I, Vermin: Aurora, a starving underhiver child, is guided by faith and a mysterious glowing figure from the safety of her tiny pipe to the halls of the Schola Progenium. Here she will have the chance she's always dreamed of, to serve the Emperor with a faith like her vanished mother's. But the faith Aurora grew up with does not seem to be the same faith that she finds in her classmates, friends, and mentors and the lessons she learns are perhaps not the ones the schola ever intended to teach her...
I, Vermin: An Original WH40K fiction
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I, Vermin: Introduction and Prologue
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Prologue: From Darkness to Light
"It's a simple question, even a child can answer!" The loud man's voice makes me want to cover my ears. He's big, with clothes that look like stiff boards with shiny pieces of metal on them and lots of words, nothing like Mama wears. His face is hard, like the walls of our home, and his voice is scarier than the noises at night.
He is a man. Mama says I'm supposed to hide from men. Mama says I'm not supposed to talk to men. Mama says men will hurt me, take me away. The room is bright, it hurts my eyes to open them, it hurts my head to look around. There is no hiding here, there is only walls, something hard off the ground that I'm forced to sit on, something taller like pipes with a flat top. There is no hiding here.
"Lay off, Harmon," the old lady, the long soft-looking clothes, whiter than anything in our shack. She stands behind me, she makes me feel safe, like mama, but she's not mama. "I've seen healthier plague victims than this child, look, you can count her ribs, she doesn't even have hair or eyebrows, she's no threat to anyone. I would fetch her a bowl of hot broth if I thought I could trust you not to accidently break her arm in my absence!"
"Clearly terrified, elevated heartrate, shock signs," a tall lady, covered in shiny metal kneels next to me, she's the biggest person I've ever seen. She's looking at my hand, she tried to take the Broken Guardian. I didn't let her. Now my hand hurts, it hurts a lot. But I can't pull it away from her. I don't want her to take him. "Little one, do you see me? Why is this so important to you?"
"She breached multiple security checkpoints, biometrics, standard locks-" the man is talking so fast that spit is erupting from his red face. It's scary, it's loud, I retreat, I hide, I'm in my pipe, my secret place, I'm safe, I'm warm, I'm…
Hungry
I tell my belly to be quiet. It's so loud, so loud it hurts all the way up to my ears. I can't stay….
I press my hands real tight over my tummy, trying to hush it up. It's yelling louder than ever, and Mama's not here to make it stop. I've been counting the sleeps since she left, more sleeps than ever before, and she's still not back. Mama always comes back.
I remember what Mama said, about staying hid until she's back. But my tummy's so loud, it's like it forgot Mama's rule. I look at the dark, trying to find the kind whispers in the pipe Mama says the Emperor sends to keep us safe. I use my fingers, the way Mama showed me, to talk to Him, 'cause talking out loud isn't safe. No lights, no sounds, that's how we stay hid. But even with my fingers moving, my tummy keeps yelling.
I try to be brave, like the stories Mama tells of heroes and the Emperor. But it's hard when your tummy's louder than your bravery. I think about what Mama would do. She'd say, "Aurora, the Emperor watches, even when it's dark, even when you're scared. He's watching over you."
I've been hiding for so many sleeps, more than ever. I can't feel my legs, the pipe hurts everywhere it touches me. The dark around me feels like a blanket, but it's not warm, not like Mama's hugs. I miss her. My tummy won't stop yelling, and I think maybe, just maybe, the Emperor would understand if I broke Mama's rule just this once.
I start to think about leaving my hidey-spot. Maybe I can find Mama, tell the Emperor with my fingers, "Please, bring Mama back." I'm scared, but the hunger's scarier. I've never left our shack, but Mama's not here, and my tummy's too loud.
I decide. I'm gonna find Mama. She's lost, maybe, and needs me to find her. I take the Broken Guardian, clutching him tight, 'cause he's got a piece of Mama with him, and I step out into the bigger world. It's so big, so scary, but I gotta find her. I gotta tell the Emperor it's too dark and too quiet without Mama.
"She probably crawled up through the sewers or—" the old lady is speaking again, her voice is like mama's it brings me back to the small bright room.
"Impossible," the big metal woman, she's pried my fingers open, she's looking at the Broken Guardian, but she isn't taking it. Her eyes, I can't stop looking at them. They're so big, so deep. She's making signs with her hand, the same signs I'm making. Is her mama lost too? "That's the sort of things you'd read about in fanciful fictions, abbess. Unless she got past our sentries and miles of servo skulls and combat servitors—"
"Security measure's I'm beginning to doubt," the loud man again, still loud. Are all men so loud? Mama says men are all bad and mean. I wish he would leave. I wish he would stop looking at me. "You were the one on the door when she apparently wandered into the service and walked right up to the aquila and—"
And he continues. I close my eyes, my hands signing faster. Maybe the Emperor is having trouble hearing me over the loud man's words.
Noise
Even my belly isn't as loud as the pipes. These aren't like my pipe, or the warm, quiet pipes that heat our home. These pipes are big, bigger than big. The emperor must have made them himself. Maybe he put them together when he made the metal walls, and the ceilings, and the floors, all so big I can't see where they stop or start. I wish he had made them to be quieter.
With the Broken Guardian clutched tight, I keep taking steps, whispering to the Emperor with my fingers to look after me. Mama says she works up high, closer to the Emperor, so I gotta go up. That's what I think as I look at the big, scary world. It's all shadows and sounds, things moving that I can't see. But I gotta find Mama.
I walk, trying to remember to be quiet, like the game Mama and I play, 'Silent Shadows.' Every step feels too loud, and I'm scared the bad things Mama talks about will hear me. But I keep going, 'cause Mama needs me.
The world outside is so different. The ground feels hard and cold, not like our floor with the warm pipe. And the lights, they're not like our soft glow from the cracks. They're too bright, they hurt my eyes. I keep looking up, 'cause Mama said she's up high, cleaning the Emperor's Shrine. I don't know what a shrine looks like, but I think it must be beautiful, with lots of lights and maybe it's warm, like our hidey-spot.
As I try to go up, everything's so big, the stairs seem to go on forever. My legs feel shaky, but I remember what Mama says about the Emperor giving us strength. So, I ask Him, with my fingers, to make my legs strong.
Then, I see her, the light woman. She's not like anyone I've ever seen. She glows, not like the wall spots, but soft, like she's made of the quiet light that comes into the cracks of our home. She doesn't talk, but she makes signs, like me. Her signs are like the ones I use with Mama, but they're also different, stronger, faster.
"Are you lost?" she signs, and her face is kind, not scary, it has lots of lines crisscrossing each other.
I nod, signing back, "Looking for Mama. She's up high, at the Emperor's Shrine." I don't tell her about the loud belly, but I think she knows. I clutch Broken Guardian tightly in my hand.
The light woman smiles, and it's like she knows exactly where Mama is. "I can help you find her," she signs. "Follow me."
I trust her. She reminds me of the stories Mama tells about angels, the Emperor's special helpers. We start moving, and even though I'm still scared, I feel a bit safer. She leads me through places I've never seen, places where the pipes disappear inside the walls, and the lights are brighter and different colors.
As we walk, I keep signing to the Emperor, thanking Him for sending me the light woman. I wonder if she's an angel. Mama says angels are the Emperor's messengers. Maybe she's here to take me to Mama.
We go through tunnels and up more stairs, and everything starts to look different, cleaner. "Is Mama here?" I sign, looking around for any sign of her.
The light woman nods, and we keep going.
"It doesn't matter!" I jump in my seat as the loud man slams his hand down on the flat metal on four pipes, it shakes, I shake. "She's obviously underhive scum that has no business on these hallowed grounds and—"
"Not so fast, Colonel," the metal woman stops holding open my hand and I grip the Broken Guardian tightly again, screwing my eyes shut and signing faster. "Well, isn't this remarkable, she's using battlesign, albeit a crude, archaic version." I don't hear, my tummy is getting loud again. "Emperor, please find my commander, please find my commander, please bring my commander here," the metal woman, she stops my hand, then I look.
"Can you speak to her? Perhaps she's a mute and deaf?" The warm woman, her hands have never left my shoulders. They feel like the light woman's hands, they tell me not to run.
"Ask her how she got in here!"
"Hush," the metal woman moves and her metal clothing makes strange noises and then the flat metal with four pipes is gone and she's sitting in front of me, level with my eyes. She takes my hand.
'Hello, little…' a word I don't know, she signs, 'how did you get here?'
I glance up at her eyes, I'm afraid but she knows my words, just like mama, just like the light woman…
The Light Woman
Following the light woman feels like I'm in one of Mama's stories, where the world's so big and full of things I've never seen. She holds my hand, and it feels warm, safe. We walk into a place with so many people, it's like when water drops leak from the floor pipes and they all rush together. My heart beats so loud, I'm sure the light woman can hear it.
Mama always said to stay away from others, especially men, 'cause they can be mean and take me away. But here, with all these people, nobody even looks at us. It's like we're invisible, or maybe the light woman knows how to walk so the Emperor hides us from their eyes.
We come to a thing Mama never told me about, a magic-lift, the light woman calls it. It's like a box that goes up and down, but it moves without anyone pushing it. My belly forgets to be loud for a moment 'cause I'm trying to understand how we're moving without walking. The light woman squeezes my hand, asking me to be brave without words, just a look. I nod, trying to show her I can be brave, even though I'm shaking.
Then we're on a magic-lev train, and it's like flying without wings. Outside rushes by in a blur, and I press close to the light woman, scared I might fall off the world. But she's steady, like the big pipes by our home that never move, no matter how hard the wind blows.
The streets are crowded, people everywhere, but they don't touch us, don't talk to us, they don't even look. It's noisy, but not like the pipes at home. This noise is made of voices, footsteps, things I don't have names for. I keep my eyes on the light woman, trying not to look too much at everything else. It's all so big, so loud, so fast. My head feels dizzy with all the new things.
But nobody stops us, nobody sees us, it's like we're walking in a little home made by the Emperor for just us. The light woman's hand is the only thing I'm sure of, it's my anchor in this storm of people and noise, light and sound.
I'm so hungry, but the hunger feels far away, like it's waiting for me to stop moving so it can catch up. I don't want it to catch up. I want to find Mama, tell her about the light woman, about the flying without wings, and how we were invisible.
I wonder if Mama will believe me. I wonder if the light woman will stay with us.
'The light woman brought me here to find my commander.' I sign and I hear the woman repeat my sign out loud.
"Light woman?" the hands on my shoulders are tighter than before as the soft woman grips me and leans around so that her hair drapes over the side of my head. I wish I had hair like her. Mama says one day I will grow hair too. I ask the Emperor for hair every night. "As in bright, or?"
"Battle-sign isn't exactly intended to convey complexity or nuance," the woman with the metal clothes stares above me and smiles. It makes me feel a little warmer. She must know where mama is. She looks a little like the light woman but much younger. The light woman must be her mother. This makes me feel much better, especially since the loud man stopped talking. "I'm fairly certain she doesn't mean, 'my commander' or 'my canoness' either."
"Well what does she mean!? Ask her how she got in here, and where this light woman is because that makes two people that slipped in, if we don't figure out where they're crawling out the the slums from we'll never get rid of the infestation. They're like rats, they breed like rats, they smell and look like rats, and I will not have rats in my Schola!" I screw my eyes shut again.
"Colonel, why don't you go organize some men to go search for rats." The soft lady behind me suggests. I wonder what rats are, they don't sound very nice. "Keep your commbead tuned to the Sororitas channel, we will advise you if we gain any intelligence from this small child."
The man's face does something unnatural looking and I know I'll be seeing his eyes in my sleep, glaring at me, bad, mean. I breathe out as he leaves.
'Where is the light woman now?'
The metal clothes woman and the soft woman follow me. I try to lead them to where the light woman took me, but my legs feel like they're made of the same stuff as the Broken Guardian—too heavy, too hard to move. I keep signing, trying to tell them about the light woman, about how she knew the way, but my fingers feel slow and clumsy.
The world starts to blur around the edges, like when Mama talks about the fog that used to roll in when she was little, before she had to come live down below in our home. I want to keep going, to show them the light woman and find Mama, but everything's getting too heavy.
Suddenly, I'm not standing anymore. The woman with metal clothes, Helena, she's got me in her arms. I didn't know people could be so strong. She's carrying me like I'm no heavier than the Broken Guardian, but much more careful, like she knows I'm not just a thing. I try to point, to tell her where to go, but my arm just falls back down.
We're back in the bright room with the high high ceiling and all its lights and the smell of burning stuff that tickles my nose. It's empty, quiet except for the sounds of our breathing and the smiles of all the big people in the shiny holes in the cieling. I point at one of the statues. I sign 'light woman,' hoping they'll understand. The statue looks so still, so peaceful, like the light woman when she smiled at me.
Helena and the soft woman look where I'm pointing, and I can tell they're trying to understand. My hands feel too tired to sign. I open my mouth, it must be ok, it's important they know. "Light, woman," I mumble through thin lips and slow tongue.
The statue's face is kind and strong, like the light woman, like how I imagine the Emperor's angels to be. "Canoness Jeanne Grace D'Emysa," the soft woman says, her voice like a lullaby. The soft woman, looks at the statue, then at me, her face all puzzled. Helena, she just watches me, her eyes kind behind the metal. I feel so tired, like all the sleeps I missed are catching up to me all at once.
As my eyes start to close, I see the light woman again, but she's not standing with us. She's up there, smiling down from the statue. I wonder, in my sleepy, fuzzy thoughts, how she got up there. How did the light woman become a statue? Is that what happens when you're really good, when you help lost kids find their way? Does the Emperor turn you into a statue so you can keep smiling down on everyone?
I can't keep my eyes open anymore, but I'm not scared. Helena's got me, and the soft woman's here, and the light woman's smiling down on us. Maybe Mama's smiling too, wherever she is. I hope she knows I tried to find her, that I was brave. And I hope the Emperor's watching, making sure we're all safe, just like Mama said He would.
Everything goes soft and quiet, and I drift off, still clutching the Broken Guardian, feeling like maybe, just for now, everything's okay.
Welcome to I, Vermin and the second book, I, Repentia.
If you've ever wanted to see Warhammer 40K through the eyes of a relatable character starting from childhood with significant plot, drama, twists, and multiple fleshed-out characters, then you're in the right place...
