Chapter 1: Once Again


For countless millennia humankind has obsessed with the nature of the spirit and dreams. Shamanistic practices believed that through the right combination of stimulants and appeasing spirits, a practitioner could intercede in the dream realm. The early world believed that oneironautics could be achieved with enough training and practice, and with the right humours in balance, one could reach out to another. The esoterics that followed would say it is through the fade that all dreams pass, and we are all connected just beyond the false skein of reality. So many believed in such a notion, yet with the rise of the psyker, the secular world decided it had no need for such a damnable path of inquiry.

Sabinus awakes with a start, though her thoughts blend with the howling screams and triumphant roars of what lay beyond the waking world. She bites her lip, drawing blood, tasting iron seeping into her mouth. It wasn't a dream, no, not at the moment. Her vision clears as she stares at the smooth grey marble ceiling, clawed fingers shaking as the emaciated limbs stretch to touch the unseen sky.

Firm hands clasp her shoulders and she closes her eyes again. Her lips move, forming words left unsaid.

'It's not them, it can't be them.'

This was neither the dream nor the ghostly touch of the Silent Sisterhood. She was free, free for a moment and unfettered by the ghosts and haunts that lurk beyond the Unseen Border.

Jarred and pulled upright, Sabinus moans as her frail frame shakes with effort. An arm loops under hers to prop her up against a shoulder as she is ferried along by two strong figures, her feet barely scuffing the featureless stone floor. Rasping mechanical speech spits shrill squeals, each electronic squawk piercing the faint calm that her whispers had provided. Still, a tremulous bolt of pain clears the haze that threatens to settle in like a summer fog on the Great Banks back home.

Figures, she could only feel them and sense them before.

Sabinus lolls her head to the left, then right, taking in the pair of humans that held her suspended between them. They were tall and broad, both male, clad in black infiltrator suits with short las carbines deftly carried in their free hands. The only mark of note is the faceless black masks dominated by a single cyclopian glass eye. They constantly sweep their gazes back and forth, halting just long enough in the lee of a shattered industrial strut leaned against the wall of a smoke choked junction. They look up and down the empty grated corridors before quickly bounding across the open gap and continue down the narrow halls.

Sabinus stumbles over a red clad corpse of the machine cultist but two firm hands hold her shoulders, keeping her upright. More by instinct than anything else, the girl's voice hitches.

"A-apologies, l-lord."

Her suppliant bow and dipped head barely elicits a twitch or pause from her guardians.

"Focus, Strider."

A harsh metallic click grates from the unseen vox emitter of the figure on her right.

By now, Sabinus' eyes had adjusted to the pulsing red lights that illuminate the gloom in shades of blood red. The walls are streaked with thick oozing rivulets from conduit pipes and are spattered wholesale across fractured sections of plasma cut rockrete. The lingering stink of burnt fyceline stings her nose as she takes a deeper breath, barely noticing the feathered brushstrokes of char from flamer units that swept across the walls.

Then she saw it, the giant.

At first, she mistook it for a devotional statue. Even kneeling in the middle of the hall, the figure was as tall as herself. Its thick lustreless plate all but absorbs the darkness as a cloak around its shoulders hangs limply in the stale air like a burial shroud. Its massive rifle is neatly raised, as if caught in a propaganda pict pose as time itself had deemed to freeze.
But as the wailing screams of klaxons howl through the narrow corridor, and red light flickers in ribbons across the figure, she realizes that the giant was all too aware of their presence.

A silent conversation must have passed between Sabinus's guards and the monolithic giant, because both of her cyclopian guards bob a head in deference and swiftly turn the corner. The trio edge around the warrior and make their way down another series of twisting halls.

Like ribs of some horrible beast, Sabinus's glimpses the pairs of identical pillars lining their new route. They were parasites worming through the innards of some horrible rotted beast as the incessant wailing alarms grow loud enough to thrum through the air like a heartbeat. She felt each klaxon now, and its bleating cry shreds her concentration.

The young woman is roughly pulled back in her guardian's unyielding grip as she sways and reaches out dumbly to steady herself. Her hand stretches out just a hairsbreadth away from dull blackened metal carapace. Its flecked with clots of blood, and she realizes that the shredded cabling that she thought was from a pipe was ruined flesh and jagged bone.

Sabinus gags as her eyes shoot upwards, locking with a pair of black sightless lenses that stare back at her impassively. It was another giant hidden in the gloom. This one's head slowly pivots, and even as her guards try to usher her on, she holds its dead gaze as she is lifted above a twisted heap of metal laying in an amniotic slick.

All around her the halls stank of expended cordite, stale air, and the backwash of flamers. One guard, then the other vault over the shattered castellax as Sabinus wobbles on unsteady limbs and rests her feathery touch on the dented red metal.

A swirling eddy of other emotions pulls at her, twisting her head as violently and possessively as a hand on her chin. Her head snaps to the right, and Sabinus finds herself looking into the abyssal darkness beyond a cog-lined aperture.

She glimpses a silhouette of an enormous figure with its palm pressed against a wall. Unlike the other two giants, its helmet is clamped to its belt, exposing the faintest glint of sweat-slicked skin on a bald pate.

"Do you recognize this place, Strider?"

His thick, warm voice intones. Compared to him, her voice is just a mousy rasp.

"N-no, my lord. I, I have never been here."

But as her guardians catch up, they wordlessly guide her forward through the aperture . As Sabinus crosses the room's threshold, a cloying sensation of déjà vu washes over her.

