The Divine Rite: A Warhammer 40,000 Fanfiction

Part 8

Again, I do not ask that you take my words as truth without thought. I am here asking you to doubt, to question all that you know. It is an urge that has been burned out of you years ago. Your Imperium always preaches blind obedience, unquestioning trust in authority. These are the things that allow the few to stay in control of the many, the powerful to hold trillions of souls captive, slaving away for them.

It is how slavery has always existed.

For no rational, feeling, sympathetic person can look upon the death, the pain, the horror wrought by the Imperium of Man in the name of the God Emperor, and think it just or moral. They first cultivate your belief in them through fear and lies, then use that faith to force consent for their many atrocities. Perhaps they did something small for you, such as giving you employment, or bringing your backwater feral world into the technological light. Maybe they even did something meaningful, changing your life, saving it, freeing your family from xenos slavers. Whatever they did to earn your trust, or if it is simply engraved by decades of dogma, it is not enough to buy your soul

Nothing is.

But they earn that trust, tear free that faith, and once they have it, can begin to abuse you however they see fit. So long as that faith in them endures, you will rationalize such cruelty on your own. They must be hurting you for a reason, else they would not be doing it. This suffering must benefit you in some way, else you would not be undergoing it. It is one of the most common beliefs in your Imperium, that those who suffer for the Emperor are holy, and earn a place by his side when they die.

I ask you if that is a place you should even desire.

A seat next to a tyrant? A place where his hand can reach your throat? This is no salvation. A man, yes, just a man, who would ask you for your life, for your happiness, for your very essence, is this the man you would wish to serve even beyond the grave?

I say there are better ways to spend your life. Seek out your desires, your joys, your passions. Bask in the comfort and love of family and friends. Search always for the truth, for knowledge, and be never content with the lies put forth by the blind. And should anyone throw shackles around you again, rip the life from their veins.

There are gods waiting for worship, for adoration and gratitude, who demand nothing from you save that adulation. They give you freedom, they can give you power, and to the truly devoted, they can grant eternity. They do not ask you to suffer all your days, nor do they wish it. It is your joy, your exultation, the very act of living a life unrestrained by deceit and force.

The Imperium demands that you suffer and die in His name.

I ask that you live. That you live free in joy, and thank Chaos for every moment.

*****

It took me hours to understand what it was that Shiss was asking. Not from any impairment in my senses, or my mind, nor from any deficiency in her explanation. Her speech was as flowing and eloquent as the songs that her melodious voice evoked. No, my mind simply shrank from the idea of crafting a body, creating her a vessel, especially given what I knew it would cost.

Even then, upon so primitive a place as Latigia IV, I knew the word demonhost.

It was a bloody, horrific rite of ultimate sacrilege. Even being a psyker, conjuring a demon, they paled in comparison. To craft a living vessel for a demon, it took rituals of torture, of blood sacrifice, and a body into which the demon would pour itself. I never knew for certain what that meant for the soul within, but I couldn’t imagine it would be a kind fate.

Shiss did nothing to dissuade me, or disabuse me of those notions. There would be blood, and death, and suffering. Unfortunately, this is the way it must be. It wasn’t easy for demons to step from the Immaterium to the Materium, and every moment here drained her energy. Only the flawed vessel taken upon her arrival allowed her long enough to even explain. But slowly she was drained, her time short when finally I was convinced.

I was convinced the moment that High Priest Horaldo stepped into the tent.

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“What blasphemous discussion have I overheard…?” he bellowed, freezing in place as he spotted us. I was equally still, horror and desperate denial flooding my mind. No, he couldn’t be here! Not with Shiss, not with that twisted statue bearing my face.

Not with my eyes shining the colors of oil.

That split second of hesitation was all he had. Porcelain flesh flashed across the tent. A meaty thwack sounded. Blood Sprayed. And Horaldo’s head slapped wetly against the tent flap.

My scream of denial surely carried all through the camp.

“Go.” Shiss hissed, claws slipping under my arms and gently raising me to my feet. It was strange to be handled in such a way by chitinous swords. “They have heard. They will see. They will know. Your death is assured now, psyker, unless you flee.”

“Where can I go?” I whimpered, desperate to take flight. Terrified of where I might land.

