Screams of Chechenwaldr
6
Epilogue
The murmur of the prayer that afternoon crawled up the monastery walls with eerie certainty and presence. Chamberlain Victon found that the ambiance was the one thing that reminded him the most of where his career had taken him. This wasn't the first such place of worship he had secluded his life within, but the difference lie in how the benedictions traveled.
Every monastery he had served in had been surrounded by a sky, and air, and the confines of a normally backwater, lonely world. Gray light came in from windows, and the galleries did not birth a special kind of darkness.
But not here.
Here the chambers were all sealed within the generous shell of the station's great bulk, eternally protected, totally isolated. It was normally more difficult for the younger of the serfdom's number to cope with their new reality when their masters deemed fit to relocate their services. Many of them left behind loved ones and friends and places of personal value.
But Victon had been devoid of all those things since the Demigods had taken his arms. Shortly afterward, he was complete and uncaring by the time they took his tongue.
Existence furthering that wasn't entirely a suffrage. For the crime of heresy, the punishment was rather generous. Most who attempted to depart their duties before granted permission saw the possibility of lobotomy, conversion to servitors most commonly, but many too also were given death as an alternative.
Victon had been spared those things, purely because of his talents, and his speed. The other Demigods hadn't seen the value regardless, but Brother Valejhos had been adamant. For Victon's long service, surely, even given the severity of his crime, the sentence could not have been so wasteful.
So, after Valejhos vouched for him, the others took most of his body, replacing it with bionics, tube-fed augmentations freeze-branded to the traces of tissue and flesh he retained. The process had been agonizing, and the best most of his former fellows had been allowed to do was merely murmur the same cants that they always did to him, but that time, they had sounded pathetic, like their voices were trembling. Prayers had been the only thing the Imperial Fists ever had granted the Lost. Perhaps, to the Sons of Dorn, Victon hadn't been lost completely, and so, they had treated him post-surgery as a foolish, blundering child who had misstepped.
Though in actuality, most of them just ignored him.
Save Valejhos, and the Librarian he had 'gifted' –Victon's repurposed body in a bid to assist in the keeping of the Library of Stairs. Brother Keeper Tahrman was the least talkative of the two, only taking the time to occasionally reprimand Victon with tiny murmurs under his tired breath.
Valejhos wasn't so dismissive. Librarian Tahrman had offered joint ownership of the limbless-serf. So in addition to being a record keeper and automated recorder for the Librarian's tomes, he was also the private messenger and writer of Brother Valejhos' extensive journals and memoirs, all the writings he accumulated in his endless quest for Storm's Teeth: the fabled and long lost blade of his Primarch, among other relics of lesser repute.
So it was as Victon was being reminded that he would never be present on a planet's surface ever again to recite the prayers he still remembered, that his work was interrupted.
The sprawl of brain-linked pen-points dabbling in their tens from the crane-like servo-arms attached to his diode-riddled torso whispered incessantly. There was a knuckle-dip filled with eight ink-tubes for his sprawl-points whenever he ran low, inscribing thousands and thousands of lines upon the ream of parchment before him.
The auto-lect desk kept processing the paper, greedily swallowing each page as soon as every illustration and paragraph from the aged and dying book held in the easel by the station's side was complete in exact duplication.
In the torchlit din of the Library of Stairs, Victon appeared to be stranded in the middle of a forest of shelves. Endless and endless reams of tomes, scrolls and books gridded the dark place everywhere, the calm flitter of Servo-skulls passing between the aisles being the only true ambiance besides the distant murmur from the nearby chapel.
Victon only had one organic eye left. It was lidded and lazy as one of his bionic crane-arms stopped dancing its arachnid fingers on the parchment, its eight points slipping into the knuckle-dip with a quiet delve before returning to its crawling post.
"I see you are preoccupied." –Came a heavy voice from the darkness. Victon's eye dabbled upwards to see a gigantic figure gingerly slipping out from the shadows to stand in the torches' amber haze. "Much piles there are for you, Chamberlain."
"Much work is in need of being done, lord." –Victon's voice was not his own, it was the dimmed vox-crackle of the iron-throat making everything below his immovable and fixed chin. His lower jaw had long atrophied away, so all that was left was the bulbous nutrient-feed and the box speaker.
"I'm intruding." Valejhos smiled hollowly for a moment, his great yellow-armored hands locked in front of his cuirass, like a monk in penance would do stalking the halls of their own temple. He always did that when he was pacing. "Otherwise, is it a task specified for you by Tahrman?"
"Not directly, sir, he- *sssshhhhhhhhh*-" Victon's box drew off into an ugly wash of static for a moment. His eye scrunched as he fought his surgeries. When he opened it again, Valejhos remained as still and as patient as he usually was, which Victon was grateful for after all these years. "No. I have not seen him in two weeks."
"Indeed?" The Sergeant furrowed his two-studded brow. "He hasn't divulged anything to anyone I imagine. I respect his need for privacy, but if I wasn't empowered to get him out of those Star Chambers when he goes and vanishes for months."
"I cannot comment on the habits of my superiors, of course, lord." Victon was still writing as he spoke, his eye darting between the Sergeant and his reams of paper. He re-dipped the points, pausing over a crackle in his voice-box. "-His latest studies prove everything."
"Everything?"
"That you were right." Victon rasped, pausing in his writing. "As it would seem, my lord, I merely express my support of your theorem."
"Appreciated." Valejhos dismissed with a brief and fake smile. He paced around Victon's auto-desk, face contorted in thought as his giant boots thudded dully in the quiet air. "…What did Tahrman say explicitly?"
"….He… asked that I do not-"
"Speak." Valejhos was smiling, but Victon quivered at the slight tone of threat in his stony word. "You needn't worry of my authenticity. Tahrman knows that."
