1.3
Drich
Von Neumann Writing Machine
1.3
+++
A Daemon is a creature of energy and concept, and a Bloodletter specifically a creature of war. Blood and violence.
It knows violence. Knows fighting. Its very existence is combat.
Eight normal cultists, even if mutated by the touch of Chaos, do not. They're corrupt, all of them, right to the deepest levels, a fact which I can taste. They're completely in the grip of Chaos, and whoever they were before, what they are now is a bunch of murderous madmen worshipping evil.
It's over quickly. Knocked down, and limited by mere flesh, I kill them quickly, and do to them the exact same thing I did to the Daemon they summoned. I pull their souls in, rending them down into raw energy as I drink it in...
They're not Daemons. Not nearly as filling. The energy I can draw from them is a pittance, in comparison.
Still, it only leaves two things to do.
I turn a Clasher-self to the wall, where the figure is chained. All of them reach under the cloth they're covered with, clinking gently as the figure shifts, slightly. They're suspended off the ground, arms to the side, yet, there's four chains. I can hear shallow, laboured breathing.
I examine the figure. I can taste... corruption, yes, but not a significant amount. More passive, rather than active... born from overexposure to Chaos, rather than acceptance of it.
Hmm. There might still be hope.
I move closer, reaching out. The three pincers at the end of the arm shift, narrowing into a longer, needle-like shape. The cloth seems to come in four pieces, so I carefully reach under the cloth over the head, pushing it up and back.
Matted hair greets me, blood and dirt both. It's roughly cut, long in some places and short in others. I can't even tell what colour it is, it's covered in so much refuse. The face...
Is young.
One eye is swollen shut, purple-black. On the cheeks is a symbol of Chaos, branded on the skin. A few teeth are missing, and others cracked. Lips... chapped and cracked, broken skin marked with sores and blood.
And yet... the other eye is still open. The veins are pronounced, leaving the whites remarkably red, but the rest...
Green. And looking at my Clasher-self with unbroken will. Glaring, in defiance.
Misplaced, directed at me.
Hmm... It's hard to tell, but the structure of the cheeks lends an impression of femininity. Carefully, I peel another layer of cloth back. She's dressed in rags underneath, but the rags are loose enough that it's no trouble to tell that she is indeed a she.
Below the neck is a collar, wrapped tightly around the neck. The chain isn't loose. If she hung her neck, it'd choke her. A basic, and easy, torture, needlessly cruel.
I pull back my pincers, the shape of them shifting again, into a more flexible, shorter claw like arrangement. I thread a claw around the hinge, taking care not to jostle the collar.
Her jaw clenches, staring with contempt.
Light spills forth, and I focus it. The collar glows, and then disintegrates, the hinge falling apart into base materials. The pieces fall to the ground, and she breathes a little easier. Still, there are welts, and bruises in the shape of fingers, and more. Her skin told a tale, one that few wanted to hear.
I can see the inside of the collar, too.
Barbed.
You know, I think I might have spent too much time around the results of Chaos cults. This used to drive me to such rage. All this is bringing up in me now is a feeling of resigned anger.
I reach up, pressing the flat of my claw against her cheek. She's warm, positively feverish. In what is certainly an unconscious movement, she leans against it, desperate for the coolness.
She's confused, now. Not quite knowing what I want. I'd guess... she's lived a harsh life for long enough that she doesn't know what to do when somebody isn't trying to hurt her.
Being completely honest, she probably doesn't even recognize that I'm not trying to hurt her.
Poor girl.
...
Yet, still... It's odd, that she's survived this long, with her will still intact. Champions many times her age had broken in the face of Chaos, men and women alike. There must be something special about her...
Especially if this cult was keeping her around, after summoning a Daemon.
Hmm.
I pull back, and her head follows before jerking back as she realizes what she's doing, a sudden note of fear entering her eyes...
My claws shift again, becoming flat tipped. I press them against her sternum, and she swallows. For a moment, nothing happens, but then a wave of light ripples down the pincer. It's slow, crawling across the smooth silver, but inevitable. It reaches her skin, and continues flowing, the light pulsing through her own body.
My energy pulsing through her body. I'm gentle, as I examine. She's not healthy; starved, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, a definite fever, muscles strained and weakened, heart pulsing slowly... She could get better, given the appropriate medical care.
But aside from that, nothing special.
I probe deeper, reaching beneath the flesh. I touch her soul, and then, I understand.
She's a Psyker. Not a realized one, not yet, but the latent potential is there, her soul strong, and the connection to the Warp wider than most.
That also explains why she has so little Corruption in her, despite being surrounded by it. A strong rejection, worn at by sheer time and exposure. Her wounds are many, but none of them too deep or scarring.
And just like that, she's valuable. I'd have helped her regardless, but now... Psykers were an incredible resource, to me.