If you only read warhammer for the action... then you'll get some of that in the first book and a LOT more of it in the second
Feel free to comment, correct, and complain! (just not about the grammar/spelling it should be near perfect...)
This is... Warhammer, starting from the eyes of a 4 year old (don't worry, by the end of the book she'll be 10!)
-Rakashua
If you've ever wanted to see Warhammer 40K through the eyes of a relatable character starting from childhood with significant plot, drama, twists, and multiple fleshed-out characters, then you're in the right place...
If you only read warhammer for the action... then you'll get some of that in the first book and a LOT more of it in the second
Feel free to comment, correct, and complain! (just not about the grammar/spelling it should be near perfect...)
This is... Warhammer, starting from the eyes of a 4 year old (don't worry, by the end of the book she'll be 10!)
-Rakashua
Chapter 1: Trial of Faith
New
Chapter 1: Trial of Faith
The cold of the barracks floor seeps through the thin soles of my feet as I slip from the narrow bunk, my movement as quiet as the darkness that still clings to the corners of the room. Around me, the other bunks hold their silent occupants, their breaths shallow in the early morning chill. I pause, my hand finding the small, worn figure of the Broken Guardian in my pocket. The one-winged Aquila is a small comfort, a reminder of... something. Something warm in the cold, dark places of my past.
I climb. It takes an hour, my legs burn, but the journey is worth missing sleep and burning muscles.
I pad softly to the small space fifty stories above my bunk where the top of the building touches the outside of the tower and the horizon is more than just the nearest wall or building or hive spire.
I've claimed the little-used stairwell as my own for morning devotions, a corner where the light from the rising sun, hidden behind untold layers of pollution and industry but still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, touches the barracks. Here, I kneel, the cold stone of the floor biting into my knees, but I barely notice. My hands fold before me, the figure of the Broken Guardian and it's single wing clasped tightly between them.
"Emperor above," I begin signing as I speak, my voice a whisper, barely stirring the air. "Thank you for this new day. For letting me wake. For the breath in my lungs and the strength in my limbs." My words are a quiet, steady stream, a mantra against the darkness that lingers from my dreams, the memories of yesterday's torment, the anticipation of the torment to come.
I squeeze the figure tighter, my thoughts turning to the mother whose face is now a blur of memories that feel less solid each day. "Watch over her, wherever she is. She saved me, once, for five years. And then... then you sent the light woman." The memory of that encounter, so vivid even after two years and yet so strange, warms me from within, a beacon in the persistent shadow.
"Give me courage today," I continue, my voice steadier now. "Help me be brave, like the light woman. Like you." The words feel like a shield, warding off the unease that awaits with the day. These are my words, intimate words, for me and the Emperor alone. After them I begin whatever litany comes to mind and continue until I hear the sound of the bells that signal change of shift in the processing plant across from the Schola, miles of empty air carry the sound of relief that signals the end of toil for millions of men and woman, and the beginning of my torments…
Finishing my prayers, I carefully stand, my body stiff from the cold and the hard floor. By the time I make it back down, the barracks begin to stir, the dawn whispering through windows lit with false sunlight, urging the world to wake. I slip the Broken Guardian back into my pocket, its presence a silent promise.
Today, like every day, will be a challenge. But the Emperor watches over me. He has to. The thought is a small light as I ready myself for the day, for the trials and the sneers and the loneliness that await beyond the safety of this quiet corner.
It's in these moments, alone with my prayers and the burgeoning, red light of dawn, that I feel closest to something like peace. A fleeting, fragile thing, but mine all the same.
As I move to join the line for morning ablutions, I steel myself. Today, like every day, I will need to be brave. For the Emperor watches over all His children, even those born in shadow.
It's in these moments, amongst my peers and the synthetic dawn, that I feel a fragile connection to something greater. But that peace is always too fleeting.
I gather the large sack of clothes from the upper classmen as I've been tasked, a duty that sets my arms aching before the day has truly begun. These older girls, already walking their chosen paths towards greatness in His service, rarely acknowledge my existence beyond their expectations of servitude. To them, I am little more than a shadow, a part of the Schola's unseen machinery.
"The Emperor watches over all His children, even those born in shadow," I whisper.
The washroom is bustling with activity, the air thick with steam and the scent of lye soap. I join the other young females at the great basins, our hands plunging into the scalding water as we scrub and chant. The abbesses move among us like specters, their eyes sharp for any sign of faltering faith or flagging effort. We sing the hymns of battle and devotion, our voices rising in a cacophony of piety and pain.
My hands are red and raw by the time the task is done; the heavy sack now filled with clean, damp uniforms. The return to the barracks is a quiet trek, my thoughts preoccupied with the day's remaining duties and the dread of what new torments might await.
The horror strikes as I reach my bunk. The pocket where the Broken Guardian should be safe and secure is dreadfully, terrifyingly empty. Panic seizes me, a cold vice around my heart. I tear through my meager possessions, hope dying with each passing second. The Broken Guardian, my only connection to my mother, my faith, and my past, is gone.
Desperation lends speed to my search, but the barracks reveal nothing of the lost treasure. My chest tightens, breaths coming in short, sharp gasps. The idea of facing the day without it, without that small piece of security and memory, is unbearable.
It's more than the loss of a possession; it's as if a piece of my soul has been torn away. The Broken Guardian wasn't just a symbol of my faith; it was a beacon in the darkness, a reminder that even in the deepest shadows, the Emperor's light could find me. Without it, I feel untethered, adrift in a sea of uncertainty and fear.
The realization that it didn't simply fall or get misplaced dawns slowly, a sickening understanding that curdles in my stomach. There's only one way the Guardian could have vanished. Theft. And in the heart of the Schola, amongst the children of the Imperium's finest, there is one who would stoop to such cruelty for the sheer malice of it.
Lucius.
The bell tolls, a harsh, clanging monster that devours the last of my hope. Breakfast. The others begin to stir, a mass of limbs and muttered curses as the day grabs us by the scruff. I feel nothing but the burning anger and a terrible numbness, a paradox that makes my steps heavy and my heart light. I am a creature of dualities now, fueled by loss and the burning need for retribution.
The dining facility is a cacophony of voices, the clatter of utensils, and the smell of reconstituted protein. I scan the room with a predator's focus, and there he is—Lucius, the bane of my existence, the thief of my solace. He's laughing, surrounded by his usual retinue of sycophants and lackeys, basking in the dim glow of his own perceived superiority. My fingers clench into fists, nails digging into palms, a physical reminder of the pain I intend to inflict.
But before I can move, he's up and leaving, his gang trailing behind like the tail of a comet. I follow, a shadow fueled by vengeance. The garden of the scrum-ball pitch is their destination, a place of open skies and the illusion of freedom. They cluster together, a herd of Grox, unaware of the Rathenon stalking them.
As I step into the open, Lucius turns, a smirk playing on his lips. "Look, lads, it's the Emperor's little gutter rat. Come to pray at our feet, have you, little rat?" The others laugh, a chorus of mockery that grates against my resolve.
I feel the fury within me, a tempest built over years of abuses, spittings, beatings, slanders, that now threatens to break free. I am small, yes. I am young, true. But in this moment, I am the incarnation of the Emperor's wrath, and I will have my guardian back or die upon this field of battle. The concept of murder has failed utterly to forestall the purity of my focus.
They've gone too far this time, this time there is no silent endurance in the surety of His will, this time there is only His wrath!
Lucius seems to sense the change in me, the shift from the usual stoic timidity to a creature forged in the fires of absolute fury. He raises a hand, and the laughter dies. "Easy there, rat. Wouldn't want to scurry off too soon. Your precious little idol, it's up there." He gestures lazily to the ledge surrounding the pitch, fifty feet in the air. My heart lurches. The Broken Guardian, a silver glint against a poison sky, an aquila with one-wing, perched precariously, a victim of their cruel sport.
It's a ploy, clear as the Emperor's light. He seeks to disarm me, to distract from my murderous intent with the fear of losing the Guardian forever. And it works. The fury remains, but it's now laced with desperation verging on terror. I can't let it be lost. Not now. Not after everything.
"Emperor curse you, Lucius. Even for a dungheap-born cretin like you, this is low," I spit out, my voice, something I seldom use, a blade honed on the whetstone of hatred. But the reality of the situation and disuse of Lucious own weapon of choice leaves the words blunt and tepid in my ears.
"Ah, but what will you do, little rat? Climb up and get it? Or would you rather we knock it down, see if it can fly?" His tone is honeyed poison, his eyes alight with the thrill of the torment. He throws a stone which impacts the wall a scant meter from the Broken Guardian.
My eyes bulge in sudden panic and I rush forward without conscious thought. I glance up from the base of the wall. The climb is daunting, dangerous. The rock is rough-cut, pitted with age, but without obvious handholds. It's certain to be my own death this time, but the alternative is unthinkable. I don't turn to the jeers and hoots of Lucious and his pack. My eyes squeeze shut and I sign 'The Emperor protects all His children, even those born in shadow.' Then I throw myself at the wall.
Each grasp is a prayer, each breath a litany of courage. I begin to climb, not just for the Broken Guardian, but for myself. For my mother. For the light that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how deep the shadows. This will be the end, one way or another, I'll gouge out Lucious eyes with the Broken Guardian's one good wing and that will be the end of two years of torment or I will fall and that will be the end of eight years of suffering.
As I ascend, my fingers find holds in the smallest of crevices, my bare feet pushing off with a strength I didn't know I possessed. Blood runs down my arms as soft, red skin loosened by hours in the basins breaks and fingernails crack. Lucius's voice fades, replaced by the pounding of my heart and the whisper of a breeze that smells faintly of redemption or my own doom.
The ledge looms closer, and with it, the promise of reclaiming what was lost. I will not falter. I cannot.
My hand stretches, fingertips brushing a cold, unyielding surface, the lip of the ledge! Victory is a whisper away, a silent promise in the chill morning air. Then comes the shock—a harsh, biting sting as the first rock smashes into the wall beside me and shatters into a million tiny shards. My heart hammers, a wild drumbeat of panic and surprise, and my grip loosens, betrayal by my own body in the face of sudden assault.
Another rock, then another, a cruel volley from below, pummeling my feet, my legs, my back. Pain explodes in bright, stark flashes, driving my limbs from their precarious purchase. I'm left dangling, a puppet with its strings cut, suspended by a single hand whose fingers scream in agony, clinging to the last vestige of hope.
Below, Lucius stands, a triumphant grin splitting his face, a final stone cradled like a dark promise in his hand. Above, the Broken Guardian teeters on the edge of oblivion. The choice is a cruel one: reach for safety or for salvation.
Time stretches, a thin, taut line between moments. No visions grace my eyes, no ethereal whispers or comforting memories. There's only the cold, hard reality of choice and consequence. The Broken Guardian or myself. Faith or flesh. I choose the Guardian. In that choice, I embrace the fall.
My hand releases, stretching out with a faith born of desperation and love—a love for what the Guardian represents, for what I've lost, for what I refuse to lose again. My fingers close around the artifact, an instant of triumph, a fleeting touch of victory amidst the certainty of defeat.
And then, the fall. Time resumes its merciless march, gravity its inexorable pull. The ground rushes up to meet me, an unwelcome embrace. No divine intervention comes, no spectral hand to break my fall. There is only the ground, hard and unyielding, waiting to greet me with the finality of its embrace.
In that moment, suspended between sky and stone, I find a clarity. A peace. Not in the promise of salvation, but in the acceptance of sacrifice. For the Guardian. For my mother. For myself. I chose, and in choosing, I have lived a truth that burns brighter than the pain, more resolute than the darkness.
The impact is a silent explosion, a burst of light behind closed eyes, a final breath exhaled into the cold morning air. I have fallen, but not without cause. Not without faith. The Broken Guardian clutched in my hand, a pyrrhic victory, a testament to a belief stronger than fear, more enduring than flesh.
Lucius's laughter, the jeers of the others, fade into nothingness. There is only the silence, the stillness of a sacrifice made, a choice embraced. In the end, it's not the ground that greets me, but the conviction of my own heart, unbroken, even as the darkness claims me.
The cold of the barracks floor seeps through the thin soles of my feet as I slip from the narrow bunk, my movement as quiet as the darkness that still clings to the corners of the room. Around me, the other bunks hold their silent occupants, their breaths shallow in the early morning chill. I pause, my hand finding the small, worn figure of the Broken Guardian in my pocket. The one-winged Aquila is a small comfort, a reminder of... something. Something warm in the cold, dark places of my past.
I climb. It takes an hour, my legs burn, but the journey is worth missing sleep and burning muscles.
I pad softly to the small space fifty stories above my bunk where the top of the building touches the outside of the tower and the horizon is more than just the nearest wall or building or hive spire.
I've claimed the little-used stairwell as my own for morning devotions, a corner where the light from the rising sun, hidden behind untold layers of pollution and industry but still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, touches the barracks. Here, I kneel, the cold stone of the floor biting into my knees, but I barely notice. My hands fold before me, the figure of the Broken Guardian and it's single wing clasped tightly between them.
"Emperor above," I begin signing as I speak, my voice a whisper, barely stirring the air. "Thank you for this new day. For letting me wake. For the breath in my lungs and the strength in my limbs." My words are a quiet, steady stream, a mantra against the darkness that lingers from my dreams, the memories of yesterday's torment, the anticipation of the torment to come.
I squeeze the figure tighter, my thoughts turning to the mother whose face is now a blur of memories that feel less solid each day. "Watch over her, wherever she is. She saved me, once, for five years. And then... then you sent the light woman." The memory of that encounter, so vivid even after two years and yet so strange, warms me from within, a beacon in the persistent shadow.
"Give me courage today," I continue, my voice steadier now. "Help me be brave, like the light woman. Like you." The words feel like a shield, warding off the unease that awaits with the day. These are my words, intimate words, for me and the Emperor alone. After them I begin whatever litany comes to mind and continue until I hear the sound of the bells that signal change of shift in the processing plant across from the Schola, miles of empty air carry the sound of relief that signals the end of toil for millions of men and woman, and the beginning of my torments…
Finishing my prayers, I carefully stand, my body stiff from the cold and the hard floor. By the time I make it back down, the barracks begin to stir, the dawn whispering through windows lit with false sunlight, urging the world to wake. I slip the Broken Guardian back into my pocket, its presence a silent promise.
Today, like every day, will be a challenge. But the Emperor watches over me. He has to. The thought is a small light as I ready myself for the day, for the trials and the sneers and the loneliness that await beyond the safety of this quiet corner.