"…He also said that you would say that, lord." Victon crackled, unable to look behind his own head as the Marine lurked there. The Chamberlain had stopped writing, and the ink-tips hung over the parchment, occasionally twitching as they longed to continue their task. "Tahrman worries for you."
"And it is disgusting that he would subvert you of all wretches to complete such a sanctioned statement." Valejhos again fakely smiled. "I did not believe we had become this distant. How long has he been locked in the Star Chambers?"
"I have not seen Master Tahrman in two weeks."
"I didn't ask how long you had not seen him, I asked how long in those two weeks have you seen the gates shut." Valejhos said. "How long has it been now, Chamberlain? A month? My memory can't clasp his face beholden to me any later."
"I do not know, lord. I have been confined to records replenishment for sixty-five days." Victon emotionlessly informed. "I discovered the Star Chamber gates shut after recovering from a resting-cycle upon my bio-station. Master Tahrman appeared once two weeks ago, murmuring to himself as he browsed the tomes. The doors were open then. They were shut again the moment he departed."
"So a month." Valejhos impatiently nodded. "Like pulling teeth, Chamberlain, aye?"
"My apologies, sire."
"Aren't you afraid I might become angry?"
Victon's touch-points twitched, and a slight crackle whispered out from his iron-throat. A sigh perhaps.
"There is not much more the Masters can do to further expose me to the justice of our faith." Victon said with complete disinterest. "If they wish to continue generously allowing me to supply my services. Do you no longer wish for my servitude, Sergeant? I am at your mercy."
"Hmmph," Valejhos hummed, glancing across the great library at the aforementioned pair of blue and gold doors nestled under an arch. "it was just good humor, Chamberlain, really."
"I do not possess vocal chords, sire, I cannot laugh." Victon shrugged with his eye, and again, his touch-points started dabbling in rapidity upon the parchment. He dipped in the ink and joined both limbs in their quest with gusto.
"Indubitably." Valejhos frowned like he had smelled something foul. The Sergeant sighed and departed from Victon just as soundlessly as he had come. He slipped through the darkness of the library, heading for the Star Chamber doors. "As you were." He mumbled over his pauldron. "Tonight, I have need of your ink. I shall return in the late evening to record my discoveries in the case files."
"It will be my pleasure sire." Victon's machine-voice distantly crackled.
When Valejhos reached the doors, he had to look up, his chin surpassing his armor's gorget. The doors were each twenty feet tall and were etched in a beautiful mural of Rogal Dorn orbited by cherubs, all carved from solid gold and platinum.
The Marine rested a palm on the surface of the gateway, listening intently, even though he knew the sound-proof walls would always nullify his attempts to spy on the Librarian during his periods of study.
He couldn't help hovering, though, or pestering the Chamberlain.
It had been so long now since he had handed Tahrman the scorched, tattered records recovered from the battle with the Harlequin agents. The cursed Xenos song-books listing the possible truth. The Librarian had initially believed it to be Eldar trickery, but now, he couldn't have been so sure if he was still locked in the damned chamber for this long.
What was the Star Chamber showing him? If anything?
Where in the name of all that was good had the Storm's Teeth gone? Had Valejhos been right?
Had it been the Collector who was responsible?
"Grant me peace, for I may stray, remind me of the light to give me what I humbly will to be salvation." The Sergeant muttered under his breath. "Damn it, Tahrman, come out of your hole and face me. I want the truth."
The prayers in the chapel chambers had risen to a crescendo. The hummed and deep cants of the serfs reached the ceiling and bounced everywhere inside the station.
He always felt a hairslength away from the answers he sought.
Just a thin glass barrier divided him from his quest. The madness of it all was total and terrible. He hated to admit his own will to simply be handed what he needed. Time was running out, especially with the growing problems inside the Imperium that required his 18th Company's attention. For too long, he had kept his men away from the wars of their brothers, and they were beginning to rouse with anger.
He couldn't blame them.
Finding the relic was like solving the origin of a dream. It did not seem possible to reverse something literally written in stone as ancient history.
Madness.
Valejhos clenched his fists and growled.
Madness.
"Tahrman, open these doo-"
The Sergeant stepped back when exactly as he wished happened. The gigantic Star Chamber gates creaked and moaned as they swung on their hinges.
A crack formed in the golden center, revealing a darkened, hunched giant who appeared barely able to stand.
"Brother!" Valejhos forgot his frustrations instantly, making room for Tahrman to stumble out of the grip of the chamber, his robes disheveled, his face taught from hundreds of hours of concentration whilst he used the Star Chamber's Scope of Sight. "You return."
"-Yes, I am back, an accomplishment on its own, believe me." The Librarian swallowed, veins pulsing across his forehead as he slumped against the doors. "-My head feels like someone hit me with a boulder."
"Do you require an Apothecary?"
"Tsk, from the Scope?" Tahrman tiredly laughed. "You can drop your fake concern, Val', I'm well enough to tell you what I saw."
"Which was?" Valejhos hungrily stepped closer, eyes wide and terrible. "Speak."
Tahrman stared at him for a moment, a look of what could've been the beginnings of disappointment weeding under his face. He banished it with another sigh and rubbed at his forehead.
"Tahrman?"
"You will not act, Valejhos, not until the Chapter Master himself has deemed this our will." Tahrman warned him. "So you will listen? And you won't jump like a starving dog?"
"Just tell me."
The distant sounds of Chamberlain Victon's quill-fingers scribbling ceased as the Librarian spoke again.
"Nothing here is certain, you know how the Scope tempts us to… believe things, even when they may not be material." Tahrman said. "But it showed me enough. I think you were right: Rogal Dorn's sword is in the clutches of the Necrons."
{📚}
-0-0-0-0-0-
-0-
Fin