your jugular.

"Well, that hardly seems sporting," the transhuman grins, a boyishly joyful expression wildly out of place on the body of an augmented killer. You raise a single eyebrow, and rather than elaborate Ciro simply shakes his head and steps back, adopting a starting point befitting of an actual duel. You'll call that a victory, you think, even though he scored his first touch - sometimes, being a duelist means knowing how to lose in a way that proves your point.

Letting out a long, slow breath, you sink back into the sword trance. This time it is you who lunges, a swift horizontal cut that is batted aside by Ciro's axe before it can land, transitioning smoothly into a roll of the wrist and an upwards slice, and when he parries that you move on to the next strike in the chain. Attack after attack, parry and riposte, dodge and counter, all of them flowing smoothly from one into the other, a dance set to music only you can hear. There is nothing but the hum of the blade, the beat of your heart, the fluttering instinct of strike and defence. Even the screaming has stopped, or been buried so far beneath your conscious thoughts you cannot even count the tears.

Ciro's style is precise and controlled, almost minimalist in its perfection. He's not a good swordsman, you gather in that endless instant of slashing metal, but he is an excellent murderer. He is faster than you, stronger than you, but he isn't used to fighting this way. You see him twitch with every exposed vulnerability, tense with every opening, but his instincts are to the swift ending of life and by the time he overrules them the opportunity is no longer there. He could have killed you a dozen times over, but he isn't willing to do it, and so he stands his ground. He stands and does not move, his feet rooted in place even as you dart and lunge, as you prowl like a wolf around the great tree rooted in the earth, and the ringing of your sword against his axe is a hymn to the god without a name.

How dare he.

He's taunting you, this warrior, this idol of perfection made flesh. He is strong and confident and beautiful, fast and deadly and immortal, he is everything you are not and everything you can never hope to be. You want that strength, that you need not fear the lash of your master. You want that confidence, that you do not flinch beneath judgement's gaze. You want that beauty, that men might call you lord and angel, might have kinder words than witch and freak and monster. You want everything he is, everything he has. You want to be him, or perhaps simply to have him, and the envy burns like acid beneath your skin, a burning pain that grows without cease, a pressure that builds behind your eyes until, at last, you break.

"DAMN YOU!"

You don't know what you are thinking, what you are saying, where the strength comes from. All you know is that you swing, just once, and with a tolling of temple bells Ciro's axe shatters in his hands, fragments clattering like rain against floor and ceiling as he slides back across the ground. Two paces, three, and then he grinds to a halt, a single line of red across his chest turning brown and still in the space between one blink and the next.

You freeze, sword outstretched, limbs trembling, eyes stinging as you blink away the sweat. You freeze, and in your heart is only triumph, the mad poisonous joy of an enemy overcome.

"Ah… now there is the spirit of a free man," Ciro says, flashing his pearly white teeth at you in a fierce grin as he straightens up. "I was starting to wonder if you had surrendered to your fear."

"Don't," you gasp, your hands trembling as you lower your sword, your throat working around the hard and bitter nugget lodged there by his words, "Don't mock me. Don't you dare."

"I am not," Ciro says, spreading his arms slightly as he steps towards you, his storm-grey eyes fixed on you with something that looks wretchedly like concern, "Is it so hard to believe that I care for your wellbeing?"

You laugh, a strangled bark of mirth and pain. Is it hard? An angel, a traitor to heaven, a man who has everything and could yet claim more… of course he doesn't care. The only people you thought might have cared turned their back on you when your powers awoke, and you have had a multitude of insights into the nature of man since that day.

"I have heard such sweet lies before," you hiss, old wounds torn open, screams replaced by fresh pain. Even before you changed, you were a child of Malfi, and learned her lessons well. "Shall you offer to bed me next? Whisper sweet nothings aind me to your cause with dreams of love?"

"I could, if you would like, though I promise no great skill," Ciro laughs, shaking his head, "A lack of practice, so to speak, not to mention the mechanical issues..."

You blink, your train of thought utterly derailed. You think he just told a joke, but Angels do not do such things, do not place sacred perfection where it might be soiled by base physicality. They are above such things, beyond them, and yet at this moment Ciro seems… enticingly human. You think you could enjoy spending time with him, in any manner, and that is a dangerous thought indeed.

"I owe you a debt of honour, Vincenzo," Ciro says, his storm grey eyes solemn and serious, his hands held out cautiously as though to calm an animal inadvertently spooked, "You revived me, fought with me, supported me and my leadership with deeds if not words. Trust in that debt, if mere altruism does not ring true."

You think back to your meeting with Sidhe and Nadia, your plans to abandon this man before he can lead you too far into madness, and you swallow. You shouldn't feel guilty, you had good reasons for what you did and nothing has materially changed, and yet… you want to feel like you transgressed, like this man is worthy enough to make your doubts unfounded.

"It is… not a matter of debts tallied and owed," you say instead, shaking your head, the taste of your own pain hot upon the tongue, "It is a question of nature. I am a psyker, a freak, a tool to be used at best, and you… you are…"

"A weapon," Ciro says, and there is a solemn weight to his words that steals the breath from you. "You look at me and see an angel, a righteous servant gone astray, a symbol of imperial strength… but this is what you were taught to see. What I am, what I have always been, is a weapon."

