XIII. Touch
The single light illuminating the cabin pulsed in tune with the unsteady heaving of the human ship. Each time it dimmed, Ayile shivered as the dark licked against the bounds of her body. There were hands lurking in those creeping shadows, long grasping fingers reaching hungrily for her, brushing and caressing in rapturous anticipation. The Seer needed only to shut her eyes to hear the dark sing in skittering voices of how soon, the thin, technological membrane the humans wrapped their vessels in would finally give, and of everything that it wanted to do with her next. Hunger, malevolent and expectant, surrounded her on all sides. Against it, she could only plead with the dead gods of her people to be spared from the predation, and fear, fear like she had never before, that she would not.
This was what the entirety of her existence had been reduced to. Ever since the incident in the sacristy, fear was what defined her every waking moment, and ruled her every dream.
Somewhere in the bowels of the voidship, bells began to chime, soon enough filling the entire craft with the rousing trill. Even the weak light seemed to respond, holding onto its brightness for unusually long. This deep in the Warp, the passage of time by itself could be a comfort; the sequential march of hours and days kept the crew reminded of the solidity of the real. It helped Ayile too. Each bell meant that, in theory, the end of this abyssal plunge neared.
It was one thing, to know—intellectually, and with no small amount of incredulity and alarm—that humans in their vast arrogance and sheer disregard for life, made their voidships travel directly through the Immaterium, shielded from its cruel denizens only by often-faulty technology that they barely even understood. It was another to be herself thrust right into the Great Enemy's realm, infinitely close to her people's great doom, and great sin.
The light dimmed again, and the gloom came rushing in, its touch sending the Aeldar into a small spasm. There was a claw, running down her spine, tracing a criss-cross pattern where the electrodes of her cruel restraint pressed into the skin. There was a claw reaching through the solid steel of the bunk, ready to spear her, and rip her open. There was a sweet voice in her ear explaining to her just how it would feel to have her soul slowly drained into nothing. Then, the light came back on, and Ayile finally managed to let a breath escape from her throat. It came out like a sob. By the time it was out, she was already staring at the lamp again, her body tensing in anticipation of the next flicker. Somewhere around, her captors began to stir, and yet she could not look away, or think of anything but the slow count of seconds until the next rush of shadows.
The Path of the Seer taught that fear was a veil strewn over choice. Fear was the attendant of risk, of stumbling blindly into an uncertain fate—the opposite of the Seer's duty. Ayile had been taught to feel the unfolding of the future not in the held breath of a gambler rolling dice, but in the calm acceptance of choice and necessity. For a Seer, then, fear was a mirage: an error of thought befitting those who could not know the future, and unacceptable in those who were learning to chart its course.
For a brief second, the light seemed to go out, before returning to full power. In the span between the flicker, and the relief, Ayile had already managed to curl down on herself, her body drenching itself in sweat. She was exhausted, in body and in spirit, but sleep would not come, not for as long as her attention remained fixated on the lamp and its unpredictable rhythm. And her attention would remain on it forever, because there was no longer room in her thoughts for anything but uncertainty.
Isha, she thought, kindly mother. Please let it shine.
Even if she was unbound, even if she was allowed to peer into the future without the searing pain her restraint threatened, even if she had her spear and armor, she would be praying all the same. Here, in the depths of Hell, fear triumphed over wisdom, and her Path could guide her no longer. Maybe if she was like the great Eldrad or other farseers of Ulthwe, maybe then she could recognize that even now, even her, this fear was just an illusion. But she was lesser than them, young and weak, and the terror had won.
"Have you even slept, witch?"
It took Ayile a moment to recognize the voice speaking to her. It was one of her captors—Fausta, probably—but she stood outside of her field of vision, and away from the light which defined what remained of Ayile's world.
"You look feverish."
