|| CULTIST CELLS — BAAL ||
ROBARUS STEELHEART
Screams, shouts, explosions.
Robarus huddled back into the deepest, darkest corner of his cage and hugged himself closely. Every new sound that echoed down into the dark tunnels that held the cages weighed on his already straining nerves.
The other prisoners, or should he call them sacrifices? Not that most of them were willing to accept their fate, but Robarus couldn’t fault them, neither could he.
He glanced at a young mother in the other corner of the large cage he was in. The poor woman looked no older than twenty-five and yet she was hugging a malnourished child close to her body protectively.
Robarus only made eye contact with her once and that was enough to know where each of them stood, the woman would throw him in front of the ravenous cultist without a blink if it meant her daughter could live for another day or get just one more bite to eat.
The woman also seemed to understand the steel in his eyes, the desperate resolve to do anything to protect what was important to him. Some would laud him a heartless monster, but would he call himself that? No.
Robarus was in love, and that love was worth more than anything in this war-ridden galaxy.
He reflexively clutched the gem hidden beneath his rags as a thunderous shockwave shook the caverns, whoever the people that were fighting with the cultists were, they were monstrous in strength and probably in nature too.
Robarus overheard that Xeno beasts had been besieging Baal for weeks by now and the distinctive lack of shouts from the side that was not the cultists made him believe those same monsters had finally found them.
He wouldn’t be missing the cultists, there was no place in his heart for pity, especially for those who would hamper his quest.
His quest.
His hand trembled as it held that delicate gem, the beautiful gem that housed his love.
He’d traveled through the stars, spoke with Witches, Farseers and even tried to bribe a Haemonculi. The latter two ended with increasingly disastrous results, but he couldn’t give up! All to feel her warmth again!
He’d been traveling through the stars on his quest for a century already, but if finishing it meant another century, he’d keep his failing body together for it. Willpower was something he had plenty of.
“We need to get out of here,” he murmured under his beard, turning to the woman. “Woman, do you have a nail or something similar?”
“Who- ah, eh?” the woman turned at him. “Me?”
“Yes, who else?” he said, letting his gaze wash over the rest of the prisoners in his cage. The cultists barely fed them enough to stave off starvation and somehow these wasteland dwellers coped with that far worse than him, pathetic.
“I do,” she blinked, quickly fishing out a slew of things from her ragged dress. A wire, a nail, a … bolt? The thing they used to hold slabs of rockcrete together. “Why?”
“Only the cultists are screaming,” Robarus said as he snatched the things out of the woman’s grasp, there was an understanding between them. Robarus’d seen the woman snatch things up whenever they were let out to do chores or clean for the cultists and she knew Robarus had the skill needed to pick the lock of the cage. He’d done it before after all.
“Oh, Oooh,” she hugged her daughter closer, looking into the darkness with an expression he couldn’t place. Maybe a mix of fearfulness and resolute defiance.
That is bravery. He could respect that, defying fate was something he took pride in and he knew deep in his bones that one day, he would overturn them, even with all the odds stacked against him.
They told him that getting her love back was impossible, that he should let her rest with her ancestors and find peace, that he was only endangering her with his actions.
Even the memory sent liquid fury flow through his veins, the very-same fury that kept him alive and going all this time.
“Alright,” he murmured, crawling over to the lock like a cat.
His fingers moved across the lock, trying to feel it out in the dim light. There, good. Old lock, that should be easy.
The cultists thought for some reason that changing the locks would be enough to keep them from picking it.
Robarus’ gaze darkened at that, he didn’t expect them to be knowledgeable enough to notice when a lock had been picked before. He calmed himself, another sin added to the long list and another man he threw before the dogs just to live another day.
His fingers moved, bending the wire and sticking the nail in just so and with an expertise even veteran thieves might envy, he opened the lock. He held it in for a moment once he heard the lock click open, straining his ears for any fuckwit cultist that might have heard it and came running, but there was nothing aside from the continued anguished screams.
Some screams cut off abruptly while others continued on wailing until they either lost their voice or succumbed.
Robarus tightened his jaw. He’d been in many tight situations, but this one was up there in his top five for sure, maybe even a contender for top one with that disastrous attempt at negotiating with the Haemonculi.
Ever since then, those monsters held the top spot for worst living things in existence and they were the reason he finally fully renounced his faith in the Emperor. If he was as powerful as he was portrayed to be, the Drukhari wouldn’t exist anymore. Those things had no right to be alive.
“Come.” he waved at the woman. “If you want.”
He wouldn’t go out of his way to help her, but he respected her bravery enough to give her the opportunity to save herself.
She stumbled onto her feet and grabbed her daughter, lifting the skin and bones girl easily.
