"Him as sun in humanities new dawn, embrace He upon terra protects. By His will, He shall shine upon a world without the heretic, mutant and alien, our joy in its stead" - The Gilded Script, Section 3
A crowd had been forced to form when she crossed the square. It was with a needle's width she escaped the herding of other men and women, young and old. A lowly guard of the imperium had called for her but that muffled voice was too tired to sound commanding.
If it felt like a mistake to be here before, it was now like being a rat in a cage. Sharing her mistake and being the reason she was even here, the woman glared at a man with a thick greying beard. Her own hair on end she still looked relaxed compared to the stare from the silver glasses of the man. He wore a blue coat that must have been finer than anything she wore before it was in a sorrier state.
Compared to the louder and louder square, the abandoned building they stood in remained rather quiet. The machinery with purpose even the The Emperor had forgotten, made as much noise as the old dust that blanked them.
"You're late! You said you would keep the time no matter what!" the greying man said as loud as he dared but as desperate as he must have felt like.
She had gotten here first so a slight cooing of her neck followed. With those paranoid, reddened eyes of his, a study of medicine was redundant in diagnosing him with some sort of substance abuse.
"I got what you want" Pulling her hand to her hip, the haggard coat revealed the desired needle and a gun next to it. Yes, she had practised this movement, not too slow to seem doubtful but enough time to let it sink in.
"Good-good, I feared an assistant wouldn't get their hands on it" The grey man breathed out in ease, to the point it reached a small laugh. "I thank you golden Emperor and your divine mercy" he hushed to himself.
"A medic can" She wasn't a nurse, and wasn't really a doctor either. What she was, was a person who needed the unquestioned authority of a doctor. The fact that a doctor wouldn't give away a medicine if the only goal would be self-harm gnalared from the back of her brain.
"Okey, the doses need to be spread out, not more than two per day or more than 100 milligrams could kill-" she started, and would have very much liked to continue.
"Spare me the lecturer, girl, and Give. Me. It."
"Pay" she said before the medic could rethink.
A loud bang broke through the factory, whatever happened at the square was getting finished.
The risk of it getting ugly was higher than she intended to find out and the man shared her sentiment.
"Hurry in his golden!" He hissed like a scared child and an angry dog. Switching between panicked stares to the square and casting those veiny eyes at her.
"The pay!" Her voice was controlled, mercy by the Emperor, but her hand shook on the holster.
Swearing something she couldn't care less about when he banged a small bag into the ground. A few dirty thrones clinked out of it and she threw him the needles cases. He grabbed it like a lifeline and disappeared where he came from with equal desperation.
On her way out of the worn-down factory, her hand was digging into the bag. The gold-hued metal was dirty but no less worth.
Allowing the warmth of relief to spread in her. It was against her rule to breathe out before the money was stored or spent but with this much, there wouldn't be any more staring into an empty pantry for weeks.
The doctor took a lunch break and gave the girl a chance to nearly skip forward. No actual skipping would take place in the factory, all though she had walked with lighter steeps than typical of this sector.
Throwing up a stubborn and creaky door she was out in the ally she came from.
It was like walking face-first into a wall of sound made of drums and a confused crowd. The alleyway of cracked cement was filled with people standing shoulder to shoulder.
"By gold…" she had the time to utter, frozen in the doorway.
The electronic scream of a mic being turned on amplified by tens of megaphones was enough to kick her back into action and a grimace on her face.
The High Gothic speech was drowning and drowned to mesh. It sounded like it rambled a list of titles to her and was probably less tangible to a crowd of mid-line workers and finer subjects valet. Barely a subject with a fine blue coat would be fluent in that articulated language… forget him now, done is done.
The coat pulled tight around her, and she pushed through the crowd. The place that once had given enough room to dance if she so wanted was now like the field hospital after unplanned mobilisation. Fewer people were screaming and far more people seemed like they knew what was going on.
Or… well at least the doctor felt so until she bumped into a boy still trying to sell newspaper in a confused voice.
It would have been three more metres of pushes and she would have been out of the conjugation, but The Emperor showing his affection for her fell an iron hand on her shoulder.
Had the hand also not helped stabilise her she would have fallen on her back to be crushed to death.
"Redhead! Leaving again, right when it's starting?" The man whose hand was crushing her acromion and humeral head said with a smile.
"Yes, I'm in the middle of an errand," She said trying to sound calm but unyielding.
