A/N: Chap 14 review responses are in my forums. A note at the bottom will give some back story to the events described in this chapter.
Chapter Fifteen: Et Flammeum Gladium
Lyta Rothid's hands shook.
When she came out of the intense, prolonged vision, she didn't fall, but her hands shook. She felt tears on her cheeks and her ears were ringing. It can't be real, she thought to herself. It cannot be the truth.
Valdor, the Emperor's companion and first Captain General of the Adeptus Custodes, was a child of this woman? This Taylor Hebert? There was a mother of the Primarchs? A xenos walking free on most Holy Terra? Was that really Saint Euphrati? "It can't be true," she whispered aloud.
"Your soul seems to think it is."
Lyta jumped, having completely forgotten Lord Moro's psyker. Maerya sat on the desk itself, staring with unseeing milky eyes at the closed door of the cell where the Gallentist collection of works was held.
"I think I understand, now," Maerya said. "It is not a psyker power, at least…not anything I have heard of. It seems almost like these are your own memories, drawn from across the ages. Are you a reborn saint, Lord?"
"Saints have fantastical powers," Lyta pointed out. Even to her own ears, she sounded hysterical. "The confirmed sightings of reborn saints like Saint Celestine or Sabbat all featured incredible, Emperor-given powers. I just have the power of good intuition."
She looked back down at the data slate. This vision wasn't just one limited memory, but an entire sequence of events that spanned days–even weeks. And what they showed her…her own order had killed people for saying less than what she just observed. Even the Malcador she saw in those memories would have been condemned by the modern Ordos for heresy.
Years of psycho and stim conditioning warred against the forbidden knowledge that had just thrust its way into her mind. She was an interrogator of the Ordos Hereticus! She was a progenum of the Schola Progenium! She was a psyker of the Scholastia Psykana! Nothing that she just saw could be true! It just couldn't! The Emperor was the one and only god! No other gods existed; no other truths could be true but for the One Truth!
If she'd spoken of anything she just saw, she would be shot on sight.
"Do you need to go to the bathroom? You seem distressed."
In the face of an existential crisis of faith, Maerya sat half-listening to hymns and staring sightlessly at a door.
The laughter bubbled up from Lyta's lungs almost like air in boiling water. It erupted from her, leaving her teary-eyed and breathless. The sheer, utterly impossibility of it all just tore away a lifetime of conditioning and faith in a storm of weeping and laughter.
It took several minutes for the storm to pass; during that time she found herself thankful that she was otherwise alone. If any of her fellow Ordos saw her breakdown, they would detain her for a mental wipe. Mental breakdowns for people in the Inquisition was not a risk to be taken likely.
Even after the storm passed, she forced herself to sit and breathe. She began reciting cantrips and devotionals while, just on the edge of her hearing in the quieted space, she could hear Maerya's music. What she'd thought was a hymn was in fact an old love song; a lament from a grieving wife for her beloved guardsman marching off to fight the Emperor's wars.
How many loves will it take? How many sons will He claim? I pray the Golden Throne; bring my love back again!
"Maerya, for all our sakes, I must know if my soul has been attainted."
The pale figure bowed her head, and Amelyta could feel her psychic touch. A whisper, ghostlike. The older woman was a powerful psyker, at least in the mental arts. But like many touched by the Warp, she was terrified of her own power and shied away from most of the more overt uses.
"I do so like looking at pretty things," Maerya finally said. "Your soul is pure, Lyta. Almost childlike. It is at once younger than it should be, and yet far older as well. It almost looks as if you have been soulbound, though we both know you were not. There is no taint that I can find; no sign of corruption. The anguish you feel is all too human."
The relief almost hurt. She glanced back down at the ancient data slates. "I've learned impossible things. Things that are difficult to accept."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why have you learned them? Why not someone else? What is it about these impossible things that required you, and you alone, to know them?"
It seemed an odd question at first, but the more she considered it, the more pertinent it became. "Why was it me?"
"I do not know, otherwise I would not have asked you."
With a surge of fresh determination, Lyta stood and placed the dataslate back in its place. With its memories reverberating in her mind and soul, it ceased to carry any visions, and instead was simply a physical object with ancient text embedded in it. She slipped it back into its place on the shelf of the secured cell.
When she turned to leave, the floating servitor skull that served as their lumen switched from broadcast illumination to beam, and dropped down to guide them back out of the secured section of the librarium.
