Between earth and heaven, there is only chaos. On Terra a madman sits upon a blasphemous throne, attended by fanatics and sycophants, boasting of his virtue while his hands drip with blood. On Mars, men who claim to be wise put power over truth and slay those who speak out against them. On every border the enemy advances, from every shadow monsters prowl, in every home the fires of sedition are stoked by ambition and outrage. The world is not as it should be, and even now those who once knew better whisper of the ending of an age.
The circumstances will never be more in your favour.
You are no heretic or rebel, no traitor to the realm, but your eyes are keen and your mind unclouded by sentiment. The Imperium is wracked by chaos and disharmony, this is true, but this is as right and proper as any other state or time. Problems arise, compile, weaken the established order; those in power find their grasp slipping, and from their shadows new powers rise to set the world to rights. From the Age of Darkness, the Golden Emperor. From the Grand Heresy, the Prince in Blue. From the Realm Divided, the Grand Ecclesiarch. And now, from this Reign of Blood, this 'Age of Apostasy', you.
From the mouth of another, you should judge such sentiment as arrogant beyond measure, hubris taken to the point of madness, but you know yourself and you know your worth. You are Miraxa SH-43893, Young Mistress of the Omnissiah's Blood, gene-daughter to the Fabricator Igvita himself. Scarcely even eighteen years of age, already you stand an Adept of the Material Realm, third of the steps among the path to true enlightenment. Your blood burns hotter than fire, your mind is sharper than steel, your will unquestioned and your spirit unmatched between heaven and earth. Not for you a time of plenty, a life of indolence spent picking apart the secrets of the universe like an old woman worrying at her shawl. No, you are owed a life greater and more terrible than any who have come before, a life of merit and excellence, a life of mastery over the very stuff of knowledge itself.
It is not a choice. Your gene-father has many children, and though you are without question the best of them all, that is not a status retained by resting on one's laurels. The Fabricator Ryza will live for centuries yet at the least, more than likely millennium, and for every day from now until your inheritance comes due you must prove your worth anew or be cast aside and discarded for one more fitting. That was why you left the Sect behind - to cower behind its walls while the galaxy was consumed by chaos is not the way of a woman who will inherit the earth, and out amid those tumultuous stars there would be challenges and opportunities beyond measure. You would seek them out, master and overcome them, return to your Sect with a legend at your back and from there strike forth to tear down the Mad Tyrant from his bloodstained throne.
Such was the plan, at any rate.
It is said that jackals walk at the heels of all those who seek greatness, feasting on the scraps from their table when times are good and dragging them down to feast when the fates turn against them. You knew this truth, but in your naivety you assumed it to be a metaphor, a warning given to those who might otherwise rely on fairweather friends and the self-interested cynics. To be captured and betrayed by an actual Jackal, once a man and now a beast through the miracle of Akasha, is an interpretation far more literal than you were counting upon. Truly, the heavens laugh at the schemes of men.
You are not even sure how it happened. You were alone, you remember that much, guarded only by the strength of your arm and the retribution implied by your robes of scarlet and white. You remember blue skies and hot wind against your face, the taste of sweet wine upon your lips, the sound of someone calling your name. Then the pain, the sense of dislocation, one brief glimpse of a golden jackal with teeth of rubies. Some manner of disabling Art, some working of the Adept's path you have no doubt, but who would dare? Who would dream of tempting the fates so blatantly as to lay hands upon the Young Mistress of the Omnissiah Igvita?
Darkness, silent and cold, is your only answer.
-/-
Lucidity comes in fits and starts, your mind waging war against the darkness.
You lie on a cold iron table, illuminated by lamps that burn with an azure flame. The air is thick and foetid, laden with spoor and the stench of raw meat. Machinery hammers in the distance, thundering and roaring in its madness, purpose and harmony stolen away by… by what?
A child laughs, cold and cruel, and spikes of burning pain drag you under.
-/-
You are cold and silent, hanging like a puppet from some cruel harness that bites at your hands like a ravenous wolf. A mortal frame would be stretched to breaking by this abuse, but your flesh is perfect and your mind superior to base matter. You could spend eternity in this hell and walk out as fresh and able as when you entered.
You cannot move. Your ideal flesh, your sculpted muscles and hardened bones, will not obey you. You hang from the harness like a wet rag and your curses are strangled by a mouth that will not speak, a jaw that will not move. From the corner of one eye you can see a rod of stygian iron piercing the flesh of your shoulder, one of many that jut from your flesh like the quills of some monstrous beast. Nerve clusters, meridians, chakra points - all are pierced, all are made passive. Your captors know you to be an Adept then, as well they should, but for what purpose have they taken you?
Swamp lights ignite, braziers filled with green flame this time, not the blue that you dimly remember. In their flickering light you see the pool beneath your feet, dank and cold and slick with chemicals that dance a rainbow across the surface. You hang suspended above the watery depths like meat at the market, and from the shadows emerge the men who would bid upon your flesh. There are at least a dozen of them, hounds and serpents and pigs in the shape of men, and when you seek to divine the truth of their nature your thoughts slide away like silk against the ice.
