Ciaphas Cain And The Morning Exercize Routine

(An omake about the philiospical, moral, practical, and hilarious implications of a proper warmup for the day)

Prayer is a dangerous business.

I was in the uncomfortable position of having attracted the attention of all four chaos gods. One of them, Nurgle, wanted to kill me in the most excruciating, demeaning, degrading way it could conceive of and had the temerity to call it love.

The other three were hell bent on seducing me. Believe me, that's almost more terrifying the dealing with 'Grandfather' Nurgle. I thought dealing with powerful humans was bad enough when I was a mere lad in the underhive. Even back then, I'd known exactly how to make that precise blend of adorable, scruffy, charming, scrappy, and vulnerable that made uphivers open their pocket books. But it was a terrifying gamble every time, because you never knew when they were going to try and kidnap you and sell you into some demeaning situation like being an apprentice boot-maker or factory slave all the while patting themselves on the back about how they had rescued you from destitution. Or even the worse, try and take you home and make you a pet.

So many of the well off had a terrifying lack of understanding of any of the realities of being a hive boy, and all of us gangers and aspiring gangers had heard the story of John-John, who'd been stolen by a lord and taken to an up-hive sanguiniamas dinner, where they'd sat him at the high table and fed him until he died from the overload of rich food. Even worse was the tantrum the Lord had thrown afterwards, sending his guards down to sweep the level and sell everyone they caught to the mechanicus for 'poisoning the poor child on the eve of his salvation' when it was obvious to every single under hiver and half the artisan class that the wretch had died of refeeding syndrome.

I had absolutely no interest in seeing what even more deadly and utterly impractical gifts a charitable chaos God, with all the riches of the warp to play with, would see fit to give to me if I was so incautious as to ever pray to one.

And I was terrified of praying to the golden throne. After having accidentally kicked the door open for three of the ruinous powers to take over Imperial World. I had some hope that declaring war on the fourth ruinous pFower would buy me some clemency when I eventually died. But I had absolutely no interest in finding out before I had to.

However, that left me rather short of patron powers to pray to, and I was fast coming to the realization that I needed to pray to something. Or rather, not exactly pray per se. I needed some way of focusing my mind away from the howling horror of my current hideous existence and toward a state of mind that would tilt the odds in favor of my continued survival.

At first, I tried the various morale boosting platitudes that work so well on everybody else. The problem with that is that I knew it was all frack. I knew exactly what sort of coward lay behind my carefully constructed facade of concern for everybody. And so the blessings, platitudes, and morale boosting phrases that I could trot out for every occasion singularly did not work on me.

And since I was far too terrified, justifiably so, of pestering the Emperor with my little problems, I needed to come up with something that did.

I discarded the notion of praying to any god, because they might actually answer. I also discarded the notion of inventing a god to pray to after Malicia told me exactly how Slaanesh came into being in the first place. I was the focal point of an entire planets worth the veneration, and it would be just my luck to either create a warp entity or become a warp entity myself.

Instead, I considered the idea of meditation. And the idea of memory.

The trouble with remembering and living in memories is that I don't have too many of them that are actually very good. But, after contemplating, and eventually ruthlessly sorting through the memories I did have for ones that would actually be of practical use to my continued survival. I decided that every morning, I was going to spend time with the memory of my fencing tutor, Myamoto de Bergerac.

I ordered the construction of a fencing salle off the corner of my chambers immediately. To the best of my recollection, I modeled it off the private tutoring room Myamoto de Bergerac had had at the schola progenium. It was a square room, three walls of which were covered in mirrors, and one of which was covered in a large pict screen designed to record a session and allow Myamoto to play it back and review your errors in excruciating detail. A shelf ran along one wall, containing four items. It was part of my ritual.

The one thing I did not include were any of the references to the Emperor that had decorated Myamoto's original salle back at the schola. I couldn't say what my allegiances actually were these days, except by primary allegiance which was always to myself, but it didn't seem politic, or more importantly, survivable, if I declared an allegience to the Emperor at this late date.

In every other particular, from the scuffed wooden floorboards to the polished handrails to the chainswords hung on the all, It was exactly as I remembered.

And every morning, I brought the memory alive.

My morning begins in bed, swimming up to wakefulness from whatever depths of dreams I had been stewing in. My dreams are not so comfortable these days that staying with them is anything I wish to spend too much time on, although the bed was incredibly comfortable. I had made sure of it. It's loving embrace clutched at me, like Emily had when she was alive, but I had an answer for that. At least Myamoto did. I shaped my vocal cord to match his gruff tones, and told myself, "It is an excellent day to live to fight again."

