“I still don’t really understand why I’m here, Callant,” Bliss insisted as I led us both into the chosen room at the chosen time. By design, I cannot be too specific; suffice to say it was a sanctified ground, warded and secured by ample prayer. Within, we met the psyker and the psychic blank—again, I cannot pen their names to parchment such as this. Their names—and therefore, their lives—were not mine to throw away.
I took a seat in a chair of grand arrangement, red satin tightly strewn within a stygian frame. Many cables connected to my seating, and while there were interface ports upon the backside of the vessel, I did not risk plugging them into the sockets upon the base of my skull, where my MIU was frequently situated for my power armor. “You are here, Bliss, because there are few I trust so deeply with such a skillset and fortitude as you possess,” I answered her, getting comfortable in a seat impossible to find comfort within. “That, and it will be nice to see a friendly face when this is over. Do you two understand your tasks?” I asked of the psyker and blank.
“I do, Inquisitor,” they said in near-seamless unison.
“Good. Bliss, be ready,” I cautioned her.
“For what?” she asked, rolling her eyes, still not knowing her purpose in this grand deception I had crafted.
“Anything. I cannot know how it will react,” I answered, and tapped a finger to the right temple of my head. “Begin, [blank],” I instructed. Without hesitation, the blank switched off their null limiter, allowing their negative presence to permeate through the room. It hit me like a sobering wave of ice cold water, filling me with discomfort head to toe. The other psyker in the room seemed to experience the same unease, moving away from the blank as far as they could. Bliss seemed not to mind, or if she did, she did not evidence any discomfort. I suspected the latter, that she was too well-conditioned to let most things change her temperament or focus. But the hit of distress would have been lesser for her anyway, as she was not a psyker. “Do not stray far,” I insisted of the other psyker, who nodded back to me.
Shortly thereafter, the blank put their hands atop my head from behind, and I tensed up in lurching agony, as though my guts themselves were being rearranged from within. “Callant!” Bliss gasped, moving toward me at once, but I held a hand up to her to keep her from interfering. I wanted to speak, to command her more directly, but each breath was nigh-impossible; it felt as though my airways were clenching closed, and they may very well have been from panic. I had asked Lycia for her best blank, and she had certainly delivered. One could only pray it would be enough to keep a daemon of Cronos’s caliber at bay.
It seemed, thankfully, this blank was capable of that for the time being. Cronos did not rear its ugly head to us, it did not overpower the blank’s negative presence with its own Warp-positive existence. In its absence, I focus all my willpower on sustaining myself in such overwhelming proximity to the blank, and finally found the strength with which to just barely speak. “P-parchment!” I stuttered out, reaching for Bliss. She produced a parchment, quill, and a vial of ink, setting the latter upon the right armrest of my chair while handing me the others. My hands shook profusely, which was not terribly conducive to scripture, but the job had to get done while it could get done. I began writing, committing a mess of barely-legible scratches to the papyrus in my shaking grasp.
My designs took me six minutes to inscribe, and each second felt as unto an eternity. Bliss and the blank waited patiently. The same cannot be said of the psyker, who even across the room from the blank had his virtuous patience tested to its limits. When I had done, I gasped a heated, pained breath over the ink, and when it had dried, folded the parchment up. “Enough,” I droned, weary. At last, the blank’s hands lifted from my skull, though they kept their null limiter disabled until I gave the word. “Come here, Bliss,” I said, and was all but tackled into a hug beneath my fretful ally. “So…heavy,” I wheezed.
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“Shut up, you,” she growled, then lifted her face before mine. “What in Terra’s name is going on?”
“I am…planning ahead,” I gasped, still gathering my breath from the negative-drain as much as from Bliss’s hug. “Take this. Keep it safe,” I insisted, pushing the folded parchment her way. “Do not look at it. Give it to Varnus when you are certain I am not near. He, in turn, will give it to Zha…when certain conditions are met.”
“Conditions?” she asked. I shook my head, unwilling to elaborate. “You’re making plans against Cronos,” she asserted, lifting herself off me a bit, but remaining in my chair itself so as to coddle me in her arms yet.
“And Ouranos, yes. While I have access to the resources offered by an Inquisitorial Starfort, anyway,” I confirmed. Bliss looked on at me for a moment more, and then flattened my lips beneath hers, swiftly undoing any progress I was making in regaining my breath. The kiss was short-lived, but it was forceful and passionate, and spoke volumes. She understood that I was planning for the end. She hated it. I cannot say I was of a mind to disagree with that hatred. When her lips did lift from mine, I had the strength remaining to mutter merely, “Pity.”
“Pity?” she asked, frowning.
“I’m not to remember this ordeal. That would have been worth remembering,” I explained, and then gestured for the psyker to come and join us. With some reluctance, he obliged, nearing the blank who still emanated their rampant negativity. “Another reason I’ve brought you along. We will need to fill the gap in time here, you and I, to fool Cronos. Any ideas?”
“Care to go for drinks afterward, then?” she suggested, smiling coyly.
“That sounds lovely, Bliss,” I nodded as the psyker’s hands fell upon my head, replacing the grasp that the blank had possessed. “Are you ready?”
“I am eager, Inquisitor,” the psyker answered, glancing the way of the blank.
“Swap, you two, and get to work,” I commanded, and the blank at last engaged their null limiter once more. Finally, the intense, gut-wrenching pressure of their presence subsided, but it was immediately replaced with the invasion of my mind at the psyker’s hands. I focused on anything but the last few minutes—in truth, Bliss, in all her alluring glory, proved a fantastic distraction for my thoughts. For the first time, I stared at Bliss’s chest, and she was as joyful for it as one might expect, tactical though my gaze may have been. Cronos knew I was hiding something from it. It knew there was something I did not wish for it to see. But it did not know that that something was being erased from my memory, bit by bit. And soon, I did not know that either.
“Flattering,” Bliss said eventually.
“Hm?” I grunted.
“You’re finally staring at my chest. Took you long enough,” she giggled.
“What? No I’m not,” I denied, shaking my head. “Have I?” she nodded, breaking into a laugh. “For how long?”
“A few minutes,” she answered, still laughing, and at last rose off me. She offered me a hand, which I took, and from there she pulled me to my feet. We were on our own in a grandiose room, far larger than the cramped confines of Bliss’s quarters. I did not imagine we were here by her choice, but if not hers, whose?
“How did we get here?” I asked, reaching to my head, suffering from a bit of a headache. Historically, I knew I could attribute more than a few of my headaches to Bliss. It would not have surprised me if this was her doing as well.
“A story for another time, perhaps, Callant. Want to get a drink? My treat,” she offered.
“You’re in a good mood,” I noted.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of in the name,” Bliss giggled. “Is that a no?”
“It wasn’t a yes or a no, but sure,” I agreed with a shrug, still getting my bearings of my surroundings. “Lead the way.”
Very clever, Blackgar, Cronos seethed as Bliss led me from the large, chapel-like structure. For once, I did not know what the daemon was referring to, unless it, too, had been enthralled with Bliss’s chest. Perhaps it had been; she had even enticed Space Wolves in the past.