~Reaver, Warrior, Scholar, King~
~799. M30~
~Segmentum Ultima~
~Approaching Prospero~
~The Emperor of Mankind, The Hero with a Thousand Faces~
A psyker is a being who has developed the ability to utilize psychic powers. A psychic power was an event that did not obey standard, material causality. These were the definitions utilized by the psy-scientists of the federation. They were robust enough for day to day purposes, and it was upon these definitions that their psy-tech was eventually founded upon. The warp drive, gellar fields, the psychic amplifier, all technologies developed by the federation to harness this power.
To them, it was a recently growing phenomenon. To him, it was an old thing he thought long dead, returned from the days of his youth. He remembered clearly the first time he learned of his own power.
An ambush in the night, and in the company of a woman, he had no sword in hand. By instinct, he swung at his attacker. By his will, his sword was already in his hand, and he cleaved the attacker in twain.
He was no stranger to the aid of a god. The chief deity of the people he ruled, although not his deity, had given him boons before. A great fury always came to him when he learned of these times, for he had not prayed for aid, he had no tongue for it. His victories or defeats were to come from his own hand, could he call himself a warrior if his only success came from the favor of distant gods?
That deity was dead now, as were all other gods of men, devoured by old horrors of the warp.
Upon killing his ambusher, he had marched through his keep and kingdom, bare as a newborn babe save the sword in his hand, and into the temple of the sun god. There he stood before his golden altar and demanded the god to answer him. Speaking through their high priest, the god had answered. With eyes of flame and a voice of lyre, they answered.
It was not by their will that his sword came to him. It was by his own.
Magic came from gods and demons, it was understood in those days. He spoke this, and the sun god had answered.
Seek the ruins of old Atlantis.
And so he did. Leaving his kingdom in the hands of his son, taking up finest sword, mail, and warriors, he ventured to the city lost beneath the waves on his finest warship. He did not know how long he spent in that ruined kingdom. He slew what men called gods in that place, and things that devoured gods, and things that devoured even those things. Stained in blood and ash of that place, with new mastery over his fledgling power, and not a single living witness of his deed, he stumbled out from the remains of Atlantis.
When he had finally returned to his homeland, a long beard on his face and sword rusted to uselessness, the kingdoms of his time were dust. The people were foreign, their tongue was foreign, and the maps were foreign. He traveled to the highest peaks, for the highest mountains were closest to the heavens, and bellowed out demands for the gods to reveal themselves. Fury, insult, threats, nothing but his own echoes answered him.
Not even the gods of his time lived on, or if they did they did not answer him, and in time his demands that they reveal themselves grew more and more hoarse. After many months on the highest point in the world, he descended from the mountain. He began to wander southwards, and in time found himself at a place they called the greatest city in the world. A riverbed town made of stacked and baked clay bricks.
He stayed there for some time, wielding an axe of bronze and defending those people. They put golden clasps in his beard, and he buried his memories in the warm flesh of their women. Eventually, a realization came to him, his body was just as hale as the day he left Atlantis, but the people around him withered with time.
He left then, traveling further south to a new city and new people. A desert people who built farms along a flooding river. Giving them his sword arm, and partaking of their maidens and wines, he waited for age to come to them and not him again, and left once more. A new town, with a new people. Whenever he encountered a sorcerer or horror, he slew it, and evermore blood stained his skin.
Eventually, there were no more sorcerers. No more horrors left upon the world. All great challenges dead or banished, and he was alone as witness to them all. They did not return for many ages, and in those times his power went unchallenged. In those times he brooded, a sword in his lap, and meditated upon all the secrets that had gone unanswered in his life thus far. At some point, he who was never without a sword in hand, he who spent all of his coin on wine and wenching, had become the last sorcerer of man. Last scholar of Atlantis.
The federation called them psykers, psychic energy, and the immaterium.
Atlantis had called them sorcerers, souls, and the lower world.
Both were true.
He frowned heavily, concentration battered at. Chemos had been a place of great death, souls had gathered there in great numbers, weary, docile, and downtrodden. Preserved by the attitudes of the population, too exhausted to spend any of their energies with imaginative arts, the souls had simply accumulated. Outermost layers peeled away by the storm and devoured, but inner layers sheltered for centuries.
He had brought light to their world, he should have expected this of them. Around him like a thick shroud, the spirits of the dead lingered. Spirits were drawn to sorcerers, especially the nascent sorcerer, for their souls provided stable narrative on which to cling, to save themselves from the eternal clash of twisting thoughts in the ocean of ghosts.
As the light most prominent upon the golden throne, they slowly made their way to him over some months clinging to various peoples upon his ships and dragging themselves to his radiance, too slowly for him to notice until it was obvious. Likely, his form had been shrouded in ghosts for a long time. They often accumulated along his back.
There was no afterlife for him to send them to, for the gods of man were dead, and the horrors of the warp wore their skins. All he could provide them was a peaceful oblivion at this point.
The grand doors to the helm opened, and the dozens of crew in the chamber recoiled in sympathetic fear, for the ghosts clinging to their souls wailed in pain.
He exerted his will, careful to not let the projection of the golden blade diminish, and stilled the ghosts. Their pain stopped, and with it the pain of those around him ceased.