It's in these moments, alone with my prayers and the burgeoning, red light of dawn, that I feel closest to something like peace. A fleeting, fragile thing, but mine all the same.
As I move to join the line for morning ablutions, I steel myself. Today, like every day, I will need to be brave. For the Emperor watches over all His children, even those born in shadow.
It's in these moments, amongst my peers and the synthetic dawn, that I feel a fragile connection to something greater. But that peace is always too fleeting.
I gather the large sack of clothes from the upper classmen as I've been tasked, a duty that sets my arms aching before the day has truly begun. These older girls, already walking their chosen paths towards greatness in His service, rarely acknowledge my existence beyond their expectations of servitude. To them, I am little more than a shadow, a part of the Schola's unseen machinery.
"The Emperor watches over all His children, even those born in shadow," I whisper.
The washroom is bustling with activity, the air thick with steam and the scent of lye soap. I join the other young females at the great basins, our hands plunging into the scalding water as we scrub and chant. The abbesses move among us like specters, their eyes sharp for any sign of faltering faith or flagging effort. We sing the hymns of battle and devotion, our voices rising in a cacophony of piety and pain.
My hands are red and raw by the time the task is done; the heavy sack now filled with clean, damp uniforms. The return to the barracks is a quiet trek, my thoughts preoccupied with the day's remaining duties and the dread of what new torments might await.
The horror strikes as I reach my bunk. The pocket where the Broken Guardian should be safe and secure is dreadfully, terrifyingly empty. Panic seizes me, a cold vice around my heart. I tear through my meager possessions, hope dying with each passing second. The Broken Guardian, my only connection to my mother, my faith, and my past, is gone.
Desperation lends speed to my search, but the barracks reveal nothing of the lost treasure. My chest tightens, breaths coming in short, sharp gasps. The idea of facing the day without it, without that small piece of security and memory, is unbearable.
It's more than the loss of a possession; it's as if a piece of my soul has been torn away. The Broken Guardian wasn't just a symbol of my faith; it was a beacon in the darkness, a reminder that even in the deepest shadows, the Emperor's light could find me. Without it, I feel untethered, adrift in a sea of uncertainty and fear.
The realization that it didn't simply fall or get misplaced dawns slowly, a sickening understanding that curdles in my stomach. There's only one way the Guardian could have vanished. Theft. And in the heart of the Schola, amongst the children of the Imperium's finest, there is one who would stoop to such cruelty for the sheer malice of it.
Lucius.
The bell tolls, a harsh, clanging monster that devours the last of my hope. Breakfast. The others begin to stir, a mass of limbs and muttered curses as the day grabs us by the scruff. I feel nothing but the burning anger and a terrible numbness, a paradox that makes my steps heavy and my heart light. I am a creature of dualities now, fueled by loss and the burning need for retribution.
The dining facility is a cacophony of voices, the clatter of utensils, and the smell of reconstituted protein. I scan the room with a predator's focus, and there he is—Lucius, the bane of my existence, the thief of my solace. He's laughing, surrounded by his usual retinue of sycophants and lackeys, basking in the dim glow of his own perceived superiority. My fingers clench into fists, nails digging into palms, a physical reminder of the pain I intend to inflict.
But before I can move, he's up and leaving, his gang trailing behind like the tail of a comet. I follow, a shadow fueled by vengeance. The garden of the scrum-ball pitch is their destination, a place of open skies and the illusion of freedom. They cluster together, a herd of Grox, unaware of the Rathenon stalking them.
As I step into the open, Lucius turns, a smirk playing on his lips. "Look, lads, it's the Emperor's little gutter rat. Come to pray at our feet, have you, little rat?" The others laugh, a chorus of mockery that grates against my resolve.
I feel the fury within me, a tempest built over years of abuses, spittings, beatings, slanders, that now threatens to break free. I am small, yes. I am young, true. But in this moment, I am the incarnation of the Emperor's wrath, and I will have my guardian back or die upon this field of battle. The concept of murder has failed utterly to forestall the purity of my focus.
They've gone too far this time, this time there is no silent endurance in the surety of His will, this time there is only His wrath!
Lucius seems to sense the change in me, the shift from the usual stoic timidity to a creature forged in the fires of absolute fury. He raises a hand, and the laughter dies. "Easy there, rat. Wouldn't want to scurry off too soon. Your precious little idol, it's up there." He gestures lazily to the ledge surrounding the pitch, fifty feet in the air. My heart lurches. The Broken Guardian, a silver glint against a poison sky, an aquila with one-wing, perched precariously, a victim of their cruel sport.
It's a ploy, clear as the Emperor's light. He seeks to disarm me, to distract from my murderous intent with the fear of losing the Guardian forever. And it works. The fury remains, but it's now laced with desperation verging on terror. I can't let it be lost. Not now. Not after everything.
"Emperor curse you, Lucius. Even for a dungheap-born cretin like you, this is low," I spit out, my voice, something I seldom use, a blade honed on the whetstone of hatred. But the reality of the situation and disuse of Lucious own weapon of choice leaves the words blunt and tepid in my ears.
"Ah, but what will you do, little rat? Climb up and get it? Or would you rather we knock it down, see if it can fly?" His tone is honeyed poison, his eyes alight with the thrill of the torment. He throws a stone which impacts the wall a scant meter from the Broken Guardian.
My eyes bulge in sudden panic and I rush forward without conscious thought. I glance up from the base of the wall. The climb is daunting, dangerous. The rock is rough-cut, pitted with age, but without obvious handholds. It's certain to be my own death this time, but the alternative is unthinkable. I don't turn to the jeers and hoots of Lucious and his pack. My eyes squeeze shut and I sign 'The Emperor protects all His children, even those born in shadow.' Then I throw myself at the wall.
Each grasp is a prayer, each breath a litany of courage. I begin to climb, not just for the Broken Guardian, but for myself. For my mother. For the light that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how deep the shadows. This will be the end, one way or another, I'll gouge out Lucious eyes with the Broken Guardian's one good wing and that will be the end of two years of torment or I will fall and that will be the end of eight years of suffering.
As I ascend, my fingers find holds in the smallest of crevices, my bare feet pushing off with a strength I didn't know I possessed. Blood runs down my arms as soft, red skin loosened by hours in the basins breaks and fingernails crack. Lucius's voice fades, replaced by the pounding of my heart and the whisper of a breeze that smells faintly of redemption or my own doom.
The ledge looms closer, and with it, the promise of reclaiming what was lost. I will not falter. I cannot.
My hand stretches, fingertips brushing a cold, unyielding surface, the lip of the ledge! Victory is a whisper away, a silent promise in the chill morning air. Then comes the shock—a harsh, biting sting as the first rock smashes into the wall beside me and shatters into a million tiny shards. My heart hammers, a wild drumbeat of panic and surprise, and my grip loosens, betrayal by my own body in the face of sudden assault.
Another rock, then another, a cruel volley from below, pummeling my feet, my legs, my back. Pain explodes in bright, stark flashes, driving my limbs from their precarious purchase. I'm left dangling, a puppet with its strings cut, suspended by a single hand whose fingers scream in agony, clinging to the last vestige of hope.
Below, Lucius stands, a triumphant grin splitting his face, a final stone cradled like a dark promise in his hand. Above, the Broken Guardian teeters on the edge of oblivion. The choice is a cruel one: reach for safety or for salvation.
Time stretches, a thin, taut line between moments. No visions grace my eyes, no ethereal whispers or comforting memories. There's only the cold, hard reality of choice and consequence. The Broken Guardian or myself. Faith or flesh. I choose the Guardian. In that choice, I embrace the fall.
My hand releases, stretching out with a faith born of desperation and love—a love for what the Guardian represents, for what I've lost, for what I refuse to lose again. My fingers close around the artifact, an instant of triumph, a fleeting touch of victory amidst the certainty of defeat.
And then, the fall. Time resumes its merciless march, gravity its inexorable pull. The ground rushes up to meet me, an unwelcome embrace. No divine intervention comes, no spectral hand to break my fall. There is only the ground, hard and unyielding, waiting to greet me with the finality of its embrace.
In that moment, suspended between sky and stone, I find a clarity. A peace. Not in the promise of salvation, but in the acceptance of sacrifice. For the Guardian. For my mother. For myself. I chose, and in choosing, I have lived a truth that burns brighter than the pain, more resolute than the darkness.
The impact is a silent explosion, a burst of light behind closed eyes, a final breath exhaled into the cold morning air. I have fallen, but not without cause. Not without faith. The Broken Guardian clutched in my hand, a pyrrhic victory, a testament to a belief stronger than fear, more enduring than flesh.
Lucius's laughter, the jeers of the others, fade into nothingness. There is only the silence, the stillness of a sacrifice made, a choice embraced. In the end, it's not the ground that greets me, but the conviction of my own heart, unbroken, even as the darkness claims me.
Chapter 2: Broken Wings
New
Chapter 2: Broken Wings
Eyelids heavy as ceramite plates, I force them open against the glaring sterility of the medicae chamber. The light assaults me, too bright, too harsh, carving through the dim comfort of unconsciousness. The air reeks of disinfectant, a sharp, chemical scent that invades my nostrils, far removed from the stale, recycled air of the schola dorms. It's a clean, merciless smell, one that speaks of wounds scrubbed raw and the relentless pursuit of purity.
Pain greets me like a worn blanket, a familiar bedfellow made anew. It radiates from my left side, a chorus of agony wrought in bone and flesh, screams protest with every shallow breath. Yet, amidst this torment, my right hand grasps a truth, cold and solid—the Broken Guardian. It lies in my grip, and in that moment I feel relief and an acceptance of life that mirrored my acceptance of death when I released my grip and made my mad grab for it.
A laugh, bitter and choked, bubbles up from my throat, a dark mirth born of pain and the absurd realization of our shared fate. Broken, both of us, yet clinging to a stubborn existence in defiance of the fall.
The medicae center comes into sharper focus, its walls a blank canvas of white, oppressive in their unblemished expanse. Memories of this place flicker at the edge of my consciousness—memories from my early days at the schola, when I was more wraith than child, a spirit nursed back to the semblance of life.
"Survived, did we?" I rasp to the air, my voice a frail shadow amidst the clinical silence. The question hangs, suspended between jest and earnest. "Seems so," I whisper to the Guardian, acknowledging our mutual endurance. With that thought comes unbidden the obvious next ones that all come spilling out as my train of thought seems to have been sitting in the que for a while.
Will we survive the next time?
It will be worse next time, but how, when?
What could be worse than this?
The pain is a constant, a relentless tide that threatens to drag me under with each labored breath. Yet, in this moment of lucid agony, amidst the disorienting clarity of my senses, a grim acceptance settles over me.
I'm alive. A stark, unyielding fact.
I shouldn't be, I didn't expect to be, also facts.
Next time…
I shiver.
The realization doesn't come as a comfort but as a mere acknowledgment of the brutal truth. Alive, yes. But at what cost? The Broken Guardian in my hand serves not just as a symbol of survival, but as a reminder of the toll extracted, the scars earned in the pursuit of something beyond mere existence.
As the waves of pain ebb to tolerable levels, a shadow looms into my narrow field of vision—a figure swathed in the stark whites and reds of a novice Sister Hospitaller. Her face, young yet marked by a solemnity that belies her years, is framed by black hair cut short in the style of her order, her eyes a clear, unwavering brown that seems to pierce through the dimness of the medicae center.
"Valeria," I mumble out the name as I read the golden thread depicting her rank on the otherwise spotlessly white robe.
"Good morning, Aurora," she begins, her voice a gentle melody amidst the discordant chorus of my pain. "By the Emperor's grace you've come back to us." Her eyes meet mine with an empathy so palpable, it feels like a balm against the sharp edges of my pain. She moves with a precision that speaks of rigorous training, yet there's a softness to her, a kindness that seems out of place in the harshness of the sterile, cold medicae. "You must be brave, for I must tell you the extent of your injuries."
Her hands, encased in thin, sterile gloves, hover over me, hesitating as if the very air around my battered form is a sacred barrier. With a reverence reserved for the holiest of relics, she begins her ministrations, adjusting the drip of a painkiller with practiced ease as various apparatus whine and pump around me.
I try to focus on her words, to anchor myself in the reality she's painting with each careful sentence. The list of my injuries unfolds like a litany of battle scars: three broken ribs, a shattered arm, a shoulder wrenched from its socket. Each word is a hammer blow, yet her tone remains steady, infused with a warmth that seeks to soften the cruel edges of truth. Then the final truth, the measured cost of my decision, not death, but loss all the same, the overall irreparable state of my left arm.
"But the Emperor protects, Aurora," Valeria continues, her gaze never wavering from mine, a beacon of faith and calm in the bright, sterile gloom. "And with His blessing, you may yet be made whole, healing to a semi-useful state or submission for blessed augmentation and amputation." Her attempt at spiritual ministration is earnest, a balm meant to soothe the deeper wounds that flesh and bone cannot comprehend, but its bland, uncertain delivery is lost on my racing mind.
My left arm… my gaze swivels slowly to the broken guardian, resting in my functional hand, resting lopsided, missing its left wing.
I can't help it; a laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep inside, a reaction as unexpected to me as it is to her. It's not the humor of the situation that strikes me—it's the absurdity, the sheer, unadulterated madness of it all. Even if my survival was pure chance and had nothing of the Emperor's protection in it, then the coincidence of my broken form was the surest proof of His sense of humor. Broken Guardian in hand, broken body in bed, and here she is, speaking of blessings and healing as if my faith wavered on a knife's edge. As if news of this might convince me that the Emperor isn't powerful, good, and watching over us all.
"L-laughter is good medicine too, b-but we must be careful!" Valeria seems wrong-footed by my unexpected reaction.
Valeria's hands, steady when administering care, now tremble slightly as she reaches for a vial of sedative. "I-I'm going to give you something to help with the pain and... the laughter. We wouldn't want your injuries to worsen," she stammers, her voice betraying her uncertainty.
My laughter, though fading, still lingers in the air, a specter of defiance in the face of grim reality. "I'm not mad, Valeria," I manage between the tail ends of my amusement, seeing the concern etched deeply in her youthful features. "It's just... all of this," I gesture weakly with my right hand, encompassing the medicae bay, the Broken Guardian, and myself in one sweeping, albeit feeble, motion. "It's like a story from the saints, isn't it? Tested, but never forsaken. Broken but with some mark of the Emperor's light still shining through all the bad?"
