That which is unknown and unseen always commands the greatest fear.
That which is controlled becomes the most powerful pawn on the chessboard.
That which is without conscience is the utmost illustrious of killers.
Culexus Temple
"Do you hear me? Do you understand my words?"
Standing just beyond the threshold of the inner sanctum, the handler waited for a response. He was patient, a man use to the particulars of the flock he attended to. Calloused fingers rolled the prayer beads looped about his waist and he reciting catechisms of devotion quietly. On the fifth verse of the Litany of Revenge, a soft and monotonous voice answered him.
"I understand and obey."
The handler stepped closer, black cloak swirling about his ankles. "Who is your Lord and Master?"
"The God-Emperor, may His name be praised forevermore."
"What is your duty?"
"To serve the Imperium. To strike down its enemies."
"Do you know who I am?"
"You are my superior, my ward, the one who I am indebted to."
Now for the most important question. "Do you remember your name?"
A hesitant pause, followed by a small intake of breath. "I have none."
The prayer beads clacked together. Even in close proximity to one whose presence did not burn in the Warp, the handler felt no dread or fear. He was use to the lack of essentia these rare humans carried. Under his care, this soulless charge had been trained and groomed to become one of the finest operatives known to the Temple. Indeed, many tales surrounded the individual, though they were never made aware of them. It could lead to the sin of arrogance and pride, unfitting for an executioner of the highest calibre.
Kneeling in devotion inside the sanctum, amid thousands of burning votive candles, the assassin waited for the inevitable orders. He studied the unmasked being. Dirt blonde hair, closely cropped, framed an expressionless face. Lack luster eyes stared at the marble floor, while hands idly held the feared skull mask. The assassin was hardly recognizable as human, even less as female with the heavy augmentation marked across all too weak flesh. She was of a different sort to the other deadly sheep under this shepherd, reanimated just beyond the edge of death and reborn into a new life. A life of quick judgement and quicker death dealing.
"Your special talents are required. The High Lords have deemed the silent terror of the Culexus to be worthy. You have been selected to carry out this most blessed of undertakings against a rogue psyker whose level has been determined as Gamma. Strike fast and without mercy, for the fate of an entire planet and more hang on the thinnest of threads."
Bowing until her forehead touched the cool floor, the assassin replied, "I am blessed in service."
"You are, child, you most certainly are."
Lord Rion of Sicheb, the Guiding Light and Master of the Five Territories, was terrified.
There was little he feared. Why should he, the most exulted of all? He, the most powerful of all? He, the most beloved of all?
Once, Rion was the heart of distrust, fear and hate. Yet he had cunningly turned the tables against the opposing aristocratic families of Sicheb and reaped the great rewards from his bravery. Those he feared as a child now grew timid in his mere presence, and shirked away when he walked past them. After Rion found out what he was, what he could do, his fears drifted away like smoke on the wind. The comforting voices trailing him day and night whispered to his egotism, building it up from the wreckage of his childhood.
Peoples' thoughts were his to mould, their dreams becoming reflections of his. Those who wanted his death as a youngling now reached out their arms to him in supplication. For Lord Rion to touch and bless them, that became the purest of joys! To have a glimmer of his smile given to them, how their hearts sang! Rion was Sicheb's new saviour, a rising deity who threw down the terror of the God-Emperor and the Ecclesiastic dogma.
The old fear which Rion once housed in his chest no longer ruled him; he ruled it.
Yet now, he did fear. Terror returned and bored its way into his heart, an old emotion long thought buried. It burst to the surface in every scream. Running from the nightmare did little good, for it pursued Rion down the spiralling halls of the palace and across terraces where marble statues seemed to mock him in their calm repose. He could not fight it and, with no way to oppose its power, flight was his only chance for survival.
"Return! Return to your punishment!"
Words thundered from on high, the voice from a death god to extinguish the would-be upstart. It echoed eerily in the vaulted corridors, from shadows which hid another shadow within. The voice and its owner skipped and cart wheeled from place to place without reason or rhyme. One moment, the shadow lay to his left, an inky outline against the darkness, the next it came from overhead. Always moving in the halls, forever just behind Rion, herding the psyker.
