|
A common misconception within the Ordo Malleus is that there are four Patrons of Chaos, the Ruinous Powers. Imagine them in an Arbites line-up: the cackling bird, the rotted corpse, the seething bull, the sighing mistress. Each one is distinct.
In truth, there are a thousand Gods. Some are great whirling vortexes, dwarfing even the Imperium's Ruinous Powers. Tilt your chin back, inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth. In the time that breath took you, a million Gods were birthed wet and shuddering into existence and a million more blinked into nothing. Landscapes of the Immaterium disappear. A million successive earthquakes eroded these legends, these beings of raw writhing life, while you took a breath. Or because you took a breath.
The Klingfelter Experiment determined just what the Immaterium was. Depending on who you believe, either a gunsmuggler named Markin or a bookkeeper named Marcos was used. He was strapped down onto a metal chair, squealing. Sensors were tapped to his chest, his temples, and the base of his spine. Probes smeared with vaseline came next. A humming vox compression unit was zeroed in on his head.
First, he was flooded with obscura. He saw a warm light, and felt something comparable to honey running through his veins. The twisted mechanical world was all-at-once at peace. Inquisitor Klingfelter watched the way that graphs fell and rose with his pleasure. Immaterial activity eased down, flat-lined, then spiked to its previous levels. They tested other substances on him, but it was always the same result. As his emotions changed, the Immaterial activity fell then rose. No lasting change.
Except when he slept. In that period of time between being awake and dreaming, there was no activity for spaces sometimes as long as an hour. No Immaterial activity. So Inquisitor Klingfelter decided that this light sleep would be his control.
A mirror was propped up in front of Markin or Marcos, depending on who you believe. A technician woke him up by slapping him. Then, Markin or Marcos was forced to watch as he was castrated.
Blinking lights turned to stinging red, then shattered. The steady drumbeat of the vox compression unit turned to the shrieking of metal grating against metal. Graphs shot straight up. One of Inquisitor Klingfelter's screens dissolved to static, and for one moment he saw a face.
A long, narrow face.
A face that was all wrong.
It was sentient thought that gave to birth to it. All the magic of emotion, the stomach twisting edge of fear and the singing way that hope called to men and the bunched-up, overtensed nature of rage, was all too real, and it was pouring into a place beyond our wildest dreams. The sewage byproduct of mankind. Storms of acid rain building on the horizon, straining the sunlight pale and thin.
These creatures doted on us. They fashioned themselves in our visage, or at least, as they saw us. Heaving wet bodies with teeth. And they doted on us. These Ruinous Powers made those of us who were willing faster and stronger and harder. Their gifts to their Gods. After all, we made them.
Klingfelter was ruined by his experiment. He showed up to his hearing a broken man with hallows carved beneath his eyes and stubble shading in his jawline. The hair was always on edge at the back of his neck. Fingers couldn't stop twitching. While the judges dissected his crimes he looked past them. If he squinted just right -
- he could see their faithful creations doting over them.
|
