Make them suffer! Make them pay! Let me have some fun! No. They will hurt her, is this how you keep your promises? To lie unconscious on the floor when you could be helping. And what would you have as the price? Licence to roam around like some marauding murderous monster? The slaughter of innocents to quench your insatiable bloodlust? Just let me free. Just for a time. Let your self walk in The Shadow of the Beast. Let me feel a heartbeat and skin again. Let me live. And what afterwards? What will stop you from committing atrocities, parasite? No fun. Need to fight and maim and rip and tear and drown in blood. Pretty blood. But not if it is not fun. Just let us harm he who harmed you. No. Your jaw is shattered, he is much larger than you and there is a bruise forming in your brain that will kill you in less than a score of days if you do not get it treated. Don't need your help. You need a healer. And where do you think you will find one? The ordo hospiteler will kill you on sight and you cannot afford the mechanicus biologicum. Turn her in for the reward and have yourself healed. NO! Filth, disease, parasite! Get away from me! But they wish harm to the lady. So would you, you think I do not know you? But I would not harm her. Why would I? No sport. One thin, blind woman. Pitiful quarry. I hunger for something more stimulating. I wish for fun with he who insulted us. I give you my word that she will not be touched. I invite you to take my place. I will walk in The Shadow of the Beast.
And then back up, much to the surprise of everyone, especially the assaulting yob. With a nauseating crunchy sound the broken jawbone snapped itself back into shape and the lump of missing skin reappeared like jam spread over crimson bread. But in some way it was not Torren that had got back up. The difference was not one that could be measured on any device devised by Adeptus Mechanicus or Engineers Guild but there was a difference never the less. Teeth became more noticeable, eyes less warm and friendly, knuckles and sinewy muscles more prominent and the way he faded into the background in his permanent apologetic crouched seemed to be reversed. He no longer looked like someone broken; now he looked like something that does the breaking.
'I'm going to chew out you eyes and spit them in you face! I'm going to tear your nose off and gouge out your sinuses!' he advanced on the startled brute. 'Look me in the godspite eyes you piece of filth!' and with un-Torren like ferocity landed a punch just under the ribcage of his startled assailant, who doubled over with an expression of agony on his face. As the man struggled to stand upright again a knee caught him under the chin and flipped him onto his back. 'You piece of shit upon my boot, you had the audacity to try to assault me? I could take you to the fucking cleaners with one arm tied behind my godspite back! Those gang tattoos on your face? Think yourself a big man because you are in a street-gang?' a foot was placed upon the mans throat. 'Do you feel big now?' The pressure on the foot was increased to the point of pain, where each breath becomes painful and stuttering.
'Torren, No!' The voice cut through the blood soaked mirth and touched his heart. That was fear. He should not cause it to the good lady. That was a Bad thing.
The world returned to its normal drabness and something became once again buried beneath Torren. A light left his eyes, his teeth stopped reminding people of the word 'fang', his hands no more a disguise for claws, his posture once again returned to its constant apologetic shuffle through life. Everyone in the bar suddenly became very interested in what they were drinking.
The room that had been rented was just as people would expect it to be; small, sparse and inadequately cleaned. The bed at least looked like it had been cleaned even if the rest of the room looked like it had not.
They had sat in the small room for nearly a half hour before one of them cracked and broke the silence.
'Good lady, you are upset by my actions in the public room of this establishment. I apologise, I did not mean to cause you distress.'
'What are you?' The fear was evident in her voice.
'I am Torren, what else needs to be known? Just as I know that you are Rosolind. Just as I know it is now my duty to keep you safe. These things are all that matter.'
That night Rosolinds dreams were less than pleasurable. Haunted as they were by a elegant, beautiful, predatory beast made of silver and a hunched up silhouette of man made of broken moonlight standing between her and harm. The ground was soaked sticky with blood and screams of horror and agony haunted everything about her.
She turned around to face what looked like an enormous Judge with a stylised I branded in still burning embers on his forehead. He drew his arm back and grasped a sword made of sooty flames. The fire in the eyes of the apparition flashed with negative light as he drove the burning sword towards her.
'Ssshhh, good lady. It is but a dream.' Torren was holding her hand as she surfaced from uneasy dreams into uneasy reality. 'Ssshhhh. Just a dream, good lady, just a dream.' She was shivering with fright like some trapped wild thing.
'How can you know it is but a dream?' she sounded almost cross.
'Have I not promised to keep you safe?'
'Safe from what? I saw with my taken eyes what you became last night. It wasn't you. Not you as you are now. You have a thing inside you that is a monster made of silver and reeks of blood.'
'I am a monster I cannot deny it. I betray the God-Emperor and no matter how hard I work the beast will always walk in my shadow. Do you know what I am going to do about it? What I know to be right. And right now that means I keep you safe.'
Looking out of the window it could be seen that there was a pale light just peering through the perpetual grey clouds of the capital, thus indicating that early morning was being attempted. Not really day but late enough to make attempting sleep wasted effort. Besides, Torren did not feel like sleep. His dreams last night had been strange and un-nerving; he had been attempting to stare down a metallic, predatory, quadruped of some kind on a field of blood amidst the screams of the dying. It was one of the many dreams he had been having recently that made waking, if not pleasurable, at least preferable. It was probably a dream from his time in the Imperial Guard. It had to haunt his dreams; he dared not remember those terrible tings in the light of day.
With a start he remembered he had left his war gear in his old room. Maybe that was a good thing. He had only ever carried those things to remind him of the guilt he rightly carried for the things he had done...
NO, NO, NO, NO! Not to think those things! DO NOT GO THERE!
How can you judge what is right, after those things you did. Bad things. Naughty red things. Did they make you feel good, those ghastly acts?
'Good lady, would that you should wish to don your cloths. I believe we should perhaps purchase fresh garments, fore I have been wearing this attire for too long by the smell and the garb of a monster is ill fitting, I think, for a beauty such as yours.' He did not add that their description was by now known to every enforcement officer and arbiter in the capital by now.
That night after they had finished buying new clothes and food plans were made to journey to the Gateland Mountains far, far to the south. The area was somewhat lawless and the words of The Emperors Light was somewhat dimmer there. The place would have been levelled centuries ago were it not for the fact that it was of so little value. And Torren had friends who moved over there once. It was at this time that Torrens mind, that had been chugging away at a minor problem, finely came to the conclusion and he asked a question.
'Good lady, might I ask how it is that you see, if your eyes are taken as you say they are?'
To his surprise he could see a colour rise in her cheeks. Was this a blush? Had he just touched a taboo subject?
'Good lady, I meant not to cause offence if this subject is not one you feel wholly comfortable with.'
'Its not that. It is just; no one has ever asked such a thing before. At the Telepathica no one cared if you walked into things, just so long as you can receive Messages. I think I can see the things because they put an imprint on the universe and I see the imprint from the underside.'
'May I enquire what it is that you see when you look at something?'
'I can see shape and silhouette and movement of all things, but people are different. Living things stand out in lines of thought and desire and intention like shining statues made of silver sparkling string catching the sunlight, except you. You have strings of black and void entwined upon your silver and it moves by its self.'
Anxious to leave this subject Torren forwardly risked another question. 'Have you ever seen colour?'
'Not since I was a small child. Not since they took me and did things to me.' She added in a whisper.
'Would you like to see them again?'
