IV. MYSTIC
Already the visions from my dream are melting away like mountain snow under a scorching sun, until only the name remains. Or a designation. Or a title.
Khurremsher.
On the previous day I had been meditating within the Armour of Pain, setting the level to the maximum which even a meskhateni would hardly endure.
But it didn't matter at all. What did matter was how I would meet my destiny and ensure it wouldn't herald the doom of my Chapter. How I'd use my warrior's gift and prevent it from becoming a curse.
Once again I recall my lord-mentor's voice, his last words, the phrase I shall cling to until the last. I pondered those words of Mentor Shes'haris, uttered in the last moments before his death. He said that one day I would lead my brothers and take them to Khurremsher.
'I shall compose my death poem,' I promised myself then, as the first lines began to weave themselves together in my mind, 'and I shall perform my duty, whatever it must be.'
'We bow to your wisdom, Brother-Epistolary,' the captain assures me.
'It won't be an easy journey.'
'I am aware.'
'All right,' I say. 'Then, Brother-Captain, you shall arrange your warriors like this...'
When I start explaining, Artashes listens to my plan and widens his eyes in disbelief.
'But what about you, Rustawi?'
'Oh, I will play my own role,' I assure him calmly.
The closer we are to Khurremsher, the clearer the future gets in my perception.
I sweep my gaze around the landing bay, feeling my brothers' thoughts, watching out for any flaws and cracks and insecurities. Their minds are like an open book to me. Or an open wound. There was only ever one living being whose mind I could not, dared not read: that of the lord-mentor.
I look at Captain Artashes across the aisle from me, and as he returns my gaze I see myself reflected in his thoughts. Meskhateni are an integral part of the Chapter, yet we are a dour, solitary lot, and our brothers treat us with clumsy respect and suspicion which I don't blame them for. There is a mathematician's intellect behind the captain's stern features and narrowed eyes, the very same quality that had made him into a Space Marine in the first place. His fierce rage is deeply buried, only just sparing him the indignity that Rajin Nera suffers from.
Nera sits to the left of him, in his matt-black warplate as scarred as his pale face, an only flash of the Chapter's bleached yellow on his left pauldron. For now he is almost serene, amiable even, only the corner of his lips twitching erratically. But under this placid exterior a brutal, insatiable tempest rages, and even I am unable to tell which aspect of him is true and which a blatant lie. Make no mistake: Nera is the most dangerous of the Chapter's warriors. Just like myself, he is part of the Kraniophori, yet largely apart from the rest. We are called upon only when absolutely necessary. The rest of the time, we are avoided. His hair is snow-white, like that of our Primarch, but his temper is the heat of the fire. His thoughts are a seething, burning turmoil. He is a noble yet troubled soul that rages at everyone and everything, but most of all at himself. At what he has become.
But we never choose what we become.
A psyker knows this better than others.
The vox-bead in my ear crackles.
'Epistolary Rustawi, the map you have procured was right. We are approaching Beta Karymkar now.'
'Not Karymkar,' I correct the man. 'Khurremsher.'
I send a thought confirmation to all my brothers in the landing bay, at once feeling their battle-reflexes ignite and engage. Mordaen, sergeant of the Aggressors, growls happily, the still-human part of his face twisting with a predator's anticipation, the machine one dully gleaming in the lumens.
Another voice slithers into my thoughts over his growing war-chant. I know this voice. It spoke to me before. It comes from without, from the place of our destination, and also from deep within myself, its unholy source held by the fraying noose of my willpower.
+I see you, little witch.+
+Oh? And you like what you see, don't you?+ I ask in response.
The thing makes a low, menacing chuckle in my mind.
+You are cursed pretty bad, you really are.+
+Gifted,+ I riposte.
Another wet chuckle, like the tread of sabatons over raw meat.
+So, do you make good use of this gift?+
+Yes,+ I reply. +For my Primarch. For humankind.+
+You are naïve, little one.+
+Better naïve than corrupt.+
+Hah! If you so believe...+
They are in the depths of Tylan XX, the void station where humans and xenoforms lived in what they mistakenly called Harmony for a long time…
The warriors have been wandering for hours…
All of a sudden, Lieutenant Rubin screams in a hundred voices, and his auxilia soldiers with him…
The Skull Bearers see the danger waiting for them all along…
Bolters roar and chainswords shriek…
Brother-Codicier Rustawi repeats the mantra of guarding, again and again, but the voice in his head is loud, too loud…
+Beware, little one, beware of the ploys untrammelled!+
+Ah, you wish me to hand you the keys to the gates of my mind, yes? That's not going to happen. Not ever. You shall tempt me no further, daemon. For you are nothing.+
+You know full well what I am.+
+You are nothing,+ I snarl at it in my thoughts.
I do not need to look inside to know it. If anything, I have already learned too much.
There shall be a fight, and I know how it will end.
I recall how, just before my lord-mentor died, for a split second his thoughts had become unguarded, and it had been enough. I had seen everything I ever needed.
And for now I allow myself a small smile.
We all walk a path laid out for us.
'But this is Candor Spire, isn't it, lord-mentor?' I ask, looking up at the smoking ruin of a towering palace-labyrinth which had until recently dominated the cityscapes of this nameless planet. 'So where is the artifact? Why am I here if it's no longer present?'
'I'd made an error,' Shes'haris admits. 'A minor one, but still it happens, Rustawi. The meskhateni arts, no matter how formidable and terrifying, are still human skills in transhuman minds. I'd told you that this is where you've had to get, and perhaps… Perhaps if the events had played out a little differently, it could still have been you.'
'We arrive when and where we must,' I nod, understanding at last what he means.
'Exactly. The future isn't set, my brother; it is fickle and uncertain, yet somehow it always brings us precisely where we need to be.'
I see this now, yes. I see all too well…
'What did you say, Brother-Epistolary?' Nera looks at me, eyebrows raised in surprise, and I realise I must have uttered a thought out loud.
And this thought wasn't mine.
'Nothing, Brother Rajin,' I call back. 'Nothing at all.'
+This shall be painful,+ the daemon insists.
+Existence is nothing but pain+, I tell it, +and I learned this better than most.+
+Your struggle is pointless,+ the creature whispers.
+Lies!+ I growl back. +Nothing is pointless. I shall die having done my duty. You forgot about yours while you were still alive.+
Duty, eh? Another empty word from your dead godling!+
'Tell me, why are you here?' Shes'haris had asked.
I think then what answer to give.
'Because I was... born to be?' I venture. 'Because on a Chapter world, this is an optimal path for someone like me – despised and persecuted by my own people for daring to speak the truth in the midst of deception and half-lies?.. Because otherwise my lot would have been death at the stake, or heresy, or ritual blinding, or running errands for the ordos, or a thousand other unsavoury fates?'
'That's right, my boy,' Shes'haris nods. 'That is exactly why. But you are privileged to serve the Maker-Lord our own way.'
+I shall not become your victim, warp spawn,+ I add. +Your ploys are only good for bringing low the defenceless and the unarmed.+ At the sight of many centuries of brutality and ruination which suddenly overwhelm my thoughts, I feel righteous fury growing from within my soul. It is a dangerous, volatile aspect of my personality buried deep in each and every son of Keletros, but I am a meskhateni, taught and conditioned to master this flaw and turn it into a weapon, pure and noble. +I am a warrior of the mind and soul. The Emperor's loyal serf. There is no chance you can win.+
+We shall see,+ the daemon promises, and then, for a time, my skull is clear of its presence once again.
But I know what it is.
The hush before the storm.