"Where shall we go next?" Maerya asked as she followed.
Lyta opened her mouth to answer as they stepped out of the secure section, only to bounce off a wall of plate armor that appeared in front of her. She looked up, and then up some more, into the jutting, oversized jaw and sloping, bald head of Tim the Ogryn. "'Ello pritty lord," he said through massive, elephantine teeth. He then backhanded her.
Or tried. As startled as she was by the presence, over ten years of the Imperium's finest conditioning did not make for an easy victim. She pushed Maerya backward into the black cells and ducked under the blow, rolling away with power-armor enhanced speed.
Unfortunately, Tim was not a slow, lumbering beast. For all his three-meter size and half ton weight, he was very fast and well versed in violence. "Don' wirry, pritty lord. Tim won' hurt you long."
He was on her the very second she emerged from her roll. Though she did her best to duck away again, this time a massive, meaty fist clipped the pauldron of her power armor. The blow lifted her off her feet and sent her crashing into a nearby shelf. If not for the armor, it would have broken her spine.
The shelf did not budge; she bounced off with a loss of breath and a deep ache in her chest. He charged her again, not giving her a second to recover or catch her breath. On the floor, she pulled her laspistol and fired; the beam struck the ogryn's plate armor, and then reflected off with a bright spark of sublimated ceremite.
She didn't have time for a second shot before he struck the weapon from her hand and kicked at her. The boot he wore was as large as Lyta's torso. She cried out as the blow lifted her off the floor and onto the shelf she'd stuck before.
The shelf was part of a large unit, the end shelf of a long arm that ran like a spoke all the way to the center indices. And the shelf itself stood two and a half meters high. Yes, Tim could still easily reach her, but not as easily as if she were below. Biting back the visceral pain from the two blows, Lyta forced herself to her feet and began running along the top of the shelf.
Tim followed, calling out, "Wai', pritty lord!"
She had no chance of matching the ogryn's strength or his speed, not even in power armor. His stride was three times her own, and she could feel the thuds of his massive feet as he followed. When he was at full stride, bearing down on her, Amelyta stopped, spun, and pulled Zhaena's gifted power sword.
Tim the Ogryn had only a moment to see the blade; but unlike her, he moved with almost half a ton of momentum. He could run faster than her, but he would never be able to stop as quickly. She swung the powered blade with an angry cry, and took the top of Tim's sloping, bald head off, cutting from the line of his small, porcine eyes back through his skull.
"Owie," Tim muttered before he fell to the floor.
She had no time to catch her breath. A bolter round winged her left thigh; the reactive round exploded a split second after striking the plate of her armor. The explosion shattered the shelf, two dozen priceless dataslates, and sent Lyta to the ground below with ringing in her ears and numbness on that side of her body.
"Do you know how long it takes to train on Ogryn, Lyta, dear?" Lord Inquisitor Abequand's voice rang through the librarium.
Struggling to catch her breath, she chose not to answer and instead tried to orient herself to the librium exit. She would have to find help and come back for Maerya.
That hope was dashed when the lights went out.
"You don't have to die, child," Abequand continued. She appeared to be using a voxcaster, since Amelyta couldn't detect a single source for the sound. But she also had no doubt it wasn't the old woman herself hunting. Abequand never got her own hands dirty until she was absolutely assured of victory–that was the function of acolytes, interrogators and entourages.
"If you confess to the murder of Adamara Rassilo and how you did it, you might find mercy."
Lyta's mind raced. Rassilo was murdered? When? How? And was Abequand trying to frame her for it?
She kept her mouth shut. The monologue was designed to mask the real hunters, Lyta knew. Though she instinctively wanted to activate her personal lumen to light her way, she felt certain doing so would be her death.
And they knew where she was when that bolter round knocked her off the shelf.
Lyta closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. She repeated the cantrips and prayers she'd learned in the psykana to focus her admittedly weak power. She felt herself sinking into the meditative calm that all psykers had to learn.
Footsteps, two aisles down. Two targets in armor. Moving confidently, night vision.
She slipped off her own boots. On her body stockings alone, she sent a thought pulse to switch her armor to stealth mode to dampen the sound of the fiber bundles and joints. She quickly ran up the aisle and away from the two soldiers. Unlike them, her otherwise bare feet made no sound on the cold stone tiles of the floor.
