04.603.989.M41
The jail door opened to reveal the form of an emperor-bother. He was adorned with white vestments with red trim, made of a fabric with a thread count beyond the prisoner's means, or rather the prisoner's means before his incarceration. It was as decadent as the gemstones, precious metals and even real animal fur that adorned the pict-casted prelates giving high mass during Sanguinala. However, this man was evidently a preacher, one of untold millions who were the backbone of the imperial cult. His adornment extended only to a golden Aquila hanging from a chain around his neck. He approached with a dataslate held at his side and his staff of office, golden and topped with haloed skull situated within a capital "I".
What was most striking about him was the preacher's age or rather lack thereof. He was still somewhat boyish in appearance, barely much older than twenty. Fresh out of seminary no doubt. Other than that, he looked like almost any other Osgrothan, with pallid skin, jet-black hair and grey serious eyes. Behind the priest a servo skull glided into the cell. It's anti-grav generators purred as it moved to the right of the priest, fixing him with hits one glowering red eye. Many ghostly silver mecadendrites floated limply from its base.
The priest moved to sit on a bench on the opposite side of the cell, with the overly careful poise of a middle hiver, gently resting his staff on the wall and consulted his data slate.
"I don't recall requesting spiritual services." said the prisoner. The words came out some disjointedly for he had not spoken to anyone in days.
"I have no sins to confess nor a desire for so-called redemption".
The priest said nothing, his eyes firmly locked on his data slate, carefully reading it for what the prisoner thought was an uncomfortably long time. No doubt he was refreshing his memory of some catechism.
The prisoner decided to ask what the priest was doing but the preacher beat him to it.
"You were a clerk of grade Primaris, weren't you Andrei." the priest said conversationally, not looking up from his device.
That question, no… statement, took him off-guard. He had not been addressed by his first name for about a week since he'd been held here by the hive enforcers (the most frequent sobriquet being heretic followed by filth), nor had he been spoken to in that candor. Was this a trick? Even if was did it matter? At least he could talk to someone.
"Accounts clerk specifically…for the office of Learning, and Vocational Instruction".
The priest gestured for him to continue, showing no sign of offense taken by the lack of reference to his station, and Andrei felt a long dormant sense of professional pride creeping back into him.
"Mainly cost analysis and management for a schola district. I also had some supervisory duties; training several lower grade clerks, checking the data entry of many more, and I even participated in hiring decisions."
He didn't mention the latter entitled him to some decent bribes when his superiors needed some exercise some familial or factional patronage.
"Indeed, three tertius grade clerks in all; and might I say they were exceptionally dutiful workers, judging by the commendations they have earned. It's a shame their career prospects will never recover." the priest responded glancing at the data slate.
"You appear to have done your research" Andrei responded, ignoring the last remark. Why should he care about the advancement of those three self-important servile fools? He barely cared if they lived or died.
The priest looked at him now. Despite his youth the man fixed him with an affably fatherly smile.
"Seminary imparts a lot of transferable skills" the Priest mused.
"The students seem to reflect their master. You have nearly a dozen commendations from your superiors and were in the middle of taking the examinations for a position within the Adeptus Administration. For a man of only 35-going-on-36 standard, and merely three generations removed from bonded labour, that is an impressive feat."
"Did you come here just to recount my career history? I would have thought you'd have more pressing duties." Andrei queried with a hint of mockery in his voice, testing the boundaries with his new interlocutor.
"On the contrary I am here on a most vital duty. To learn why you turned from your enviable life. Why you endangered the lives and livelihoods of yourself, your friends, your co-workers, and your family, and cast it aside by associating with a heretical cult: The Brotherhood of the eight-pointed star. To engage in all manner of blasphemy, including denying The God Emperor's divinity, denying the authority of holy mother church and the High Lords of Terra, as well as performing barbarous practices like human sacrifice."
"The last charge shouldn't be of much concern to you. Does not the Ministorum condone such behaviour on many a feral world?" Andrei quipped. He would not be lectured by a fugging borderline child let alone a corpse worshiper.
"The savages of Fetrel Secondus require a virgin sacrifice to secure the 'sun-emperor's' blessings for their chieftain's great hunt?" Andrei mocked snidely his confidence growing.
"On Gidril Prime, whenever a Juncker dies, their retinues are killed so they may keep them company by the emperor's side. What difference is there?"
He grinned in triumph, but was aware a vicious physical rebuke awaited him for such comments. Perhaps he had been too aggressive and dashed hopes of more conservation, but then again proclaiming truth in the face of a corpse-worshipping pseudo-infant was worth the loss of an old pleasure. However, the rebuke and the violence did not arrive.
"Ah, a learned man!" the priest beamed.