A human hand touched her forehead—just in time for the light to go out again. Ayile flinched, her mind shutting down on itself in expectation of the Immaterium reaching for her once more. But this time, there was nothing. No spectral touch, no voice in her ears. Just two callous, human fingers smearing the sweat above her brow. They should be violating, but they were real, warm, flesh and blood. And somehow, they held back the Warp entire. Or maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe the light had not really flickered. That was safer to assume. That was safer to believe.
"Witch. I am talking to you."
There. The machinery of the voidship sighed heavily, its hum briefly growing to a low growl. The lamp dimmed, obviously, visibly. Ayile's body was ready to flinch, to spasm, to recoil. And yet, again, there was nothing. Nothing! Arduously, the Seer looked away from the lamp, blinking quickly to get the bright afterimages out. Fausta was by her, looking down at her with a frown that only seemed to deepen as she met her prisoner's eyes.
"Are you sick?"
Ayile tried to mouth a "no", but neither her body, nor her mouth, were capable of cooperating. Somewhere, in another direction, the lamp kept pulsing, with nothing following each flicker. Hope rushed in, small, desperate, and infested with doubt. Through some mysterious power or miracle, her captor, her tormentor, who had proudly declared herself the sole owner of her pain, was also capable of stopping the shadows, stopping the dark, of quieting fear and providing comfort, even at the very bottom of Hell. Something went slack in Ayile's face; something loosened in her throat, and she tried to—
The door to the cabin opened, followed by heavy footsteps. Out of the corner of her eye, the Seer noticed Maria drag herself to the table in the middle of the room, and drop a stack of dataslates on top.
"Got a moment, Fausta?"
And then there was no more hand collecting sweat from the Aeldar's brow, no more concerned frown, and no more of Fausta's attention. The zealot dropped down at the table, the pile of data her sole focus now. For a moment, Ayile tried to listen on to the quiet conversation between her and Maria, as if that could keep the fear from choking her again. It could not, obviously. The ship sighed, the lights dimmed, and the Warp reminded the Seer of its presence, and its forever claim on her, and her soul. Only now there was a difference, lodged in a tiny splinter of desperate need, that maybe there could be some protection against the Great Enemy's hunger.
The Aeldar's attention kept snapping between the lamp, and Fausta, and with each flicker, each assault, each surge of soul-killing terror, she was coming closer to realizing the one last thing left to her to do. And yet, it still took forever to act; each time she seemed close, the hands of the Warp closed around her, and wrung thought and resolve out of her. Or maybe it only felt like that? Maybe it took no time at all? Desperation hardly made for good timekeeping, stretching seconds into hours and collapsing hours into seconds.
The light brightened, and the Seer forced her mind enough to shift the body. With her arms still bound to her chest, and the legions of She-Who-Thirsts howling in her ears, even simple movement was a challenge; but she managed to toss her body down from the bunk, and onto the floor. From their place at the table, her captors looked at her with idle interest; Ayile simply stared at the light above, begging in the name of Asuryan for the human ship to hold its breath steady for a moment longer.
"What is it, witch?" Fausta asked, while Maria simply unholstered her gun.
Ayile did not listen—she could not listen. Again, feeling her entire body quake, she dragged herself as far up as her unsteady legs would allow, and then in two, drunken bounds, stumbled across the cabin, collapsing to her knees in front of Fausta. If the human would look into her face now, she would see an expression contorted by sheer, single-minded desperation.
"Hold me," she growled, words barely making their way out of a cinched throat. "Please."
It must have been something in her voice that made Fausta pause and bite her tongue before demanding that Ayile beg. The Dialogus nodded in surprise, and with gentleness unlike her race, placed a hand across her captive's head, ruffling the shorn hair slightly.
The light flickered, and the ship sighed and groaned, and it was all as if nothing, as if just another moment like any that came before. At first, fear continued to keep Ayile upright.What if it was all just a fluke? What if this divine property that her captor seemed to possess would vanish and dissipate, letting the Warp in again? Questions and doubts buzzed through her thoughts, but even they could not hold for long, not in the face of the sheer relief, and the weight of exhaustion that the Seer could finally allow herself to feel.