My Entity-self makes the preparations; energy warping and twisting, forming the core of a matrix, the embryo of another body. This one, however, has a special purpose, nothing so normal as the rest of mine.
It takes a few seconds to form. I transmit it from my Entity-self to my Clasher-self, and from there...
I, gently, push it inside of her being. The embryo glides along the same path as the rest of my energy, and I nestle it into the core of her being, where the body meets the soul. I feed it energy, and it begins to grow, blooming into life, a fragment of my being inside of hers...
It wraps around her soul, small tendrils at first, but quickly turning into an armoured shell. Where it finds corruption, it makes a quick cut, severing it from the rest of her. She twitches as it happens, but it's a necessity. Left alone, it will fester.
Besides, souls are like livers. They regenerate. Eventually. So long as there's enough of it left, anyway.
The cut off pieces of corruption are shortly consumed, used to fuel its own growth. The process takes minutes, but it happens easily. I've got a lot of experience, here.
The shell completes, and she's mostly safe, then, against further predation. But the embryo isn't done, there. It taps into her Soul, into the connection between her being, and the power that she had the potential to command. The Warp connects to her, and as such...
Through her, the embryo has a source of energy that won't deplete. Through her, it draws upon that energy and consumes it, using it to maintain itself and fuel its own growth.
Satisfied, I cut the energy I had been feeding it. Time will fuel the rest of its growth, just as time will heal the wounds that corruption has inflicted on her.
I pull back, no longer touching her skin.
She's still staring at me, but her eyes are beginning to unfocus. She's tired, after all, and without the collar to keep her awake through pain and choking...
I raise an arm, gather energy, and fire a breaking-wave. The other three chains binding her to the wall shatter like so much glass, and she falls to the ground.
I catch her, of course, in the other arm. I shift, and she's nestled into the crook of my arm against my chest, a wall of cool pleasantness to help keep her fever down. The other three shackles are revealed in the process, two around her arms and one around her stomach. Those, too, are quickly removed, with nothing left to hurt her. I pause for a moment to recover the cloth that had covered her, and I take care to wrap it around her neatly and softly.
Her head lulls back, and she stares up. She tries to stay awake, shaking periodically, but it's a futile effort. She falls asleep in moments, lulled by a lack of ongoing pain.
My Clasher-self moves out of the room, smooth movements to prevent any jostling. I take her upstairs, out into the city. The air is thick and stuffy, down here.
First thing, done.
Now, where is that reactor?
+++
A Daemon is a creature of energy and concept, and a Bloodletter specifically a creature of war. Blood and violence.
It knows violence. Knows fighting. Its very existence is combat.
Eight normal cultists, even if mutated by the touch of Chaos, do not. They're corrupt, all of them, right to the deepest levels, a fact which I can taste. They're completely in the grip of Chaos, and whoever they were before, what they are now is a bunch of murderous madmen worshipping evil.
It's over quickly. Knocked down, and limited by mere flesh, I kill them quickly, and do to them the exact same thing I did to the Daemon they summoned. I pull their souls in, rending them down into raw energy as I drink it in...
They're not Daemons. Not nearly as filling. The energy I can draw from them is a pittance, in comparison.
Still, it only leaves two things to do.
I turn a Clasher-self to the wall, where the figure is chained. All of them reach under the cloth they're covered with, clinking gently as the figure shifts, slightly. They're suspended off the ground, arms to the side, yet, there's four chains. I can hear shallow, laboured breathing.
I examine the figure. I can taste... corruption, yes, but not a significant amount. More passive, rather than active... born from overexposure to Chaos, rather than acceptance of it.
Hmm. There might still be hope.
I move closer, reaching out. The three pincers at the end of the arm shift, narrowing into a longer, needle-like shape. The cloth seems to come in four pieces, so I carefully reach under the cloth over the head, pushing it up and back.
Matted hair greets me, blood and dirt both. It's roughly cut, long in some places and short in others. I can't even tell what colour it is, it's covered in so much refuse. The face...
Is young.
One eye is swollen shut, purple-black. On the cheeks is a symbol of Chaos, branded on the skin. A few teeth are missing, and others cracked. Lips... chapped and cracked, broken skin marked with sores and blood.
And yet... the other eye is still open. The veins are pronounced, leaving the whites remarkably red, but the rest...
Green. And looking at my Clasher-self with unbroken will. Glaring, in defiance.
Misplaced, directed at me.
Hmm... It's hard to tell, but the structure of the cheeks lends an impression of femininity. Carefully, I peel another layer of cloth back. She's dressed in rags underneath, but the rags are loose enough that it's no trouble to tell that she is indeed a she.
Below the neck is a collar, wrapped tightly around the neck. The chain isn't loose. If she hung her neck, it'd choke her. A basic, and easy, torture, needlessly cruel.