"I have. I've seen it in my dreams. I've seen this in legends, and then in schematics. Now I see it with my own two eyes and still wonder if I'm asleep. You know this feeling, don't you?"

With a soft gesture, he waves her to his side. Her two human guards take a step back and cautiously exit the room, leaving her alone with the giant.

Despite herself, Sabinus cautiously edges forward into the utter blackness between the entrance and the shrouded giant. Each step brings her closer, her feet padding quietly over cold stone. The darkness was all but formless but not so much as a mote of dust coats her feet as the chill grounds her to the world. Now that the giant had mentioned it, every step replays itself in her head like a never-ending loop. Time after time it blends together until she finds herself by the giant's side.

A massive armoured hand descends near-weightlessly on her shoulder. Its feather touch sweeps away tangled locks of matted black hair.

In front of her was no wall, but a simple silver amalgam; a mirror of some antiquated design. Its gilt edges remain locked in the harsh unflinching cold of mechanicum bindings, with conduit bundles spiraling down like dreadlocks from punctured inlets across the slab-like adamantium clasps. But it did nothing to the elegant gold painted wood and flawless surface.

Sabinus looks into the mirror and sees herself, though darkly. Her pinched face is starved, hollow cheeks showing flecks of grime, bile and dried blood. Her greasy black hair had been untreated, unkempt for countless months.

'That can't be me.'

Her voice hiccups as more by reaction than thought, her bony fingers reach toward her own face. Sabinus' fingers shake and jitter of their own will, her nerves long since having fled as she weakly touches her powdery skin before tracing down across cracked and bleeding lips. She hadn't always been like this, the face that stares back from the silver mirror is foreign.

Sabinus had only glimpsed her neglected form for the briefest instants in the long months that her silent guardians prowled the tall gantries above the isolation cells. The ghosts had swam in her vision, she caught contorting glimpses of creatures writhing under her skin in errant reflections of the glass porthole pressed to her face. The wandering beams of searchlights flitted over the hellish nightmare holds of the Black Ships and cast predatory shadows across other stasis tanks. There was screaming, crying, and finally nothing as lifetimes of solitude came crashing down upon her. All the while she was watched unflinchingly by the Soulless Host.

"I'm a mess."

The giant takes a breath and keeps its other palm pressed to the pane, before glancing down at her. Piercing emerald eyes shift to aqua and back in swirling torrents. Sabinus quivers when he holds her gaze, her wracked body only settling when he went back to peering at his own reflection a moment later.

"A fitting metaphor given our state of affairs, wouldn't you say?"

She, in fact, says nothing. But staring at the hollow face, there's an unspoken command to reach out as if to touch and prove that the ghastly image looking back at her was some other being. As her fingers stretch out to brush the metal, that tiny hope is snuffed out.

But an ember of something else takes its place. A fearful whisper arises like a gasp.

F̵̢̑r̴̪͐ē̷͎ĕ̶͉ ̷̺̓u̶͈̇ş̴̒.̸̭̈ ̷̥͗ ̸̯̃H̴͎͂ḙ̴̈́l̶̰̂p̴̯͂ ̷̪̇ū̷̳s̴͍͋.̷͎̂ ̴̡̀ ̵̘̈́S̵̪̓a̸̙͘v̸͙̾e̷͑ͅ ̸̭̀u̸̠͒s̶̖͌.̷̲̀ ̶̠̃L̴̮͠e̵̡̿a̸̱͐v̵̗̀é̷̩ ̷̣͝ù̸͚ṣ̴̕.
Free us. Help us. Save us. Leave us
F̵̢̑r̴̪͐ē̷͎ĕ̶͉ ̷̺̓u̶͈̇ş̴̒.̸̭̈ ̷̥͗ ̸̯̃H̴͎͂ḙ̴̈́l̶̰̂p̴̯͂ ̷̪̇ū̷̳s̴͍͋.̷͎̂ ̴̡̀ ̵̘̈́S̵̪̓a̸̙͘v̸͙̾e̷͑ͅ ̸̭̀u̸̠͒s̶̖͌.̷̲̀ ̶̠̃L̴̮͠e̵̡̿a̸̱͐v̵̗̀é̷̩ ̷̣͝ù̸͚ṣ̴̕.

Dozens of voices rasp their sibilant tones as winking lights spark in colourful bursts in front of her eyes. The dull ring of chimes accompany the breathless intonations as her mind wanders through the star specked flickering images of humanity, from fur clad savages to resplendent archaic lords. All of them stare out at her from the starry abyss. The waking dreams returned after a long hollow sleep.

Four figures in pearl white armour clasp hands together. A trio of dark shrouded forms surrounded by a writhing horde raise stone spears to the heavens. Cabals of crimson figures crowd around an ostentatious orrery. Finally, the screaming of a tortured god stretching his hands towards a distant light. Each flitting image is dominated by the light of a new moon cresting in the heavens above them. Past, present, future, it doesn't matter.

But she reaches further, feeling the dreamscape fold like velvet across her questing touch. Slowly, almost imperceptibly something pushes back.

"-binus. Sabinus."

The tone snaps her out of her stupor. Klaxons wail anew as she regards the giant, having lost track of time. He stands with blade drawn, and her mind tries to put a name to him as if it should know. Though some muddled fugue engulfs her, he still radiates a sense of supreme power.

"We won't have much time, and I can't say what's going to happen. Use your gifts wisely, we won't have a second chance to achieve our goals."

She blinks, her mouth slightly agape in confusion.

"W-what goals?"

The massive form replies while turning and stepping to intercede between her and the doorway.

"Undoing this mess."