He raises one arm, twists it so that the muscles bulge and flex with obscene might. "This flesh was forged as one would a blade. This mind was trained as one would a targeting matrix. This soul was shaped to find nothing more than ecstasy in the service of my master. The Imperium made my kind to fight its wars, and it keeps us isolated in moments of peace as a precaution against old sins wrought anew. No Astartes will rule over mortal men, though our minds be keener and our lives longer. None will speak with lords and tyrants as equals, though we are by any measure their better. None will walk the surface of an imperial world, bargain in its markets and revel with its people, though we could give them so much more."

He smiles then, a pearly white flash amid the gloom, and nods to you. "I broke free of that control, and learned to wield myself. You might too, given time and the strength to stand. Is it any wonder I should wish to stand at your side, instead of retreating back into the splendid isolation of our nature?"

"You speak as though we are equals," you hiss, and the hate in your heart makes your voice turn bitter, the outrageous deception poisoning everything you are, "yet your conduct speaks otherwise. You horde secrets, claim authority, reserve power. You think a few sweet words will make me forget that?"

There is silence in the sparring chamber for a time, Ciro staring you down with a quiet smile on his face and a storm in his slate grey eyes. You are intimately aware of his presence, in the sheer physicality of his bared flesh, of the ruinous power and glorious potential in those shining muscles, and it does not matter. Malfi was a cruel teacher, but you were a diligent student, and now you refuse to be swayed to this man's cause by a few words without substance or meaning.

"You speak of Karnak Zul," Ciro says at last, as though there could be any doubt, any other sin yet unresolved.

"Of course I do," you snarl, the sword singing a sweet melody in your hands, the screams wearing at the distant edges of your mind, "You went into seclusion with a daemon, Ciro! I don't know what it was you spoke of, what agreements you made, but that is poison beyond any cure that mere ideals can offer!"

"You heard it's whispers in your mind long before I," Ciro points out with faux reasonableness, "and you took its advice, let it guide your steps. Is your collusion to be forgiven, while mine is held as supreme treachery?"

"I'm not the one asking for trust," you shake your head, and in the back of your mind you have to wonder at the clumsy grasp of wit this man beyond men seems to employ. He is an angel in the flesh, humanity elevated in every way, yet now his words fall flat and his deeds condemn him. "Nor am I the one seizing power aboard this ship, or taking us headfirst into hell."

"Messia," Ciro says absently, and at your look of confusion continues, "The world of Messia is our destination, if Zul's glimpse into the immaterium is to be trusted. A rough world, rich in promethium and other minerals, and as such a nexus point for ships and warbands across the Vortex. We might find passage with any number of them, once rid of this hulk."

You stay silent, because nothing you say will matter. If Zul's glimpse is to be trusted… if the word and foresight of a daemon can be taken as reliable. As if that is even a question worth asking.

"Oh, but it is," Ciro says with a grin, answering the doubt in your eyes, "The daemon promised me much, and implied much more, but this is a simple matter. If we exit our jump and we are not where it predicted, then it has deceived me and will be destroyed. If we are at Messia… then there will be a choice to be made."

"It offered you a bargain," you say flatly, because you can already see where it is going, "Service for escape or the like, I imagine. What did you promise it, Ciro?"

"The Carrion Queen," Ciro says with a shrug, his broad shoulders rising and falling like a wave, "The daemon requires a new body, to replace its last one, burned as it is by the passage of centuries. So it says, at any rate. I had not yet decided if the bargain was worth keeping, and now it seems I have an alternative to consider."

He nods to you, and extends an open hand. "You wish to be treated as an equal, Vincenzo? Very well. Here is my offer - pledge your sword to my service, for one year and one day, as you might a lord on that poisonous world of yours. Do so and I shall destroy Karnak Zul this very day."

You swallow, blinking rapidly as the circumstances shift beneath your feet, as the world seems to tremble and even the screams of the damned seem to wait for your reply. "I… that is no light thing you ask, to be claimed for a single unlife."

A year and a day… how did he know to ask for such a thing? Malfi is no stranger to treachery, but there is a means and a meaning to such things, a proper etiquette to be observed. No man trusts another who would betray his master less than a year after entering his service, and no traitor so willing can count on living to enjoy his spoils. To even begin sounding out a potential convert before the term is up is considered gauche, and yet...

"Then name your terms, free man," the Astartes says, a challenging look in his grey eyes, "Strike a bargain worth more than a daemon's service, and set your limits appropriately."

Article:

Choose one. Note that Vincenzo is from a culture that prizes honour and the art of vendetta enough that it has formalised the rules of treachery - he won't willingly break any agreement he enters into, but is highly adept at exploiting technicalities and ambiguity.

[ ] Swear Fealty. For a year and a day you will serve Ciro as his sworn sword, trading loyalty for a daemon's life and taking comfort in the familiarity of an old role and the shelter of an angel's wing.
- [ ] Specify additional terms. (Optional write in)

[ ] Refuse the Pact. Angel though he may be, beautiful and strong, Ciro remains unworthy of your sword.
- [ ] Having rejected him, what do you do next? (Optional write-in)