Fresh-Faced New User
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Hey all!
This is my first post! Been reading Dakka for awhile but never go around to making an account. I recently started playing a Dark Heresy game with a few friends and as I do for most all characters I create I wrote a back story. I dunno if it quite qualifies as fanfic but its placed in the 40k universe sooo maybe? The character I play is Talina, a sister of battle with a few...Issues. It took a few hours and has only been edited once or twice, so comments and critique are more than welcome.
Hope you enjoy!
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A Curse - Talina's Story
By Shade
This is my history. My recount. My confession.
I was born on a rocky crag of a mining base on Tsade. The bastard daughter of a miner and cleaner-cum-barmaid-cum-rotgut slag, whom I would I lovingly refer to as mother. I was raised in colony full of the universes' scum: drifting traders, miners and heathens; a dirty cadre of swilling, smoking, foul-mouthed wretches, whom I could come to call customers. Clients. Abusers.
Life was peaceful once upon a time, at least for a few years. I played. I laughed. I was taught the Emperors word and watched the stars turn through the dome that enclosed the colony. My parents provided what they could. Once we even saw the Black Templars as they made their way through the sector, the mighty ships cleaving dark holes in space. On lazy afternoons I would close my eyes and pretend I was with them, drifting into galaxies unknown. Looking back the depths of my innocence and naivety were astounding.
Everything must change though, and change it did. My father left when I was six, stating a new claim not far from Fenksworld that would make us rich. He was so excited and filled my head with promise, dreams of moving to another planet, away from the desolate place we knew. Whatever the claim had, we never saw him again. I was left with my mother, just us two on the frontier of nowhere. The day that he left us I will remember always. I held my mother’s hand, anticipation swirling in me. She seemed more aloof, troubled. As we watched his craft leave port, the flare of the engines stinging my young eyes, my mother turned to me and said:
"This is your fault. You are a curse from the Emperor upon me."
Her words rung in my head like a bell, echoing and echoing. From there, little I could call a childhood would ever be seen again. I was taken out of education, much to the anger of my teachers, and forced into labor in a hotel. Being so little I was made to crawl the vents, cleaning soot and shooing away the creatures that would nest in the warmer parts. Each evening mother and I would sit down for our meal, drained to our cores of strength and willingness to see the next artificial dawn. The years stretched into what felt like decades, centuries even; each day’s repetition and repetition and repetition grinding us to dust. We survived through sieges from Orks, disasters, mining boons and busts, calamity our only excitement through the doldrums. Fleeting were the glimpses of golden happiness against the never ending precession of grey.
Once I hit fourteen, life had to change again. A barely budding girl, I had long been too old to clean the vents, and was relegated to cleaning rooms. The pay was better, but the hours longer and longer. My mother had long been too tired for her life, and had relegated herself to the bottle. That would come to cost us most of my pay, and all of hers. Each night to the bar and each night back. Sometimes not even that far. Our home soured. Entering a room with her was like carrying a candle through a powder keg; I learned to watch my footing and kept my hands clear. Explosions were inevitable with words or with fists and not uncommonly both. She degenerated, and I was left to carry the house.
One evening, after a shift almost too long for my body to bear, I came back to our cramped quarters. The air felt unfamiliar somehow, but unease in that place was anticipated. As I took a shower, the heat of the water the only comfort I knew, voices started coming through the walls. They started first muffled, then louder. Raised shouts and slams resounded. I dressed and when into the living space to find my mother eye to eye with a leader of a mining guild, the space around them crackling with anger.
"Her?" He said. My mother quivered, her fist clenched.
"Yes her. She's a curse, and always will be." She stared through me, her eyes colder then the void outside.
"But she's so young..."
"Talina, go with him, you will make a living for both of us".
