Joris was brooding, clearly unhappy with his situation, but unwilling to talk about it. He had already killed all the slaves Alygias had designated for combat practice, adding their skulls and fresh blood to the little altar to Khorne set up in the chapel, but he clearly wanted to do something more.
Sitting down in one of the pews next to the angry neophyte, both their armour off and replaced with robes, Alygias asks, "Am I going to have to sedate you?"
"No," Joris replies in an annoyed tone.
"I was hoping not, sedating the followers of Khorne is always a pain in the ass. Taking them down in the first place is no easy task, and then when they come to they're all pissed and start ranting about Slaanesh because of the drug use and its all just a big mess," Alygias says with a wave of his hand.
Looking at him, Joris sighs and says deferentially, "I apologize for my selfish brooding."
Raising an eyebrow, Alygias says, "You still think like a Loyalist Marine."
Laughing bitterly, Joris replies, "That is because up until an hour before I met you maniacs I was a Loyalist Marine!"
Stunned at that declaration, Alygias sits up straight and leans forward, saying, "Well now your brooding at least makes sense to me."
"Indeed. For almost my entire life up until the hours before I met you, I wanted to be a Marine. A Black Templars crusade smashed a Chaos incursion of my homeworld, and I was one of the few survivors in my hive after both sides had fought over it. I saw those black clad gods walking through the rubble, not a care in the world, righteously slaying all in their path, and I wanted to be like them, to be one of them. The first chance I got, I ventured out across the ash wastes between the hives for the temple they were constructing. I was one of the fist aspirants on that world, except for the fact that I was still a bit too young to begin gene seed implantation," Joris says, a twinge of happy nostalgia reaching his eyes.
"Those were good times, happy times. Hard, harsh times of course, but there was simplicity in everything, and the tight bonds of comrades in arms. We all would have perished for one another," Joris explains, just before the joy drains from his face.
"Then the disaster on Forlorn Reach struck. Our crusade slammed headfirst into a massive raiding fleet being led by the Word Bearers. They had heavily corrupted the planet, so we heavily bombed it before deploying to the surface. As we rolled through the devastated cities, shooting everything that moved, I had this growing sense that what we were doing wasn't right, wasn't what we were supposed to be here for. We were supposedto save all these people, not make more orphans damn it!" Joris cries out, banging his fist hard on a bulkhead.
Regaining his composure, he continues, "My unit was ambushed by a full Host of Word Bearers while we were purging the Governor's Palace. We, somewhat ironically, made our last stand in the mausoleum vault that carried the item that held the very item that had drawn the bastards to the planet in the first place." Joris then pats the sword at his side affectionately.
"By the Emperor… err… sorry, old habits," Joris says, pausing in embarrassment. "Uh… anyway, we fought like daemons we did down there, which is probably why they eventually deployed daemons to root us out. The last thing I remember before going down was being hit by the axe of one of them."
Lifting up his robes, Joris shows an ugly scar along his right side.
"I don't know how I survived that, but I did. The enemy managed to capture six of us, five initiates and me, one dumb, unlucky neophyte. They kept us alive, and kept all but one of us from actually managing to kill ourselves in transit. It wasn't pleasant, they pretty much had us bound at all times and forced food down our throats to keep us from starving," Joris says, anger beginning to cloud over his face.
"I'm not entirely certain why they set down on Anachronous; I think it had something to do with a prophecy or some such nonsense. Somehow I get the feeling that if I knew the entire thing I would laugh my ass off. In any case, they took us to a temple in the middle of the city, deep down beneath the surface to a room where you could feel the Warp bleeding through, predators on the other side of the walls of reality and sanity just waiting to jump through. They had the five of us surviving Templars, our armour returned to us for reasons we did not know at the time, and dozens of children," the rage was now clearly building in Joris' face.
He took a moment to calm himself, knowing that a berserker rampage would be meaningless and futile against an ancient like Alygias.
