Storm Trooper with Maglight
Ottawa
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The black ship of the Inquisition had just entered the Warp. Marius and his two thousand fellow captives could feel it in the air, in their bones, in their very souls, despite the engraved metal collars that dampened their psychic powers. To a psyker, Warp travel was like being put in a mesh cage and lowered in a pool full of sharks. In a way, Marius envied the silent, cruel men who came to feed him once per day. They, at least, did not see the sharks. They knew there were sharks out there, surely, but they could choose to forget about them.
Marius was not so fortunate.
Every waking moment, the boy could see strange shadows moving at the edge of his vision and hear scratching noises against the walls of reality. Whenever he fell asleep, he was visited by the most vivid nightmares he had ever known. Unspeakable things were trying to claw their way inside the ship and devour all of its occupants. Marius’s three cell mates could feel them, too. Jaffe was quickly losing his mind. Reena whimpered in a fetal position and needed to be force-fed her gruel. Zachariah prayed aloud to the Emperor for hours on end; the fool still insisted that a glorious fate awaited them on Holy Terra, if only they kept faith and remained strong.
On the third day, poor Jaffe tried to open his wrists with his teeth. He gave it a valiant effort, but made a bloody mess of things before passing out. In an act of mercy, Marius strangled him with his chains to finish the job, against Zachariah’s shrill protests. The men of the Inquisition were not happy to lose a prisoner. They gave Marius thirty shocks for killing Jaffe, and Reena and Zachariah ten shocks each for failing to stop him.
Perhaps we should be taken by the Warp, was Marius’s heretical thought as electricity coursed through his emaciated body, setting his nerves afire with pain. Better to die in vain than to serve an Imperium that stole children from their parents, locked them in cramped cells and took them many lightyears away from their homeworlds, to unknown fates.
On the fifth day, Marius and his cell mates were pulled out of their fitful sleep by the ship’s alarms. “Hull breach on level six,” said the female voice on the speaker. Soon, distant gunfire rang out in the hallways, getting closer every minute. The horrors of the Warp had finally torn their way in, and now rampaged throughout the ship. From the sound of it, the men of the Inquisition fought back, but clearly they were outmatched. Reena went quiet as the grave. Zachariah prayed louder and faster, with a pathetic tremor to his voice. Marius just leaned back against the bulkhead with a resigned sigh. Let them come, he thought. No one on this wretched ship deserves to live, anyway. The dying screams of his jailors just beyond his cell door were music to his ears.
The door slid open, and the daemon walked in.
It was tall; so tall that it had to stoop to enter the cell. It had the head of a raven, with feathers that seemed to shift colors from pink to purple to green. Its eyes were black as the void, utterly expressionless, yet when they paused on Marius, the young psyker felt as if they were reading his soul. The creature was dressed in blue robes, and the talons of its hands were wrapped around a bronze staff topped with a strange symbol. Psychic energy radiated in powerful waves from the daemon. Marius shrank back into a corner. Reena’s jaw dropped. Zachariah stood defiantly, ready to fight the creature with his bare fists if need be.
<You need not be afraid,> said the daemon, its telepathy carrying a soothing tone. <Rejoice, for the Changer of Ways brings you liberation… should you accept it.>
Zachariah spat. “Liberation? No servant of Chaos is free!”
The daemon eyed Zachariah, making him gulp. <Alas, no man alive can ever truly be free,> it said calmly, <and nothing comes without a price. But today, you do have the rare freedom of choosing your master. That is more than you were ever offered before.>
“My only master is the Emperor!” Zachariah shouted.
Marius rose, ashen-faced. “I’ll take my chances with a new master.”
The daemon had no lips to smile, but a glimmer of joy appeared in its black eyes. It drew a tiny glass knife from between the folds of reality and offered it, handle first, to Marius. “Carve the mark of my master in your left palm,” it said, pointing at the symbol on top of its staff: an orb, set against a flame-like shape. “And my master will free your mind from its shackles.”
Marius accepted the knife without hesitation and did as he was told. To his surprise, there was no pain when the blade bit into his skin, though his blood flowed freely. He feared his knife hand might slip and make a poor drawing, yet the end result was flawless. Upon carving the last line, he saw something poke through the cut in his skin. At first he thought it was a bone. He pulled on it gingerly, and found that it was a key. He tested it in the lock of his collar, where it fit perfectly. As soon as he removed his collar, his psychic powers came rushing back. He could once again feel the Warp currents flowing around him, call them to himself, bind them to his will. He knew who his master was, and he pledged to serve Him until his dying breath.
Directly across from him, Reena had done the same with an identical knife proffered by the daemon. There was no more fear in her eyes, only fierce determination as she watched blood dribble from her clenched fist.
“Traitors! Heretics!” Zachariah yelled at them both, his voice cracking with fear. “You’ve doomed yourselves!”
Marius and Reena exchanged a look and a nod. In unison, they each laid a bloody left hand on one of Zachariah’s shoulders and called upon the powers of the Warp. The boy tried to fend them off, but his muscles would not obey him. Blood began to flow from his nose, then his eyes and mouth. He fell on his knees with a shriek. His flesh distended, then split open in several places. From the ruins of his body emerged a shapeless, pink-skinned horror with an impossible number of flailing limbs and a huge mouth filled with fangs. When Marius and Reena let it go, the creature broke out of its chains and leapt out of the cell with a yelp, mutating incessantly as it ran.
Satisfaction was plain in the eyes of the robed daemon. <Come with me, children of Tzeentch, for we need your help,> it said, shattering their shackles with a negligent snap of its talons. <Once we control the bridge of this ship, you will be taken to the Eye of Terror to be instructed in the ways of the Warp. There, you shall be lords, not slaves.>
The hallway outside the cell was littered with dead jailors and crewmen. Among them walked many daemons; a few robed ones like Marius’s liberator, but most of them closer to the thing that Zachariah had become. Dozens of young psykers were there as well, freed from their collars. Their left hands still dripped with blood, and the air around them crackled with energy as they flexed their psychic muscles after days or weeks of disuse. Smiling to one another in brotherhood, they followed their daemonic allies to the nearest lifts, eager to settle some debts with their tormentors.
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