Stepping into the chamber was a group of utterly silent women. Their hair was red, and tied up in a horse-tail, with the rest of their heads shaved bald. They were clad in golden armor, the servos of which were without sound.
The Atlanteans had theorized a dread art they named ghost-eating technique. Dreaded, for it was anathema to their way of life, a heretic's art. An art he mastered while slaying the manifold nightmares of their ruins out of necessity.
The women before him did not know that art. They did not understand it. They had never practiced it. They had an inherent talent for it, and his hand had twisted that talent into ruinous efficacy. One half of a living weapon he had designed to combat the horrors of the warp, the other claw to be paired with his Custodians. Now, they would never be able to practice sorcery, their own souls working against them.
The Anathema Psykana approached his throne, and the souls around them recoiled from their slavering spirit. Reaching the bottom of the throne, they stopped, and gestured in a language of hands and motions to ask what his bidding was.
"Kneel, Anathema Psykana, and fulfill your purpose to me." He commanded, to which they obeyed, knowing what was to come. Their eyes were filled with a gentle, accepting melancholy.
Focusing his will over the wraiths that accumulated around him, he forced them to heel. He stilled their panic, their pain, and all sensations from beyond. He could not do this indefinitely, it simply took too much will. But he could do it long enough to grant them peace from the rolling narratives of the psychic-sea.
From his back, a procession of becalmed ghosts strode forth, and walked into the void-souls of his Anathema Psykana, who drank deeply. When the women in front could not stomach drinking any more, they moved to the sides, and the ghosts proceeded to the next line of women, until they too could no longer stand to drink, and moved aside for the next line.
And so, over the course of many hours, the Emperor of Mankind laid the souls of men to rest with the gentlest funerary rites available to him. For the gods of men were dead, and the Immaterium was turbulent with the tormented and the predatory.
It was the best he knew to do.
—
"I was not permitted to enter the helm." Danu grunted at him, sounding both entirely at ease and deeply annoyed. "The Custodians told me you could not be interrupted. I intended on bringing taller sister Fulgrim to the helm."
"Ah. It's fine, don't worry." Fulgrim quickly waved a hand in nervous panic, the other hand pulling at her new robes. A smile had been forced on her face. "If you were busy then you were busy. It would be rude to interrupt. I just introduced Danu and Hathor to my pa-fosters." The two dull mortals had been brought along as dutiful aides to his daughter, a new job they took weary joy in.
He smiled lightly in apology, frame unburdened by phantoms, and kneeling to be closer to their heights. "Something quite critical came to my attention, and it took many hours to resolve. The task is done for now."
"What?" Danu asked bluntly, causing Fulgrim to flinch.
He hesitated for a moment, reaching up to scratch at his chin. They would soon retrieve Fifteen, and their psychic education would be mandatory regardless. Malcador had warned against teaching them anything beyond the essentials, and he had agreed with the assessment at the time…
But their plans had proven potentially fallible enough to require time travel to correct, and hiding Fifteen's extracurricular education from the others would only stoke fires of jealousy and resentment. He alone could tutor Fifteen in this, he could trust no other psyker with the task…
He nodded to himself, and decided. Focusing his attention back to his daughters, he saw Danu waiting patiently, and Fulgrim waiting nervously. He smiled, she'd get over her nervousness around him in time, she was still used to her life on Chemos. "I will soon retrieve your next sister. After that, I will begin to tutor you all on the matters of psychic power and the warp. There are dangers to such, however, and there will be topics I forbid any further study upon. I do this to protect you. Do you understand?"
Danu nodded, dutifully as ever. Fulgrim reached up to tug at her hat, only to remember she wasn't wearing one. "Ah… well when are-"
"Sister and I have built a castle." Danu interrupted. "She is too nervous to show it to you." Fulgrim shot a betrayed look and quickly began to downplay the act.
"It's not really a castle. It's just some sketches and a scale-model. It's really nothin-"
"Oh, well I should like to see this castle then." He declared imperiously, hiding the smile on his face behind his armor's bevor. "The work of my daughters is surely something grand."
Fulgrim started to rapidly vibrate in anxiety. Danu grabbed her hand and began to walk to the small workshop that they were educated in engineering and similar fields in. He followed with a light heart.
"You will point out its many flaws, father. The next castle will be better." Danu demanded of him. Fulgrim made a sound like a choking feline.
Indulgently, he replied. "Of course." He furrowed his brow slightly. "Where is your other sister, where is Hathor? Do you know?"
"She has declared that as the eldest, she had to be the strongest. She is sparring with the custodians." Danu explained, reaching up on the tips of her toes to grab the door handle and open the chamber. It was attached to a rope, which was in turn attached to the actual handle.
Being too heavy for normal pull, Danu pulled herself up upon the rope, feet dangling, and used the whole of her weight to open the custodian-scale doors.
He nodded in understanding, yes that sounded about right. He smiled again, feeling the brush of a distant mind against his, fumbling in ignorance for a familiar soul. Fifteen was doing her best to understand the great golden thing that appeared on the edges of her senses.
It would only be a few hours before they were at Prospero.