What a sad sight. He thought, not that the scene moved him enough to help her should his own freedom be threatened again. He’d been on his quest for a damned century; it would not end in a den of blood-crazed lunatics and neither would it in the stomach of some Xeno beast that crawled out of the ass end of the galaxy.
He turned as he saw the woman stumble out of the cage, leaving the rest of the prisoners behind. The cultists already broke them, by then they remained little more than walking bags of meat and blood that did as they were told.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Robarus knew there were other cages in other caverns where the ‘fresher’ prisoners were kept, the ones that still held out hope, but he couldn’t waste time by going around and freeing them all. He didn’t want to either.
They will be a distraction for the beasts.
With a last glance behind him, into the caverns with some semblance of light creeping down from them, he took off with the woman following a few steps behind him.
They wouldn’t be able to lose the beasts, but maybe they could find a place where they couldn’t be followed. There had to be a way.
All the while, as he walked, his fingers softly caressed the glimmering gem under his ragged robe.
Soon love, I promise.
Soon you will live again.
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SELENE VOSS
Something had to be wrong with her.
Did she lose her mind somewhere along her travels with that annoyingly hot alien?
Maybe it was the betrayal that broke her mind? Or was it the loss of the first person she could call a friend in her life?
No, she was sane for a while after. She could make reasonable decisions back then and she certainly wasn’t shooting flesh-eating swarms of worms at cultists with a grin on her face.
That was new.
Was it becoming a Psyker? That supposedly changes even the most strong-willed people, and she didn’t even count herself among their numbers. Could it be that her new powers are warping her mind into something new? Was this why the black ships were a thing?
Was she becoming a rabid dog that would be in need of being put down?
That couldn’t be.
She could think straight, she could reason and she was sure that what she was doing was well within her control.
Control.
She had control over her life now and that of others’ without all the damned restrictions.
Most thought rogue traders were the freest people in the Imperium and while that may be true, they had shackles of their own. She for one needed to keep her crew happy, fed, somewhat functioning while making decisions that’d make or break the fates of all those people.
She made herself be the ‘Captain’, she had to make herself be something she wasn’t and something she never wanted to be. She didn’t want to be a Rogue Trader, she wanted to be free for the first damned time in her life.
From strict upbringing, to Guard Academy to actual service and then into the seat of the Wanderer.
She always lived for either a false ideal or for others.
Was I always like this? Deep down, when everything that bound me is gone, is this what I am?
She stared down at the hall, now filled with both lifeless and wailing bodies thrown around. Blood, guts and tangible pain coated the entire room, and she didn’t feel all too bothered by it.
She poked one of the dead ones with her boots and the armour on her feet extend into the body, absorbing it and her mental counter went up a bit. It was addictive. Kill, Absorb, Grow, Repeat.
With each kill, her stash of energy grew and with a larger stash, she could waste more of it.
Selene hummed to herself, her helmet flowing over her head and a tracker overlaying her vision.
“Oh, I knew I heard some runners,” she clicked her tongue. “Those must be the prisoners,” she noted the bundled up signatures of a good few dozen weak life signs.
“But what are you three?” She narrowed her eyes at three signs going deeper into the ground, getting further and further away from her.
She’d have thought they were another trio of running cultists, but those three were much further than the cultists and their signatures were all weird. One weak, one average and one unnaturally strong.
Then something pinged on her vision again, something on the strongest of the three.
Selene didn’t quite understand what the new sign meant, most of the signs were self explanatory on her HUD, but what was she to do with a glowing bright blue dot?
Interesting nonetheless. I’m sure Echidna would be interested … I should get it before going after the runners. They are slow anyway.
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‘Done’ I sighed to myself, feeling the surroundings of my extending soul-threads tip change from slightly Warpy to fully being in Realspace. The last stretch of it was hard to cross, and I really had to concentrate with all of my might. Every single speck of mental power I had went onto keeping that flimsy soul-thread from breaking into a million pieces under the winds of reality. Realspace really didn't like things breaching into it without invitation it seemed, much less so when said thing came from the Warp.
Selene is looking healthy. No danger signals coming in … good.
I then followed that up by quickly checking on all my ‘companions’ going for the less important ones first.
Both Zedev and Valenith had some tiny tendrils crawling around in or on them somewhere so I could indulge in some stalking.
Zedev was tirelessly commanding his fading army of armoured vehicles, he might have started out with quite a lot, but he only had a hundred at most at this point. The Tyranids were really sending in all the remaining big-hitters they had.
We should get back there and help soon … though, they are doing fine for now.
Valenith was actually instructing the human guards and chatting with a damned Librarian of all things. Not Mephiston of course, but a Librarian.