I pull back my pincers, the shape of them shifting again, into a more flexible, shorter claw like arrangement. I thread a claw around the hinge, taking care not to jostle the collar.
Her jaw clenches, staring with contempt.
Light spills forth, and I focus it. The collar glows, and then disintegrates, the hinge falling apart into base materials. The pieces fall to the ground, and she breathes a little easier. Still, there are welts, and bruises in the shape of fingers, and more. Her skin told a tale, one that few wanted to hear.
I can see the inside of the collar, too.
Barbed.
You know, I think I might have spent too much time around the results of Chaos cults. This used to drive me to such rage. All this is bringing up in me now is a feeling of resigned anger.
I reach up, pressing the flat of my claw against her cheek. She's warm, positively feverish. In what is certainly an unconscious movement, she leans against it, desperate for the coolness.
She's confused, now. Not quite knowing what I want. I'd guess... she's lived a harsh life for long enough that she doesn't know what to do when somebody isn't trying to hurt her.
Being completely honest, she probably doesn't even recognize that I'm not trying to hurt her.
Poor girl.
...
Yet, still... It's odd, that she's survived this long, with her will still intact. Champions many times her age had broken in the face of Chaos, men and women alike. There must be something special about her...
Especially if this cult was keeping her around, after summoning a Daemon.
Hmm.
I pull back, and her head follows before jerking back as she realizes what she's doing, a sudden note of fear entering her eyes...
My claws shift again, becoming flat tipped. I press them against her sternum, and she swallows. For a moment, nothing happens, but then a wave of light ripples down the pincer. It's slow, crawling across the smooth silver, but inevitable. It reaches her skin, and continues flowing, the light pulsing through her own body.
My energy pulsing through her body. I'm gentle, as I examine. She's not healthy; starved, dehydrated, sleep-deprived, a definite fever, muscles strained and weakened, heart pulsing slowly... She could get better, given the appropriate medical care.
But aside from that, nothing special.
I probe deeper, reaching beneath the flesh. I touch her soul, and then, I understand.
She's a Psyker. Not a realized one, not yet, but the latent potential is there, her soul strong, and the connection to the Warp wider than most.
That also explains why she has so little Corruption in her, despite being surrounded by it. A strong rejection, worn at by sheer time and exposure. Her wounds are many, but none of them too deep or scarring.
And just like that, she's valuable. I'd have helped her regardless, but now... Psykers were an incredible resource, to me.
My Entity-self makes the preparations; energy warping and twisting, forming the core of a matrix, the embryo of another body. This one, however, has a special purpose, nothing so normal as the rest of mine.
It takes a few seconds to form. I transmit it from my Entity-self to my Clasher-self, and from there...
I, gently, push it inside of her being. The embryo glides along the same path as the rest of my energy, and I nestle it into the core of her being, where the body meets the soul. I feed it energy, and it begins to grow, blooming into life, a fragment of my being inside of hers...
It wraps around her soul, small tendrils at first, but quickly turning into an armoured shell. Where it finds corruption, it makes a quick cut, severing it from the rest of her. She twitches as it happens, but it's a necessity. Left alone, it will fester.
Besides, souls are like livers. They regenerate. Eventually. So long as there's enough of it left, anyway.
The cut off pieces of corruption are shortly consumed, used to fuel its own growth. The process takes minutes, but it happens easily. I've got a lot of experience, here.
The shell completes, and she's mostly safe, then, against further predation. But the embryo isn't done, there. It taps into her Soul, into the connection between her being, and the power that she had the potential to command. The Warp connects to her, and as such...
Through her, the embryo has a source of energy that won't deplete. Through her, it draws upon that energy and consumes it, using it to maintain itself and fuel its own growth.
Satisfied, I cut the energy I had been feeding it. Time will fuel the rest of its growth, just as time will heal the wounds that corruption has inflicted on her.
I pull back, no longer touching her skin.
She's still staring at me, but her eyes are beginning to unfocus. She's tired, after all, and without the collar to keep her awake through pain and choking...
I raise an arm, gather energy, and fire a breaking-wave. The other three chains binding her to the wall shatter like so much glass, and she falls to the ground.
I catch her, of course, in the other arm. I shift, and she's nestled into the crook of my arm against my chest, a wall of cool pleasantness to help keep her fever down. The other three shackles are revealed in the process, two around her arms and one around her stomach. Those, too, are quickly removed, with nothing left to hurt her. I pause for a moment to recover the cloth that had covered her, and I take care to wrap it around her neatly and softly.
Her head lulls back, and she stares up. She tries to stay awake, shaking periodically, but it's a futile effort. She falls asleep in moments, lulled by a lack of ongoing pain.
My Clasher-self moves out of the room, smooth movements to prevent any jostling. I take her upstairs, out into the city. The air is thick and stuffy, down here.
First thing, done.
Now, where is that reactor?
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