Armorum Fidei Chapter 35
Justini was lost, her head filled with fog and confusion. Pain tore across her synapses with every thought, punishing her for trying to think at all as blurring impressions swam before her eyes. Place and faces came and went in a rush, leaving no memory behind and Justini had no control over her own mind. Through it all a great clamour roared inside her skull, a pounding beat demanding obedience and submission, drowning all thoughts in a tide of oppression.
Justini did not know how long she stumbled through this twilight world but suddenly found herself leaning on a cold wall. Her brow ached where something blunt had struck hard and the throb of a concussion rang loud. She looked down and found blood upon her gauntlets, but from where she could not say. She wasn't in the garage either, she was somewhere in the bowels of Currens Ecclesia, far from where she had been.
Justini tried to remember what had happened but the mere attempt made her temples spike in agony. Trying to think brought forth a crushing sense of weight in her mind and behind it a million voices screamed to give up, to stop trying to fight and simply obey. She clutched her head in agony as she gasped, "Go away… shut up… just stop!" The voices didn't heed the plea, demanding she surrender her will. Desperately she staggered away from the wall, lurching down the corridor as she wrestled with her head.
She reached a corner and was nearly bowled over as a Friar came rushing around and crashed into her. The man bounced off her plate and fell to his rear gushing, "Don't hurt me!"
Justini fixated upon the man and barked, "You, what is happening?!"
"I don't know!" the man wailed, "It's madness, they've all gone insane!"
Justini was about to ask where he'd come from but suddenly the clamour in her head surged. Justini's vision blacked out for a moment and she awoke to find the man dangling from her grip, armoured hands locked about his throat. He struggled and kicked impotently, unable to break the Ceramite vice around his windpipe as she choked him. No, Justini screamed in her mind, stop it, but the Psybrids cared not. They forced her to watch as they killed the man with her hands, crushing the life out of him with relentless pressure. Only when he had gone grey and still did they let go, dropping the body to the ground.
Justini's soul wailed in denial and somehow she managed to regain control of her legs. She turned from the murder and staggered away, stumbling over her own feet. She didn't know where she was going, only a half-formed idea of finding her squadmates swam in her mind but she knew not where to look. They had abandoned her, as everyone else had, Justini was alone and friendless in the world.
She stumbled through a doorway and found herself in a small chapel. It was a plain and humble sanctum, a few wooden pews, brass candlesticks and an altar set before a mural of Saint Lucia being martyred. There was no one within yet Justini stumbled inside pleading, "Help me… please… someone help me…"
There was no response except the pounding inside her head, relentless and unending. The Psybrids scorned her petty defiance and redoubled their efforts to claim her mind, scraping her nerves raw. She felt a million scrambling claws tearing at the back of her eyeballs, her throat was filled with sharpened thorns and in her ears voices bellowed. Give up, they cried, give up and stop fighting us, let the bliss of oblivion take you and the suffering shall end.
Fat tears rolled down Justini's face as she clutched her gorget and pleaded, "Mother… please…" There was no help from that quarter either, her mother had been a dream, the truth a mockery. She could expect no help from the one who had abandoned her so long ago. Filled with despair Justini nearly gave in but then her eye settled on a small knife left on the altar. It was nothing, merely a tool for trimming candles but she lurched over and grabbed it. She set it to her own throat and hissed, "You shall not take me…"
She urged her hand to move, to slit her throat and end her torment but the knife did not budge. Fearfully she tried again but her arm was locked solid. She grabbed her elbow with the other hand and tried to force the knife inwards but her arm was immovable as a mountain. The smallest twitch would sever her jugular, but the cut did not come. The Psybrids would not let her kill herself, not while she yet held use to them. They denied her, forcing the arm back and opening the hand until the knife fell from her grip to clatter on the floor.
"No!" Justini screamed, "Let me die!" They wouldn't, the aliens had her in their clutches and would never let her go. Justini's last hope guttered out like a dying fire. She had no friends, no family and even the relief of death was denied. Justini crashed to her knees as she pleaded, "Kill me, please someone, anyone, kill me!"
Silence was the only reply, the small chapel giving no succour in her time of need. Justini's strength gave out and she wept salt tears as her doom became certain, the aliens already pressing their advantage. Her spirit shrank into itself as the fight went out of her, the final surrender becoming real at last. Justini fell to the cold floor as the pain in her head grew to a crescendo. A million alien voices screamed inside her mind, demanding violence and death.
Her resistance withered as her will dissolved like ice before a flamer. She was only a mortal woman, she had no strength to deny the power of the Psybrids. Justini's soul was adrift in a dark sea, drowning under stormy waves. Her life had been a lie, her dreams a farce and her companions had abandoned her. There was nobody left in her life to turn to, she was alone, abandoned by the cruel indifference of the galaxy. She had no solid ground to stand upon, no fixed point to anchor her spirit. Justini's head touched the cold flagstones as she let go of her sense of self, sinking into the darkness, to be lost forevermore.
It was then that the world erupted into golden fire.
Justini's head snapped up as searing brilliance scoured her eyes. Blazing coronas of fire washed over the chapel, setting her nerves alight with electric excitement. She squinted as the light made her retina ache but in the midst of the fire she made out a figure standing proud. Her eyes rose higher and she made out golden armour, engraved with screaming angels and divine lightning bolts. Above that a stern and commanding face gazed imperiously downwards, crowned by black locks of hair and golden laurels. Eyes like supernovas burned in that face, spilling power into the world, divine essence too boundless to contain in a human form. He looked upon Justini and her heart swelled with love and adoration as she beheld her faith manifested in all its glory.
"Why Dost Thou Cry?" the golden giant asked.
"The pain… they're in my head… I can't block them out…" Justini wept in torment and joy.
"Be Not Afraid," spake the God-Emperor of Mankind, "For I Am With Thee."
A golden hand descended and rested for a moment on the top of her skull, a benediction laid upon a suffering servant. Justini felt His love swell within her and her faith flared, like promethium thrown on a bonfire. Heart burning with raw belief, her spirit became aflame with the pure conviction of one who has gazed upon divinity itself. Then her guts cramped violently and she fell back, retching and gagging.
Justini clutched her belly as agonising cramps wracked her head to toe. She choked on vomit for a moment then spewed up a tide of bile, black and stinking, and with it came a wriggling Wyrm. She fell still as coldness rushed through her, and the cramps faded, leaving her weak and crying upon the floor. She lay sobbing in pain but her eyes saw the Wyrm was blackened end to end, smoking like wet wood held over a flame. Even as she watched it curled up and died, growing still at last and with it an end was brought to the voices in her head. Justini was free.
Justini wiped vomit from her jaw and forced her head up. The vision of the God-Emperor was gone, leaving no trace He was ever there. Some may have called it a hallucination, a fever dream or a delusion of the desperate but Justini had no doubt as to what she had seen. The God-Emperor had visited her, He had saved her soul and her adoration became the iron-hard certainty of the true zealot.
"A miracle, it is a miracle…" Justini gasped as she shakily forced herself to her feet. The chapel was quiet and drab as ever but it mattered not, this place had been sanctified by His presence and so had she. Justini's body ached all over but sheer passion overrode all mundane concerns. She had been blessed by His touch and with it been gifted fresh purpose. She would take this revelation into battle and share her vision with all she met. She did not know how they would beat the aliens, she did not know with what weapons they would fight, but none of that mattered. He would be her guide and so long as she believed in Him, victory was certain.
Filled with the righteous fire of unassailable faith Justini staggered from the chapel, returning to battle as she recited over and over, "The Emperor Protects. The Emperor Protects. The Emperor Protects…"
