Path of the Midget

Prologue

Disclaimer:I do not own the Culexus Temple, Ordos Sicarius, Inquisition, or any of the related concepts of the 40K universe. The only properties I own are Marcella Snow, Ippo Bellini and any other character I might make up.

M41.996

Epsilon Regalis

Myrcella Tyrell, a petite but lithe woman with bright green eyes laid on the bed; her sweaty cocoa-skinned body was tangled up in her bedsheets. Her wavy mousy hair, usually tied up in a bun at the nape of her neck, was dishevelled, and she panted heavily.

"YOU FRAKKING IDIOT, KNOCKING ME UP LIKE THAT! I ALREADY BORE YOU FOUR CHILDREN, PLEASE LET THIS ONE BE MY LAST!" The woman swore at her husband, Lord General Ethan Snow, a muscular, yet wiry man with dark eyes and a hooked nose. He sighed, before taking out a packet of lho sticks. He puffed into the single stick that he had took out before sighing.

"Arthur, Sirella, Kevin and Neillias is excited to see their new little brother or sister. They had been begging for another one, and you had the idea to indulge their desires. They're in the playroom, dear," he replied.

Myrcella's belly was swollen, the proof was there that she was bringing a new life into the world. She ran her hand through her hair and sighed, "Oh well, I hope this child will be a spitfire. Sirella is too obedient for her own good, and I worry that this naivety will lead her into some dangerous situations. Both Arthur and Neillias are constantly getting into fights at school and I worry for their future prospects. Kevin is quite even-tempered, but his eye for money remind me too much of these conmen that I've had to deal with in my work."

"I agree, Sirella's naivety will be her undoing, one way or another," Ethan nodded, "I remember a daughter of one of my comrades; she ran off with some guy that the father had forbade her from marrying because of his associations with several criminal fronts. A year later these two were discovered to have joined a war band of Chaos, and were wiped out by one of these monstrosities that the Inquisition often unleash onto their enemies."

Myrcella had shuddered at the very thought of what her husband had implied; when she was a young woman visiting Neovraks, the planetary governor there, Lord Jeon Molochias had made an attempt to secede from the Imperium and establish himself and his cohorts as the rulers of his small empire.

They had titled themselves the Council of Fourty-Five, and there were ten Arch-Elders in this deviant group, including Molochias while the rest were just called Elders. And to make matters worse, the traitor was a warp-dabbler, something that had drawn the Inquisition's ire.

During the inauguration parade, a drop-pod had impacted the road in the centre of the line, and unloaded its psychotic payload, all in broad daylight and in front of the vid-cameras. The Adepta Arbites had instantly recognized the creature as an Imperial assassin of the Eversor Temple, and she watched in horror as the cadre was dismembered in gory and terrible ways. Even the bystanders who had gathered to cheer upon Molochias wasn't spared, including the children. Their faces, still frozen in horror had gave Myrcella nightmares for years on end.

It was little wonder she had a healthy fear of the agents of the Officio Assassinorum; the bowel-loosening reputation the operatives of the various Temples had accrued had ensured that their mission were carried out unmolested, for it was an act of the ultimate stupidity and/or hubris to obstruct one.

One such example was Silas Burroughs, a former rising star in the Adeptus Administrium; he had attempted to prevent an assassination attempt on Kalto, a planet in the Calixis sector that had been terraformed into an agriworld nearly 5 millennia earlier. The operative, a Vindicare by the code-name of Centurion-107, had dealt with the fool after he had sent renegade Astartes mercenaries to kill the operative. He had suffered serious injuries in the attack, and if it was not for the timely intervention of a nearby Medicae Adepta, he would have died of his wounds.

The man had accidentally fathered a child off this woman, which he took with him after the mother died in birth from complications; the female child was registered under her mother's surname in order to protect the aforementioned agent's secrecy.

Myrcella Tyrell could still recall the confusion on his face, as he obviously didn't know how to handle a child, let alone his own. She and the Inquisitor working with him had forcibly dragged the assassin to parenting classes, much to all three's chagrin and embarrassment.