I was shown another trade inside the hotel that year, a trade of flesh. I would see too many a day, their faces blackened by dirt and grease. I saw priests, commissars, men of the Imperium. I saw soldiers and scoundrels, thieves and redeemers, I saw them all. They all came to me, praising my shock white hair and cerulean blue eyes. They said I had skin of a saint and would run their tongues over me. They would make me say I loved them or that they were the best I ever had. They would say they would take me away to the far off beauties of Reth or Quaddis or wherever. They never did. It was hard at first, but I came to enjoy it in a way. I also started to take upon some of my mother’s vices. I had all but stopped speaking to her, though she could rarely speak those days herself. Her addictions had morphed into an all-consuming creature the likes of which few had ever seen, devouring her very being as I slipped into its pull as well. I would lose myself in the intoxicants to lose myself from everything. They blurred the faces with their lustful eyes, letting me waste away even for a while in physical abandon. At the end of the day each sensation would fade and I would drag myself home, barely a shell of husk of a person.
My salvation from that life came just as unexpectedly as my downfall. I was a few days past eighteen. One prefect from the sector had become quite taken with me. He would often take me with him to the bar inside of hotel to show me off to his comrades. He would drink, sing and shout. He'd often get angry and violent. I would bear the brunt of his frustrations as, like he said, I knew my place. We were sitting around a table one afternoon, as he railed on.
"...And what does Terra know of what happens on the fringes? Nothing! I would like to see the snobs from the Administratum come here and do my job! They wouldn’t be able to manage a second with those sniveling guilds with their arrogant, pompous leaders." He called out, shaking his fist. "The gall they have to tell me how I should manage my sector!”
At this point I all I wanted was to edge away, slink to the bar and then maybe back to my room. The drink had blurred my vision, but I still could see the flash in his eyes. I knew the one more drink and two wrong words and I would see another night bloodied. As I slowly stood up to make my move he found in my actions what little of provocation he needed, and in turn decided to pin me to the table by my hair.
"Where do you think you're going, huh? Think you can just take off? Oh you would like that wouldn't you? Think you can leave without my say?” He chuckled, twisting his fingers. “Not today, Talina, I’m not done with you yet. Those bastards in the Adminstratum may not be able to see, but I'll for damn sure show you just what this man is made of."
"And what exactly are you made of? Perhaps you can show me." His hand was off me in an instant and his face slammed next to mine, eyes wide. As I fell to my knees and looked up and caught only a glimpse: a black cape lined with red, with a fleur de lis emblazoned upon the shoulder pad.
"AHHHHH! Sister! F-forgive me!" The prefect sputtered, struggling vainly to stand up.
"You should treat this girl with more respect. She is a child of the Emperor, and as a representative of his holiness, you should be better behaved". The sister drove her knee into his side with an almighty crack, crumpling the prefect to the floor.
"As for you, child, what are you doing in a place like this?" she turned to me and said, issuing her hand to lift me up. I shook, eyes filled with tears.
"I work...My mother....She...She needed..." I whimpered as I collapsed into her. She took me away to one of the rooms and asked me my story. I recounted it all, each day I could remember through the haze of lho and sacra and grinweed. I cried with the flood of recollection, the remembrance of so many tortured hours. With my head on her I could hear the beat of her heart grow faster, and the faint grind of her teeth as I spoke.
"This is a great injustice child. With the light of the Emperor in the universe so deep run the shadows." Her leather gloves creaked with tension. "I will not tolerate this."
She took my hand and told me to take her to my mother. I pointed her in the direction, but she was the one who took me there, practically dragging me. While she led me she told me of the sororitas, and how too many of the Emperors daughters have fallen to the wayside, corrupted by those around them. She said she saw in me the potential for a great warrior, the chance to be an extension of his will and a force of justice.
Once we had reached our quarters the sister told me to wait outside while she talked to my mother. She entered and I stood staring at the door. I counted each rivet in the metal frame as I waited and strained and wished I could hear beyond my ears limits. After what seemed like hours, the sister returned with my mother in tow, throwing her into the street.