"Go away," Rion shrieked. Slivers of cold ice embedded themselves in his heart. Just hearing the voice was enough to cause him waves of nausea; it grated against his bones at its approached. "You aren't real! Go away!"
Rion's guards were useless against whatever itwas. Elite shock troops picked from the aristocratic families, people who once sneered at Rion and his bastard blood, were unable to hold a power lance against this agent of death. Their tightly-knit shield wall was undone when the being somersaulted – no, crashed – into the center without care. It darted serpent quick under sharp blades, breaking bones, disarming opponents, and ultimately killing them with their own weaponry. Rion hadn't stayed long to watch the slaughter.
What had woken him in the night and now chased Rion sparked primal terror. It was cold, unfeeling, merciless.
Void.
Indeed, Rion only awoke from sleep because of the utter lack of feeling he perceived. He thought nightmares gripped him at first, dusty cobwebs causing his mind to slow. The skull face staring at him across the bedroom was no lingering phantasm, however.
The assassin rushed him, its fearsome skull helm grinning mirthlessly as Rion's bowels loosened. Before it was upon him, the man repelled the assassin back with a wild thought. The undirected psychic attack worked; while not touching the intruder, it caused the ground underneath them to roil. The minor earthquake in the bedchamber sent the wooden planks to break and brought the assassin tumbling to the ground. It gave Rion enough time to run from his inner sanctum, calling for his guards to rescue him.
Rion knew he was living on borrowed time until the Imperium learned of what was transpiring on Sicheb. Families swearing their allegiance to an upstart, away from the God-Emperor and His Light. Of the Ministorum clergy spirited away in the night and a new order assembling across the planet. A grand order, one where people like Rion could walk about free and persecute those trying to kill him. Rion's hard labours were so close to bearing fruit, so close—
He skittered down a sequestered hall of the palace, close to the chapel in the western wing. If he could make it to the sanctified ground, Rion knew he stood a chance. Not all would be lost, the voices crooned in his mind. They skated over the surface of his thoughts, each one a joyful caress.
Their embrace turned jagged, hot pricks of fire stabbing Rion's mind as the window across the hall shattered. The loathsome assassin jumped through raining shards of glass without thought, cart wheeling across the marble floor and coming to rest in a crouch. Rion, even in the throes of psychic agony as nothing surrounded him, staggered to hide. A quick glimpse of the death artist sent another shiver of primordial terror through him.
Back-lit by lumen globes, the assassin's waif-like profile was marred by the heavy augmentation underneath the black synthsuit, all harsh mechanical angles. Offset by the freakishly disproportionate helm covering the assassin's face, it made for a malformed individual. Rion dimly registered the assassin as female, and barely even that.
"Where are you? I can smell you, psyker. Tainted black, tar black." Her growling voice was hideous. Rion curled into himself when she began to pace the hallway. Hunting. She was hunting, looking for the scent of his aura.
Fighting panicked breathes, Rion wondered if his mother died like this, hounded by a hired hand sent by the Sicheb aristocracy. All for birthing someone like himself. She had loved him despite Rion's obvious faults, hid him from the murderer who left a mangled corpse, red blood congealing from a slit throat.
"You can't hide forever. Nobody can hide from the Imperium's wrath," the assassin rasped. "Come out, little heretic, come out to your doom."
Her voice made Rion's skin itch, the sensation of thousands of needles jabbing into him. He felt ill, deathly so. Daring another look around the pillar, Rion saw absent the aural lights dancing around this assassin. Only the chill of death emanated from her, a heavy shroud covering her being and rippling in her passage.
"By the Gods," he whispered, "let me last long enough to serve your designs."
The chapel held salvation. Pressing the heels of his hands against the pillar, Rion pushed off and made the frantic run for the sanctuary. The chapel and what was housed inside could save him. A sharp yell from the murderess; the hunter once more in pursuit of its prey. Feet thundered after Rion, the ring of her boots cold and metallic, countering the fleshy slaps of his naked feet against the marble floor. The more distance he put between himself and the assassin lessened the pain, but it was never enough. It was never enough.
He ran, crashing into the heavy oak doors of the chapel and stumbling through. Behind came the death dealer, her horrible body keeping pace, the frigid cold void trailing. Rion stumbled as though drunk to his salvation. Atop the remains of an altar once dedicated to the Emperor of Mankind was something abhorrent, twisted with a dark will and insidious purpose. The assassin, having seen many horrid things in blessed service, recoiled as she came upon it.
