A school for the cursed: A Psyker Quest. Warhammer 40k quest.

The following days are a blur of confusion for you. You are kept in the same sterile black room, occasionally plugged into machines that buzz and tick and give off a faint ozone smell. Constantly monitored by curious devices, you feel like someone's pet canid. Strange tools are waved in front of your face, and attached to your body through the implanted sockets in your wrists.

A large servitor in red robes, its face hidden beneath a hood and visible only through the many spider-like cybernetic eyes sweeps into the room, robes dragging along the floor. A swarm of mechadendrites like piranha eels swarms over your body, poking, prodding, and injecting you at places across your body.

The servitor examines your hands, eyes extending as he examines your nails. "They are filthy. Unacceptable. You shall be groomed." There is a whir as some sort of evil-looking cylinder emerges from the priest's robes and slides over your fingertips. Before you can complain, it retreats, revealing trimmed and cleaned nails.

You frown at just how clean your hands look. Nails perfectly trimmed, cleaned, even of the grime deep between the knuckles. "I look like you want to run my skin." You grumble.

The servitor stops. "Querry: I am unfamiliar with that term. Elaborate."

"You're no Servitor?" You ask it. "Or is the operator spreaking through the vox?"

It shows no sign of emotion. "Negative: I am a Genetor of the Adeptus Mechanicus, specialized in the maintenace and upkeep of high value Psykers, seconded to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. "

That's a lot of titles. You hold up your hands defensively "Never seen your like before, bud. First cog-lord I've seen. Honour to meet you. Name's Occam."

The cybernetic eyes blink at you. He blurts out something in binary so vile that you can see hints of it in the front of his mind. "Demand: Continue clarification of terminology."

The innocence of the Tech Priest surprises you. Were the priests right when they said the spire-dwellers had better 'moral virtues' than the hive dwellers? you shrug and try to explain. "Skin-trading is people giving the—" You make a very rude gesture involving a pumping balled fist and your open mouth. "behind the revel den."

The Tech Priest just glares at you. You try to justify your assumption. It was a normal one. "You're the one that said you were grooming me, milord." You say innocently.

The red eyes turn off as the Tech-Priest's social processes crash for long enough that you feel you should call someone. He shakes his head "Negative: You are not being sold into the sex trade." He prods you with a metal finger in the chest. "You are a Beta-Grade Psyker. An asset for the Omnissiah. That requires maintenance." He pauses. "Do you possess knowledge on using a hygiene cubicle?"

You nod. Finally something you do understand. "Sure. Back when I worked the factory, once a month we had to get sprayed with the hoses."

The Tech Priest very slowly explains the concept of showering using the hose in the Hygiene Chamber, and the cleaning unguents provided. And that you should try to do it every day. It sounds ridiculous.

After the shower, you're sprayed down with chemicals, and the Genetor shaves you bald using some form of a laser scalpel. It leaves your head bare but devoid of the itch that usually comes with shaving. But instead of your hair being used for practical purposes like being stuffed into pillows or woven into rope, one of the servitors shovels it into a chest-mounted incinerator.

What a waste of good thread.

"Naff." You mutter. "What about my hair?"

"The Oncocidal treatment you will receive will cause hair-loss. This is pre-emptive."

"What's an onco?" You ask.

The Tech Priest does not answer and just leaves.

Several days pass, marked by constant injections and medical examinations. Different coloured liquids are placed in the IV bag and you begin feeling slightly queasy from them. But you do not complain. It is very comfortable sleeping in a luxurious bed like this.

The servitors, their faces devoid of emotion, appear at set times three times a day to bring you trays of food and a plastek cup containing what they called "pills". You took them readily, eager for a high or a buzz, but found that nothing happened, much to your disappointment.

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On your sixth day, you do not wake up, instead falling into a deep dreamless slumber as the IV-drip is replaced as you sleep. Opioid slumber takes you, leaving you in an almost meditative state where hours pass in what feels like barely enough time to blink. The days pass quickly, marked by the sound of medical machinery, soft beeping, and the shuffling of Servitors.