Valeria pauses, the vial held uncertainly in her grasp. "You find faith... funny?" she probes, her brows knitting together in a mix of confusion and concern.
"Not faith," I clarify, still smiling faintly. "Just the situation. Me, with my broken wing, like my Guardian." The mention of the Broken Guardian threatens to drag me back into the throws of mirth.
Her hand steadies as she administers the sedative, a gentle press against my arm. "Tell me," she urges, her tone softer now, inviting confidences. "What happened to you, Aurora? Why were you climbing the wall?"
The sedative begins its work, drawing the edges of my pain and amusement into a gentle blur and suppressing my few social filters. "I was protecting Him," I say, my voice growing distant as the medication takes hold. "The Guardian. From Lucius." I should feel angry as I say the name but all I feel is a slight warming of my cheeks "Lucious, he wanted to... he stole it.... I couldn't let him… I couldn't lose it…" I managed to relate the whole story, at least I think I do, my mind is fuzzy but at least the pain is a tolerable throb that encompasses the left side of my body.
Valeria listens intently, her earlier hesitation giving way to a deep, genuine concern. "You stood up to Lucious and climbed a fifty-foot sheer wall... for a… a broken aquila?" she asks, her voice a whisper of curious awe and disbelief.
"For the Broken Guardian!" I correct her, "my guardian, my mother's guardian, all I have left of…" and then it all spills out, either the exhaustion or the sedatives and painkillers are to blame, but for the next few minutes I cover the poor novice in a deluge of my life's story from my earliest memory of home and the brick shrine, the Broken Guardian, to the light woman and the two years of constant lonely dedication to stoic faith and service broken up only by the daily torments of Lucious and his ilk, a single name and face that stands like a billboard for all the myriads of sneers, whispers, beatings, spittings, and scorn from upper classmen, faculty, and all quarters that have accompanied my rise from hive rat to schola student.
All of it culminates in the last act of bullying, of malice, that brought me here. There my voice fades, not willing to bear witness to the tightening in my gut over what escalation my living through this latest degradation will cause.
Through it all Valeria listens politely, nodding, not commenting, eyes wide as an existence she likely cannot even imagine plays out before her in the horror theater of my short, and quite nearly ended, life.
The silence that stretches between us after my tale feels like a chasm, wide and deep, filled with the echoes of my recounted sorrows. Valeria's face, etched with a kindness that seems almost foreign in its depth, struggles to bridge that gap with words that might soothe or mend. But what solace can be offered to a story such as mine?
I've risen to impossible heights, heights beyond imagination, beyond even foolish hope. Perhaps, they're right, all of them. Perhaps I've truly risen beyond where I belong. The Light Woman lead me here, but why? Perhaps…
A new thought forms in my mind, a mind that was never consulted in the path laid out for its life. Perhaps a student was not what I was meant to be…
She finally speaks, her voice a hesitant whisper against the magnitude of my despair. "The chief hospitaller will need to decide whether to try and preserve what's left of your arm or... to amputate and fit you with an augmetic."
Amputate.
The word echoes in the caverns of my mind, not with fear, but with a clarity that pierces the fog. Suddenly, in a way I can't understand but can only feel, a door of opportunity opens and the scales that, with very few encouraging exceptions, everyone seems to believe I've unbalanced, balance out. No more bullying. No more being told I don't belong but not having any alternative but to be where I am. No more pain. No more uncertainty about how to serve the Emperor.
A simple solution, and one that's already been made for me, a path I've already been placed on. I just have to have enough faith, to let it go and take this one, first, deciding step, before the same forces of the Imperium that pushed me up to schola student and held me there pull me down to the place where I can belong, can serve, can find peace.
"Amputate it," I find myself saying, my voice steady, even if my heart is not. "But no augmetic." Like the Broken Guardian, an aquila missing a wing… a sad smile graces my lips once more.
Valeria's confusion is palpable, a silent question hanging in the air between us. "But Aurora, an augmetic could restore so much of your functionality. You could return to your classes in just a few weeks or..."
"I know what I could," I cut her off, more sharply than I intend. My gaze drifts away from her, focusing on something beyond the walls of this medicae chamber, a future I'm hastily rewriting. They settle on a shadow silhouetted against the wall, the woman in metal, metal I now know to be power armor, probably not the same one, Helena. Tears sting my cheeks and I bite out the words. "But I also know what will happen if I go back. The next time... there might not be a next time. I've been wrong. I've thought all this time that it was a trial of faith to endure, to test me, to rise as none have. But that was arrogance, wasn't it? My life was given back to me and it took almost losing it to learn the lesson the Emperor wanted to teach me."
It's not a confession, not a surrender, not a defeat but to the reality of my existence, a reality ground in my face through a daily stream of abuses small and great. "All I've ever wanted was to serve, Him, like…" I can't bring myself to say it but my right-hand signs 'mama'. I continue, my gaze locked onto hers, willing her to understand.
I can see that she doesn't, that she can't fathom it. Forfeiture of my limb, my future as a student, my chance to be a hero of the imperium as so many from these halls have become in ages past.
But it's not forfeiture.
It's not losing.
It's finding. Finally finding the place the Emperor made for me all along, and finally ridding myself of the pride that made me think I was worthy of being a hero after being born… as Lucious so often put it, vermin.
I give Valeria a steady stare. "If losing an arm means I find my place, even if it's just as a menial dusting the shrines and scrubbing the floors, then that's more than I ever had any right to hope for."
The silence that follows is heavy, a chasm, deep and wide, filled with experiences so different that it's clear Valeria is struggling to reach me on the other side of it. Valeria's hand, when it reaches out to touch the Broken Guardian in my grip, is gentle, her touch a benediction.
She turns her head and I perceive the smallest of nods at the edge of my peripheral vision, a unseen approval of an unknown observer.
"There's honor in all forms of service, Aurora," she says, her voice soft, a balm to my frayed edges, bridging a gap by means of the same simple faith that brought me out of squalor and threw me from a ledge. "In your sacrifice, you embody the spirit of the Emperor's teachings more than you know."
They're kind words, kindly spoken. But the truth isn't as black and white, even in my drug-addled mind.
Is it giving up?
Am I giving in?
Is this faith, or fear…
My grip on the Broken Guardian tightens. It burns in my hand as though indignant in my choice, but that's just the drugs, and my own pride burning away, I tell myself.
I ignore it.
Some things are just expecting too much, and this life was never meant to be mine. Greatness was never meant for me. I'm no hero.
Mama, she was a hero, my hero. Mama worked all her life in the service of the Emperor and she was the least of all. So perhaps I am a hero too, in my own way, following in her footsteps. I find, for the first time, great peace in that moment. Being like mama, service, no matter how humble, fulfilled with faith, contentment, peace.
That peace is turned to turmoil just as quickly as it arrived as my mind drifts in a sea of sedatives and painkillers as I feel consciousness slipping back out of reach.
The peace of the moment is chased away by a single stray thought as I drift between the sleeping and waking world.
I wonder, what the Light Woman would think of my choice.
The thought brings no peace to my feverish dreams.
Eyelids heavy as ceramite plates, I force them open against the glaring sterility of the medicae chamber. The light assaults me, too bright, too harsh, carving through the dim comfort of unconsciousness. The air reeks of disinfectant, a sharp, chemical scent that invades my nostrils, far removed from the stale, recycled air of the schola dorms. It's a clean, merciless smell, one that speaks of wounds scrubbed raw and the relentless pursuit of purity.
Pain greets me like a worn blanket, a familiar bedfellow made anew. It radiates from my left side, a chorus of agony wrought in bone and flesh, screams protest with every shallow breath. Yet, amidst this torment, my right hand grasps a truth, cold and solid—the Broken Guardian. It lies in my grip, and in that moment I feel relief and an acceptance of life that mirrored my acceptance of death when I released my grip and made my mad grab for it.
A laugh, bitter and choked, bubbles up from my throat, a dark mirth born of pain and the absurd realization of our shared fate. Broken, both of us, yet clinging to a stubborn existence in defiance of the fall.
The medicae center comes into sharper focus, its walls a blank canvas of white, oppressive in their unblemished expanse. Memories of this place flicker at the edge of my consciousness—memories from my early days at the schola, when I was more wraith than child, a spirit nursed back to the semblance of life.
"Survived, did we?" I rasp to the air, my voice a frail shadow amidst the clinical silence. The question hangs, suspended between jest and earnest. "Seems so," I whisper to the Guardian, acknowledging our mutual endurance. With that thought comes unbidden the obvious next ones that all come spilling out as my train of thought seems to have been sitting in the que for a while.
Will we survive the next time?
It will be worse next time, but how, when?
What could be worse than this?
The pain is a constant, a relentless tide that threatens to drag me under with each labored breath. Yet, in this moment of lucid agony, amidst the disorienting clarity of my senses, a grim acceptance settles over me.
I'm alive. A stark, unyielding fact.
I shouldn't be, I didn't expect to be, also facts.
Next time…
I shiver.
The realization doesn't come as a comfort but as a mere acknowledgment of the brutal truth. Alive, yes. But at what cost? The Broken Guardian in my hand serves not just as a symbol of survival, but as a reminder of the toll extracted, the scars earned in the pursuit of something beyond mere existence.
As the waves of pain ebb to tolerable levels, a shadow looms into my narrow field of vision—a figure swathed in the stark whites and reds of a novice Sister Hospitaller. Her face, young yet marked by a solemnity that belies her years, is framed by black hair cut short in the style of her order, her eyes a clear, unwavering brown that seems to pierce through the dimness of the medicae center.
"Valeria," I mumble out the name as I read the golden thread depicting her rank on the otherwise spotlessly white robe.
"Good morning, Aurora," she begins, her voice a gentle melody amidst the discordant chorus of my pain. "By the Emperor's grace you've come back to us." Her eyes meet mine with an empathy so palpable, it feels like a balm against the sharp edges of my pain. She moves with a precision that speaks of rigorous training, yet there's a softness to her, a kindness that seems out of place in the harshness of the sterile, cold medicae. "You must be brave, for I must tell you the extent of your injuries."
Her hands, encased in thin, sterile gloves, hover over me, hesitating as if the very air around my battered form is a sacred barrier. With a reverence reserved for the holiest of relics, she begins her ministrations, adjusting the drip of a painkiller with practiced ease as various apparatus whine and pump around me.
I try to focus on her words, to anchor myself in the reality she's painting with each careful sentence. The list of my injuries unfolds like a litany of battle scars: three broken ribs, a shattered arm, a shoulder wrenched from its socket. Each word is a hammer blow, yet her tone remains steady, infused with a warmth that seeks to soften the cruel edges of truth. Then the final truth, the measured cost of my decision, not death, but loss all the same, the overall irreparable state of my left arm.
"But the Emperor protects, Aurora," Valeria continues, her gaze never wavering from mine, a beacon of faith and calm in the bright, sterile gloom. "And with His blessing, you may yet be made whole, healing to a semi-useful state or submission for blessed augmentation and amputation." Her attempt at spiritual ministration is earnest, a balm meant to soothe the deeper wounds that flesh and bone cannot comprehend, but its bland, uncertain delivery is lost on my racing mind.
My left arm… my gaze swivels slowly to the broken guardian, resting in my functional hand, resting lopsided, missing its left wing.
I can't help it; a laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep inside, a reaction as unexpected to me as it is to her. It's not the humor of the situation that strikes me—it's the absurdity, the sheer, unadulterated madness of it all. Even if my survival was pure chance and had nothing of the Emperor's protection in it, then the coincidence of my broken form was the surest proof of His sense of humor. Broken Guardian in hand, broken body in bed, and here she is, speaking of blessings and healing as if my faith wavered on a knife's edge. As if news of this might convince me that the Emperor isn't powerful, good, and watching over us all.
"L-laughter is good medicine too, b-but we must be careful!" Valeria seems wrong-footed by my unexpected reaction.
Valeria's hands, steady when administering care, now tremble slightly as she reaches for a vial of sedative. "I-I'm going to give you something to help with the pain and... the laughter. We wouldn't want your injuries to worsen," she stammers, her voice betraying her uncertainty.
My laughter, though fading, still lingers in the air, a specter of defiance in the face of grim reality. "I'm not mad, Valeria," I manage between the tail ends of my amusement, seeing the concern etched deeply in her youthful features. "It's just... all of this," I gesture weakly with my right hand, encompassing the medicae bay, the Broken Guardian, and myself in one sweeping, albeit feeble, motion. "It's like a story from the saints, isn't it? Tested, but never forsaken. Broken but with some mark of the Emperor's light still shining through all the bad?"
Valeria pauses, the vial held uncertainly in her grasp. "You find faith... funny?" she probes, her brows knitting together in a mix of confusion and concern.
"Not faith," I clarify, still smiling faintly. "Just the situation. Me, with my broken wing, like my Guardian." The mention of the Broken Guardian threatens to drag me back into the throws of mirth.
Her hand steadies as she administers the sedative, a gentle press against my arm. "Tell me," she urges, her tone softer now, inviting confidences. "What happened to you, Aurora? Why were you climbing the wall?"
The sedative begins its work, drawing the edges of my pain and amusement into a gentle blur and suppressing my few social filters. "I was protecting Him," I say, my voice growing distant as the medication takes hold. "The Guardian. From Lucius." I should feel angry as I say the name but all I feel is a slight warming of my cheeks "Lucious, he wanted to... he stole it.... I couldn't let him… I couldn't lose it…" I managed to relate the whole story, at least I think I do, my mind is fuzzy but at least the pain is a tolerable throb that encompasses the left side of my body.
Valeria listens intently, her earlier hesitation giving way to a deep, genuine concern. "You stood up to Lucious and climbed a fifty-foot sheer wall... for a… a broken aquila?" she asks, her voice a whisper of curious awe and disbelief.
"For the Broken Guardian!" I correct her, "my guardian, my mother's guardian, all I have left of…" and then it all spills out, either the exhaustion or the sedatives and painkillers are to blame, but for the next few minutes I cover the poor novice in a deluge of my life's story from my earliest memory of home and the brick shrine, the Broken Guardian, to the light woman and the two years of constant lonely dedication to stoic faith and service broken up only by the daily torments of Lucious and his ilk, a single name and face that stands like a billboard for all the myriads of sneers, whispers, beatings, spittings, and scorn from upper classmen, faculty, and all quarters that have accompanied my rise from hive rat to schola student.
