– Dreams in the Warp –
– Chronos Incognito –
Elena did sleep for an hour or two, which made a nice change from just falling unconscious from the pain.
But her sleep, she found, was not repairing at all.
She opened her eyes back into the Pit. Heinrix's arms around her had gone ghostly, grey, as if frozen in space and time. His face didn't move at all and he wore no expression. She touched him briefly, and felt her hand go through him. She had as much material resistance as a vapor.
A sinking feeling took hold of her. The atmosphere, the uncertainty of it : it reminded her too much of the hallucinations she'd been a prey of lately.
But the mindworm contaminating her had been taken off her. Had it ?
Or was she living in a perpetual hallucination ?
A sense of fear grasped at her innards, twisting her stomach painfully. She got up, feeling as if she was the only real thing in this strange state of being.
What had happened to her ? Has Commoragh broken something inside her mind forever ?
" You're awake, Mistress Martyr !" said a cheerful voice from above.
She lifted her eyes up. On a platform above her sat Kunrad Voigtvir. The slender man was sitting casually, his grey uniform wrinkled and torn at its sleeves. He was playing with a knife that she recognized immediately - the blade that had stabbed her. It shimmered with a beautiful blue glow.
" Yes," he said, smirking as he noticed her reaction, " you are familiar with my dearest friend. "
Kunrad lifted a finger in the air and Elena felt the phantom pain of the dagger slashing her, without him even having to get close to her.
The man giggled as she pressed her hands to her chest, shocked and bloodied.
" This is not a mere dream", she whispered. " Is it ? Are you really… there ? "
Kunrad shrugged and opened his arms in a dramatic way. " I always have been, Elena. After all, isn't watching over each other what family is for ? "
The pain subdued and the slash on her chest was gone, but the outline of her old scar shone in the oppressing grey of her current landscape. She scanned the area : everything looked like the Pit, but nothing was tangible. It was like being in limbo.
" How ?" she asked, confused.
Kunrad leapt downward towards her in a graceful manner, and dusted his doublet as he got up. He coquettishly spat in his hands and slicked his pale blond hair back.
Something had been torn apart from him, Elena realized. His eyes were slightly too widened, a terrible sight when there were four of them to look at : one had grown over his right cheek, and one was staring at her, without eyelids, from the center of his neck. His gestures were a bit too edgy, too frantic ; nothing like the nonchalant and almost charming man she had met the day he came looking for her upon her garnison planet.
Compulsive gestures. Paranoïa. Heightened sensitivity. Heightened awareness. Swiftness of mind and action, but speaking with a soft slur, as if it was hard for him to have to pause to actually utter words.
She had seen all those symptoms before in psykers as they fell into corruption.
She had felt all these temptations before.
When she was still a little girl aboard the voidship called the Martyr, when she did repairs in outer space with her clan, her father had taught her not to look for too long inside the deep blackness of the void.
He had told her that many voidsmen suffered from "l'appel du vide" : a strange fascination, a vertigo born from the sublime and infinite depths of space ; you couldn't but imagine yourself drifting away, falling into the void. It was impossible to resist the lure of the void. Many had killed themselves by ceding into their temptation, diving into the void to satiate their fascination, and finding only death.
Looking into Kunrad's multiple eyes right now, Elena felt exactly that same pull, that same lure. It was like watching a version of herself that had gone wrong.
In that exact moment, Elena got the distinct feeling that she should never have been the Rogue Trader. Theodora's heir should have been him all along.
But fate had decided otherwise and what remained of Kunrad was wicked, wretched, a shadow of the man he could have been.
" I thought a psyker as remarkably gifted as you would have understood by now. Are you going to disappoint me again, dear sister ? Or do I have to spell the solution to this little enigma out for you ? "
Elena exhaled, thinking, but the presence of the corrupted man seemed to ease her track of mind ; he made things around him clearer, strangely. She said :
" Commorragh is a strange place between real space and what the xenos called the Webway. An interstice of sorts between multiple realities. Transitional places like these hold power in themselves. They are like mirrors, reflections, the dawn and the twilight. Places where things can be both unreal and real. The moments in-between, where everything is still possible and nothing is decided yet. "
She eyed his reaction, as he smiled like a satisfied schoolmaster. " Yes, yes, exactly ! A place where things exist in multiple dimensions and state of being. The cat is both dead and alive here ! The cake isn't a lie ! And so am I ! " he replied cheerfully, in a melodious voice. He twitched his head compulsively to the side three times, pressing his hands to his temples and muttering to himself.
The fact that Kunrad had gone completely cuckoo seemed a little too obvious to be worthy of being pointed out.
" What happened to you ?" she asked, trying not to feel compassion for such a wretched creature, but finding it impossible not to have pity for the strange torment he was enduring.