When you finally wake, you feel awkward. Your skin feels tingly… different. You don't understand it fully. It looks different. Maybe due to all the showering. The clean medical room has been replaced by a small unadorned cell with a small bed, a hygiene stall, and a shrine to the God-Emperor. You spent several weeks there, recovering from whatever the Genetor has done to you. Time becomes hard to track.

The halls of the Keep are made of the same black marble that the walls of the medical room were, with occasional silver warding symbols carved into them. The scale is impressive, almost like the Temple to the God Emperor, but without the same lighting. You occasionally catch glimpses of other people when being marched from your room to the Medicae, where the Genetor continues his work.

Aldin is the only one to meet with you occasionally, speaking with you about the Adeptus Terra, the makeup of the Imperium, instructing you on the use of numbers and letters for the first month of your stay. You have been givena robe like him, only it is unadorned. The black cloth is somewhat coarse, but fits well. Better than anything you have worn.

He explains just what a Psyker is, how you aren't a 'Witch', but are instead a human born with a natural ability to reach into The Warp for energy. Although what that truly means, he neglects to explain. Food continues to be brought, and every week you go back to get treatments. There's even small pieces of cloned meat.

Aldin is patient, kind at times, as he explains the subjects in detail. You find yourself looking forward to his visits, to the occasional kindnesses he shows you. But he keeps you at a distance, refusing to chit-chat or getting too close. He is very reserved and seems dead-set on cramming information into you. In the end, you are told the mechanics of what being a Psyker involves, the grading system.

After a month, you are led past lines of trudging teenage acolytes that are bald and fitted with the same augmetics that you are. Some of them have visible wounds and replacement limbs. They look worse than you, wearing even simpler synth-cotton robes, and many being marked with tattoos and glyphs. A few give you quizzical looks. They follow lockstep behind instructors, with two Black Sentinels in front of the line and two in the back. Each of them carries a long lance with a tip that hurts your eyes to look at.

This is not the usual area of the Keep that he takes you.

As you see other people, the plugs in your neck and behind your ears begin to heat up. The feeling coincides with the sensation you have already come to associate with your mind-reading.

Aldin's voice echoes in your mind, it is harsh and serious. ++You can feel their minds.++

You answer verbally. Your dampeners continue to inhibit you. "It comes naturally, master. Their minds reach for me."

There is a pause before he answers. ++You subconsciously draw them in. Focus. Will yourself to stop drawing them in.++

When you will yourself to not listen, even though you do not feel like you are listening, the sensation stops.

At a silvered door marked with curious angular symbols, Aldin performs a series of small rituals to the Machine Spirit to open the doorway, leading you to a small room lit by a single sodium tube in the ceiling. There is a silver circular platform in the center with a large chair covered with symbols, and several machines standing around it. Two figures are standing next to the chair, older men, one with a cybernetic lower jaw, the other with mechanical eyes.

Aldin begins to speak, standing before you as you are strapped in. The plugs on your wrists and in your neck are removed and connected to the chair. As they are removed, you feel the power that you felt the day you Awakened. It is within reach, close enough to touch. But the depths of power from before are gone. Limited.

"Your flesh has been healed of harm and imperfections. Now your sanctioning can begin. Do you know what that means?"

"I will learn to control my powers, and wield them safely. I will be an asset to the Imperium."

Aldin gives you a pained look, one shared by the two other robed figures in the room. "Before you are Adept Edamantu, Epsilon-Grade Telepath, and Adept Adamak, Epsilon-Grade Biomancer. They will aid me in putting you to the test. We will prove wether or not you can be safely put aboard a Black Ship."

You blink. "The Sanctioning has not begun yet?" You begin to worry slightly. Your heart starts beating in your chest.

None of the Psykers laugh. Aldin shakes his head. "No. You have been prepared for them to begin. May the Emperor be with you, Acolyte Occam."

You immediately try to get out of the chair but the chair's straps tighten. You clutch the armrests tight. You feel -something- changing about your plugs. The other Psykers move on either side of you. Cold metal diodes are placed on your shaven head. Your power awakens and flows from you. The devices around the chair begin to hiss and spark.

The the two adepts each aims a hand at you.

You begin to scream.

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