"The question you have to ask yourself, dear, is why you weren't sent to the Mountain to power the Golden Throne? Your psyker power is not a benefit, only a window to your own corruption. There's nothing special about you, other than your own gullibility. That could be forgiven, until you got not one, but two Lord Inquisitor's killed. If you surrender and cooperate, I promise you will not be executed."
A sound, just around the shelf ahead. Single hunter, scion tempestus. Normally stronger, faster, better trained. Power armor makes up a great deal, but not enough. She was not going to survive prolonged close-quarters combat with Inquisitorial stormtroopers, all things being equal.
Kneeling down, she determined not to let it be equal. The shelves shielded her thermal signature and any IR reading. They could see in the dark, yes, but only with clear line of sight. She gripped the power rune of her sword, and waited as the stormtrooper cleared the corner. He spun inward, his hot-shot lasgun directed down the aisle to clear it. He saw her almost instantly; she saw him a fraction of a second sooner. Her power sword flicked on even as she thrust it forward and up.
The powered blade slid in under the line of his breastplate, through the more vulnerable lower abominable connection, and with the strength augmenting fiber bundles of her armor, se thrust further up through his torso all the way to the vertebra of his neck. She never activated the power feature, using only the naked, silent blade.
He couldn't draw breath to scream, and the shock against his nervous system killed him before he even began to fall.
She gripped the hellgun from his lax hands after sheathing her bloodied blade. With her free hand, she reached around and quickly disconnected the heavy-yield power array from his carapace armor. The Ryza-pattern hellgun was heavy enough that without her power armor she would not have been able to carry it. She considered removing his helmet as well, but the helm likely wouldn't function for her regardless.
The sound of boots on tiles warned her that her hunters were closing in. She dashed away on silent bare feet, using the suggested sounds and her power to keep shelves of dataslates between her and her killers.
Abruptly her vox bead came to life on their own secure channel. "This is Artigan. The Fortress is on lockdown. Lord, are you there? Report, please."
She started to answer, but forced herself to stop. Voice modulation slightly off. Artificial. Signals into and out of librarium are restricted. A trap to triangulate location.
She took her small vox bead from her ear, but opened the frequency and activated her emergency beacon before placing it on a spoke of shelving that began in the open space as the originating spokes widened apart from each other. Having laid her own trap, she quickly ducked back behind another line of shelving.
They came swarming; nearly a dozen. Far too many to engage. And yet, she knew there was no escaping this. The librarium was a secured, enclosed space. A massive space, to be sure, but there were only two exits, and she had no doubt Abequand had both fortified. There was a time for stealth and a time for flight.
And there was a time when neither was an option. If she was going to die, it would be making her master and family proud. Swinging the power array clumsily onto her back, she switched her purloined hellgun to full auto; there was no reason nor hope in conserving charges.
From the sound alone, her power deduced location. Eleven hunters. Operating in pairs and singularly. Honing in on the signal of her vox. Believe she is inexperienced and hurt.
Which, while true, wasn't going to stop her from fighting back.
She stepped from behind the shelf, eyes closed, and fired where her low psyker power deduced the enemy to be. The heat from the barrel blasted back over her face as she unleashed fifteen rounds of penetrative lasbolts every second.
Inquisitorial stormtroopers were among the finest trained soldiers in the entire Imperium. They carried the highest quality weapons and were sent on the most dangerous missions the Inquisition faced. Only the Emperor's angels, the dreaded space marines, were more dangerous.
But in the face of over seven hundred lasbolts a minute, the eleven stormtroopers sent to hunt her down were caught completely by surprise.
The bolts flashed against her closed eyelids like strobing lights; she ignored the visual stimulus and concentrated. Four of the eleven fell immediately. She spread her fire in a wide pattern, winging three others. Four more ducked for cover. If they established a perimeter, she was dead. Their guns were just as powerful as the one she carried. More importantly, they had…
Thermal charges.
Amelyta turned and ran. She barely made it behind another spoke of shelving when the two charges went off with deafening pops and the staccato sound of shrapnel spraying against the shelves behind her. Rather than keep running, she scrambled painfully up one of the shelves and laid on the top as two stormtroopers turned the corner after her.
Her spray of fire blew one enclosed helmet off, and second a second spinning with a muffled cry.