"Though your comparative theological analysis is rather limited, I'm afraid. At least in this sector sanctioned human sacrifice is conducted based on promoting social stability and in accordance with pre-imperial planetary custom, not for socially destabilising individual advancement via divine favour. Of course, there are significant procedural differences too. Ritual castration is not required in conjunction with moderate cannibalism of the victim prior to sacrifice; such violence is superfluous. Victims also tend to be at the age of majority; I can't speak to your god's desires, but what use has The Emperor for a mere half-formed version of his people?"
No hint of judgement entered his voice. There was something objective and detached about it, which made Andrei queasy. Such acts were supposed invoke a strong reaction emotional of some sort. Righteous rage, sadistic pleasure, disgust, horror. That was the point! To treat it as a phenomenon of dispassionate study, was revolting. Yet, that dispassion was intriguing. Clearly there was something odd about this priest.
"That's a rather novel response for a preacher. The ones I have known would have recited some catechism about the virtues of ignorance."
The priest gave a mild chuckle to that.
"What would that achieve? You have already damned yourself in the eyes of Emperor, Imperium and Church."
"A conversion perhaps? Surely winning me over to The Emperor's light will advance your career. Perhaps you'll make Cardinal?" Andrei replied jokingly.
The priest laughed "I'd be lucky to make deacon! Alas the church doesn't see it that way. To consort with the heretic at one's own initiative even to convert them, is not looked kindly upon. Our superiors tend to worry that our faith is not strong enough to survive such an encounter. Even if I do, that wouldn't make you a good case study."
"Case study?" Andrei asked.
"They teach you a lot in seminary" the priest explained.
"However, when it comes to understanding why people fall to heresy, we only have dogma, and secretive theorising between peers. I want to learn and understand the heretical and the blasphemous, and what makes people fall to them."
"I would have thought chauvinistic dogmatism was a prerequisite for ordination. Even still this sounds like something well beyond your station, Preacher." Andrei said with a mock hit of reproach.
The priest looked away from him for a second, with a hint of regret in his eyes, before turning back.
"I admit I have been… deracinated from a higher calling. Theological difference may have played a role, but I suspect not being born into nobility was a bigger factor."
"However, you'd be surprised at the amount of intellectual freedom a mere preacher has down here in the lower hive" the priest began enthusiastically.
"Experimental theology pamphlets, forbidden ecclesiastical histories, or even different versions of the same catechisms. You would be surprised how they transformed between the Age of Apostasy and the Age of Redemption. The idea of sacrifice shifted from a denial of material pleasure, no doubt to pay for Vandire's vanity projects, to military martyrdom for redemptive conquest. My colleagues say this is a common theme after imperial crises, like during the Cataclysm of Souls, but it hasn't been as long-lasting in imperial theology."
For some strange reason the young priest reminded Andrei of an aspect himself. The curiosity and inquisitiveness that had driven him to the cult and had survived the suppression of his parents, Preacher Dietrich, and schola masters, was staring him.
"As much as I'd enjoy it, what can I gain from indulging you? There is nothing you can give me that I want, and there is nothing I want you can give me."
"A convert to your religion, perhaps" the priest responded tentatively.
Andrei was too stunned to respond. What kind of a preacher was this?
However, the priest continued non-plussed.
"You may succeed. Others thought more incorruptible and with a greater stake in the Imperium, than I have fallen from The Emperor's light before; Vangorich, Vandire, and the arch-traitor himself. Surely a lowly preacher can be tempted".
"This has to be a trick." Andrei said incredulously.
"Maybe, maybe not. It's not as if you have much to lose. You will be eventually handed over the arbitrators or the Church, and they will ensure your fate make your time with the enforcers appear pleasant. I could even help you escape and become a powerful ally."
Andrei digested the words of the priest. He couldn't help but think this was a trap, one way or another, but he was damned anyway and felt an eagerness to share his experience.
"Okay, you want the truth. I doubt you can handle it but here goes…I saw the nature of this universe".
The priest was intrigued.
"Enlighten me".
"I was introduced to The Brotherhood of the eight-pointed star, about year or so ago, or rather their front group. The meetings were fun and secretive. Allowed me to speak my mind and ask questions; questions the Imperium doesn't like to dwell on and got answers as well. However, I felt I was always being held back from a greater truth, and after cultivating enough connections I was invited into the inner circle of the brotherhood. I was deemed worthy enough to experience what they called, communion with higher beings; a mediation where a witch would offer a tiny glimpse into the Immaterium. I saw the reality of creation and…It was only for a second; horrific and magnificent, yet I emerged alive and with my sanity intact, unlike most of the others. I didn't sleep for several days, but that is a small price to pay for enlightenment."
He drew in a deep breath, glancing at the servo skull swaying menacingly in the air.