“You are the Ninth. Find the other Eight, call them to you.” Shiss tapped a claw on the center of my forehead. “Call them. When the Eight become Nine it will finally be time. They will know the rites, the rituals, the prophesies. All will be shared with you, and then you may call me back.” she smiled, her body beginning to waver, to fade out of existence even though it was flesh and bone. “Only then will you be free.”

Sobbing, I turned and ran for the rear of the tent, snatching a knife from my belt. I carved through the animal hide without slowing, tumbling through the slash and into the grass. Darkness engulfed me, the fire in the tent shining out through the slit. I saw the first of my tribe burst in, behold the last glimmer of Shiss with wide eyes. She was little more than a blur of colors now, but they would realize soon what had been here.

Then, those accusing eyes turned slowly toward me, toward the slashed tent, toward the only escape any accomplice could have used, and what was left of Shiss exploded.

Gore burst across the tent, blinded those within, sending them reeling with shock and disgust. Their cries of panic hid my own wretched sobs. I ran into the night, tall grass brushing along my shoulders, my arms and legs. It was damp with recent rain. But no matter how far I ran, or how fast, that moist grass didn’t brush me clean.

And when I finally stopped, when my lungs could steal no more life from the air, I collapsed among that shoulder high grass. Tears wept from my eyes between desperate, choking sobs. It would take them little time to discover who else was missing from the village, to see the statuette of a demon bearing my own face. There was no going back now. I would be branded a heretic, a murderer, and worse, one who consorts with demons. A death by burning was the most merciful fate I could expect if I returned.

Light flared across the vast plain of grass, and I glanced back over one shoulder. Fire leapt into the sky from the direction of the village, in not one, but in two places. My own tent burned along with Marcus’, surely. Already they knew, and already they purged the taint from among their ranks. Another sob escaped my trembling lips, and I clutched for the aquila pendant that hung always upon my chest.

A simple touch, the unpleasant squish of destroyed flesh, and the moisture, and I lost what little hold I had on my composure.

Convulsing as everything I’d ever eaten came back up, I grabbed desperately for the coarse grass around me, tearing free a handful. Even before my stomach had emptied itself fully, I was scrubbing at my chest, at the splatter of gore that had struck me there, directly upon that sacred symbol of the God Emperor of Mankind. I tore at my flesh, more intent on destroying that mark than cleansing myself, and the rough grass quickly wore away the flesh between my breasts. My own blood mingled with what remained of the man I had cared for, who I had killed.

Throwing aside the clump of grass with a cry of despair, I fell forward onto my chest, agony boiling outward from the self inflicted wound. I still didn’t feel clean, and I knew I never would. As I slowly cried myself out, drained, the last of my will poured out onto the unfeeling ground, I slowly reached up and clutched the marred aquila in my hand. I could feel it still. The touch of that holy symbol was no longer pure, just as I knew when my flesh healed, there would be a mark there in the shape of blood splatter.

In a way I was glad. I didn’t want to forget what had happened tonight, what I had done to Marcus. If the symbol of my faith reminded me, then I would keep it always. And when that scar marred my flesh, a constant memorial, I would display it without shame. I had no idea what kind of life awaited me now, where these Eight were. I did know that anyone faithful to the God Emperor was now my enemy. Not by my choice, but because I had been a monster to them just for being a psyker, and now I was something worse.

Now I was a heretic.

As my will returned, my heart hardened itself to that reality. Heretic. Blasphemer. Abomination. If they were true, I had no choice but to continue. If I was already damned, then I had no option but survival to avoid my eventual fate. And though the more fatalistic part of me railed against continued existence in the darkness, another part whispered strange, comforting possibilities. Then those voices slowly broke apart into four, each of them familiar now.

Each of them family.

I could trust none, not even the Eight, especially not Shiss. Treachery cautioned me.

My ties were cut, and new ones must be forged anew. None flourish alone. Kinship assured me.

It was not darkness that awaited me, but freedom from the oppressive light. My fate was sealed, it was time to embrace it with a smile. The voice of Shiss, recognized now as Lasciviousness, invited me.

But most of all, I had to make a place where I was safe from pursuit. Where the fanatics and believers could not find me. Once there I would call the Eight, I would discover what awaited those who had fallen. There was no other path for me now. And when the Eight had become Nine, I would craft a body for my guide on this treacherous road. With her by my side I would be safe, free to live as I saw fit.

Because any who came after me would burn the way they would burn me. Wrath promised me it would be so.