Servitor drones above. Position compromised.
She rolled off the shelf to the next aisle over just in time to avoid the bolt round that struck the shelf. So that was what had been shooting at her whenever she popped her head up! Lugging the heavy weapons as best she could, beaten and bruised and aching all over, she began to run down the aisle.
First thing I'll do if I survive this is have my ocular implant upgraded with night vision! Even if it means I lose the aesthetics.
With burning lungs and a hip that felt like molten lead, she reached the central indices.
It all came to a head at once. The lumens flashed to life, blinding her good eye for a moment, though the oculus adjusted instantly. Lord Inquisitor Abequand herself stood near the central desk flanked by half a dozen more stormtroopers. Her hunters surged down adjacent aisles behind her.
No words; nor warnings or admonitions. The Lord Inquisitor pulled the trigger on the pearl-handled las pistols.
Time seemed to slow and something filled her natural vision, but remained disconcertingly absent from her implant. It was a figure of white-gold; amorphous in shape but with a suggestion of wings. It hovered before her, illuminating the final seconds of her life. I am the giver of gifts, and I bless you, daughter.
Light filled her; almost to the point of pain. She dropped her hellgun as her arms were flung backward. The light rushed into and through her, and swept her up into the air in a surge of golden fire.
Abruptly it ended. Lyta fell, gasping. Her legs buckled and she collapsed to the cold tile. She knew the kill shot should be coming, but in that one moment she couldn't make herself care. She felt as if something had cored her out, leaving her hollow and, oddly, weightless.
She blinked as her vision came back, only to blink again and stare in shock at the bloody ocular implant that lay on the tile below her. Her hand shook as she reached up and felt at her face; the scars were gone; the hard adamantium under her skin was gone. Her own two eyes stared out across the indices section.
Abequand lay crumpled on the floor surrounded by her fallen stormtroopers. Behind Lyta, the last of the stormtrooper hunters were also down.
Movement drew her eyes. Captain Laers Artigan was sprinting toward her. He reached the indices forum only to come to a stunned halt. "What in the Emperor's name happened here?"
Before Lyta could answer, Maerya wandered the scene. Her hair splayed out around her head as if she had licked a power hub, and her clothing was disheveled. She sported a bruise on her cheek. "I believe our interrogator is a saint, Commander. For she has performed a miracle. She is healed, and her enemies brought low in the Emperor's name."
Lyta's mind tried processing it, but she couldn't help but circle around a slightly different conclusion.
Whatever saved her, it was not the Emperor.
~~Revelation~~
~~Revelation~~
Lyta's cell was exactly three meters square, to the millimeter. She sat on the cold rockcrete floor; the cell held no furnishing of any kind. Its only feature was the opaque waterproofing on the surfaces, and the small grill for draining in one corner–essentially, the cell's toilet.
She couldn't thought-pulse the time, but through her own meditation she would guess this was her second day in the cell. Her captivity began almost the moment after Artigan and Maerya joined her.
The Castellan of the Fortress led the way into the Librarium with a swarm of over a hundred troopers and a squad of Battle Sisters ready for war. Lyta did not even try to defend herself, not given the circumstances she found herself in. She tossed her weapons onto the ground, knelt and placed her hands behind her head as the Fortress security forces swept into the chamber.
Artigan looked as if he might fight at first, but at her immediate surrender, did the same. She suspected his surrender was the only reason either of them were still alive. If he resisted, it would have given the security forces the excuse to just kill everyone.
No questions were asked; no demands made. Her captors stripped of her power armor and slapped a rune-inscribed delimiter on her. No one showed any interest in finding out what happened. The Castellan's only concern was the containment of a threat against the Fortress.
The delimiter collar hung painfully against her collar bones. The floor felt very cold against the thin black body glove she'd worn under her armor.
Her thoughts spiraled around the memories she absorbed from the Gallent Sidozie reports and her family's archive–of that glimpse into the first days of Unity, before even the Great Crusade had begun.
Taylor Hebert was tied to humanity, according to Malcador the Sigillite himself. Taylor Hebert was Malcador the Sigillite's daughter. She was the mother of Constantin Valdor, the Emperor's first Custodes. She was one of three aspects of an ancient Terran goddess. A goddess of hope, for whatever that might entail. A goddess whose cult was somehow absorbed into the Imperial Cult by the simple process of being named a Saint.