All of it culminates in the last act of bullying, of malice, that brought me here. There my voice fades, not willing to bear witness to the tightening in my gut over what escalation my living through this latest degradation will cause.
Through it all Valeria listens politely, nodding, not commenting, eyes wide as an existence she likely cannot even imagine plays out before her in the horror theater of my short, and quite nearly ended, life.
The silence that stretches between us after my tale feels like a chasm, wide and deep, filled with the echoes of my recounted sorrows. Valeria's face, etched with a kindness that seems almost foreign in its depth, struggles to bridge that gap with words that might soothe or mend. But what solace can be offered to a story such as mine?
I've risen to impossible heights, heights beyond imagination, beyond even foolish hope. Perhaps, they're right, all of them. Perhaps I've truly risen beyond where I belong. The Light Woman lead me here, but why? Perhaps…
A new thought forms in my mind, a mind that was never consulted in the path laid out for its life. Perhaps a student was not what I was meant to be…
She finally speaks, her voice a hesitant whisper against the magnitude of my despair. "The chief hospitaller will need to decide whether to try and preserve what's left of your arm or... to amputate and fit you with an augmetic."
Amputate.
The word echoes in the caverns of my mind, not with fear, but with a clarity that pierces the fog. Suddenly, in a way I can't understand but can only feel, a door of opportunity opens and the scales that, with very few encouraging exceptions, everyone seems to believe I've unbalanced, balance out. No more bullying. No more being told I don't belong but not having any alternative but to be where I am. No more pain. No more uncertainty about how to serve the Emperor.
A simple solution, and one that's already been made for me, a path I've already been placed on. I just have to have enough faith, to let it go and take this one, first, deciding step, before the same forces of the Imperium that pushed me up to schola student and held me there pull me down to the place where I can belong, can serve, can find peace.
"Amputate it," I find myself saying, my voice steady, even if my heart is not. "But no augmetic." Like the Broken Guardian, an aquila missing a wing… a sad smile graces my lips once more.
Valeria's confusion is palpable, a silent question hanging in the air between us. "But Aurora, an augmetic could restore so much of your functionality. You could return to your classes in just a few weeks or..."
"I know what I could," I cut her off, more sharply than I intend. My gaze drifts away from her, focusing on something beyond the walls of this medicae chamber, a future I'm hastily rewriting. They settle on a shadow silhouetted against the wall, the woman in metal, metal I now know to be power armor, probably not the same one, Helena. Tears sting my cheeks and I bite out the words. "But I also know what will happen if I go back. The next time... there might not be a next time. I've been wrong. I've thought all this time that it was a trial of faith to endure, to test me, to rise as none have. But that was arrogance, wasn't it? My life was given back to me and it took almost losing it to learn the lesson the Emperor wanted to teach me."
It's not a confession, not a surrender, not a defeat but to the reality of my existence, a reality ground in my face through a daily stream of abuses small and great. "All I've ever wanted was to serve, Him, like…" I can't bring myself to say it but my right-hand signs 'mama'. I continue, my gaze locked onto hers, willing her to understand.
I can see that she doesn't, that she can't fathom it. Forfeiture of my limb, my future as a student, my chance to be a hero of the imperium as so many from these halls have become in ages past.
But it's not forfeiture.
It's not losing.
It's finding. Finally finding the place the Emperor made for me all along, and finally ridding myself of the pride that made me think I was worthy of being a hero after being born… as Lucious so often put it, vermin.
I give Valeria a steady stare. "If losing an arm means I find my place, even if it's just as a menial dusting the shrines and scrubbing the floors, then that's more than I ever had any right to hope for."
The silence that follows is heavy, a chasm, deep and wide, filled with experiences so different that it's clear Valeria is struggling to reach me on the other side of it. Valeria's hand, when it reaches out to touch the Broken Guardian in my grip, is gentle, her touch a benediction.
She turns her head and I perceive the smallest of nods at the edge of my peripheral vision, a unseen approval of an unknown observer.
"There's honor in all forms of service, Aurora," she says, her voice soft, a balm to my frayed edges, bridging a gap by means of the same simple faith that brought me out of squalor and threw me from a ledge. "In your sacrifice, you embody the spirit of the Emperor's teachings more than you know."
They're kind words, kindly spoken. But the truth isn't as black and white, even in my drug-addled mind.
Is it giving up?
Am I giving in?
Is this faith, or fear…
My grip on the Broken Guardian tightens. It burns in my hand as though indignant in my choice, but that's just the drugs, and my own pride burning away, I tell myself.
I ignore it.
Some things are just expecting too much, and this life was never meant to be mine. Greatness was never meant for me. I'm no hero.
Mama, she was a hero, my hero. Mama worked all her life in the service of the Emperor and she was the least of all. So perhaps I am a hero too, in my own way, following in her footsteps. I find, for the first time, great peace in that moment. Being like mama, service, no matter how humble, fulfilled with faith, contentment, peace.
That peace is turned to turmoil just as quickly as it arrived as my mind drifts in a sea of sedatives and painkillers as I feel consciousness slipping back out of reach.
The peace of the moment is chased away by a single stray thought as I drift between the sleeping and waking world.
I wonder, what the Light Woman would think of my choice.
The thought brings no peace to my feverish dreams.
Chapter 2.5: I, Broken; Once Seraphim (Helena's POV)
New
Chapter 2.5: I, Broken; Once Seraphim (Helena's POV)
The battlefield is a maelstrom of fire and smoke, the deafening roar of artillery mingling with the guttural bellows of the Ork horde. My jump pack thrums against my back, its sacred machine spirit eager for the fray. The scent of promethium and scorched metal fills the air—a familiar aroma that steels my resolve.
"Canoness Commander Helena, enemy lines ahead," voxes Sister Miriam, her voice steady despite the chaos.
"Maintain formation," I command. "By the Emperor's grace, we shall be His wrath incarnate."
"Ave Imperator!" my Seraphim sisters respond in unison.
"For the Emperor!" I respond in kind.
We soar above the churned earth, a flock of avenging angels descending upon the greenskin menace. Below, the Imperial Guard fights valiantly, but even with the support of the rest of my company, they're being overwhelmed. It's up to us to turn the tide.
The Warboss looms ahead—a monstrosity of muscle and metal, standing three times the height of a man. His armor is a patchwork of stolen plates, adorned with grisly trophies. A crackling forcefield shimmers around him, distorting the air. His red eyes lock onto me, and a predatory grin splits his grotesque features.
"Seraphim, engage the Nobz," I order. "Draw them away from the Warboss!"
"Understood, Canoness Commander," Sister Miriam replies.
My Seraphim peel off, dive-bombing into the clusters of Nobz. Bolt pistols and inferno pistols unleash holy wrath, explosions of light and sound that momentarily stem the green tide. I catch glimpses of them weaving through enemy fire, their movements precise, lethal.
I fix my gaze on the Warboss. His red eyes lock onto mine, and he lets out a rumbling laugh.
"Come ta play, little 'umie?" he taunts, hefting a massive chain axe that crackles with raw energy.
"In the Emperor's name, I bring you death," I declare, squeezing the triggers of my hand flamers.
Twin jets of blessed promethium stream forth, washing over his force field. The flames cascade harmlessly off the shimmering barrier, dissipating into the air.
He laughs, a guttural sound that reverberates through the battlefield. "Ya gonna ave ta do better dan dat, litta byrd!"
I grit my teeth. "As you wish."
He lunges forward, swinging the chain axe in a wide, high arc. I twist mid-air, the axe's teeth snarling inches from my armor. The force of his swing creates a gust that buffets me, but I hold firm.
Assessing quickly, I realize the flamers are ineffective against his shield. I veer to the side, narrowly avoiding a second sweep of his chain axe. The whirring teeth of the weapon slice through the space I occupied moments before. I ascend sharply, gaining altitude.
I holster my flamers smoothly and draw my bolt pistols. Circling above him, I unleash a relentless barrage. Explosive rounds detonate against the force field, each impact sending ripples across its surface.
"Emperor guide my aim," I whisper.
The explosive projectiles detonate against his forcefield in rapid succession, bursts of light and shrapnel that obscure his vision. The field flickers, straining under the assault. "Let's see how you handle this," I murmur, emptying the clips.
The Warboss staggers slightly under the onslaught, raising a massive arm to shield his eyes. Seizing the moment, I reload with practiced efficiency and dive toward him, angling for a flanking position. I fire continuously, the recoil jolting up my arms. The last of my clips empty into the barrier, and with a final surge, it collapses.
"Now," I breathe.
I holster the pistols and draw my flamers once more. Descending through the smoke, I aim for his exposed form, flames roaring from my weapons. The air around us turns into an inferno, the heat searing even through my armor's insulation. The ground beneath him scorches black.
But as I close in, a glint catches my eye—a split-second warning. Too late.
From within the billowing smoke, his whip lashes out with impossible speed. It coils around my left ankle, the barbed edges biting into the ceramite. Agony lances up my leg as an electric discharge courses through me. My jump pack sputters, the blessed machinery faltering.
"No!" I gasp, kicking at the whip, but his grip is unyielding.
With a triumphant roar, the Warboss heaves. I'm ripped from the sky, the ground rushing up to meet me. I brace for impact, but nothing can prepare me for the force with which he slams me down.
The world explodes in pain. Agony radiates from my spine, a cold numbness spreading down my legs. My vision swims, the edges darkening. I try to move—nothing. My legs are unresponsive. Panic claws at the edges of my mind.
"Emperor preserve me," I whisper, a tremor in my voice.
Flat on my back, I stare up at the polluted sky, smoke and ash blotting out the weak sun. The sounds of battle fade, replaced by the pounding of my own heartbeat. Fear claws at the edges of my mind—a fear I've never allowed myself to feel.
Paralyzed. Vulnerable.
This cannot be.
I force myself to focus, to push past the terror. My sisters—where are they? I catch glimpses of them in the distance, locked in fierce combat with the Nobz. They're outnumbered but unyielding, fighting with the ferocity of the righteous. Sister Miriam darts between Nobz, her inferno pistols reducing them to ash. But they've exposed themselves to create this opening for me and the tide is closing in. I need to help them, but I'm powerless.
A shadow falls over me. The Warboss looms, his grotesque features twisted into a gleeful sneer.
"Not so tough now, are ya?" he mocks, spittle flying from his tusked mouth.
He reaches down, massive fingers closing around my helm. The pressure builds as he starts to squeeze, the visor cracking under the strain. Lights flare behind my eyes as the strain mounts.
I can't let it end like this.
Summoning every ounce of strength, I raise my arms—each movement a searing agony—and press the barrels of my flamers against his face.
"Burn," I hiss.
I depress the triggers. Flames erupt, engulfing his head in a torrent of holy fire. He howls, a guttural scream that rattles my bones. His grip loosens slightly.
"Ya stinkin' witch!" he bellows.
"Burn, Xeno!" I shout, pouring every ounce of fury into the attack.
He releases my helmet, but his hands shoot down to my wrists, encasing them in a vice-like grip. He pulls my arms outward, attempting to wrench the flamers away. I twist my wrists, keeping the nozzles trained on him. The heat is intense; warnings scream in my helm about temperature overloads.
His flesh melts, the stench of burning meat filling the air. Yet he doesn't relent. With a surge of brute strength, he begins to pull.
I feel the tendons stretch, muscles tearing. Pain unlike anything I've known rips through me. I scream—a raw, primal sound torn from the depths of my being.
"Let go!" he roars, his voice muffled by the flames.
I won't. I can't.
The servos in my armor strain, alarms blaring as systems overload. Metal groans, and with a sickening snap, my left arm gives way. Blood sprays, hot against the cold numbness spreading through me. A scream tears from my throat—a sound I didn't know I could make.
He laughs, a choked, gurgling sound emanating through boiled lips and flash-fried larynx.
He turns his focus to the right. The process repeats—each second an eternity of excruciating torment. My vision dims, darkness encroaching at the edges.
With a final, wrenching pull, he tears my right arm free as well. I collapse to the ground, a broken husk. The world tilts, sounds fading into an indistinct murmur.
I see the Warboss stumble backward, flames still consuming him. He falls, the ground shaking with the impact.
"Canoness!" a distant voice cries. Sister Miriam? The sounds of battle grow distant, replaced by an all-consuming silence.
Cold seeps into me. I stare up at the choked sky, the smoke spiraling into the void. No feeling in my legs. No arms. Just the weight of failure pressing down.
"Emperor... forgive me," I whisper.
Darkness closes in.
I bolt upright, gasping for air, the echoes of my own scream fading into the oppressive silence of my chamber. Sweat beads on my forehead, a cold sheen that does nothing to dispel the lingering heat of phantom flames. My heart pounds against my ribcage like a caged beast.
Another nightmare. The same one, again. No amount of prayer or penance seems to banish it. Even after all these years, after regaining the use of my legs, after mastering my augmetic arms, the past refuses to release its grip on me.
I draw my knees to my chest, wrapping my mechanical fingers around them. The metal is cool, unyielding—an anchor to the present. Tears blur my vision, and I let them fall. Here, alone in the predawn darkness, I allow myself this small weakness. The sobs come quietly at first, then wrack my body with a force that surprises me.
"Emperor, grant me strength," I whisper into the void.
Minutes pass—or perhaps hours. Time loses meaning in these solitary moments. Eventually, the storm within me subsides. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, the motion almost human despite the synthetic touch. Composure returns like a well-worn habit.
Rising from the bed, I move with practiced efficiency. There's no point in attempting more sleep tonight. I wash quickly, the icy water shocking but necessary. My reflection in the polished steel mirror reveals nothing out of place—no sign of the turmoil within.
Donning my robes, I ensure every fold is immaculate, every insignia of the Schola, the Sisterhood, the Ecclesiarchy perfectly aligned. The armor plates on my shoulders catch the dim light, the symbols of the Order of the Sanctified Shield etched deeply into them. I fasten them with care, each click of the clasps a familiar ritual.
The corridors of the Schola are silent at this hour, the stillness broken only by the distant hum of machinery and the soft whisper of my footsteps. The air is cool, carrying the faint scent of incense and metal. Unbidden, my path leads me toward the Mechanicus quarter—a place I've frequented in these sleepless hours.