I snapped my eyes open, snatched my bolt gun from under my pillow and rolled out of bed. I had no need to make a grab from my chain sword, since I'd made a habit of belting it to my waist. I found I slept better that way, and the second saved knowing instantly where it was at all times rather than having to hunt around in the dark for it comforted my paranoia and my soul.

"Smoothly done," I told myself in Myamoto's voice. It ought to be smoothly done: it was a practiced maneuver, and I always took care to do proper stretching and proper positioning the night before I went to bed in order to make it so. "Proper prior preparation prevents piss poor performance", I told myself, holding my pistol at the ready and bringing my chain sword into a guard position. My eyes did a careful sweep of the room, then I stalked over to the fencing salon's door.

My hands were full, and I paused at the doorframe, listening. I heard no sign of anybody inside, and whispered to myself "Never make assumptions." And then I assaulted the door as if I were learning a breaching drill. This time I went high, doing a brief run-up and coming in with a flying kick. The door was unlocked and banged open on its hinges. I flourished my chainsaword in a defensive maneuver before sprinting into the room, pointing my gun at all eight corners, checking for enemies.

"Room clear," I reported to myself then locked the door behind me.

Then I sat myself in the same corner that Myamoto de Bergerac had always used when he was mentoring me. In some respects it was a terrible defensive position, because I was literally cornered. Yet in other respects it was fairly good, two walls at my back, a solid floor beneath me, and the ability to surge up out of it and stab shoot or otherwise seriously annoy anybody who could dare to come at me. Then I did the exercise Myamoto had always done to start a lesson. I reached up on the shelf and pulled the first item off it, to start my ritual. It was a paper cup, and I placed it on my head.

"Paper is a weak." I told myself, Opening my eyes and looking at my various reflections in the mirror. " Paper is unbalanced." I sat with the cup on my head, remembering the lesson, weaving from side to side, feelling the paper slide in the nest of my hair. Reteaching myself the lessons that had kept me alive so far. "Any wind will blow the paper off your head, any movement will tip it over, And only the slowest, steadiest movements can keep it on your head."

I slowly rose from my corner, speaking the lesson, as Myamoto had repeated to my younger self. "You children are paper. Small. Light. And so, with you, we move slowly. Learn from being paper. Learn judicious movement. Learn proper bracing. learned to guard and protect and to not overbalance. With every passing push."

I smiled a little when I remembered one particularly pointed lesson. I had been feeling rather smug, the only cadet who had not lost their cup, or fallen over trying to keep it on my head. Then Myamoto had literally kicked me in the ass. " What else is paper good for?" I whispered to myself, falling over as if I had just been kicked and letting the cup and myself sprawl across the floor.

"Paper bounces. It does not break from a high fall. Paper was not hurt. Nothing was spilled, nothing lost, except balance. Put you can it right back on your head, get back up, get balance, and get back to work." I did so, following my teacher's routine. I felt many times. " You will fall many times." I repeated to myself. " And you will get up and try again, having learned from them."

"You must care for paper, as you care for yourself. You must care for it's weaknesses and you must keep yourself in balance." I drew myself up to my full height. " We will begin with the Beginner's exercises." I told myself.

"We start with fundamentals." I said. "The fundament. That is to say, your ass. Watch it."

I looked at myself in the mirror, and waggled my hips. "The pelvis holds by center of maas. It's the support around which everything else balances. flexed it. Know it. Love it." I moved my hips from side to side, in and out, in slow circles clockwise and counterclockwise. I made sure my joints were flowing smoothly, that my sacrum was properly seated, and that my lower back was in full working order. My pelvis cradled my bowles, and my bowls turning to water was my most reliable sign something was about to go ploin-shaped.

Then I took the exercises slowly up my spine, testing that each vertibrae was in place. I breathed deeply, checking to make sure that my ribs expanded in contracted. All the while, I kept moving my body in circles, while keeping my head in dynamic balanace. Rolling my shoulders forward, backward, side the side, and all the while keeping the paper cup balanced on my head. "As goes the body, so goes the mind." I repeated myself Myamoto's dictum. As I tested my body and found it good, i felt a sense of control flow to my fingertips. Not control of anything out in the world. Simply acceptance and mastery over myself.

It was time for the next step.

I took a water jug, stuck on the same shelf I had gotten the paper cup from. I filled the paper with water. I placed it back on my head.