The Inquisition considered her one of the most dangerous beings alive. Why?
A mortal aspect tied to humanity who could not truly die. So, in this vast Imperium of man, where was Taylor Hebert?
Lost in the trees. Both Father Colindaus and the assassin, Eta, both used that phrase. But what did it mean?
She sent a thought pulse to check the time, only for nothing to happen. Once again, she forgot that she had no ocular implant any more. Her hand reached almost instinctively to the back of her skull, but even with this tenth check, she felt only natural skin and hair. Even her cerebral jack was gone. Her body was wholly organic again, which also meant her power armor would not be quite as effective. Assuming she ever got it back.
Taylor Hebert was an aspect of Telos, a name that when spoken aloud made the Warp itself angry. That meant that Malcador was the father of Telos, the ancient pre-Imperium goddess. The Emperor knew of Telos; worked with her church, until he forbade it.
Without warning, the light strip in the cell went dark and brought her chain of thought to grinding halt. Absolute black enshrouded her. With the delimiter around her neck, her power provided her no answers, but her own training and her own thoughts raced with possibilities.
The cells did not have individual power units–all power and utilities to the holding cells were centralized to ensure master control from the nearest control hub. This was a core concept in all Inquisition construction. So if power failed, it would have failed for this entire cell block.
A chill seemed into her chest. Was Abequand the only inquisitor who thought she murdered Rassilo? Was this simply a cover to complete what the Inquisitor started?
A seal appeared in the wall opposite her. It formed a finger-nail thick line of dirty red light from the floor to the three-meter high ceiling. Lyta, bereft of her armor and boots, scrambled into a ready position. If it was an attacker, she knew she would have little chance, but she felt determined to die fighting.
The door opened further, revealing dull red emergency lights in the hall beyond. Silhouetted against that dirty red light, she vaguely made out the features of the Castellan himself. Tall, gaunt, heavily scarred with a metallic augment mandible to replace the bone lost in his youth, Lord Inquisitor Obaresch looked down on her with an expression as warm as the rockcrete she stood on. He had his hands clasped behind his back.
She didn't bother asking what was happening. For the longest time, he simply stared at her. She met his gaze squarely from her defensive stance.
"Did you kill Lord Rassilo?"
She could feel a vastly powerful psyche press up against her mind. "No, Lord. I wasn't even aware she was dead."
"You worked for her? You attempted to contact her a week ago."
"She implied that if I reported to her about Lord Inquisitor Moro, my mistakes on Luna might be forgiven."
"Did you believe her?"
"No, Lord. But neither did I intend to deny her."
He considered her answer a moment before stepping inside the cell. "Stand at ease, Interrogator. I shall remove your collar."
As old as the man was, in his armor and with his weapons he could have killed her easily. She stood as commanded, and made no movement as the Castellan removed the collar from her neck.
The moment it came off, she was flooded with a pervasive, almost despairing level of unease. She looked around the cell, trying to identify what was wrong.
"You sense it, even as weak as you are," Obaresch noted.
"Lord, what is happening?"
"We do not know everything for sure, but this is what I do know. The Astronomicon has failed, and a warp storm has enveloped Holy Terra itself. Our astropathic choirs have collapsed in despair–Cadia has fallen and the galaxy burns. One might be forgiven in thinking the end of times is upon us."
Each word came as a blow–as an impossible assault on the foundations of humanity itself. "Lord, how can that be?"
Rather than answer, he walked out of the cell, forcing her to follow. "All Inquisitorial Forces are on highest alert. We are receiving reports across Terra of unprecedented heretical and insurrectionist activity. There are open battles outside the Imperial Palace walls. You will gather your gear and return to your lord to prepare for whatever may come. There is no forgiveness for what has happened, but in the wake of the end times, much can be forgotten. Do your duty, Interrogator."
A/N: Within 40K lore, we are now right in the middle of a galaxy-wide Warp storm called the Cicatrix Maledcitum-a tearing of the walls between real and unreal resulting from the destruction of Cadia. ON Terra, it was called the Noctis Aeterna, because Latin makes it sound cooler. Through a series of events detailed in the Vaults of Terra series, the Astronomicon which served as the navigational beacon for all Warp travel failed, as did the Emperor's aegis around Terra. That's what is happening right now in this story. In other words, hell literally just broke out across the homeworld of humanity.