The labour pains were getting stronger, and it was apparent to her that the baby was crowning; Myrcella could tell by the sensation of stretching in her own cervix. It was time for her to push, and Ethan Snow had moved to her side, and taken her own hand in his own, while his other hand had wrapped around her shoulder.

After what seemed like an eternity of pushing a strong cry emanated from the newly born female, but it was at this moment that the parents noticed that this child greatly repulsed both of them although she appeared like any other child.

The Adepta Arbites had heard of such people from stories; from what she had learned from them, many were psychopathic and cold. She had wondered about these soulless individuals, and her curiosity had won out over the hatred and discomfort.

This little baby would be her social experiment, as she had wondered, would a blacksoul like this child be less inclined to psychopathy and callousness if they had received a good upbringing?

The girl, Marcella, would answer this question, soon enough.

Eight-years-old Arthur Snow placed a triangular block on top of the arrangement he had painstakingly built from the group up. He stood back, marvelling at his handiwork, before Neillias, age two, swatted the structure to bits. His other siblings, Sirella, aged seven, and Kevin, age five, was playing with their stuffies, a bird for the girl and a lion for the boy. The girl was busy playing tea party with the aforementioned toy, and she sang in an all-too-sweet tone that the eldest sibling found to be ultra-annoying.

'I hope her younger sister will knock some sense into that naive head of hers,' Arthur thought sourly. The girl was on her way to becoming one of these submissive ladies that would willingly do what her husband say, even if it endangered her safety. The boy, in his own opinion, wanted a woman who was willing to pound some sense into his head than one of these vapid idiots.

He had recalled last year that the neighbours next door had one such woman, she willingly submitted to her husband's abuse, even as his mother had found the man's behaviour toward her inexcusable. She was murdered a few days after his seventh birthday, and mother had arrested him after finding extensive evidence of his role in her and two other wives's deaths. He was carted off on the nearest penal barge as soon as it had arrived, much to everybody's satisfaction.

Ever since he turned eight, he had visions of future events, and he had been hearing voices all around him, both in sleep and in waking life; it was how he knew that the baby in mother's belly was going to be a girl. But what bothered him was that when he had tried to reach out to his baby sister in the womb, he had sensed that she was a big black hole, and he had nearly collapsed when her mind had made contact with his.

Arthur didn't tell his parents about his gifts, he was too afraid and ashamed to ask for help so he bore it in secret. The fact that psykers were reviled in the populace didn't help matters; he had once saw how a boy in his class had been bullied because of his gifts. He had killed himself because of the treatment the perpetrators had plied upon him.

It was common knowledge that many psykers were scared of going on the big black ships that came and gathered them up, and left, heading toward Holy Terra. He knew that it was an inevitable fate, given his gifts, but why flee these ships? In his opinion it was a dumb idea.

Arthur was beginning a new setup of his beloved blocks when Grandpa Matthias had beckoned the four children, announcing that their new sibling had been born and that it was a girl. The entire group moved down the saffron-hued hallways of the estate that father had been awarded as a result of his victories in the various theatres of war in the Imperium of Man.

It was a simply decorated one, with hand-hewn artificially grown wood furniture; some were left bare while others were painted. One-quarter of the furniture were two centuries old and had been passed down from Snow to Snow over the generations, and others were newly acquired, and carefully chosen to harmonize with the original pieces.

The mansion had 50 rooms, with half of them being utilitarian in purpose like the library, kitchens and dining room. The other half were bedrooms; Arthur's own room was painted a pale grey, with gold and orange accents. The bed was made in the Mission style, an extremely ancient and classic style that had came from Holy Terra, and it was stained in a walnut colour that he particularly liked. It had a trundle under the bed that he had used on many occasions to house visiting friends from school for sleepovers.

The children looked upon the double doors that led into the master chambers; he could tell that his siblings were antsy to see their new sister; but Arthur was becoming more terrified with each step that drew him nearer to the door, the suffocating presence there had pained him and he had felt as if his life force was being sucked out. As his grandpa pushed the door to make way for the group of five, he had saw his mother's exhausted form sitting up on the couch, leaning back for support. At her breast was a teeny female baby, suckling hungrily at the nipple. He could clearly see that this child had inherited their mother's dark skin, but her eyes were like Grandma's and her hair was tousled, like his had been at birth.