"And now you are growing," I told myself. "With growth comes mass. Gravity. weight. Physical weight, and weight of character. You must control both. You must balance both, as this cup of water balances on your head."

I flowed through more movements talking myself through them. "Notice how the water sloshes." I said. "Notice how you must carry forward with momentum, lean into turns, and to make allowances for the weight." I did a brief run into a circle, as delicate as a ballet dancer. " Notice as well how you can move faster, as long as you stay under the cup's center of gravity. As long as you know your weight, and know your character, you can balance without spilling a drop."

And then I fell to the ground, spilling all of the water on the floor. "And notice how. If you forget yourself, forget your centre, you cannot simply pick yourself back up again with no harm done. Yo u have spilled. Part of you is paper. You can use that paper. You can you can refill your cup. But you are also water. When you error, water is wasted, it is spilled, and you will never get the same cup of water back. Your decisions have weight, and your lack of balance, consequences. You are growing."

I took the pitcher again, and refilled my cup. I drank exactly two glasses, then refilled it and put it on my head. I ran through all of my dances, my drills, again, being very careful to not spill a drop.

Then I took the next item off the shelf. It was a lid. I snapped it over the cup. And placed it on my head.

I spoke the next words Mayamoto had taught me. "With growth, comes wisdom. With wisdom, comes tools. With tools, come clever ways of mitigating the consequences if you lose your balance." This time I snapped forward into roll, snatching the cup off my head as I did so and tucking myself under. "See how the water does not spill. See how the weight of your responsibilities is the same, and yet you are equal to the task. With wisdom, you need not spend yourself, and need not spend others, with the reckless ease of a child spilling a glass. You can spend like a man grown...careful, safe, calculated, with always an eye on the what your payment will earn."

"This is the wisdom of growth."

I took the fourth and final item from the shelf. My commessar's cap. I placed it carefully on my head, over the capped cup of water. I could feel it, weighting my head, the water threatening to slosh the instant I forgot myself. "When you don the cap, you don everything you were, and bring it to this moment. You keep all of your training, all of you mistakes, all of your growth, under this. You keep all of your lessons. You keep all of your spills. You keep all of your tools. And most important of all, you keep the memory of balance."

I whispered to myself the words Myamoto had told me, teaching myself anew. I straightened, and saw myself in the mirror. Tall. Cool. Balanced.

Afraid.

I narrowed my eyes at the image of the mirror. "Know yourself." I whispered. I felt the fear flow through me, unsettled back into a ready stance. Then I moved.

I moved with the assurance of training. I moved with the greased flow of reflex. I moved with balance, poise, speed. I befriended my fears, I fought them, danced with them, slew them, and half an hour later, hard breathing and sweaty, I felt...steady.

"Bring yourself in balance." I wispered, My teachers words of wisdom. "First, balance yourself. Bring your balanced self to your day. Only then can you lead."

I could not quite bring myself to finish Myamoto's phrase, because he had always completed it with..."lead your people to the emperor's light."

I let out a deep sigh, wishing, as always, that instead of so much balance...I had a smideon of the Emperor's courage to go with it.

Then I straightened my cap, and set out to find a shower, my coat, and a cup of recaf, in that order. I pushed my way out of the salle, ready to face the day.

You know what the problem with prayer is? If you pray too hard, you summom exactly what you were praying to. It can be an entirely mortal man and they still frakking well SHOW UP.

Myamoto De Bergerac was waiting for me in my sitting room, his right brow slightly raised in that incredibly annoying "I know more than you" manner I had just spent the better part of an hour re-creating in my hall of mirrors.

I dodged.

Most of the bucket of water missed me, but not all. And I dodged right into the second bucket.

"The Emperor sends his regards," De Bergerac said. I sputtered, coughing. I lunged forward, my right hand snaking out to grab his wrist. Oddly, he didn't resist at all as I pulled him out of the chairm so my left hand brought the pommel of my chainsword up into a block for the dagger I just *knew* woudl be in his offhand. Instead of blocking the stab, though, my fist and hilt of my chainsword punched straight into his unprotected stomach.

It was still like punching a rock wall, since he wasn't completely relaxed. But still, I completed the manuver, spinning him around, crashing his face up against the nearby wall and cranking both of his arms so far up his back they nearly dislocated, and held him there, his feet tangling six inches off the ground.