"By the Emperors grace! What kind of mother would prostitute her child to feed her destructive habits?! Does the obscura blind you from the horrors you have exposed her to, or did you ignore that all by yourself?" The sister spit at the ground in front of her.
"I see in you the taint of Chaos. Such depravity is only known by its influence. You have destroyed your own daughter’s innocence surely. For this, you shall in turn be destroyed." The sister turned to me and released the chainsword attached to her belt, holding it out. She looked deep into my eyes, hers the same blue as mine.
"Take this child. This purest of vengeance is yours. In the name of the Emperor, cleanse this scourge from the universe". I gripped the handle, feeling the leather cushion my hand. She let go of the body and for a second I strained to hold the weight. Lifting it upright I engaged the blade, watching the spines spin, hearing the wail of the engine. Never so clearly had a machine spoke to me, and it spoke of righteousness.
"Talina, my daughter, what are you doing?! You cannot kill me, I am your mother!" She crawled to me, grasping at my feet. I stepped back and looked down on her, studying her sunken cheeks and pock-marked skin. The sister stood behind me, placing her hand on my shoulder. As I stared into this mass that had caused me such pain and strife in my young existence, I felt the light of the Emperor inside me and heard a distant voice calling me to his side.
"Mother, you have led me astray, and had me believe that it was my own doing. You have cast me amongst wolves so you could revel in your own terrible decadence"
"Talina, no I didn-"
"Oh but you did! Have you any idea the things I have done? All the things I have known? I was all of fourteen, and you had me work in that wretched hole! I was so young and you had me…" I snarled, the biting fury rasping between my teeth.
"Don't say these things! I had no choice! We had not a gelt to our names, your father made certain of that. And even if I did you liked it, you little harlot!" She pulled at my legs. With a flick of my foot I pushed her onto her back.
"Mother....By the Emperor...." I raised the blade.
"You've always been a curse." She muttered, struggling to sit up. I filled my lungs to capacity, till they felt as they would burst.
"YOU WILL KNOW HIS WRATH!"
I screamed and swung the sword down. It connected with her frame just below her sternum, spraying blood and viscera into a fine mist. As it coated my face and rolled down my neck I felt bathed by it. I felt cleansed by the taste of iron on my lips. I had killed her, and with her death killed a long part of my past. I had slain the memories of those nights of fighting with her, the feeling of her nails against my face. I destroyed the visions of that dingy hotel room and too many men. I stood over her body and felt a wave of absolution, and that there may be redemption for what I had done. I dropped the sword beside me and sunk to my knees, savoring the brief moment of pure serenity.
"This is his will child. You have served him rightly in purging the corrupt. This is only the first step though, on a long path that will have you cross many stars. Come now, stand up, there is training to be done." The sister lifted me up and we turned away, leaving my mother’s body to the darkness. I gathered what little I had and departed on her ship for Ophelia VIII, resolute in becoming a sister of battle.
Out of all of my life, this gallery of atrocities, if there was ever a glimmering piece of truth it would be that I am a curse. With my training and studies I have come to accept and own that title for myself. I'm not a curse upon my mother. I was born a curse upon the enemies of the Emperor. I have sinned, I recognize this. I have lived in corruption and have ignored his urgent call for so long. I have heard it now though, and I will prove myself and earn his forgiveness for my weak discipline. If I have to burn every star, every planet in my path, I will burn them. Through battle I will flow a river of righteous blood to his feet so my sins may be washed clean, that one day he might count me one amongst his chosen. I will submit only to him and fight eternally for the honor and glory of my sisters and his holy will.
To the Emperor, my life; to Him, my death.
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If you've read this far, many thanks! I hope the formatting turned out alright (it looks better in word). As you can figure, Talina is most likely en route to become a repentia, her past leaving her with a just a little bloodlust and fevered devotion, not to mention a love of tearing people apart with a chainsword. Again, any comments please post!
Cheers!
-Shade
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