He laughed scornfully, bending down in half, holding his face and eyes, and Elena saw blood dripping from his fingers, as if someone was slashing his face off as they spoke. " What didn't happen to me, you mean, Elena dear ! "
His laugh turned into a choked sobbing. " I thought you would understand me better, sister. At this exact moment of time, a tapestry of threads had been weaved by my Lord. In thousands and thousands of iterations, we dance and we dance for Him. "
He smiled horrendously and crouched over the ground, as if in pain. " Most of the time, the Rogue Trader ends up killing the traitor and servitor of Chaos." He mimicked crazy stabbing moments, laughing all the while. " Of course, such is the nature of the hero to prevail over the villain ! Sometimes, I get to sink my claws inside the Rogue Trader, and how those times are sweet. Other times are just…well, some are surprising indeed, but in the end, it doesn't matter, Elena Martyr. Nothing you do or I do matter. My Lord always wins in the end. But it does beg the question : who is the villain and who is the hero ? "
Elena frowned, looking down discreetly on her side to see if she still had her weapons with her. She found she still had the poorly balanced pistol the Solitaire had given her. She was surprised how heavy and real it felt in the strange demi-being plane she was trapped in.
" How are you even here, in my dream ? " asked Elena, trying to make sense of the situation, and with no better witty comeback at the ready. Moral philosophical questions were not her strong suit, especially not when discussing them with a chaos worshiper.
Kunrad rolled his eyes. Once again, something she wished she had never seen, considering the perverse amount of those.
" ' How are you here, in my dream ?' " repeated Kunrad, mimicking her soft voice with a ridiculous vibrato. " It is very hard for my ego, dear sister, that all those helpless Rogue Trader keep vanquishing me when they have the equivalent total sum of cerebral matter of an oyster left to dry out in the sun."
In a painfully quick movement, unnatural and sharp, he was suddenly on her, pressing his hand on her chest, where the wound was. She stepped back and hit a wall.
" The Truth, sister, is that I have always been here." His hand pressed against his wound and she could swear she felt the flesh respond, the scar vibrate unnaturally. " Whenever you bleed, whenever you cry, whenever you hope for change, whenever you survive impossible odds, I am here. I am here when your heart beats and I have sown my melody around each of your steps to the Expanse's throne. I sing for you when all is silent and I know all of you because we are the two sides of the same coin. "
Unwavering, Elena lifted up the pistol she barely had time to seize and put the muzzle of it just under Kunrad's chin, pressing it against his skin. From up close, Kunrad stank.
A stench of decay and death, something worse than the foulest sewers ; even the pile of decomposed bodies she had woken up in didn't smell as bad as him. The stench was physical, and it seemed to her that she wasn't smelling it with her nose but with her mind. A foulness that made the average Footfall's shadow quarters privy as fragrant as a rose.
" I am the taint and you wear the mark of my Lord with you ; I left you with a scar that never heals and a thread is woven between us that cannot be cut short. " He smiled again, and up close, Elena noticed that his teeth were rotten and pointy.
" Get away from me, creature of Chaos ; I shall never bow to your nefarious lies ! " she spat back. She was angry, but mostly at herself, because deep down she knew he was right.
The day he had stabbed her with that heretic blade, the day the demon had looked down upon her to save her and the whole voidship, something had been set. Something she had looked at behind the curtains of times when she was in Dargonus, pushing her divination abilities far beyond her limits.
You couldn't play with fate like that without it twisting you. The words of Kunrad rang true to her ears and she knew he wasn't lying.
Her fingers trembled around the trigger of the pistol. Still smiling, Kunrad disengaged slowly.
" I knew you'd understand", he sighed. " Threads like puppets bond us together. I did not ask to play that part, Elena Martyr ! I did not ask for this ! And yet I am trapped in this cage, in this play, in this role " - his four eyes flashed blue with anger.
A turquoise blue, the same shade she had chosen for her dress during the Magnae Accessio.
A play, a role. A leading part. The Solitaire had said something in the same line.
" Stop swallowing in self-pity, Kunrad ," she snapped. " You are the one who accepted Chaos into your heart. You were ready to damn us all for your own gain ! "
He snorted. " And isn't that just what Rogue Traders do everyday ? Isn't that what Xavier Calcazar and his minions do as well ? Oh, don't try to shame me, Elena Martyr. Chaos always wins in the end. I choose to be amongst those who survive. Isn't that what any sane man does ?"