"What the frakking WARP are you doing here?" I hissed. I'd recreated Myamoto's teachings, but I'll be damned if I was prepared to actually *smell* the man again, with my nose barely a centemeter from his neck as I held him pinned against the wall. The oder of leathery old man mixed with hair product and a few other off-world scents I couldn't name but were utterly familiar was almost enough to throw me, but the reflexes and balance training *this very man* had drilled into me didn't steer me wrong.

And where the frak was Jurgen?

"Checking up on you." Myamoto sounded astonishingly calm.

"...why?" I hissed, with even more demanding bewilderment.

"Mostly because the inquisition asked me to." The man admitted. "That Inquisitor Vail can be very insistant. As were all the rest of them."

"So you're here to kill me." I ground out.

"No." He didn't wiggle.

Despite myself, I tensed, a motion he certainly felt.

"My daughter?" To my own surprise, I discovered my voice had become even more menacing than the Level 1 commesarial bellow they teach at the Schola.

"No." He said, his voice even more deliberately calm. "She sleeps until 8. I took care not to disturb her." He didn't scream, despite the fact that I *knew* his joints had to be howling at him by now, and continued. "You're dripping holy water. You'd have been dead thirty seconds in a melted puddle of steam and flaming ashes if you were actaully a sort of warp-twisted traitor they claimed you , you're just sopping wet and-" A wierd note of pride entered his voice. "You haven't spilled your cup."

"Of *course* I haven't." I snapped. "That's the whole fracking point of staying balanced."

"Who knew a self-interested little snot like you would be the one to actually pay attention to what I said?" He mused. "It does do an old man's heart good to see at least one of his students take his lessons to heart."

"I had a *very* good teacher." I growled. "Who just tried to kill me."

"Tried." He agreed. "But only in such a way that it would work if you actually deserved it. Holy water is a discriminating weapon in a way that a chainsword is not." He was quiet for a minute. "I am glad to see Inquisitor Vail was wrong about that." His voice grew more severe. "You are, however, guilty of betraying the commessariat, the schola, and the Administratum in that order. And they are not pleased with you."

"Tell me something I don't know." I growled.

"You don't know that I actually don't give a flying frack what the commessariat, the schola, and Administratum say. My duty has always been to the wider picture." He stated it as if it were a fundamental truth of the universe. "I have a higher duty to the Emperor, and you just passed His test of balance, if not his test of faith."

The room was quiet, save for the liquid dripping off me onto the hardwood floor.

"What. Does. That. Mean.* I eventually asked, keeping my voice very, very level.

"It means the only reason you're not glowing gold right now with the Emperor's blessings is that you're somehow refusing to take them." De Bergerac's voice was calm, with the complete absence of either orders or appeasement I remembered so well from him. He was just...tutoring. Giving a calm explanation to someone who had asked for it. "That wasn't just an ecclesiarch's blessed holy water. That was baptism from the Font of Terra, the libation with which the Emperor's deadliest enemies are cleansed from the galaxy, and the sacrament by which his devotees are blessed with a portion of the emperor's power." His tone grew lighter, despite the fact that I hadn't let him up by so much as a millimeter. "In ten thousand years of records, it's always been the one or the other. But not you. You're just...dripping."

I...dripped.

"So where does that leave you?" I said, as calmly as I could feign.

"It means I'm not going to try and kill you again, my Lord Liberator." Myamoto sighed. "Not that that vicious bloodward of yours or your pet psyker are likely to let me live after they get out"

Despite my best efforts, I asked, in morbid fascination, "What did you do to them?"

Myamoto managed a pained chuckle.

"Remember Field Day at the Schola?"

"...Yes?"

"That, with more ropes."

This time I *did* grunt in irritation. "And *how long* will it take to unwrap them this time?"

"Only about four hours, if you let me do it. A full day if you kill me and do it yourself."

I growled in even more frustration.

I closed my eyes. I felt the weight of my position. My responsibilities. I felt the paper cup, full of water, capped, under my commessarial cap. Through it, I felt the weight of my duty to the bigger picture.

I felt...balance.

I made my choice.

"You will not die today, Myamoto de Bergerac." I stated. "It's as well you've reported for duty at this time, Teacher." I said, stepping back and releasing the man, releasing my memories, and releasing everything but what I needed to get the job done. "You're fairly good with children, and with teaching balance."

He turned around, shoulders working themselsves back into place after the twisting I'd given them. I straighened, observing him with mild eyes, all calm and lordly authority. Entirely in balance.

"I have a daughter. And I have a new duty for you."