The din in Ayile's head quieted and died down. When Fausta tired of holding her, and instead delicately ushered her head into her lap, she did not resist, but smiled. The body she rested on was warm, made of flesh and hope, reassuring as only reality could be, and as fear finally started to drain away from her for good, a sucking kind of emptiness remained. But as far as feelings go, it was hardly an unpleasant one. Someone had lifted her out of the depths, and the pressure that used to crush her was not just air to be breathed freely. The light flickered, and Ayile remained only tangentially aware of it, her focus and attention collapsing slowly inwards, into some warm, safe place.
"Your pet xeno is crying," Maria observed in a tone of small bemusement.
It was true. Ayile was crying, out of relief and exhaustion, a reaction of her body so completely unprompted and uncontrollable that she was capable of neither controlling it, or even really recognizing it as real. Fausta did not respond with words, instead simply brushing her fingers through the Aeldar's hair, nails scratching lightly across the skin.
Of what happened next, Ayile could remain little, if anything at all. She dazed in and out of consciousness for a time, head pressed to Fausta's lap, knees digging into the metal floor. Later, stiff and sore her body would keep her reminded of the discomfort of that position, but exhaustion and a sense of safety trumped all, and the Seer finally was allowed to rest. Slow silence took over her thoughts, and for a moment tasted better than freedom, than power, than pride.
At some point Fausta got up, but she did not leave Ayile behind. The next thing the Aeldar could remember with any sort of clarity was waking up strewn half-across her captor, their bodies pressed together under a coarse blanket. Her first instinct should have been revulsion, or shame. Neither arose out of the sluggishness of her thoughts, which continued to submit only to that overwhelming, seductively sweet sense of safety. Something had broken inside the Seer, and she could name what it was exactly, nor resent its loss.
Underneath her, Fausta slept soundly, but with an arm still wrapped around Ayile's bound chest. There could be no leaving without waking her up—not that the Aeldar wanted to. Without much surprise or outrage, she realized she did not want to, anyway. The part of her that managed to cling to pride, no matter how chipped or ramshackle, wanted to believe it was the simple proximity to her spirit stone. Ayile could, after all, feel its slight pulse somewhere under Fausta's shift. It would be easy, and quite comforting, to think that it alone was the source of this strange sense of safety, of the power of sanctuary that sheltered the Seer within the confines of her captor's touch. But a single Tear of Isha could not accomplish as much. It was not meant to. And so, it had to be Fausta, somehow. Some miracle lodged inside her that Ayile could neither imagine, nor understand—but now had to rely on.
Or maybe to speak of necessity here was just a delusion. Ayile came to Fausta of her own volition. She asked for comfort without coercion. She chose this when she could no longer shoulder the fear on her own. The choice now was whether to accept it, and find herself owing her captor not just her life, but also her soul. And that choice had already been made, with certainty as soft as it was undeniable.
Ayile let her head back on Fausta's chest, and drifted again into sleep. In the last moments before exhaustion dragged her back beneath consciousness' surface, she could see a pair of eyes from another bunk, staring coldly in her direction.
Then, there was nothing, and then bells were ringing again.
Someone—not Fausta, but Minoria, with her rough, firm hands—helped Ayile to the floor, and on her feet. Around, morning chatter dissolved into chiming noise; somewhere in the flurry of activity, there was Fausta, and with her thoughts still half-asleep, the Aeldar sought her as if by instinct, clinging to her captor's side as if it was the only thing that mattered. Laughter—trilling, Clarissa's—wound around her even as Fausta offered the reassurance that Ayile needed, a finger hooked through the ring in front of the restraint the Seer wore.
"And doesn't she just long for a leash," the young zealot laughed again, giving Ayile a slap on the back.