"We are naught but microbes living at the pleasure of unfathomable intelligences in the service of Gods- real Gods. The four divines of Chaos. They are beyond our very comprehension, and bend reality to their will. The thoughts of the power I could wield through them was intoxicating. I saw colours that cannot be. Smells and sounds the human mind was never meant to know, and pain so great it verged on pleasure. I tasted past, present, and future all at once. So far beyond this dull little Imperium. I wanted more. I needed more."
The priest cocked his head and frown slightly, as if complementing an answer.
"Four gods?"
"The Blood God, the Lord of Decay, the Changer of Ways, and the Prince of Pleasure" Andrei answered.
"And they govern reality?" the priest queried.
"They are the manifestation of our emotions, fears, and desires. Their wishes to see them enacted, unbarred from petty rules and customs" Andrei replied amazed he had gotten this far.
The priest sighed.
"I was, perhaps foolishly, expecting something a bit more theologically substantial, especially given how you led me on about unsanctioned questions. You experienced what a typical chem junkie goes through and risked everything you had built for yourself and disregarded it like a nutri-paste wrapper. And for what? Some primitive superstition that could have come from a feral world sociopath. I had expected more from you Andrei."
That remark struck him harder than he expected. Not a wrathful denunciation but sneering casual dismissal of a jumped-up schola master. The gall of this man!
"Of course, a priest of the corpse emperor would phrase it like that! If you saw what I saw…you'd tear off your vestments and praise the four true divines unquestioningly!" he snarled.
"What kind of true divines have their followers hide from humanity at large to practice their worship in secret, when they control and shape reality?" countered the preacher in a level-headed tone.
"The worship of the master of mankind is conducted openly, from splendid Cathedrals to humble shrines by countless quadrillions, administered by countless billions of preachers and confessors backed by the full unfathomable economic, military, social and political might of the Ecclesiarchy."
"That is not true power, that is the manipulation of the masses! Lies of the weak glorifying a corpse!" Andrei snapped.
The preachers' eyes narrowed.
"That manipulation seems to thwart your four so-called divinities. In any case, what makes you so sure there even is a corpse?" he responded raising a quizzical eyebrow.
"Time in this world is no consequence to them, and…?" Andrei stopped his counterargument before realising what the preacher had said.
"Wait, what?"
"Why stop at denying His divinity? Why not say The God Emperor was a fiction created by the High Lords? It makes more sense." replied the priest nonchalantly.
"Come to think about it how do you know such a body even exists tens of thousands of light years away? Indeed, the High Lords themselves could have just been an invention of Lord Grundervere himself, to justify his rule over the sector" the priest said casually.
"The brotherhood confirmed much of what-" Andrei began.
"Strange social outcasts in the lower hives told you there is a million-world strong human empire ruled by 12 people, which is governed in a corpses' name? A corpse that the great divines of the universe can't be asked to depose in thousands of generations? Really, Andrei?! I expected more of a man of your education." the priest scolded.
Andrei looked at the man stunned, ignoring the slight.
"What are you playing at?"
"Observe. Chastisement Gamma" the priest snapped the second part with the harshness of a manufactorium overseer.
The servo skull previously content to hover in the jail's dimly lit corner suddenly lurched towards him, and with its one tendrils, touched his arm.
A hot stab of electric shock induced pain shot through Andrei making him jolt.
"Argh fugging Throne fugging damn it!" he yelped out of instinct as the skull slinked back.
"Yes, that is indeed a popular response." the priest replied in feigned interest.
"Despite your new faith and the power of your divines your first reaction was to reference the seat of The Emperor himself. How many, thank The Emperor for a rest period after a long shift, blaspheme in his name when they stub their toe, or cry out his name engaging in carnal rutting?"
The priest pronounced the last two words with the venom his kind typically reserved for witches and mutants.
"Holy Mother Church gave them the reference point for what is sacred or profane. An inkling of our power. We have ability the shape the minds of people to our own choosing, and to do so in ways which they can barely comprehend. We have done that on a very large scale, over the course of countless generations. Far more so than your pathetic four divines have. Even you can't escape it Andrei. Your heresies are grounded in our orthodoxies."
The priest grinned with ecstatic viciousness and spoke with the passion of the zealot.
"It doesn't matter whether The Emperor is a corpse, real or imagined. He ultimately exists through us. He is the manifestation of our power. In the name of The God-Emperor of Mankind, the minds of countless trillions obey us, and through them we can shape physical reality. We built great cathedral cities of Ophelia VII. We mold the culture of countless worlds. We shape the very galactic order, with our wars of faith that snuffed out entire cultures. In His name millions across the galaxy die by our hand, without the direct wielding of munitions on our part. We are the very backbone of the greatest power in the galaxy, despite our neutering during Thorian reformations."