Gritting in a smile she wanted to punch off him, his grip tightened. There were literally people in whatever direction she looked but the gold-painted insignia of their imperium spoke loud in the cheap mud hued fabric. The human skull glared its golden power.
"But you ran so quickly before, surely you already spared the time to witness His imperium".
"My shift at the hospital will start any minute-"
"The Emperor would understand" so sure in his own power and suspicion his eyes were like a snare around her neck.
Trying her hardest to give her clinically grim full eyes a doe-like surprise. "If it's what he intends for me". Her smile wouldn't have convinced a baby she was anything else than ready to bite a person's head off.
One of the first good pieces of advice the young woman heard repeated itself, "those who look away in the light of the God Emperor begin a profane pilgrimage".
If His holy order hadn't changed their mind on what counted as aiding the sick, their attention would strangle.
Breath and the heat of bodies was an oven, the pressure increasing with everybody pushed forward.
The middle-aged couple that tried pushing their way through, forgot their worry and smiled at her formerly dressed guide.
The instrument banging their first note spread a silence in the crowd, that shared moment with the chain on her shoulder pulling her to the front.
On the hastily built iron rig were quotes from the Gilded Script. The red-haired woman was stabbed with all the information she needed to know what tune the orchestration would carry. The Ecclesiarchy was holding an execution.
A short woman clad in rags except for a golden insignia was whom the High Gothic came from. She finished her rambling and backed away in an extended bow but not towards her audience.
The music stopped dead when a painting of a man dressed in all the fabrics gold and faith could buy was carried up the stage. The golden frame was cleaner than the vendor boy's face. Now his and dozen upon dozen of other eyes starred with a bugged-eyed nervousness at the holy canvas. Some were already on their knees.
The humbly clothed woman returned and with a last bow to the painted man, she stood again at the metallic mic.
The doctor clasped around her ears when once again an electric scream came from the megaphones followed by High Gothic noise. The doctor's reaction was common in the crowd to the annoyance of the priestess.
"The chosen of the Arch-Deacon, Dean Gulzar has sanctioned our work. The Emperor's caring and firm hand have led you here to witness. For He loves you and you're allowed to feel blessed".
She repeated in low gothic, now just dragging through the worn-out words. If her grand hand movements to the clouds hadn't given her boredom striking aggressivity it was rather weak compared to counting of titles before.
"He sees your toil, he sees your humble fight against the heretic, the mutant and the alien. And you have served him well. The meagre part of His imperium your rulers conduct prospers"
The doctor didn't care but someone else inside her did. She and her scalpel had played their part in the greater whole. A microscopic smile was on the young woman. However, it was still pretty tame compared to the raised fist and cheer from the uniform and crowd beside her. What they all shared was a breath of relief.
"However— ruthless betrayals of you and your protector have been committed. Yes heresy has been among you. Defiling your mind of The Emperor's protection".
The priestly woman smacked her lips absentmindedly when she accepted a scroll from another robed man. The cheer died off fast.
"But do fear… not- but do not fear. The wasted life of heresy will end here and today. Know we are in his grace, we see, we hear and we-w… we.. No one will escape his justice"
Yelling and a bang was the short story of those who tried to run.
For she who stayed with a palpitating heart saw gagged and beaten bodies pushed on stage. One of the nine was pulled from the group by the skin of her neck by one of the guards.
Forced to her knees in front of the priestess who was too busy inspecting the scroll to notice the barks of swear. The godly woman also missed how a small piece of fabric and a pair of hands were the only reason she wasn't torn apart.
"Brutal murder and bad conduction at the workplace" she leaned into the mic, still glancing at the scroll.
What the constantly scribbling medic in the young woman's head diagnosed as unrepairable happened to the woman. The gagged screams were the last sound she made before the bang of a body hitting the iron stage.
The priestess swung her hand and someone far younger had to be practically dragged to the woman's old place. He screamed too, but in the language of the priestess, begging.
The sick breathed a special desperation when they struggled to explain symptoms that they of course had no responsibility for carrying, the young woman thought.
"Also bad conduction at workplace.. and defilement of his holy symbol and cooperation in illegal circuits" the priestess responded in the language of workers.
She took a step backwards when what broke the previous criminal befell this one too, not that her robes were much to keep clean.
Less time was needed for him to stop making sounds. The banging music filled where he faded.
The next one also tried to explain. The fabric slipped and she cried like a child new to speech how it was a mistake. The livid audience didn't hear and with an annoyed finger snap, she was simply shot.