Ayile did; or at least needed and long for some kind of assurance that Fausta's touch would not stop, not withdraw, that she could stay forever in that bubble of safety, allowed reprieve from the horrors outside. When her captors filed out of the cabin to head for the morning meal, Ayile followed after Fausta like a stray dog, never farther than a step behind. As long as she did, the shadows had no purchase on her, and the Warp would not devour her.
There was a narrowing of attention inherent to all of this; fleeing from fear, Ayile allowed herself to focus only on the moment, and on the proximity to Fausta. Everything else faded into the background. The brightly lit middle-deck officer's mess , the strange glances from other human crew watching the spectacle of an Aeldar clinging to a Sister of Battle with a mix of fascination and revulsion, even the usual humiliation of knowing that soon, she would have to be fed by a mon-keigh hand: none of that could turn the Seer's focus away from that desperate need to not be left alone.
But her captors were creatures of rite and habit, bound to their small oblations with rigidity fit for a follower of an Aeldar path. Once they were all seated, it was the time for the morning prayer, and Fausta's touch and attention were at once elsewhere. Ayile snapped back to reality, the cold dread that the shadows would return now that she was no longer touched, no longer held, immediately cinching its noose around her throat.
But the lights did not flicker, and the dark did not whisper, not even when the ship hummed and coughed through its strange technological exhales. Squeezed between Fausta and Minoria on a narrow, metal bench, Ayile remained safe—and the absence of Fausta's touch hurt not for what it threatened, but for another, smaller, and more pathetic reason that the Aeldar would not admit, not even in her present, sorry state.
The morning prayers, which Ayile by necessity was forced to witness, were starting to become familiar by now. Today, it was Theodora who offered to lead them, as always striking in her cold beauty. She held up the breviary and read from it, in the sharp melody of her voice, an extended litany towards humanity's corpse god. Ayile looked away, with her head bowed low. None of the zealots, not even Minoria, wanted the "xeno" to draw attention to her presence during the morning grace.
The ritual continued after the prayer. Thick stew and dark bread were served, and Theodora remained standing, reading on from her book. As always, it was stories of Imperial saints that Ayile tried to ignore. They were invariably murderous men and women, sanctified in blood and flame, and made particularly worthy of veneration by how elaborate and cruel the manner of their death was. Instead, the Aeldar focused on not thinking how Fausta was no longer holding her, and—more practically—on how having no hands or even arms when trying to eat must have made her look. The sight of the Seer bent over her bowl and lapping at it like an animal must become familiar by now to her captors, though it never failed to elicit mocking stares from Clarissa and Maria, especially when Minoria took pity and helped with the food.
And yet, today, Theodora's reading managed to make its way through all the layers of confusion and distraction, and find Ayile, reeling her in by hooked words like Aeldar and deceitful or screaming. The tale extolled the deeds of some "sainted primarch", a figure of sheer brutality and inhuman rage who burned with fire the Aeldar seeking new homes in the wake of the Fall. On its own it might have slipped from Ayile's attention after all, but there was more to it: the way that the beautiful zealot stared straight at Fausta as she read on and on from stories of flame and mutilation. Through glances stolen from above her meal, the Seer watched Theodora look at her companion with nothing short of accusation in her deep, beautiful eyes.
"And let us never forget," she intoned as the grisly tale came to its end, "that though we are lesser, and children of a damned time, we must not allow the sainthood of the Primarchs stand in awe, but rather serve as a reminder of the duty that obliges us all."
Theodra slammed the book shut with an executioner's conviction.
"Now, sisters," she smiled bleakley, "what does the example of Vulkan, the Sainted Primarch, teach us today?"
Minoria bumped a warning into Ayile's shoulder, but the Aeldar did not need it. She bowed her head immediately, the old fear—the one of humans, not the Warp and its masters—returning in force. The last night might have been shamefully blissful, but now she was back to reality, and all of its cruelty.
No one said anything, and for a far-too-long moment, the only sound around was the groan of the ship's engines, and the idle chatter from the rest of the mess. Theodora allowed the silence to extend. For the first time in days, Ayile felt her gaze settle on her, merciless in the judgment it had long since passed onto the captive Aeldar.