The grand archway marking the entrance looms before me, adorned with the cog-toothed skull of the Omnissiah. As I approach, a servo-skull detaches from its niche, hovering before me. Its ocular lenses focus with a soft whirring sound. It opens the door and follows me as I walk with slow reverence through the expansive halls. I approach another archway only slightly less grand than the main and the skull hovers down in front of me at eye level.
"Access restricted. Magos Biologis Harspes is currently occupied," it intones in a metallic voice devoid of inflection.
"I seek audience," I reply calmly.
I present my right hand, the back of which bears a nanoscript sigil—a personal mark inscribed by Harspes himself. The servo-skull scans it, beams of red light playing over the intricate patterns. A moment passes, then another.
"Identity confirmed. Sister Helena. Access granted."
The heavy doors slide open with a hiss, revealing the dimly lit passage beyond. I step inside, the atmosphere shifting instantly. The air here is cooler, drier—the scent of sacred unguents mingling with the ozone tang of active machinery.
Navigating the labyrinthine corridors, I make my way deeper into the sanctum. Conduits and data lines crisscross the walls, pulsing with arcane energies. The silence here is different—alive with the subsonic thrum of the Mechanicus's ceaseless workings.
I reach the entrance to Harspes's personal chambers—a reinforced door adorned with shifting metallurgic patterns that defy simple geometry. Before I can signal my presence, a panel slides open beside the door. A slender mechadendrite extends, ending in a small skull adorned with delicate sensors and a single, gleaming optic lens.
The skull tilts slightly, regarding me. "Sister Helena," the Magos's voice emerges from a hidden vox-emitter. It carries the timbre of aged machinery, precise yet devoid of warmth. "Your presence is unanticipated but not unwelcome. State your purpose."
"Magos Harspes," I begin, inclining my head respectfully. "I wish to consult with you, if you have a moment."
A pause. The skull's lens adjusts, emitting a brief flicker of light. "My current tasks are of high priority. However, your clearance permits interruption under specified conditions." The mechadendrite retracts slightly. "Do you require maintenance of your augmetics?"
"Not exactly," I reply. "No, actually," I correct myself. "There are no deficiencies in your craftsmanship. My arms function flawlessly—better than my original limbs ever did."
"Acceptable parameters," he states. "Your biometrics indicate elevated heart rate and residual adrenaline. Are you in immediate danger?"
The skull's optic shifts to an amber hue, signaling heightened alertness. I shake my head quickly. "No, Magos. I am perfectly safe."
"Contradictory data observed," he counters. "Pheromone analysis detects stress hormones inconsistent with a state of safety."
I suppress a sigh. The Magos is nothing if not thorough. "It's a personal matter," I admit. "One I…" I pause, feeling the shame wash over me only amplified by the certain knowledge that, in some way I can't possibly comprehend, the Magos detects it as well. "It is a very personal matter and… despite being here, now, I am hesitant to discuss it."
"Emotional reticence is inefficient," he remarks. "Such matters can impede operational effectiveness."
"I understand," I say, glancing away. The cold metal of the corridor seems suddenly oppressive. "Even so, I'm not certain I can—"
Before I can finish, the mechadendrite retracts fully, and the skull disappears behind the sliding panel. The door before me remains closed. An uneasy silence settles, broken only by the distant hum of machinery. I wonder if I've overstepped, if my reluctance has caused offense.
Just as I'm considering leaving, the door unlocks with a series of mechanical clicks. It slides open to reveal a dimly lit chamber beyond. Cool air flows out, carrying with it the sterile scent of antiseptics and machine oil.
"Enter," Harspes's deep, echoing voice beckons from within.
I step across the threshold, the door closing smoothly behind me. The laboratory is a vast space filled with towering stacks of equipment, hololithic displays projecting complex data streams, and arrays of tools whose purposes elude me. The lighting is subdued, casting long shadows that dance across the metal surfaces.
At the center of the room, the entrance to the inner sanctum—a heavily secured door—stands slightly ajar. From within, a faint glow emanates. I hesitate, then proceed cautiously.
As I approach, a section of the wall slides aside, and the same servo-skull from before emerges on its mechadendrite. It hovers at eye level. "Proceed to the secondary chamber," it instructs.
I follow its guidance into a smaller adjoining room. Here, the ambient temperature drops noticeably below freezing. The walls are lined with interfaces and cogitators, their displays cycling through streams of bio-data but in the sudden dryness of the air, not a single screen shows signs of frost. My own breath seems to crystalize in the air before me and then falls to the ground as tiny flakes of frozen vapor. In the center of the room stands an operating table, surrounded by an array of articulated arms ending in various instruments.
Magos Harspes lies upon the table, his crimson robes set aside. Without the coverings, his form is a fusion of cable and metal. Most of his body is augmented—mechanical limbs, reinforced plating, and integrated systems. Yet a single portion of humanity remains: a segment of his torso housing an exposed, beating heart, and above it, the equally exposed structure of his brain encased within a translucent protective dome.
"Magos," I begin, averting my gaze out of respect, the cold shiver that runs through my whole body has nothing to do with the air temperature. "I did not intend to intrude upon your..." I struggle for a word and find one I immediately know is lacking, "maintenance."
"It is within acceptable parameters," he replies. "You are the first other individual to observe this process. I have deemed your presence acceptable."
Mechanical appendages move with precise coordination, attending to his organic components. Sections of neural tissue are delicately removed, cleansed in nutrient solutions, and repositioned. The heart pulses steadily, monitored by a suite of sensors that adjust infusions of various compounds.
"The flesh is weak," he states matter-of-factly. "Periodic servicing is required to maintain optimal functionality."
I nod slowly, absorbing the gravity of the moment. That he allows me to witness this—a display of vulnerability so profound for one of the Mechanicus—is an honor beyond words.
"I am deeply honored by your trust," I say softly.
For an hour, I stand motionless in the freezing air, the cold seeping through my robes and biting into my skin. My augmetic arms hum quietly as their internal systems work to maintain optimal function despite the temperature. I watch as Magos Harspes meticulously tends to his organic components. Mechanical limbs remove sections of neural tissue, cleanse them in shimmering solutions, and replace them with precision. His heart pulses steadily, a rhythmic reminder of the fusion between flesh and machine.
Silence envelops us, broken only by the faint whirs and clicks of his self-maintenance. The cold is relentless, but I refuse to shiver. There's a strange solace in observing the rhythmic procedures—a stark contrast to the chaos that churns within my own mind.
At last, the Magos seals his cranial casing and rises from the table with a fluid motion. He dons his robes, the crimson fabric cascading over his form, the symbols of the Omnissiah etched in silver along the hems.
He turns to me, his ocular lenses focusing with a soft adjustment. "Sister Helena," he begins, "your physiological and psychological indicators—both of which I have monitored during your recovery—suggest that only an equivalent demonstration of vulnerability would suffice to engender reciprocal trust."
I swallow hard, the weight of his words settling upon me. "You calculated that I would only confide in you if you first exposed your own... humanity," I say.
"Affirmative," he replies. "Data analysis indicated a 92.7% probability of success with this approach."
The temperature in the room begins to rise, the chill gradually receding. I realize I'm trembling—not from the cold, but from the emotions threatening to surge forth. I grip the edges of my sleeves, willing myself to maintain composure.
Harspes steps closer, his gaze unwavering. "The ice crystals on your eyelashes are melting," he observes.
Before I can respond, a mechadendrite extends gently from beneath his robes, a delicate appendage tipped with a soft cloth. It brushes against my cheek, wiping away a tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
I huff softly, turning my face away in embarrassment. "Was that gesture one of kindness, Magos, or merely another calculated action based on my psychological profile?"
He pauses for a fraction of a second—a lifetime for one such as him. "Both," he states. "In this context, they are functionally equivalent."
A wry smile tugs at the corner of my mouth despite myself. "You and your damned logic."
"Logic is the foundation upon which understanding is built," he replies without intonation.
He motions toward a doorway leading back to his living quarters. "We should relocate. Prolonged exposure to low temperatures is suboptimal for your biological systems."
I nod, following him out of the chamber. The warmth of his quarters envelops me, a welcome relief. The walls are adorned with intricate tapestries depicting the union of flesh and machine—a symphony of gears, circuits, and organic forms intertwined.
I sink into a chair, the weight of exhaustion settling upon me. The silence stretches, but it's different now—heavy with unspoken words.
Harspes stands nearby, his presence both imposing and strangely comforting. "You are experiencing distress," he states. "Verbalizing the source may lead to resolution."
I take a deep breath, the air filling my lungs with warmth. "I've been having nightmares," I confess. "Vivid, relentless. The same battle, over and over. No matter how much I pray, how much I atone, they won't cease."
He remains silent, his gaze fixed upon me.
"I've tried everything," I continue, my voice trembling. "Prayer, penance, rituals. I've flagellated myself until I could barely stand. I even resorted to sleep drugs—I lied to acquire them, claiming they were for a student in need. Nothing works."
Shame washes over me, and I bow my head. "I fear I'm losing my faith. That I'm weak."
Harspes does not immediately respond. The soft hum of his internal systems fills the space between us.
"Your experiences have left indelible imprints upon your neural pathways," he says finally. "The trauma you endured manifests in subconscious cycles during REM sleep."
I look up, meeting his mechanical gaze. "Faith is supposed to be enough..." I hesitate at the tremble in my own voice and swallow, forcing more surety into my words. "The Emperor's light can banish any darkness."
"Perhaps," he replies, "you are placing excessive emphasis on the God-Emperor and insufficient regard for the Omnissiah."
I blink, taken aback. "They are one and the same," I retort, a hint of indignation creeping into my voice. "Suggesting otherwise borders on heresy."
A sound emerges from him—a soft, mechanical approximation of a chuckle. "In ultimate reality, they are unified," he concedes. "However, reality is perceived through the limitations of flesh and mind. Your faith, as you experience it, centers on the Emperor alone, not the Omnissiah. This perceived division, a false dichotomy unknowingly held by the majority of those inrecipient of the Omnissiah's blessings, may have hindered you from seeking the aid you require."
I swallow hard, a knot forming in my throat. "What are you implying?"
He tilts his head slightly, or at least the casing that houses his ocular lenses. "It is self evident. You have been seeking a miracle to alleviate your nightmares. Yet, due to the separation between the Emperor and the Omnissiah in your perception, you hesitated to come here—to the one place from which such miracles are wrought."
The realization settles upon me like a weight. "You believe my lack of faith in the Omnissiah has kept me from finding a solution."
"Correction: Your faith is not lacking," he corrects. "It is misaligned. Embracing the unity of the Emperor and the Omnissiah may provide the path to the healing you seek."
A mixture of fear and shame churns within me. I grip the arms of the chair, the cool metal steadying me. "Then... what is it that I truly came here to ask of you?"
"It is apparent," he replies. "You seek a means to heal—a miracle, as you would term it. Through the sacred fusion of flesh and machine, the Omnissiah provides such miracles."
I gaze at him, the conflict within me raw and exposed. "Can you help me?"
Harspes's gaze fixes on me, the glow of his ocular implants steady and unblinking. "I can offer a solution," he states.
Hope flickers within me, cautious and uncertain. "What kind of solution?"
He steeples his mechanical fingers, the servos whirring softly. "By modifying your neural architecture, I can eliminate the need for dreaming. Your brain will no longer produce the random synaptic firings that result in dream states. Instead, you will experience a state of restful inactivity during sleep cycles, a blank, a void, a more efficient neural purge of excess biochemical compounds associated with strong emotion, REM sleep."
I hesitate, the enormity of his proposal settling upon me. "That is... possible?"
"Indeed. The procedure involves precise adjustments to your thalamocortical networks. It is minimally invasive and has a 98.71116 probability of success."
I search his expression for any hint of doubt, but his features remain impassive, a blend of steel impossible to read. "Would it affect anything else? My memories? My cognition? My… emotions?"
"Negative. Your cognitive functions and memory retention will remain intact. Only the mechanisms that generate dreams will be altered."
A weight lifts from my shoulders, replaced by a mixture of relief and apprehension. "And this is... permissible?"
He tilts his head slightly. "The Omnissiah grants us the knowledge to enhance and repair. To utilize this gift in service of the Emperor is both logical and righteous."
I nod slowly. "Then I consent, on one condition—"
"Very well. We shall commence immediately." He motions me back towards his laboratory with a wave of a mechadendrite.
"My condition—"
"Is self-apparent. To vocalize, I shall not disclose this operation or record its occurrence in any form to include purging the record from my own memory, in exchange you will not reveal to another what you witnessed here today so long as you shall remain operational."
I swallow and nod, "I swear it…" I whisper as I move to lay on the freezing operating table.
Hours later, I stand before the imposing doors of the Abbess's chamber. The corridor is quiet, lit by flickering candlelight that casts long shadows along the stone walls. I take a moment to steady myself, adjusting the hood of my robe to ensure it conceals the thin adhesive strip covering the incision along my scalp except for a tiny section visible at the center of my forehead.
I knock softly.
"Enter," the Abbess's voice calls from within.
Pushing the door open, I step inside and bow respectfully. The Abbess sits at a grand desk cluttered with parchment and data-slates, her piercing eyes lifting to meet mine.
"Sister Helena," she acknowledges. "What brings you here at this early hour?"
"Revered Abbess," I begin, choosing my words carefully. "I wished to inform you of a minor incident. One of my augmetic arms experienced a malfunction during my mourning drill. In the resulting... mishap, I sustained a small injury."
Her gaze sharpens, flicking to the barely visible mark on my forehead. "Are you in need of medical attention?"
"I have already tended to it," I assure her. "However, I believe it prudent to take the remainder of the day to recalibrate my augmetics and ensure no further issues arise."
She studies me for a moment, her expression unreadable. "Very well. Your diligence is appreciated. See that you are fit for duty promptly."
"Of course, my abbess. Your trust is not misplaced."
She nods, returning her attention to the documents before her. "You are dismissed."
Bowing once more, I exit the chamber, closing the door softly behind me. The corridor feels cooler now, the air tinged with the scent of incense and aged parchment. I make my way back to my quarters, each step measured and deliberate.
Inside my room, I close the door and lean against it for a moment, exhaling slowly. The familiar surroundings offer a semblance of comfort—the neatly made bed, the modest altar adorned with icons of the Emperor, the armor stand bearing my polished breastplate.
I move to the small washbasin, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror above it. The thin line on my forehead is barely noticeable, already beginning to heal. The eyes that stare back at me are weary but resolute.
