“What’s happening? Oh god, I can’t see anything but faces, I see thousands, hundreds of thousands, and it’s deafening. I can’t get out, I can’t run, there’s so many, I’m dead, I’m dying, over and over, so many faces bloodied and smashed!”
Beads of sweat collect on her forehead shortly after she screams. They grow too large, surface tension recruits nearby pools and they amalgamate, their weight fueling their escape and leave shining lines between the grooves of her strained and furrowed brow. She thrashes wildly in impotent defense, unknowingly striking a bar and puncturing the skin of her scalp. She doesn’t notice. The only pain she feels is that from her malingering vision. All that she sees conquers all that she is, everything she’s ever known herself to be. She is lost to the Warp, reborn as a new psyker.
Of course, her comrades realize this and ready their las pistols. Shame to lose such a good guardsman, but the Warp must be quelled.
“Stop!” shouts the Inquisitor Wilstrom.
“Sir, we can’t risk-”
He pushes him aside as he makes his way toward the overwhelmed guardsman, each boot echoing in the cathedral hall. “Nobody touch her. Pray.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
They do so.
“I can’t, I can’t, oh god I can’t see anything… I can’t make anything from the faces but pain and anger. I’m dying.” She whimpers, eyes focused somewhere unseen. Inquisitor Wilstrom quickly binds her hands and escorts her to the brig of the Astridamus.
***
Shortly before the Inquisitor returns, the Guardsmen talk among themselves. They are curious about the event, but not so far as to forget their holy ignorance in the name of the Emperor.
Inquisitor Wilstrom emerges from the hallway and his subordinates stand at attention. He releases them from formality. His authority has always allowed more leniency than other Inquisitors would allow, yet he has commanded questionable orders, some more violent than the visions the new psyker spoke about.
The Guardsmen continue their conversation, seeking tentative wisdom from their superior. They know he has experienced more than they will ever see.
“I never thought I’d see a psyker in person,” one says.
“Sir, is it always like that?”
Inquisitor Wilstrom deliberates for a moment before replying, “In my years, yes. Uncommon, but always violent.”
Inquisitor Wilstrom doesn’t usually lie; it reminds him of his darker days, but the weight of guilt has since lightened. He could afford minor remorse. In comparison, one lie is a drop of mist in the ocean of atrocities he’s committed, though his guilt is cleared by his repeated personal reassurance: “I didn’t do those.”– a lie he’s told himself every day for eight years, and for eight years plus one day, he’s been correct.
What he’s kept secret is since the daemon entered another, he is freed.