“Your colors are noted,” I repeated back to him, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. Snarked! The shorter fellow in blacks, making an interesting contrast to the first guy, was amused at the wordplay, but gave an impression of being dangerous in a very different way than the first guy.
Brains and brawn, got it.
“You don’t look like you recognize my uniform?” the guy in white asked, politely dispersing his blade.
“I don’t,” I admitted, squinting at the two of them, noting emblems, rank insignia, and other subtle things that would have indicated information, but I didn’t have a point of reference. “As a matter of fact, I can’t recall much of anything other than my name right now, which is very annoying.”
“You know your name?” the shorter man spoke up, sounding surprised. I glanced at him, and he put his hand on his chest and bowed. “Philius Marwengora, of his Imperial Majesty’s Order of the Fallen Moon.” When my eyes betrayed not the slightest recognition of what that was supposed to mean, he continued, “My rather stiff companion here is Sir Dorval, of His Majesty’s Order of the Rising Sun.”
I nodded at them both. “Greetings. I am pretty sure I am Sama Rantha, but given the utter lack of other verifying information, I say it with caveats.”
I was pretty sure searches by that name were instantly going out, but I highly doubted anything was going to be found. When your progenitor is now a creature of the Warp too heavy for this dimension, birth certificates weren’t likely to be found.
Both men seated themselves at my gesture, looking rather impressed at my calm. “Do you recall the circumstances where we found you, Sama?” Sir Dorval asked, beginning the questioning, right with the honest concern.
“No. I think I remember a fight, but it isn’t even a blur.”
“I notice you manifest claws. That’s very unusual for a mindblade,” he observed.
“It is? Oh, it’s because I’m a Null Psion. I can’t manifest more than a couple inches from my skin. A mindblade is impossible for me to manifest without a Focus.”
“Ah. Do you remember having a Focus?” I noticed Philius was taking notes for later questions.
“My Focus is Named Chalice,” I said firmly. “You are carrying it in the pouch behind your back.”
The two looked at one another knowingly. “You remember its name?” Sir Dorval asked.
“Not until you came within five feet of me, and I realized you were holding onto my Focus.” I held out my hand.
They both blinked when the Focus flipped out from the sheath behind him and smacked into my hand. I closed my grip, and ahhhh, this sucker was Heavy, perfect for me weight-wise, the knurling in the grip alchemically sticking to me, shunning oil and grease, and humming with power.
I flicked up my Claws, but poured them into Chalice instead of around my hand.
The psionic circuits inside hummed, channeled the energy with singing purity and Bound perfection. Yes, this was MY Focus. Mom-me gave it to me, you can’t have it.
The golden psychic blade snapped out of the end of it. It didn’t look totally like a normal sword, flaring out to three inches wide, slowly narrowing over a meter of length to a diamond-point. The glow of its force spread out for another two inches around it, crackling with translucent force.
Both men froze, staring at it in amazement and great caution. I snapped it off before they told me to.
“Thanks for returning it to me,” I said calmly, sitting it down with a heavy tap of metal on metal.
“That is a Psi-bane Weapon!” Philius managed to get out, inhaling a deep breath. “How are you wielding it?”
I frowned, thought about it. “Is it? Well, I’m not a Psi, I’m a Null Psi. A Psi-Bane Weapon works against psi-users and phrenics. I’m a Null Psi; of course it doesn’t work on me.”
The two looked at one another. “You’ll have to forgive us. What is a Null Psion?” Sir Dorval asked reasonably.
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“You don’t know?” I found it strange, and my voice said so. “How to explain it... do you know what a squirt gun is?” I had some very erratic knowledge programmed into me, after all. Thanks mom-me...
“A children’s toy?” Sir Dorval clarified.
“Yes, that. You two are squirt guns. A Null Psion is a jug of water with the lid screwed on tight.”
They got the allegory. “You can’t spend psionic power?” Philius asked archly. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Correct.”
Sir Dorval broke in, “But a Psi-bane weapon should innately act upon a mindblade and disrupt it with its opposition to psionic power.”
“I’m hitting you with the jug. Why would it be opposed to the jug?”
He blinked. “That... is a workable interpretation,” he admitted. A Nimbus did effectively contain the pure psionic inside, after all. He gestured at the Focus. “May I examine your blade?”
It was akin to saying ‘can I look at your soul?’ I lifted an eyebrow, but he only flushed a bit, and Philius smiled slyly.