Undressing methodically, I fold my robes and set them aside. Clad in the simple undergarments of white silk, I sit on the edge of my bed. A tremor runs through me—not of cold, but of lingering apprehension.
"Emperor, keep me," I whisper.
I lie down, pulling the thin blanket over me. The room is quiet, save for the distant hum of the Schola waking up to a new day. I close my eyes, willing my mind to calm. But a nagging doubt tugs at the edges of my consciousness—a vestige of fear tied to the act of sleep itself.
What if it doesn't work? What if the nightmares return?
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. Harspes was confident. The procedure was precise. There is no logic in succumbing to irrational fear.
Gradually, my muscles relax. The tension ebbs away, replaced by a gentle fatigue that seeps into my bones. The darkness behind my eyelids is vast and quiet—a serene void untouched by the chaos of dreams.
A soft chime pulls me from unconsciousness. I blink, eyes adjusting to the pale morning light filtering through the narrow window. For a moment, disorientation holds me. Then, realization dawns.
I sit up swiftly, glancing at the chrono on the wall. Eighteen hours have passed.
Astonishment floods me. I slept—truly slept—without the torment of nightmares. No visions of battle, no echoes of pain. Just an expanse of restful nothingness.
Rising from the bed, I stretch tentatively. My body feels rejuvenated, the usual stiffness absent. There's a clarity in my mind, a sharpness that hasn't been there in years.
I dress quickly, donning my robes and fastening my armor with practiced ease. Each movement is fluid, unhindered by the weight of exhaustion.
Approaching the small altar, I kneel, bowing my head before the golden aquila. "God Emperor, I—" I pause and begin again, "Omnisiah, my Emperor, thank you for this respite. Guide my steps, that I may serve you with renewed vigor."
There's a knock at the door. "Sister Helena?" a voice calls—Constantia Samara.
"Enter," I reply, standing.
The door opens, and Samara steps inside, offering a respectful bow. "I organized the morning drills and lessons yesterday at the abbess' direction and I've summoned the novitiates for morning drills today as well. Are you well? We missed you yesterday."
I smile—a genuine expression that feels almost alien. "I am well, Constantia Samara. Better than I have been in some time."
She studies me, a hint of curiosity in her eyes, wariness even. I doubt anyone in the schola has seen me wearing a genuine smile. "I'm glad to hear it, drill sister," she bows again and I step forward raising her chin and taking a deep, satisfied breath.
"Come," I say, moving toward the door. "There is much to learn," I let the breath out again, "for all of us."
As we walk through the bustling corridors, a sense of purpose fills me. The shadows that once clung to my every step have receded, replaced by a steady lightness.
The Emperor's light, the Omnisiah's shines brightly, and I am ready to embrace it.
The battlefield is a maelstrom of fire and smoke, the deafening roar of artillery mingling with the guttural bellows of the Ork horde. My jump pack thrums against my back, its sacred machine spirit eager for the fray. The scent of promethium and scorched metal fills the air—a familiar aroma that steels my resolve.
"Canoness Commander Helena, enemy lines ahead," voxes Sister Miriam, her voice steady despite the chaos.
"Maintain formation," I command. "By the Emperor's grace, we shall be His wrath incarnate."
"Ave Imperator!" my Seraphim sisters respond in unison.
"For the Emperor!" I respond in kind.
We soar above the churned earth, a flock of avenging angels descending upon the greenskin menace. Below, the Imperial Guard fights valiantly, but even with the support of the rest of my company, they're being overwhelmed. It's up to us to turn the tide.
The Warboss looms ahead—a monstrosity of muscle and metal, standing three times the height of a man. His armor is a patchwork of stolen plates, adorned with grisly trophies. A crackling forcefield shimmers around him, distorting the air. His red eyes lock onto me, and a predatory grin splits his grotesque features.
"Seraphim, engage the Nobz," I order. "Draw them away from the Warboss!"
"Understood, Canoness Commander," Sister Miriam replies.
My Seraphim peel off, dive-bombing into the clusters of Nobz. Bolt pistols and inferno pistols unleash holy wrath, explosions of light and sound that momentarily stem the green tide. I catch glimpses of them weaving through enemy fire, their movements precise, lethal.
I fix my gaze on the Warboss. His red eyes lock onto mine, and he lets out a rumbling laugh.
"Come ta play, little 'umie?" he taunts, hefting a massive chain axe that crackles with raw energy.
"In the Emperor's name, I bring you death," I declare, squeezing the triggers of my hand flamers.
Twin jets of blessed promethium stream forth, washing over his force field. The flames cascade harmlessly off the shimmering barrier, dissipating into the air.
He laughs, a guttural sound that reverberates through the battlefield. "Ya gonna ave ta do better dan dat, litta byrd!"
I grit my teeth. "As you wish."
He lunges forward, swinging the chain axe in a wide, high arc. I twist mid-air, the axe's teeth snarling inches from my armor. The force of his swing creates a gust that buffets me, but I hold firm.
Assessing quickly, I realize the flamers are ineffective against his shield. I veer to the side, narrowly avoiding a second sweep of his chain axe. The whirring teeth of the weapon slice through the space I occupied moments before. I ascend sharply, gaining altitude.
I holster my flamers smoothly and draw my bolt pistols. Circling above him, I unleash a relentless barrage. Explosive rounds detonate against the force field, each impact sending ripples across its surface.
"Emperor guide my aim," I whisper.
The explosive projectiles detonate against his forcefield in rapid succession, bursts of light and shrapnel that obscure his vision. The field flickers, straining under the assault. "Let's see how you handle this," I murmur, emptying the clips.
The Warboss staggers slightly under the onslaught, raising a massive arm to shield his eyes. Seizing the moment, I reload with practiced efficiency and dive toward him, angling for a flanking position. I fire continuously, the recoil jolting up my arms. The last of my clips empty into the barrier, and with a final surge, it collapses.
"Now," I breathe.
I holster the pistols and draw my flamers once more. Descending through the smoke, I aim for his exposed form, flames roaring from my weapons. The air around us turns into an inferno, the heat searing even through my armor's insulation. The ground beneath him scorches black.
But as I close in, a glint catches my eye—a split-second warning. Too late.
From within the billowing smoke, his whip lashes out with impossible speed. It coils around my left ankle, the barbed edges biting into the ceramite. Agony lances up my leg as an electric discharge courses through me. My jump pack sputters, the blessed machinery faltering.
"No!" I gasp, kicking at the whip, but his grip is unyielding.
With a triumphant roar, the Warboss heaves. I'm ripped from the sky, the ground rushing up to meet me. I brace for impact, but nothing can prepare me for the force with which he slams me down.
The world explodes in pain. Agony radiates from my spine, a cold numbness spreading down my legs. My vision swims, the edges darkening. I try to move—nothing. My legs are unresponsive. Panic claws at the edges of my mind.
"Emperor preserve me," I whisper, a tremor in my voice.
Flat on my back, I stare up at the polluted sky, smoke and ash blotting out the weak sun. The sounds of battle fade, replaced by the pounding of my own heartbeat. Fear claws at the edges of my mind—a fear I've never allowed myself to feel.
Paralyzed. Vulnerable.
This cannot be.
I force myself to focus, to push past the terror. My sisters—where are they? I catch glimpses of them in the distance, locked in fierce combat with the Nobz. They're outnumbered but unyielding, fighting with the ferocity of the righteous. Sister Miriam darts between Nobz, her inferno pistols reducing them to ash. But they've exposed themselves to create this opening for me and the tide is closing in. I need to help them, but I'm powerless.
A shadow falls over me. The Warboss looms, his grotesque features twisted into a gleeful sneer.
"Not so tough now, are ya?" he mocks, spittle flying from his tusked mouth.
He reaches down, massive fingers closing around my helm. The pressure builds as he starts to squeeze, the visor cracking under the strain. Lights flare behind my eyes as the strain mounts.
I can't let it end like this.
Summoning every ounce of strength, I raise my arms—each movement a searing agony—and press the barrels of my flamers against his face.
"Burn," I hiss.
I depress the triggers. Flames erupt, engulfing his head in a torrent of holy fire. He howls, a guttural scream that rattles my bones. His grip loosens slightly.
"Ya stinkin' witch!" he bellows.
"Burn, Xeno!" I shout, pouring every ounce of fury into the attack.
He releases my helmet, but his hands shoot down to my wrists, encasing them in a vice-like grip. He pulls my arms outward, attempting to wrench the flamers away. I twist my wrists, keeping the nozzles trained on him. The heat is intense; warnings scream in my helm about temperature overloads.
His flesh melts, the stench of burning meat filling the air. Yet he doesn't relent. With a surge of brute strength, he begins to pull.
I feel the tendons stretch, muscles tearing. Pain unlike anything I've known rips through me. I scream—a raw, primal sound torn from the depths of my being.
"Let go!" he roars, his voice muffled by the flames.
I won't. I can't.
The servos in my armor strain, alarms blaring as systems overload. Metal groans, and with a sickening snap, my left arm gives way. Blood sprays, hot against the cold numbness spreading through me. A scream tears from my throat—a sound I didn't know I could make.
He laughs, a choked, gurgling sound emanating through boiled lips and flash-fried larynx.
He turns his focus to the right. The process repeats—each second an eternity of excruciating torment. My vision dims, darkness encroaching at the edges.
With a final, wrenching pull, he tears my right arm free as well. I collapse to the ground, a broken husk. The world tilts, sounds fading into an indistinct murmur.
I see the Warboss stumble backward, flames still consuming him. He falls, the ground shaking with the impact.
"Canoness!" a distant voice cries. Sister Miriam? The sounds of battle grow distant, replaced by an all-consuming silence.
Cold seeps into me. I stare up at the choked sky, the smoke spiraling into the void. No feeling in my legs. No arms. Just the weight of failure pressing down.
"Emperor... forgive me," I whisper.
Darkness closes in.
I bolt upright, gasping for air, the echoes of my own scream fading into the oppressive silence of my chamber. Sweat beads on my forehead, a cold sheen that does nothing to dispel the lingering heat of phantom flames. My heart pounds against my ribcage like a caged beast.
Another nightmare. The same one, again. No amount of prayer or penance seems to banish it. Even after all these years, after regaining the use of my legs, after mastering my augmetic arms, the past refuses to release its grip on me.
I draw my knees to my chest, wrapping my mechanical fingers around them. The metal is cool, unyielding—an anchor to the present. Tears blur my vision, and I let them fall. Here, alone in the predawn darkness, I allow myself this small weakness. The sobs come quietly at first, then wrack my body with a force that surprises me.
"Emperor, grant me strength," I whisper into the void.
Minutes pass—or perhaps hours. Time loses meaning in these solitary moments. Eventually, the storm within me subsides. I wipe my face with the back of my hand, the motion almost human despite the synthetic touch. Composure returns like a well-worn habit.
Rising from the bed, I move with practiced efficiency. There's no point in attempting more sleep tonight. I wash quickly, the icy water shocking but necessary. My reflection in the polished steel mirror reveals nothing out of place—no sign of the turmoil within.
Donning my robes, I ensure every fold is immaculate, every insignia of the Schola, the Sisterhood, the Ecclesiarchy perfectly aligned. The armor plates on my shoulders catch the dim light, the symbols of the Order of the Sanctified Shield etched deeply into them. I fasten them with care, each click of the clasps a familiar ritual.
The corridors of the Schola are silent at this hour, the stillness broken only by the distant hum of machinery and the soft whisper of my footsteps. The air is cool, carrying the faint scent of incense and metal. Unbidden, my path leads me toward the Mechanicus quarter—a place I've frequented in these sleepless hours.
The grand archway marking the entrance looms before me, adorned with the cog-toothed skull of the Omnissiah. As I approach, a servo-skull detaches from its niche, hovering before me. Its ocular lenses focus with a soft whirring sound. It opens the door and follows me as I walk with slow reverence through the expansive halls. I approach another archway only slightly less grand than the main and the skull hovers down in front of me at eye level.
"Access restricted. Magos Biologis Harspes is currently occupied," it intones in a metallic voice devoid of inflection.
"I seek audience," I reply calmly.
I present my right hand, the back of which bears a nanoscript sigil—a personal mark inscribed by Harspes himself. The servo-skull scans it, beams of red light playing over the intricate patterns. A moment passes, then another.
"Identity confirmed. Sister Helena. Access granted."
The heavy doors slide open with a hiss, revealing the dimly lit passage beyond. I step inside, the atmosphere shifting instantly. The air here is cooler, drier—the scent of sacred unguents mingling with the ozone tang of active machinery.
Navigating the labyrinthine corridors, I make my way deeper into the sanctum. Conduits and data lines crisscross the walls, pulsing with arcane energies. The silence here is different—alive with the subsonic thrum of the Mechanicus's ceaseless workings.
I reach the entrance to Harspes's personal chambers—a reinforced door adorned with shifting metallurgic patterns that defy simple geometry. Before I can signal my presence, a panel slides open beside the door. A slender mechadendrite extends, ending in a small skull adorned with delicate sensors and a single, gleaming optic lens.
The skull tilts slightly, regarding me. "Sister Helena," the Magos's voice emerges from a hidden vox-emitter. It carries the timbre of aged machinery, precise yet devoid of warmth. "Your presence is unanticipated but not unwelcome. State your purpose."
"Magos Harspes," I begin, inclining my head respectfully. "I wish to consult with you, if you have a moment."
A pause. The skull's lens adjusts, emitting a brief flicker of light. "My current tasks are of high priority. However, your clearance permits interruption under specified conditions." The mechadendrite retracts slightly. "Do you require maintenance of your augmetics?"
"Not exactly," I reply. "No, actually," I correct myself. "There are no deficiencies in your craftsmanship. My arms function flawlessly—better than my original limbs ever did."
"Acceptable parameters," he states. "Your biometrics indicate elevated heart rate and residual adrenaline. Are you in immediate danger?"
The skull's optic shifts to an amber hue, signaling heightened alertness. I shake my head quickly. "No, Magos. I am perfectly safe."
"Contradictory data observed," he counters. "Pheromone analysis detects stress hormones inconsistent with a state of safety."
I suppress a sigh. The Magos is nothing if not thorough. "It's a personal matter," I admit. "One I…" I pause, feeling the shame wash over me only amplified by the certain knowledge that, in some way I can't possibly comprehend, the Magos detects it as well. "It is a very personal matter and… despite being here, now, I am hesitant to discuss it."