" Your speech drips of heresy and lies, Kunrad, and in a major part, lies to yourself ! There are those who would rather die than sacrifice their souls to the Ruinous Powers ! "
" And to what do they sacrifice their souls instead, have you ever wondered ?" Kunrad hissed back. " You are not one to sanctimony me, Elena Martyr, when your soul has been so obediently tempered to shreds on the altar of control. You are but a tool to your masters and they have taken away from you the mere possibility of thinking otherwise. You psykers are the worst : living in perpetual fear of yourself or the daemons that could feed upon you should you ever let yourself feel something. Half living , half thinking, never whole ! "
Elena bit her lips angrily, inhaling deeply to keep her cool. " Don't try to fool me. You kill, torture and destroy. That is what Chaos does. It deserves no mercy nor redemption."
" You do the same everyday. Don't you remember Rykad Minoris ? Should I be thanking you for leaving so many souls to my Lord ? " His smile had grown sweet, but his words teared in her heart and guilt.
She said nothing for a while. " On this, at last, the Inquisition agrees with you", she whispered finally, regret seeping into her every word.
" The Inquisition", Kunrad laughed as if she just told a joke. " I see van Calox is still with you. That's a real obedient puppy you have here. Do you know he is tainted too ? "
Uralon had said something to that extent, back on Kiava Gamma. At the time, Heinrix had deviated the question, as he always did. He had put the blame on the cogitator he had touched. Elena hadn't thought about it that much ever since.
But now, with Kunrad…she felt doubtful. It had been an easy answer, hadn't it been ? A convenient one.
Noticing her uneasiness, Kunrad made a soft sound. " Tssss. He has lied to you, hasn't he ? Those Inquisition types, they always do that. They surround themselves with so many lies, believing that it will protect them, until one day they end up forgetting who they really are and what they truly did. I know personally why van Calox was so eager to join your retinue back and get to Kiava Gamma."
Elena knew she shouldn't be asking, that she shouldn't let doubt overwhelm her, but still she asked : " Why ? "
" Because he was the one responsible for that debacle and he knows it deep down. Hasn't he told you about his past ? Of course not. But as a Master of Whispers, it was my job to know about these kinds of things, and Lady Theodora wanted me to know everything about the Lord Inquisitor and his hounds. I'm sure you remember some strange things happening on that planet ? "
" The experience for the cogitator", replied Elena, as a memory flashed into her brain. " The mutated humans. The woman…she talked to him. She recognized him. She said…"
Kunrad opened his mouth and a womanly voice spoke once more.
" You promised us ! You promised ! You took us from the inferno ! You promised us a reward ! You - "
The echoes made Elena's skin crawl as blue veins lightened up over Kunrad's face, twisting unnaturally around. He laughed again, maniacally.
" Never thought about asking about that again, eh ? And what about his previous experiences on dying worlds ? Didn't he tell you he set a planet to die already ? Oh, no, Elena Martyr, the agent of the Inquisition, has no pure heart and my Lord had clawed at his soul long ago already. Billions of lives have been lost on his watch in the name of power ; it may not have been the Ruinous ones, but it is power all the same, and your puppy knows not how to disobey. And so is the taint growing and growing inside. "
" You're lying ", she said defensively.
" Everyone thinks the crazy cultist villain lies all the time, but actually, I find that telling the truth is often the most destructive and disruptive thing one can do," analyzed Kunrad coldly, shrugging.
Elena pressed her face into her hands in frustration. Was he lying ? Was Heinrix lying ?
How stupid exactly was she ?
Of course, they were both lying to her.
She was a step behind in the game, dancing to everyone else's tune, without ever knowing which puppeteer was pulling at her strings. Theodora, Kunrad, Uralon, the Inquisition, the xenos, the Solitaire, whatever was going on with Nomos…That made for a lot of players. And for what ? What were they gambling for in the end ?
And suddenly things got clearer in her mind.
All playing a part. All playing a role.
Trapped in narratives they haven't chosen for themselves.
In multiple dimensions, all across time, echoing to each other, rippling like waves in a much bigger ocean. An ever-changing tapestry replaying a classic tragedy. A heretic cogitator processing simulations of interwoven possibilities at the scale of a planet, a system, a sector. Simulations and realities. Changing forever.
All for the pleasure of the Lord.
Kunrad stared at her intently, his stench still clogging her mind. " You see, " he said, triumphant. " I thought a seer could see that. Now, don't only see, but understand. " He extended his arms to her and touched her forehead softly.
Elena remained unmoving, enthralled and entranced by the moment.
" You're the dawn, I'm the twilight. The yin and the yang. The creation and destruction. The birth and the death. The Star and the Epitaph. It's all woven together, Elena Martyr. I didn't choose that. It wasn't my fault. Theodora began it all. But by your hand, it can stop. I can be freed. "
He pressed his forehead against hers, holding her tight.
" I will help you survive, Elena Martyr. I will whisper to you all my secrets. But I beg of you : save me while I can still be saved. "
" I promise I will save you…" she hesitated, barely, " … Kunrad von Valancius. "
A promise that she could only regret.