Rion clambered up the pile of wet bones and preserved skin, sinewy muscle and knotted clumps of hair until he reached the top. Grasping an iron stave of black and bearing the eight-pointed star of Chaos, the rogue psyker grinned maniacally at the Imperial servant. Was she visibly twitching in fear at seeing his stratagem? The Warp gate's construction had been completed in diligent secrecy. Those who gave their blood were blessed by becoming part of it, those who had destroyed the secrecy of what the chapel held joined those willing souls in the mass of rotting flesh.
Pulling a dagger from the torso of a sacrificial victim, Rion pressed the tip of the blade to his left forearm. The darkly consecrated altar seemed to ripple in anticipation, hungering for the destruction it could unleash. He heard voices, faintly warbling upwards from the corpses, and then it faded.
"Too late, assassin, you're much too late!"
Dragging the corrupted blade across his flesh, Rion let his blessed blood flow. It spattered down onto the remains of his enemies, the aristocracy and clergy who had vehemently opposed his ideals. His psyker blood dripped onto the flayed muscle and sinew of priests and lords who vindictively sought to halt Rion's rise to power. The blood pooled from the corpses to touch the warped sigils carved into the floor. Rion gritted his teeth against the pain, light-headed from the blood loss, and opened his mind as the voices taught him. Now Sicheb could be properly purified. Now his plan would come full circle.
Nothing happened.
Nothing could.
Rion, standing with a dumb expression on his face and his life-blood flowing away, realised the ghastly truth. The emptiness of the assassin stopped even his dark magics. Her presence terminated a salvation he had craved for too long.
"Your punishment comes." The assassin's voice was as hollow as her non-existence. She stepped forward, surrounding Rion in her sphere of nothing, and the rogue psyker screeched at the horror she was.
He shrieked as though he were plunged into the most bitterly cold vat of water. He cried out as if his flesh were being torn from his skin, each bone broken into a thousand pieces. Rion screamed as though if long enough, even the Dark Gods would hear and show some mercy. Rion wept in wretchedness as childhood memories, long pushed to the back of his mind, came tumbling to the fore. Of the debauchery he witnessed, of what the immorality of the aristocracy had done to him. What they created and fashioned him into, their own weapon turning against pure-blood lineages.
Tumbling from the heap of ragged human skin and muscle, Rion scrambled away backwards until his back met the wall. Following his downward path, the assassin bounded across the pile of dead bodies, her skull helm still grinning; only now it seemed cheeky and impish.
"Death to those removed from His guiding light." Each step, each measured pace, brought the terrible sense of nothing with it. Rion's back arched and he wailed, thrashing wildly. She paused over his twisting form, her arms dangling at her side, the ugly helmet looking down in judgement.
Spitting at his soon to be killer, Rion chuckled. Oh, how cruel fate for one such as himself! Having only spite to support him in the end, Rion unleashed every ounce of bitterness against the Imperium's servant, imagining her as the hateful Emperor.
"I pity you," he spoke through gritted teeth. "Nobody cares for you. Neither friends, nor family. My mother loved me, even as I was born an abomination. She gave her life to save mine. What about you? Will your blessed Imperium do the same? You believe the Imperium is your family? Pah! They discard those who have no use, no strength to offer their withering flesh. Poor child. Poor, poor child."
The assassin paused. A perceptible tremor shook the woman's body.
"No. No, no, no."
"Yes, they would. The Imperium doesn't abide those who have no use! Look around you." Rion waved his wounded arm. "After you have killed me, what will happen? Will they thank you? Will they give you a golden laurel and carve your name on a monument? No! Nobody will sing your praises; nobody will remember what you've done. Yet by my death, you stand yet to make a martyr from me. My brothers and sisters in oppression will use it as a rally point, draw strength from it, and become more! Through my death, I live, while you will end your days forgotten and unnamed!"
"No," she hissed, her head now swinging from side to side. Faces rippled in her field of vision, no longer the rogue psyker's but a clean-shaven youth wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard. He was only a few years older, chuckling good-naturedly with their mother. He was real… no, a ghost… he stood tall… yet there he was before her… walking in file to the troop ship… he was never coming back.