—
Prospero is a mostly worthless world. On the very edge of the habitable light of its local star. A rocky planet that contained essentially nothing required to sustain life. Its only real advantage was its relative distance from anything of note, making it an ideal place for a collection of outcast psykers and mutants to converge and live in relative peace.
What was once a barren rock had been transformed, containing several arcologies of gray and brass, streets illuminated by psychic lights, and a relatively small but thriving community of sorcerers. Their only true danger being the psychic pests that dwelt upon the planet, and themselves.
He looked upon their largest city, reclusive and far from the swarms of psychic-parasites that made their homes near old ruins. Mounds and towers of astrological intent, and numerous people going about their days. Obelisks and roads formed a great grid that allowed them to channel the natural energies present into powering some manner of psy-tech that lay deeper within their largest buildings.
It was attractive. It was bustling. It was hopeful.
It looked quite a lot like how he imagined Atlantis might have at one point, before its ruins were filled with a thousand nameless horrors, manifested by their own love of sorcery over the blade.
There, in the midst of their largest building, most likely their place of study, he felt the soul of Fifteen. An eye of hindsight, an eye of foresight, skin dyed red as blood, and grasping hands reaching out to feel his golden soul.
Fifteen was drawn from his days delving Atlantis, desperate for its secrets, to know why sorcery had come to him unbidden. To know why the sword answered his hand. To know that it was his will and none other's that his battles were won.
Fifteen was to be better than him. Whereas he learned in desperation and out of necessity to survive, they would learn with passion and enthusiasm. Where he had to learn with skin stained in godblood and a rusted sword in hand, Fifteen would learn as he did in the Age of Technology, unburdened with stressors and gladdened by the simple pursuit of knowledge.
Fifteen had received special attention from him, and just as his hand enhanced the talents of the Sisters of Silence, so too did he weave his daughter. She would be gifted with foresight, a sorcery woven into her right eye. She would be gifted with hindsight, a sorcery woven into her left. Between the two, she would see the logic in each lesson quickly, and with more thorough comprehension. For having another sorcerer on par with himself and Malcador would be a great boon indeed.
He descended in a bolt of artificial lightning, crashing to land in the center of the plaza. Making sure to not harm anyone in his descent, he stayed there for a moment, giving their psychic defenders time enough to prepare themselves to attack, before slowly rising up from his kneeling.
A giant of gold loomed over the psychic scholars of Prospero. Eyes burning with light, and blinding all who attempted to look upon him directly. He breathed in, then out, casting his gaze upon the gathered.
A hundred or more psykers were around him. He gazed impassively, making no aggressive moves. Sorcerers were a skittish bunch, and liked to feel as if they controlled the situation no matter how tenuously. He would allow them to make the first move.
Eventually, one did. A man with a shaved head, clad in red robes, called out with eyes squinting in pain. "You come to the learned scholars of Prospero. Your ships hang over us. What do you wish with us!? We have little to offer to the outside world!" A scholarly accent of High Terran.
He turned his gaze to the man, and slowly reigned in his will. The light faded, but did not disappear, and he proclaimed the truth. "I am a father, looking for his daughter."
They paused at that, silence for a moment, most of their tension faded by that simple intent. The man who spoke previously was about to speak again, before being cut off by another voice. A young female doing her best attempt to give a deep laughter.
The man tensed. He raised his brow.
A cloud of multi-colored smoke filled the area at the foot of the steps of the primary arcology.
Many of the scholars gave aggravated or pinched looks. Others gave exasperated sighs.
"Stranger of golden ships! You stand before the dread sorcerers of Tizca, greatest among the wizard-kings of Prospero! Know this and despair!"
He raised his other brow.
"Stranger of golden armor! Standing before you are the elites of this world! Amon! Nut! Kek! Their wisdom is enough to fill a dozen libraries! Know this and tremble!"
Amon brought his head down to his hands.
"And now! Standing before you is their greatest student! She who has mastered all they had to teach in a single year! Greatest prodigy and sorcerer of Prospero! She who will one day master all psychic arts!"
The smoke faded, revealing a girl slightly older than Danu, but not by much. Clad in abbreviated robes meant for children, designed to prevent tripping over their hems, a girl with red skin and dark red hair stood before him. Brandishing a wing-staff too large for her, and wearing a blindfold that only covered her right eye, the grasping soul of his daughter revealed herself.
"Madonna the Magnificent!" A great series of flashing lights and fireworks burst to life behind her, clearly something that she had spent a long time on.
Dead silence followed her declaration. He resisted the urge to smile at how precocious she was.
Instead, he nodded, and spoke. Amon's head raised from his hands, and then his eyes widened, sensing a build up. Madonna tensed, as did many of the sorcerers surrounding him, feeling similar.
"Madonna. Allow me to introduce myself."
He cast a projection of his power as a sword of light, sprouting up as a pillar. The city of Tizca was bathed in radiance, and psychic parasites close enough to him were burned to ash.
"I am the Emperor of Mankind, most powerful man alive."
He smiled at the slack wonder in his daughter's eyes. Several sorcerers fell to their knees.
"I have come to find my daughter. I have succeeded."