He fled the room as soon as possible, as he was frightened by his sister, and with good reason. This girl was a psychic abomination, and her presence would have killed him if he had stayed in the same room too long. But nevertheless he knew that the girl was an innocent baby, but the fact that he had sensed virtually no soul in her had unnerved him to an extent.

Myrcella's eyes widened as she watched her eldest son flee the room; she had suspected for some time that the boy, Arthur was a psyker but this reaction had confirmed her suspicions. She had once worked with a psychic null during her time with the Inquisitor Thrawn Eisenhorn; his name was Jack Byblos, and he was an ebullient and rather rude man who had a fondness for collecting glass marbles. From what the Arbites had seen of his collection, he had over 120 marbles displayed in his room, and he was in the process of acquiring another twelve to add to it at the time.

"KILL HER-SHE IS A DEMON!" her father-in-law's voice took her out of her reveries, as he attempted to reach for her newest addition; Myrcella held the crying girl close against her chest. This was inexcusable, the child was only newly born, and for someone to demand her death was unfathomable. It soon become apparently why; the child's aura was driving everybody to the point of madness, although both Ethan and she had the willpower to hold it in check.

"I'm keeping this child: no matter what you say or do to her will dissuade us otherwise, Matthias," she replied sternly, "from this day on this child is a part of our family. Her name will be Marcella Nicole Snow."

Myrcella left the room, still holding her new daughter to her breast.

M41.999

Marcella Snow peeked out of the window of the auxiliary living room; it had a window seat that she had particularly liked because it gave her a vantage point from which she could watch people. One funny- looking man was scurrying along on the street, carrying a stack of papers which he was taking to a nearby building, while an elderly woman plodded along, weighted down by the cart of groceries she was pulling behind her. Another man, this one clearly drunk, stumbled across the street; he bumped into the aforementioned man, causing paper to fly around the whole intersection they were situated on.

Marcella giggled at this scene; she clearly found it funny, since it reminded her of her favourite servant, Boondocks, who often stumbled and tripped. Sometime he broke things, but these things often were things that the entire Snow family didn't care for all that much, like the ugly flowery vase that mommy had received as a wedding gift from one of her father's cousins.

She knew that her mommy had no brothers or sisters on her side; the woman was an only child and her maternal grandparents were long dead. They had died serving the Imperium when she was the same age as Marcella.

Mommy was taken to the Schola at age six where she had shown an aptitude for law, and graduated there as a judge. She had travelled the Imperium briefly before she had met daddy and they married and settled upon Epsilon Regalis.

Daddy had been born here as had Grandpa Matthias and Grandma Marcella Lotnik, Emperor rest her soul. Marcella, her siblings and cousins had been the latest generation to be born on this planet, and she loved living there. There were lots of things to do and places to explore, and she loved watching people; they often said and did funny things in her opinion.

"During my time travelling through the Imperium I realized that the oppressive reign of the corpse god didn't allow anybody to enjoy their live as it should be, with its joys, rage, hope and despair; so I found salvation in the gods.

Hope is the driving force of change, and it is the Changer of Ways who epitomizes the desire for change, the hope for a better future. He listens to our hopes, share our dreams, and it is he who moves us. We are all-" A man was preaching in a nearby alcove; Marcella had seen the strange marking on his face; it looked like a star, expect that it had arrows instead of points, and it didn't look anything like the halos on the Emperor's head.

Her intuition told her that this mark was evil and that it was going to bring bad things with it. The young girl tugged at her front strand as she wondered what the man was talking about.

BANG!

The noise had startled Marcella, and she had given a small jump of shock; the man that she had heard pontificating about this "changer of ways" had dropped dead. He clearly had a hole in his head and gooey bits were splattered all over the wall behind him. The girl gasped at what she saw, and she was scared. She looked out of the window, and she could see a faint male figure climbing down the exterior of the building she was in.

She had ran to her mommy and told her about what she had saw and heard; it was clear that the woman was horrified by the idea of this person and also by the death that he had experienced.

"That man was a worshipper of bad powers. He died a death I'd rather not experience myself," Mommy told her.

That day was her first encounter with death and looking back on it, Marcella would agree that this corrupt preacher had died a ignominous one.