"No, you don't- Don't let them kill me! Dram! Mother! They lie!"
Rion drew back as his would-be assassin collapsed to her knees. She clutched her head and moaned like a wounded animal. The tainted psyker continued his verbal assault, struggling to rise against the weight of the null presence.
"Calling for your family, how original! Yes, call for your mother as though she will come. Mine gave her life to save me, but where was yours? Call for Dram, whoever he is. I'm certain he'll save a lost soul like yourself!"
The growl that emanated from the assassin's throat was not entirely human. Rion realised his poorly chosen words, and as the murderess pushed herself upright, not completely sane, how he had undone himself.
She jumped, her fingers curling into talons to rend him limb from limb. Rion threw himself to the side; the assassin impacted against the wall, hard. She turned her nightmarish helm toward him and Rion saw his death through the broken lens of the eyepiece. Her approach slowed the thudding boom of his heart. Rion's world drained of colour. Sound became thunderous, a sluggish tempo building to his ultimate fate. Time crawled, each second now a minute, each minute a ponderous hour to his death.
Rion remembered his mother in his last moments. Recalled her words, a prayer to the God-Emperor in which he should never give into the darker temptations, before hastily bundling him in her dresses and pushing him to back of her wardrobe. Be a good son, she whispered, be a good son.
"My family," the assassin shrieked point-blank into his face, "are to the void and stars!"
The Culexus raised her ancient animus speculum and fired it point blank into the psyker's face. Fuelled by Rion's psychic power thrown back at him, the animus speculum burned his flesh and melted his eyes. It seared his mouth shut and caved in his skull. Then, in a methodicalness which belied her warped sense of reality, the assassin began to butcher Rion, former Lord of Sicheb, the Guiding Light and Master of the Five Territories.
She was found on the rooftop of the palace with her helmet cast aside, the lens cracked, while the sky wept all around. Sprawled on her back amid a pool of dirty rainwater, lack luster eyes gazed beyond the steel grey clouds to something her keeper was unable to see. She smiled and giggled, whispering a childish song over and over again.
"Brother, brother, high above, in the sky where no one dies. Between the void of stars, come and catch me on a cloud."
Words turned into a raging scream, a rising howl ripped from her frail body when hands reached for her. She fought them, not knowing who they were, reacting out of instinct and a desperation born from survival. Locked away in her mind, she was back on the rooftop with the chanting mob below, torches pinpricks of light they were so far away. The noose was heavy around her neck, the hands grabbing at her and pushing, driving her off the edge of the church roof—
"Did she complete the objective?"
Her handler curtly nodded, watching his deranged charge being placed in heavy restraints. The corpse of the renegade psyker had been smeared across the walls, the bones looking as though picked at.
"Does she usually have these lapses of memory?"
"Only under extreme duress," the steward mentioned. "The last moments of her former life sometimes rise to the surface. The augmentations were to offset the mental retardation caused by asphyxiation before her body was cut down and returned to life. There is much fine tuning to still be done."
She kept screaming, but now a familiar name was heard, "Dram, Dram, Dram, Dram!"
Signalling for the Culexus assassin to be brought to heel, her superior watched a heavy sedative be given. Her voice trailed away to be replaced with a drugged murmur. The keeper approached.
"Who is your Lord and Master?"
"The God-Emperor, may His name be praised forevermore."
"What is your duty?"
"To serve the Imperium. To strike down its enemies."
"Do you know who I am?"
"You are my superior."
Now for the most important question. "Do you remember your name?"
She gurgled. "I have none."
"Indeed, you don't. Only the Emperor will know it through your service."
Led from the rooftop with no further outbursts, the seniors of the Culexus Temple stayed on. Hard, embittered men who held no sentimentality, they looked down on a world slated to be wiped from existence if the assassin hadn't won.
"Another successful mission for Vykos," the senior-most trainer muttered. "My concern is one day she will break through the walls we set in place and in the haze, remember everything."
"It won't. There is always the failsafe implanted in her."
"Ready to trigger should she utter her own name?"
"Yes," her keeper absently replied. Prayer beads worn smooth clicked together. "And no one will ever utter her name, let alone herself. We have no heroes, only perfect killers without conscience."