"The leader of the Word Bearers, their Dark Apostle, then dismissed all but a handful of his most trusted lieutenants and he began to explain what this was all about.He had discovered the daemon sword Iniuria, containing a greater daemon of Khorne. Lost since before the Great Crusade, the daemon within had been dormant for thousands of years, and even after being brought into the Eye of Terror it still slumbered. In order to wake it, a sacrifice would have to be made," Joris says, his burning coal eyes flaring for a moment with the memory.
"I take it you all were the sacrifice," Alygias says idly.
Nodding, Joris continues, "Of a sort. Whatever prophecy they were following demanded a blood sacrifice, as expected for a Khornate weapon, but the requirement was for innocent blood to be shed, thus the children. The Dark Apostle intended to use us Marines to check if it was working, as it was said that the sword could cleave through any armour. As the killing began… I lost it. I completely lost it."
Close his eyes and bundling together his fists, Joris hisses, "It wasn't the screams of the children that pushed me over the edge, it was the silence of my brothers. They just remained quiet before this atrocity, uncaring for the lives of the lost civilians so long as they went to their death with quiet dignity."
Exhaling after a moment, Joris says, "My brothers ignored even my screams, but the leader of the Word Bearers was quite amused at the obscenities I was throwing his way and instead of testing the sword's edge upon me like he had originally intended, he went to the opposite end of the line and killed the man who had been my mentor. The way the others just looked at me shamefully but never spoke, never gave voice to their chastisements just drove me into a greater fury."
Hanging his head, Joris says, "As the ritual continued and the blood of the innocent flowed in increasingly large batches, the screams dying down from hoarse throats into terrified bawling, I heard a voice reaching out for me. It told me to give in to my anger and hate, to accept the calling in my blood. It sang to me, it threatened me, it pleaded with me, and I ignored it. I ignored it right up until the last moment."
Taking in a deep breath, Joris continues, "I was the last one left, and the Dark Apostle moved on to the youngest at last, seeking the most innocent blood possible. The splashes of blood became smaller and smaller, I began to see red everywhere, and finally I listened to that voice. As the sword was raised above the last child, born in transit to the Eye, I did as the voice asked and swore my soul to Khorne."
Smiling viciously now, Joris runs his hand affectionately across the unadorned surface of the blade and says, "Iniuria means 'Injustice' or 'Injury' in an old language. The Dark Apostle thought that it was made to cause injustice. It was not. The daemon bound within is an old one, trapped in its current state by its fellows. Khorne is a god of anger, and this blade is one of righteous anger. The blood of the innocent did indeed awaken the daemon, but not in the way the Word Bearers thought. The blood of the innocent brought forth my rage, and it was that upon which the daemon fed."
Drawing the weapon to look at the glint of the light in the chapel catch its lustrous black edge, Joris says, "Once I was angry enough to swear to Khorne I was bound to this weapon, and it to me. The blow against the infant was never struck, the sword ripped from the Dark Apostle's hands. It struck my chains and cleaved right through them, and I grasped it in my hand and the power began to flow through me. I killed every last man in that chamber, mostly because they were so dumbfounded that I was the one holding the sword that I had half of them dead by the time they recovered enough to fight back."
Putting the weapon away, Joris hangs his head and says, "Once the thrill of battle was away from me, I collapsed and wailed at what I had done. I… I… I still believe in the Emperor and His Imperium… but I know that what I have done cannot be gone back from. I am Khorne's forevermore, and I will not bemoan my fate. My soul felt burdened and tarnished from my actions on Forlorn Reach, so I felt it a fair trade to save the life of but one innocent."
"That… that baby girl is what kept me going. Had it not been for her, I would have charged up the stairs into the heart of the compound, seeking the solace of death. I would have probably slaughtered many servants of Chaos, but death would have been inevitable. Ironically it was the daemon in the sword that told me to take the subtle path. I had a mission now: to protect the child. Kill anything that got in my way to be certain, but protect the child first, and if that meant not fighting, then so be it," Joris explains.
"So I marked myself with the icons of my new god Khorne and snuck out of the temple. I kept to the backstreets until I realized that the Word Bearers knew that I had escaped and were hunting for me, at which point I decided that if I could not survive and keep this child safe, I would go out in a blaze of glory. You know how that turned out," Joris says, smiling wryly, Alygias now caught up with his story.