There is debate between those beasts, grunts and mutters and the hawk of phlegm, and you can do nothing but listen and glare in mute defiance. If you had the use of your mouth you would curse them ten thousand times for this indignity, or perhaps pity them for the doom they have called down upon their heads, but your nerves are pinned in place and you can do nothing more than exist. If you were not an Adept you would have suffocated beneath your own weight by now.
A consensus is reached, a command is given, and with a dull rattle the chains holding your puppet's frame in place go slack. You sink, slowly and inexorably, into the cold and oily water. Restrained and immobilised, your body paralysed and your mind made dull, you can only rage inside your skull as the waters rise above your neck.
You drown. No, you don't. You… this isn't happening, you need to…
-/-
Ice. Sheets of it atop the water, layers of it caking the walls, patterns of frost that sparkle across your skin. Your mind races, unaffected by the cold, piecing together the clues. Cryogenic storage? Shipment to some barren world on the frontier? No, this is something else. Something worse. Something foul.
There is a coffin before you, floating in the void, twice your size and pierced through with needles. You recognise them. They were in your flesh not so long ago, that is your gore that stains the metal. But how can that be? You are unpierced, you are unbound, and yet still you cannot move.
The coffin opens. The spikes retract with a hiss of steam and the lid of the casket folds open like the petals of a flower. Inside is… debris, detritus, the broken remnants of flesh that once was a human being. No hair, no skin, no limbs or tongue. The ragged wounds where the needles pierced its flesh weep oily blood in trickling rivers, and you refuse to recognise the taste upon your tongue. It makes no sense. It cannot be real.
The ruin opens its eyes, and beneath the burning light of uncaring stars, you scream.
-/-
You wake, once again.
No false resurgence this time, no maddened visions of impossible monsters. You wake and roll to your feet in a single motion, feeling the burning pulse of akasha welcome you home. Your veins burn with power, chasing away the last lingering traces of incapacitating chill, and though for one brief moment you fear you might stumble already your strength and grace returns.
You are in a pit, perhaps thirty paces wide. The ground is covered with reeking sand and the detritus of old prisoners; scraps of wire, fragments of bone, the odd patch of blood and piss. The walls are wrought of thick and rusted iron, encrusted with strange iron grates and lights behind fragile mesh, reaching up to a rim some six metres above you. There is no sign of the sky, only clinging gloom and iron vaults, broken by the soft jangling of chains hanging from great gear-driven lifts in the chamber above. You are underground, you think, or perhaps in the most foetid guts of a starship owned by tramps. The walls are studded with blades, hooked and cruel and curved inwards to prevent anyone climbing the sides, but such obstacles are nothing to one such as you. You dismiss them, turning your attention inward.
You are naked. Your robes have been taken, your electoos excised, your implanted neuro-link torn out by the root. You feel no pain, no fear, no shame. Only rage and a grim resolve. You will find who did this, and you will pluck out their eyes and make them beg forgiveness for the slight offered to this craftsmanship of the Omnissiah Igvita. Such a task will take time, but you have the will to see it through, and for a blessing you lack any wounds that might hinder you in your task. For a moment you pause, remembering the spikes that paralysed you, that pinned you in place and robbed you of your strength. There is no trace of them now, no wounds upon your skin or weakness in your limbs, yet there must have been some method employed to keep you quiescent, to ensure that you only regained your strength now.
There is a low, rasping shriek, metal against metal and rust flayed as skin from bone. One of the grates on the wall slides open, slow and juddering, stuck halfway. There is a tunnel behind it, a shadowed maw that belches dust and echoes with the grinding roar of mechanical guts somewhere far beyond sight. You can hear skittering, glass on metal, the wet panting of something vaguely canine advancing at speed. Feeding time for whatever beasts are kept here, no doubt, and so you should be off. You should leap from the pit, be born aloft on pinions of flame, escape to somewhere safer or at least a better vantage. And yet…
You look down. There are others in the pit, twelve of them, and you the thirteenth. Menials, all of them, embraced by akasha yet unaware of its presence. Men and women of all ages, some starvation-thin, others padded with fat. None have regained consciousness - one has already died, his heart giving out beneath whatever was used to keep him down, and the others are insensate and likely will be for a while yet. If you leave here, they will likely all die.
Objectively, they are useless to you. Rationally they are doomed; even if you stand in their defence here there is no way for menials to escape this pit, much less pass through the mechanical guts of whatever broken leviathan has swallowed you all whole. Yet your heart still twinges at the thought of leaving them behind. It is your pride speaking, you suppose. The idea that you cannot save them offends you. Yes. That must be it.
The sounds are getting closer now. You will have to make a decision.
Choose one:
[ ] Leave. Hide your strength from any observers, conserve your stamina in this unknown place, and escape. You will avenge these poor souls a hundred fold upon the wretches that dared to take you.
[ ] Stand. Put yourself between the helpless and whatever creature will emerge from that vent. You will examine your reasons for doing so later.
[ ] Improvise. Perhaps there is a way that you might remove the helpless from harm's way without depleting your strength in straightforward battle?
- [ ] (Write in how. If you have a cool idea for a sect-appropriate art or technique that could help here, this is the time to vote for having retroactively always known it.)
