The holo-candles were kept dim, though the occupants neither knew nor cared, since their eyes have long since been burned from their sockets. The aroma and fog of harsh incense clouded the chamber, the scratching of a dozen servitors and the gentle hum of machinery were the only sounds.
The servitors sat facing one another in two rows, hunched over gnarled wooden lecterns, ink-stained quill-fingers darted back and forth across parchment as information poured into what remained of their minds and into their calloused hands. Behind each servitor stood an angled, curved pod, sparkling like a gleaming coffin. Golden wires trailed from each ones frosted surface and ribbed cables snaked from their sides, running in long lines along the chambers edge.
A hunched figure, swathed in red robes of the machine priests with gold embroidery on the hem made it's way slowly down the stone-flagged nave towards the chambers end, stopping every now and then to view a servitors tome. Shadows clouded the adepts face, only a shimmer of silver was all that was visible beneath it's hood. He stopped beside the furthest servitor and examined the expressionless face of the lobotomised slave, it's figures skipping at irregular beats, he glanced at it's script that was oddly angular and hard to focus on, the words "the fallen god, long forgotten... but still dreaming" written ominously several times amongst the random letters and symbols.
He moved passed the servitor coming to stand beside the golden pod behind it. A coiled bundle of wires trailed from the coffins devices top to a series of neural jacks in the back of the servitors skull.
The adept wiped a black-gloved hand across the glistening sparkling surface of the golden coffin, sending a shower of ice crystals plinking off the floor. The adept stared through the misted glass panel, a young female astrotelepath was shaking and bucking inside the nutrient filled capsule, blood clouding the liquid where tubes and cables had been torn free trailing food and Simms into the nutrient bath. Like the servitor infront of the coffin she was eyeless, her lips moving constantly in a silent whisper sending a thin trail of bubbles to the top of the pod. The message she was receiving was passing through psychically-warded cables to its dancing fingures where the message was being scribbled ominously down the pages, repeating the same message again and again.
The adept removed a small vial of black liquid from beneath his robes,the liquid seemed to form odd shapes and faces through the glass. The adept eased past the girls prison and knelt beside the pulsing bundles of cables stemming from the back of her pod pushing through them till he found a needle tipped tube. He broke the vials seal and slipped the needle in and allowed it to suck every last drop from the vial, careful not to let any of the liquid to touch his person. Satisfied the liquid had entered the circulation system of the pod he stepped back onto the nave infront of the pod and watched as the liquid traveled to every pod in the room. The adept watched as the astropaths started to scream in their pods as the liquid liquified their flesh in seconds, finally the servitors stopped writing.
Before he exited the chamber he took the page with the writing on a fallen
god and made a swift exit, a smile breaking his silver mask as he fled.