The rest was a whole spectrum of sounds, more curses, whimpers, screams, and even more begging.
The woman in the front row could swear she heard one of them moan…
One that stood apart was a young man who lazily pranced across the platform. When she recognized the dazed manners of the patient under anaesthesia, he was already gone. With no signs of pain and cleaner than the others, he faced the God Emperor's judgement.
The man beside her left, probably to glare at someone less compliant to order.
With the surprising room, she leaned on the reeling. By all means, she had the view a pilgrim would spend an adequate bucket of thrones on.
It would be silly like the grin of a lowdown youth earning their first pay, but was it the reason her pulse flared like a frontliner? Despite her gloves, her hands were cold.
The cold spread when the next person to face the emperor was thrown at the priestess's feet. And a godly disgust was channelled through the priestess's round face.
A dirty rag around the other's mouth had been enough, but here it swept around the whole body. Maybe the wet glitter of eyes could be spotted.
"Here we have the mold" The priestly voice began with a new life.
"Slipped between walls and hatred. He thought human sight wouldn't tell the difference between a true human and him"
The men and women around her broke their silence when whispers and shouts of the creature's foulness shimmered to the surface. At least a small prayer for protection was demanded of the young woman. A fist over her windpipe.
"Thought we wouldn't notice the rat that stole our bread and tried to walts along with us? You grew too jealous of our blessings, mutant?" This time the whole sector heard the metallic voice.
The small word that carried the executioner's glaive started a fire. Not that such a merciful death be given to a half-human. The hooded figure was thrown insults and curses like children throwing rocks at a stray dog. Feeble attempts came from the thing to hide.
Hand over her heart, the priestess signed to both her god and the guards that the half-human's disgrace would end.
Again a scream came from the stage. Longer than the others, a childhood nightmare that came true fueling it.
In all other ways, it sounded like a patient the doctor had helped…
Had her help ever saved the soldier from the grinder or any worker from the gears… Probably not. If they even deserved the help, the mutant, the heretics, the audience, the priestess and herself.
When the mutant had stopped twitching there was no reason to be here. The priestess and the painting were already gone.
Only stale air left to breathe. Vomit stenched from a few and blood from, well the obvious. Let's go now… go home and tell someone what she had seen. Watch how her own audience's eyes fill with awe, envy and shock. Just go home, or just get out of here.
Where the music had been, the wind instead filled and it wasn't much to listen to.
A small woman to her left cleared her throat and pulled in a child younger than herself when she walked away. Any cheers or mumbles were gone now, the doctor finally noticed that she was one of the few left on the square. The strongest she felt was how sore her feet had gotten in her leathery shoes.
Strangely everything in her head and face felt detached from the rest of her. All of it unfeeling ice.
On the hastily built platform, something lay. It shook up and down with life, unlike the less-living leftovers of the ordeal.
The young woman knew better but on already aching feet she walked up the stage. The thing that moved was a greying man in a once expensive blue coat, cradling the corpse of the young man who couldn't walk straight. His gaze had been blurred from chemicals the last momemts of his life and now his eyes would never turn clear again.
No resistance was left in the men. Eyes empty the young stared at nothing and the living man hummed as he rocked the body back and forth.
The corpse heard nothing but the young woman and a silent statue of The Emperor /grey sky listened.
The old man turned to her. A beaten throat mumbled, "Thank you".
…
Head in her hands, she had not seen anything. Everything was steel around her, the seat she sat on, the endless noise of the train, the sky no one could see and the heart of every human she ever met. She was it too. Rusting, cold but she would last forever. She had not seen anything wrong today. All she had done was live to see another day.
…
Separated by an interstellar distance but also so close they could be the same, an eldar slouched in his seat as well.
He was Calrion…. No, he how could he…? It was a mistake. He blinked and have the name Lanmar yell when they argued, the name his friends once made rhymes of, a name two farseers had said bore promise, the name his father had said when he left… the name his mother called him by…
It had been a lifetime since he heard her say his name. He would give up all the names a person could earn and lose to speak to her again, in the voice when she remembered herself… when she still loved him, herself and the rest of this world.
Controlling your mind was something he never learned and now it leapt. It went to all the people he loved, how they all would vanish to tragedies or growth. Callin was someone other would grow out.
From childhood, he knew his future would be as dark as the eyes his father gave him.
Across time, and space, two souls glow brightly, one immortal and one meant for the sea but both fresh into this world. They had failed to grow into forms that could take this world on its own. Young trees who bear fruit too early do not survive the winter.