"What does it teach us now that we let a xeno live," she said, each word perfectly clear in its sadness. "Now that we protect it from danger, from night's terrors of its own making, now that we care for it more than it ever cared for us, now that we let it to our bed and table?"
"Theo," it was Minoria who responded first. Ayile winced; a part of her wished it would have been Fausta's voice instead. "Can't you see she is bound? Broken? Just look at her!"
Abruptly, Minoria pulled Ayile's head up, to make a show of wiping the food-stains from the Aeldar's mouth and chin.
"Look at this mess," Minoria continued, holding the Seer so that everyone would see. "For the Throne's sake, she stinks worse than me!"
That much was true—yet another of the many indignations of her captivity, comparatively small when set against everything else inflicted upon her. Between her bondage and her humiliation, the Aeldar had gotten numb to the odor of her unwashed, battered body. It was just that she did not think that humans could notice, or care.
"We haven't even let her shower yet! This is your terrible enemy, Theo? This is what you want to burn, so desperately?"
But Theodora was not looking at Minoria, nor at her display of Ayile. Instead, her eyes were back on Fausta, who remained rigid and inscrutable.
"And see who jumps to the xeno's defense? Sister Minoria, who had long since lost any semblance of faith, who remains among and with us only for the sake of our shared sin."
Fausta hesitated; she raised a hand in a defensive gesture, beads of a rosary still wound between her fingers. If Theodora shone with beauty that only clarity of purpose can offer, her superior—her lover—bowed under the weight of the accusation. Age showed in her, and regret. When she finally spoke, little remained of the domineering tone she seemed to so enjoy. Instead, she sounded plaintive.
"Theodora. Sister. What is the purpose of this?"
There was a change in the air, and in the calm that the presence of the Sisters offered to Ayile. If Fausta seemed to shine like a warm light in the depths of night, holding the dark at bay, now that warmth was dissipating. No shadows came rushing in; no voices of the Immaterium hurried to whisper in the Seer's ear. A silence, cold and perfect, seized her instead, and in it could be no safety nor reassurance, only the great, bright power. If in the grasping hands of the Warp Ayile was prey to be devoured, in this light she was not meant to exist, and should it one day burn over the whole of Immaterium, no place would remain within the realspace for the Aeldar to live. In Theodora's presence, all Ayile's futures terminated in a blinding nothing.
"You know full well why," the beautiful Sororita said, holding the breviary close to her chest. "I see you stray, from righteousness, and from purity, and I love you too much to allow this to happen."
Only humans, Ayile thought, could declare love like promising murder. But even if such were their ways, Fausta still recoiled from those words, and when she finally managed to look back at her accuser, there was genuine hurt in her eyes, and something more bitter still.
"In the eyes of the Emperor, none of us are righteous, and none of us are pure. To think otherwise is to sin with pride."
"So we should not strive?"
"So we should not judge."
"An excuse for those afraid of looking into their own hearts!"
"Enough!"
The rosary snapped, sending little beads clattering across the floor.
"You are making a scandal out of us, Sister."
At other tables, officers in their uniforms tried their best to pretend to not see, and not hear. But there was attention upon Sororitas, bashful, yet rapt, and there would be rumours later, no doubt. Theodora looked around and sighed, still staring accusingly at her lover. But slowly, she sat down, mouthing a wordless, desperate I worry about you in Fausta's direction.
The Dialogus deflated, the sudden hardness immediately blunted and chipped away. She slouched down, and let her head hang just for a moment. But resolve returned quickly, and the moment of weakness passed into another expressionless, solemn face.
"How little all of it matters," she murmured. "We all know it ends."
Before the full implications of the statement could register to Ayile, Fausta added:
"But yes, the witch does stink. Maria, Clarissa, get her cleaned up. And make sure there is no scene."
)