Staying silent for a long time, Alygias finally says, "But now your mission is over. You have found a home for the child and she will be safe and well cared for. You need a new mission to define yourself."
"Yes," Joris says darkly before looking away. "Right now, all I want to do is find a trip to the nearest world, be it Chaos or Imperial or Ork or whatever, and start killing. Kill the guilty, spare the innocent, and not stop until I lie dead or this blood soaked galaxy is free from injustice. I long for death at the moment, torn as I am between the Emperor and Khorne. Let me die and my soul be torn asunder by daemons, tortured for eternity for my crimes, it will be a peace compared to the tension I feel now."
Nodding, Alygias says, "Once a crusader, always a crusader. While I feel it would be a shame to lose such a creature as you, if your lot in life is to die on some gods-forsaken battlefield for poorly defined reasons, it is not my place to stand in your way. Would you care for some advice though?"
Looking back at Alygias, Joris takes it all in and then begins to laugh. He laughs for a solid half minute before wiping away his tears and saying, "Oh, look at me. Aren't I pathetic? Here I sit, like an aspirant at the feet of a Hierarch, wide eyed and afraid, looking for safe wisdom to light my path. So go ahead sorcerer, give me your advice, it will surely be better than this idiot can muster."
Smiling thinly, Alygias says, "First of all, as I said before we came aboard this ship, I can complete your transformation into a Space Marine by growing for you a compatible Black Carapace and then implanting it. This will of course have its cost. For a time, I could define your mission for you, give you a goal to work towards, a crusade to travel along. As you have seen, our goals do not so much align as not come into conflict, so there shall be little for you to worry about. If I have people I want dead, then they have probably done something you would want to kill them over anyway. I am not a protector of the innocent, but neither do I actively, or even particularly passively, seek to destroy it."
Taking this in, Joris chuckles and asks, "A former Black Templars neophyte turned Khornate champion for the innocent working for a bitter old Tzeentchian sorcerer? Have these gods of yours no end to their humour?"
Snorting, Alygias says in a dead serious tone, "No. The bastards."
Still laughing, Joris asks, "When my debt to you is paid, what then? This self-destructive impulse in me will not go away, I can feel it. It is not merely a part of me, it is me. It is the lost, lonely child within me seeking a place of quiet and peace away from the swirl and din of the madness about me, but there is no peace, there is no solace in this galaxy, except in death. Everything else is just grim darkness."
"If in that time, you cannot find a new crusade for yourself, perhaps you will have found another person you can follow. Perry and Hamilcar are going to stick with me I think. It's rather funny really, but I do believe that the cleanest Nurgle follower in the universe is quite smitten with the fallen Seraphim. Perry's story is quite interesting indeed; perhaps you should ask her about it, if you can stand her broken speech patterns and flighty mannerisms. We have plenty of time in transit before we reach my fortress, it might be a useful distraction for you to talk to her for a while," Alygias tells him.
Joris absorbs this bit of information and asks, "Thank you for the suggestion, I just might."
There is then a comfortable silence before Joris asks, "I get the feeling you have one last thing to tell me."
"Yes," Alygias says before leaning in conspiratorially. Inching in closer, Joris listens as the sorcerer says in a low, quiet voice, "Don't tell the others this, but I have in my time seen many thousands of children grow up, and took quite the active role in the rearing of some of them. In the past ten thousand years though, I could be said to have been an actual father to those I raised but five times. It is the most frustrating and rewarding adventure you can have.
"Are you sure that you are done protecting that baby girl from the horrors of this cosmos? Are you sure that if you just find for her a place of shelter, sustenance, and safety, that your mission is complete? Are you sure your heart is confused because you are torn between two gods and not between deciding on whether or not you wish to be a father?" Alygias asks in a whisper.
Smiling, he backs away from the now horrified looking Joris and dusts off his robe before standing up from the pew.
Gulping hard, Joris says slowly, "You… have given me much to think about sorcerer."
"Indeed," Alygias says before slipping out of the chapel, leaving the confused young man to consider his future.