"Emotional reticence is inefficient," he remarks. "Such matters can impede operational effectiveness."
"I understand," I say, glancing away. The cold metal of the corridor seems suddenly oppressive. "Even so, I'm not certain I can—"
Before I can finish, the mechadendrite retracts fully, and the skull disappears behind the sliding panel. The door before me remains closed. An uneasy silence settles, broken only by the distant hum of machinery. I wonder if I've overstepped, if my reluctance has caused offense.
Just as I'm considering leaving, the door unlocks with a series of mechanical clicks. It slides open to reveal a dimly lit chamber beyond. Cool air flows out, carrying with it the sterile scent of antiseptics and machine oil.
"Enter," Harspes's deep, echoing voice beckons from within.
I step across the threshold, the door closing smoothly behind me. The laboratory is a vast space filled with towering stacks of equipment, hololithic displays projecting complex data streams, and arrays of tools whose purposes elude me. The lighting is subdued, casting long shadows that dance across the metal surfaces.
At the center of the room, the entrance to the inner sanctum—a heavily secured door—stands slightly ajar. From within, a faint glow emanates. I hesitate, then proceed cautiously.
As I approach, a section of the wall slides aside, and the same servo-skull from before emerges on its mechadendrite. It hovers at eye level. "Proceed to the secondary chamber," it instructs.
I follow its guidance into a smaller adjoining room. Here, the ambient temperature drops noticeably below freezing. The walls are lined with interfaces and cogitators, their displays cycling through streams of bio-data but in the sudden dryness of the air, not a single screen shows signs of frost. My own breath seems to crystalize in the air before me and then falls to the ground as tiny flakes of frozen vapor. In the center of the room stands an operating table, surrounded by an array of articulated arms ending in various instruments.
Magos Harspes lies upon the table, his crimson robes set aside. Without the coverings, his form is a fusion of cable and metal. Most of his body is augmented—mechanical limbs, reinforced plating, and integrated systems. Yet a single portion of humanity remains: a segment of his torso housing an exposed, beating heart, and above it, the equally exposed structure of his brain encased within a translucent protective dome.
"Magos," I begin, averting my gaze out of respect, the cold shiver that runs through my whole body has nothing to do with the air temperature. "I did not intend to intrude upon your..." I struggle for a word and find one I immediately know is lacking, "maintenance."
"It is within acceptable parameters," he replies. "You are the first other individual to observe this process. I have deemed your presence acceptable."
Mechanical appendages move with precise coordination, attending to his organic components. Sections of neural tissue are delicately removed, cleansed in nutrient solutions, and repositioned. The heart pulses steadily, monitored by a suite of sensors that adjust infusions of various compounds.
"The flesh is weak," he states matter-of-factly. "Periodic servicing is required to maintain optimal functionality."
I nod slowly, absorbing the gravity of the moment. That he allows me to witness this—a display of vulnerability so profound for one of the Mechanicus—is an honor beyond words.
"I am deeply honored by your trust," I say softly.
For an hour, I stand motionless in the freezing air, the cold seeping through my robes and biting into my skin. My augmetic arms hum quietly as their internal systems work to maintain optimal function despite the temperature. I watch as Magos Harspes meticulously tends to his organic components. Mechanical limbs remove sections of neural tissue, cleanse them in shimmering solutions, and replace them with precision. His heart pulses steadily, a rhythmic reminder of the fusion between flesh and machine.
Silence envelops us, broken only by the faint whirs and clicks of his self-maintenance. The cold is relentless, but I refuse to shiver. There's a strange solace in observing the rhythmic procedures—a stark contrast to the chaos that churns within my own mind.
At last, the Magos seals his cranial casing and rises from the table with a fluid motion. He dons his robes, the crimson fabric cascading over his form, the symbols of the Omnissiah etched in silver along the hems.
He turns to me, his ocular lenses focusing with a soft adjustment. "Sister Helena," he begins, "your physiological and psychological indicators—both of which I have monitored during your recovery—suggest that only an equivalent demonstration of vulnerability would suffice to engender reciprocal trust."
I swallow hard, the weight of his words settling upon me. "You calculated that I would only confide in you if you first exposed your own... humanity," I say.
"Affirmative," he replies. "Data analysis indicated a 92.7% probability of success with this approach."
The temperature in the room begins to rise, the chill gradually receding. I realize I'm trembling—not from the cold, but from the emotions threatening to surge forth. I grip the edges of my sleeves, willing myself to maintain composure.
Harspes steps closer, his gaze unwavering. "The ice crystals on your eyelashes are melting," he observes.
Before I can respond, a mechadendrite extends gently from beneath his robes, a delicate appendage tipped with a soft cloth. It brushes against my cheek, wiping away a tear I hadn't realized had fallen.
I huff softly, turning my face away in embarrassment. "Was that gesture one of kindness, Magos, or merely another calculated action based on my psychological profile?"
He pauses for a fraction of a second—a lifetime for one such as him. "Both," he states. "In this context, they are functionally equivalent."
A wry smile tugs at the corner of my mouth despite myself. "You and your damned logic."
"Logic is the foundation upon which understanding is built," he replies without intonation.
He motions toward a doorway leading back to his living quarters. "We should relocate. Prolonged exposure to low temperatures is suboptimal for your biological systems."
I nod, following him out of the chamber. The warmth of his quarters envelops me, a welcome relief. The walls are adorned with intricate tapestries depicting the union of flesh and machine—a symphony of gears, circuits, and organic forms intertwined.
I sink into a chair, the weight of exhaustion settling upon me. The silence stretches, but it's different now—heavy with unspoken words.
Harspes stands nearby, his presence both imposing and strangely comforting. "You are experiencing distress," he states. "Verbalizing the source may lead to resolution."
I take a deep breath, the air filling my lungs with warmth. "I've been having nightmares," I confess. "Vivid, relentless. The same battle, over and over. No matter how much I pray, how much I atone, they won't cease."
He remains silent, his gaze fixed upon me.
"I've tried everything," I continue, my voice trembling. "Prayer, penance, rituals. I've flagellated myself until I could barely stand. I even resorted to sleep drugs—I lied to acquire them, claiming they were for a student in need. Nothing works."
Shame washes over me, and I bow my head. "I fear I'm losing my faith. That I'm weak."
Harspes does not immediately respond. The soft hum of his internal systems fills the space between us.
"Your experiences have left indelible imprints upon your neural pathways," he says finally. "The trauma you endured manifests in subconscious cycles during REM sleep."
I look up, meeting his mechanical gaze. "Faith is supposed to be enough..." I hesitate at the tremble in my own voice and swallow, forcing more surety into my words. "The Emperor's light can banish any darkness."
"Perhaps," he replies, "you are placing excessive emphasis on the God-Emperor and insufficient regard for the Omnissiah."
I blink, taken aback. "They are one and the same," I retort, a hint of indignation creeping into my voice. "Suggesting otherwise borders on heresy."
A sound emerges from him—a soft, mechanical approximation of a chuckle. "In ultimate reality, they are unified," he concedes. "However, reality is perceived through the limitations of flesh and mind. Your faith, as you experience it, centers on the Emperor alone, not the Omnissiah. This perceived division, a false dichotomy unknowingly held by the majority of those inrecipient of the Omnissiah's blessings, may have hindered you from seeking the aid you require."
I swallow hard, a knot forming in my throat. "What are you implying?"
He tilts his head slightly, or at least the casing that houses his ocular lenses. "It is self evident. You have been seeking a miracle to alleviate your nightmares. Yet, due to the separation between the Emperor and the Omnissiah in your perception, you hesitated to come here—to the one place from which such miracles are wrought."
The realization settles upon me like a weight. "You believe my lack of faith in the Omnissiah has kept me from finding a solution."
"Correction: Your faith is not lacking," he corrects. "It is misaligned. Embracing the unity of the Emperor and the Omnissiah may provide the path to the healing you seek."
A mixture of fear and shame churns within me. I grip the arms of the chair, the cool metal steadying me. "Then... what is it that I truly came here to ask of you?"
"It is apparent," he replies. "You seek a means to heal—a miracle, as you would term it. Through the sacred fusion of flesh and machine, the Omnissiah provides such miracles."
I gaze at him, the conflict within me raw and exposed. "Can you help me?"
Harspes's gaze fixes on me, the glow of his ocular implants steady and unblinking. "I can offer a solution," he states.
Hope flickers within me, cautious and uncertain. "What kind of solution?"
He steeples his mechanical fingers, the servos whirring softly. "By modifying your neural architecture, I can eliminate the need for dreaming. Your brain will no longer produce the random synaptic firings that result in dream states. Instead, you will experience a state of restful inactivity during sleep cycles, a blank, a void, a more efficient neural purge of excess biochemical compounds associated with strong emotion, REM sleep."
I hesitate, the enormity of his proposal settling upon me. "That is... possible?"
"Indeed. The procedure involves precise adjustments to your thalamocortical networks. It is minimally invasive and has a 98.71116 probability of success."
I search his expression for any hint of doubt, but his features remain impassive, a blend of steel impossible to read. "Would it affect anything else? My memories? My cognition? My… emotions?"
"Negative. Your cognitive functions and memory retention will remain intact. Only the mechanisms that generate dreams will be altered."
A weight lifts from my shoulders, replaced by a mixture of relief and apprehension. "And this is... permissible?"
He tilts his head slightly. "The Omnissiah grants us the knowledge to enhance and repair. To utilize this gift in service of the Emperor is both logical and righteous."
I nod slowly. "Then I consent, on one condition—"
"Very well. We shall commence immediately." He motions me back towards his laboratory with a wave of a mechadendrite.
"My condition—"
"Is self-apparent. To vocalize, I shall not disclose this operation or record its occurrence in any form to include purging the record from my own memory, in exchange you will not reveal to another what you witnessed here today so long as you shall remain operational."
I swallow and nod, "I swear it…" I whisper as I move to lay on the freezing operating table.
Hours later, I stand before the imposing doors of the Abbess's chamber. The corridor is quiet, lit by flickering candlelight that casts long shadows along the stone walls. I take a moment to steady myself, adjusting the hood of my robe to ensure it conceals the thin adhesive strip covering the incision along my scalp except for a tiny section visible at the center of my forehead.
I knock softly.
"Enter," the Abbess's voice calls from within.
Pushing the door open, I step inside and bow respectfully. The Abbess sits at a grand desk cluttered with parchment and data-slates, her piercing eyes lifting to meet mine.
"Sister Helena," she acknowledges. "What brings you here at this early hour?"
"Revered Abbess," I begin, choosing my words carefully. "I wished to inform you of a minor incident. One of my augmetic arms experienced a malfunction during my mourning drill. In the resulting... mishap, I sustained a small injury."
Her gaze sharpens, flicking to the barely visible mark on my forehead. "Are you in need of medical attention?"
"I have already tended to it," I assure her. "However, I believe it prudent to take the remainder of the day to recalibrate my augmetics and ensure no further issues arise."
She studies me for a moment, her expression unreadable. "Very well. Your diligence is appreciated. See that you are fit for duty promptly."
"Of course, my abbess. Your trust is not misplaced."
She nods, returning her attention to the documents before her. "You are dismissed."
Bowing once more, I exit the chamber, closing the door softly behind me. The corridor feels cooler now, the air tinged with the scent of incense and aged parchment. I make my way back to my quarters, each step measured and deliberate.
Inside my room, I close the door and lean against it for a moment, exhaling slowly. The familiar surroundings offer a semblance of comfort—the neatly made bed, the modest altar adorned with icons of the Emperor, the armor stand bearing my polished breastplate.
I move to the small washbasin, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror above it. The thin line on my forehead is barely noticeable, already beginning to heal. The eyes that stare back at me are weary but resolute.
Undressing methodically, I fold my robes and set them aside. Clad in the simple undergarments of white silk, I sit on the edge of my bed. A tremor runs through me—not of cold, but of lingering apprehension.
"Emperor, keep me," I whisper.
I lie down, pulling the thin blanket over me. The room is quiet, save for the distant hum of the Schola waking up to a new day. I close my eyes, willing my mind to calm. But a nagging doubt tugs at the edges of my consciousness—a vestige of fear tied to the act of sleep itself.
What if it doesn't work? What if the nightmares return?
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. Harspes was confident. The procedure was precise. There is no logic in succumbing to irrational fear.
Gradually, my muscles relax. The tension ebbs away, replaced by a gentle fatigue that seeps into my bones. The darkness behind my eyelids is vast and quiet—a serene void untouched by the chaos of dreams.
A soft chime pulls me from unconsciousness. I blink, eyes adjusting to the pale morning light filtering through the narrow window. For a moment, disorientation holds me. Then, realization dawns.
I sit up swiftly, glancing at the chrono on the wall. Eighteen hours have passed.
Astonishment floods me. I slept—truly slept—without the torment of nightmares. No visions of battle, no echoes of pain. Just an expanse of restful nothingness.
Rising from the bed, I stretch tentatively. My body feels rejuvenated, the usual stiffness absent. There's a clarity in my mind, a sharpness that hasn't been there in years.
I dress quickly, donning my robes and fastening my armor with practiced ease. Each movement is fluid, unhindered by the weight of exhaustion.
Approaching the small altar, I kneel, bowing my head before the golden aquila. "God Emperor, I—" I pause and begin again, "Omnisiah, my Emperor, thank you for this respite. Guide my steps, that I may serve you with renewed vigor."
There's a knock at the door. "Sister Helena?" a voice calls—Constantia Samara.
"Enter," I reply, standing.
The door opens, and Samara steps inside, offering a respectful bow. "I organized the morning drills and lessons yesterday at the abbess' direction and I've summoned the novitiates for morning drills today as well. Are you well? We missed you yesterday."
I smile—a genuine expression that feels almost alien. "I am well, Constantia Samara. Better than I have been in some time."
She studies me, a hint of curiosity in her eyes, wariness even. I doubt anyone in the schola has seen me wearing a genuine smile. "I'm glad to hear it, drill sister," she bows again and I step forward raising her chin and taking a deep, satisfied breath.
"Come," I say, moving toward the door. "There is much to learn," I let the breath out again, "for all of us."
As we walk through the bustling corridors, a sense of purpose fills me. The shadows that once clung to my every step have receded, replaced by a steady lightness.
The Emperor's light, the Omnisiah's shines brightly, and I am ready to embrace it.
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