He drew in a deep breath, and bared his teeth in a wild grin.
"We are what makes The God-Emperor divine, and we are far beyond the pathetic power of your lowly Gods."
Andrei let the fanatical tirade sink in for a few seconds. Never had he heard such a blunt valorisation of power, even from followers of the primordial truth. He was about to dismiss the man as insane with a pithy remark, before noticing a recurring theme within the speech.
"We?"
The priest leaned forward as if interested in his rebuttal.
"You said it yourself; I did what I did for personal advancement, regardless of the cost to the social order", Andrei said growing confident of his argument with each syllable.
"You talk of great power and control excised over common humanity, but what do you gain preacher? I was offered a glimpse into the inner workings of reality, and the brotherhood said the chosen could attain power human greater than human understanding. Perhaps they exaggerated the odds that anyone could attain this power, but the prospect was real. The feelings and experiences to be gained from that power are real. What power does the Church and the Imperium offer to you priest? To be a disposable cog in a machine? To be a vessel for power rather than having it. Where is the joy and satisfaction with that."
Priest leaned back on the bench and considered Andrei's response. After a moment he clasped his hands together and leaned forward.
"Let us assume your brotherhood could have given you such power. What power can a mortal truly possess? Our presence is nothing in this galaxy, and even the actions of the greatest of us can fade into oblivion via the passage of time. Those whose names endure do so at the Imperium's pleasure."
The priest drew a thin smile.
"The Imperium is beyond mortal power and eternal. To be part of it and yes to be a disposable cog or vessel for it, is the greatest form of power and happiness any human could attain. To live and die with purpose, and to know that your efforts will materially endure, allows even the unskilled bonded prole the opportunity to bask in the power and immortality that the ancient kings of old earth could only dream of."
"Even if I believe that Imperium was eternal, am I supposed to be grateful at the prospect of maintaining the plaything of future High lords or planetary governor? What tangible gains does that bring to me?" retorted Andrei.
"A somewhat better deathbed, and nice feeling after a long shift so long as I never ponder the dogmas! I'd rather strive for more on my own terms, than be told, nay made, to be satisfied on another's whims!"
Priest leaned back on the bench and pondered Andrei's response.
"Thymotic heresy" he murmured.
The priest stood up and smoothed out his vestments.
"Thank you for the riveting conservation, Andrei, but I must bid you farewell"
The tentacled and monstrous servo skull leered at Andrei if one red eye.
"The experience of being imprisoned here can take its toll" lectured priest. "Stress-induced heart attacks are quite common, or so the resident chirurgeon tells me. Some say the rate is surprisingly high, ceteris parbus, which is attributed to foul play. However, 350 gelt ensures that won't be the case in the medical reports."
Andrei eyes widened as it dawned on him what the priest was implying.
"Life is said to be cheap in the Imperium, though in this case a week's wages of a skilled free-worker are quite reasonable for hiding the…alternative orthodoxies of a priest, don't you think Andrei?"
Andrei had accepted his demise in principle when he arrived here, but not as imminent. His mind was swimming, barely able to process the scarcely concealed threat. In seconds that felt like hours his mind latched onto the one thing he could do to leave some kind of legacy, or at least eke out a few more seconds of life. He needed to make one strike of defiance before the end, but what could he say to such a twisted man? Who worshipped false power blindly, contemptuously dismissed the truth, and readily accepted servility as empowerment. Or did he…
"A shame after you tempted me with some comparative theology earlier. You know, for a man preaching obedience and conformity, you do seem to relish the prospect of breaking the rules for intellectual curiosity" said Andrei in a calm, genial manner with a slight hint of malice. It was the tone he had perfected over his career.
"Your ordination may grant you some freedom for now, but eventually you'll be where I am, and know I was right. This Imperium has no room for persons, only servants and thralls."
He had expected an honest, if self-delusional, response but the preacher didn't give his remark that dignity.
"Freedom is slavery, and slavery is freedom for viceroys of The Emperor's flock. Saint-Ecclesiarch Pius XII, Praecepta ad Principes, Book IV, 20:1" the cleric replied in a tone that ooze superiority.
"That's not a real answer!" exclaimed Andrei.
"Who are you to say what is a real answer?" responded the preacher.
"A man still trapped in the mental frameworks of the God-Emperor's servants, appealing to powerless Gods?"
"Your arrogance is…insane!" Andrei in an outburst of anger, disgust and astonishment.
The priest wagged his figure and tutted at Andrei like a Schola master lecturing a small child, with a sadistic smile, as the servo skull readied.
"Oh Andrei, did you forget your catechisms? Only the insane have strength enough to prosper; only those that prosper may judge what is truly sane. Chastisement Alpha".