Not that I doubted the death-faced incarnation of the Dark Angel wasn’t paying attention to an unsanctioned psyker wandering around his fortress. He might even be able to pierce through his illusion … yeah, he probably could, but was doing nothing against the Eldar in their midst.
Was that a metaphorical nod of respect to me since he was my companion or a show of ‘I don’t even care for your games’?
Oh well, the boys are doing fine it seems, let’s get to the most important one.
My soul-thread locked onto Selene’s armour and solidified into being, it might have been there before, but it took constant concentration to maintain and now it just snapped into place like the other one. It went from trying to protect a candle-flame in a snowstorm to … well the metaphor kind of dies there, but it didn’t need protecting anymore. It was just there and mostly unbothered by the snowstorm.
‘Hi,’ I sent to Selene.
‘Hello?’ she sent back. She wasn’t aware that I was directly connecting to her armour yet.
‘Can I steal some of your energy please?’ I asked, mentally batting my eyelashes at her.
‘Sure?’ she nodded.
‘Thankies~’ I smiled to myself, taking control of just enough energy to forge myself a new body.
I only made it a simple human body though, I’d remake my Psyker Form later from the Splinter Fleet’s worth of stash I had in my puddle. I left that stash there just in case something like this would happen. Hmm, I’ll take out maybe a … fifth of it? We are going to demolish Tyranids later today, anyway.
I controlled the tiny Eldritch tendril in Selene's armour and made it replicate itself with the energy. Then I connected my soul thread to those new little tendrils which sucked up my borrowed energy and jumped out of Selene’s body.
Still mid-air, I reformed a simple human body that kept most of the looks I had in my Psyker Form. Then my silky clothes flowed over me and when my feet touched the damp rocky ground, they were basic white for now and looked similar to a female silk pants and shirt.
Then I threw up a tiny psychic light and the dark cavern gained some much needed illumination.
“Nice,” I groaned, stretching my joints. I sighed as I felt that all too human sensation, my Psyker Form had joints that didn’t pop and nor did they need to as they were always perfect and ready.
“Umm,” Selene looked me over, her helmet flowing back into her armour. “Hi?”
“Hi~,” I smiled at her, looking around for a bit. I didn’t really bother looking too much into what sort of environment Selene might be in. “Well, look at that. Who are these three?”
I tilted my head, three humans, one woman, one girl and an old man who was for too spry for his age. He was kicking and squirming even as Selene held two of his wrists together with a single armoured hand.
“Wait,” I narrowed my eyes. My psychic powers were absolutely horrendous in this simple human body, but I still had some of my senses. I walked up to the old man, continuing to kick at Selene’s shin as he hung there like a piece of smoked meat. “What an interesting thing you have there.”
He stiffened up, maybe hearing something in my purring tone, but when I reached for the source of what was radiating all that power under his robe he started kicking with renewed fervor.
“These were some of the prisoners?” I asked as I coated the man in a flimsy TK, holding all of his limbs and joints locked as they were. This much was barely straining even in this body.
“Yeah,” Selene said, watching on with a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. “These were the only ones that took the opportunity to escape.”
“Hmm,” I grabbed the thing, feeling something glassy under my fingers and pulled it out.
“DON’T TOUCH HER!” The old man screamed, spit flying all over the place and some even sliding down a thin barrier I threw up just before it went into my left eye. “TAKE YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF OF HER!”
“Well, aren’t you,” I coughed, TK snapping his jaws shut. “As I was saying,” I glared at him. “You are quite passionate.”
“That he is,” Selene nodded along. “Was he protecting that thing?”
“I assume so,” I smiled. It was a beautiful blue gem with a slightly elongated orb-like shape that vibrated with Psychic power. “I always wanted one of these.”
The man started frothing and straining against his bonds, not that a simple human could fight back against my Psychic strength even if all I had for a conduit was a human body.
“What’s your name?” I asked the man, letting go of his jaws.
“FUCK YOU!”
I locked them up again, continuing to smile all the while. What an interesting man, I think I can understand Trazyn a bit. If I had a museum, I’d just lock this guy in time and put him in there. I can smell the delicious story behind this.
“What is his name?” I turned to the woman, she shrunk back a bit at first, but quickly straightened her spine.
“I don’t know,” she said, and I could tell she was telling the truth, which made me sigh.
Then, the man started trembling as tendrils of Soul Energy pierced into his mind. Finding out his name was a child’s game, though I made sure it felt as unpleasant as possible while not actually damaging his mind.
“Robarus,” I said, my mouth pulled into a tight line. Names in this galaxy can be so fucking dumb. “So Rob … nah. You are more of a Bob, aren’t you?”
He glared at me.
“Well,” I grinned at him. “This is going to be interesting.”