I picked up Chalice, concentrated, and the blade snapped out again. I set it down, but naturally did not let go, holding it upright on the table in front of him.
He was clearly uncomfortable around that clear energy, but hid his unease well. “Can you charge it?” he asked, after examining the design of it, particularly the internal fractal patterns.
“Nimbus or Corona?” I asked calmly.
“Both,” he replied after a bare moment of hesitation.
I narrowed my eyes and concentrated, gathering up my Vajra and concentrating it through my Focus into the blade on my hand, and dredging up sustained power from around my Vertex, like harnessing the light of a fire vs the flame, and sending it all into Chalice.
The blade hummed ominously as two veins of light lit up on the body of the thin, crystalline all-edge force-line of the sword, and glowed within the edge of the blade like a halo. Three pairs of star-like particle effects began to swirl opposite one another up and around it, starting from the hilt and winding their way up to the point, where they met, dissipated, and started over again, equally spaced.
Both men sat back, staring at it, flicking their eyes at me.
“Binary Suns, Triple Stars,” Sir Dorval said calmly, tapping his finger as he looked at me. “Falling Star, Star Core...” He shook his head slightly as Philius nodded agreement. “I can see why you could slaughter your way through a coterie of Warp spawn. A single hit from your Flared blade could likely kill one on the spot.”
“Well, that’s good news.” I didn’t remember any of that, but it certainly sounded feasible. Binary Suns was the term for Greater Psionic Weapon, dealing +4d6 damage when my Nimbus discharged. Falling Star was Deep Impact, the reason why Psi-users weren’t great swordsmen; it turned an attack into a touch attack, carving right through all armor and natural armor, when your Nimbus discharged. Who needed to be an awesomely skilled weapon user with such a power?
Triple Stars represented the psychic discharge from being an adept mindblade user, basically frying the psyche of the target. It didn’t do any damage to anything that couldn’t think, so it was useless for carving through walls or fighting automatons, but against thinking creatures Three Suns was +3d8 damage. Warp users were sentient and strongly attuned to psionics given their origin, so a hit would have been base mindblade damage, + Psibane’s 2-12, +4-24, +3-24, +whatever bonuses on top from strength and enhancement and whatnot. A fifty-point hit was enough to trash a lesser demon made from ectoplasm, sure.
As for Star Core, that meant my soulblade was hard, hard enough to act like adamant and chew through the scenery like butter. I imagine I’d left a trail behind of carved walls, floors, and ceilings, or something...
“You must have been intensely trained to develop such a plethora of techniques,” he went on, grimly impressed, and nodding for me to withdraw my blade, which I did courteously. “And you can’t recall any details past that?”
I picked up Chalice, staring at her as she hummed in my hand. He couldn’t tell, but she was also enchanted, and a Psychic Weapon. I hadn’t put any Soul Essence into her, or my soulblade would have looked plenty ominous to him. I’d have to be careful about that...
“I can see the techniques. I know the movements. I can feel how to exercise my will, I know how to focus, how to center myself, the patterns of attack and defense...
“But there’s no other element attached to them. No sense of human involvement, of advice, or voice, or emotion, or guidance. I can’t recall my teacher, my sparring partners, who I’ve fought before... I know what I know, but I don’t remember the process of learning it.” I looked up at both of them. “Does that make sense?”
It was Philius who answered. “Actually, yes.” I lifted my eyebrows at him. “We did a deep scan of your brain, looking for anomalies. What we found... was a whole lot of nothing, as it were.” I just looked at him. “The areas of your brain that should be full of memories, of childhood development, the instincts and desires and training that formed your personality... were wiped away visibly, subtly, and completely. It was described to me as this tall, fancy, complicated building, where you walk inside and it’s completely hollow and empty. The frame and structure are fine and intact, what’s built is built... but the why and how it is that way is gone, visibly.” He tilted his head slightly. “No furniture, paint, carpeting, decorations, lights... just the skeleton with the fancy outside.”
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Glossary:
Nimbus: the sheath of transpsionic energy around you when you enter Psionic Focus. This is what is used by Null Psions.
Corona: The extra energy around a mindblade which can be condensed by a member of the Mindblade Class. A Corona is rated by number of Stars around your Mindblade.
Null Psion: A Forsaken with Psionic Power, Cannot spend it. Reinforces a default state of resistance to psionic energy/change in their area (their Null) by making the universe stronger.
Binary Suns, Triple Stars, Falling Star, and Star Core are explained above.