Interregna III: Mor's Feen Prophecy

There were grox. Dead all around. Their internal organs were spilled over a hill of thorns, and Scythius stood in the center, their blood upon his hands. The skies were red and desolate, long hanging storm clouds in the distance. A woman in rags stared at him through interwoven bandages. Her eyes were blackened. She pointed at him. "Soon the Imperium's failure will be complete," She said without saying, the words forming in his mind. "Nothing will stand in the way of the new Empire." He moved to say something but the storm clouds thundered as the landscape changed before his eyes. Rolling plains with sand storms. He could taste metal in the air. Inquisitor Mengsk stood before a council of his peers - shadowed silhouettes raised on pillars of judgement. "You will decide the fate of the Inquisition. The Imperium. The Galaxy." The words spilled out like a litany of hatred, thundered by hundreds of voices. Darkness fell from the lights. swallowing Scythius in the haze. Lights...a multitude of neon lights illuminating the hive spires of a dismal place of the most traitorous recidivists, wallowing in their sins. A masked man was sit upon a seguin, surrounded by vice and pleasure, alcohol and women abounded in chains. "Show me the strength of your Imperium." The masked man said, the brazen purples and pinks of his outfit rifling Scythius' senses. A dead world now. Surrounding by the crypts of the long dead. A vortexed sky of pure warp energy. "We must fight 'til victory, 'til death. For the Imperium," Mengsk said, existing beside Scythius but unware of him. "Though the sacrifices are heavy, we fight knowingly." With his one eye, he turned and stared at him now as if it was the first time. "These are the moments we strive for. When the hope of victory becomes real, when we can see peace on the horizon." He pointed, beyond the crypts and across the hills, where the vast shape of darkness took a bestial and leviathan form. Then, suddenly, there was a naked woman bound in chains. Rising above Scythius. "Show me the strength of your resolve," Mengsk whispered. "Wake up!" Scythius started to open his eyes. The bright lights above him were blinding. The voice was painful to hear. Where was he? He saw a form - Silas, he recalled with some pain. "What are you rambling about a solstice?" Silas said, asked, or somewhere inbetween. It was hard for Scythius to tell.

A rushed gasp was all that greeted Silas's inquiry. The great fire burning the Psyker's lungs as air rushed back into his deprived lungs, had he stopped breathing? Visions and reality blurred together as the recipient's mind tried to process the information, its progress halted by the Torpor and painkillers. But the flame did not disappear, the burning sensation weaved its way through his body, again and again in recognisable patterns through his flesh, burning away through his mind and soul. He calmed himself somewhat upon seeing the marks on his skin, the words and icons of faith giving him relief and a point to re-focus himself as they had so many times before. "S-Sila... Silas? Where's the... Where's the Inquisitor!? He's in dang-aaaagh!" Clutching his head and chest in a mix of pain and drowsiness, Scythius found himself barely able to release his natural tongue of High Gothic, attempting to grab ahold of reality once again.

"What more prayers, Preacher?" Silas couldn't really understand what the man was saying, but he was obviously in a lot of pain. He had muttered off and on in his sleep for as long as Silas had been awake. Silas wasn't much better, lightning shot through his chest and abdomen every time he breathed to deep, but it had gone on for so long that he barely noticed it now. It was amazing what desensitization and painkillers could do. Unfortunately for the Preacher, he had just woken up, and whatever had happened to him in that flash of light obviously hurt more than Silas' own injuries. "Hey! Medicea! He's saying something and it's not a 'goodmorning'!" He yelled out, hoping someone would come along and notice. "Probably qouting his scriprures front to back for the eleventh time tonight. As if his god would even ca--wait, did he just say Mengsk?"

With a jolt, Scythius's senses shunted back into reality. Now the rampant pain of his mind was but a distant memory, replaced with the dulla che of flesh. He was still under the effects of the drugs they had put into his system, but at least he was more or less in control of his own mind again. "Forgive me, I... Know not what happened," a bitter lie, even if it was laced with truth emerged from the Psyker's lips, this time in a rationalized if groggy Low Gothic. He had experienced things of such a nature before. Though the intensity of this dream paled in comparison to the endless waves of twisted visions he had received as part of the Sanctification process, it allowed his mind to process the information in more detail. "Where are we?" Perhaps they had been moved, perhaps they were in the same place as last he was awake, the one thing he was sure of was that he did not have the perception to know.

"We're on the ship. Pillar of Penitance or some damn fool name like that." Silas replied to the Preacher. At least he's speaking regular Gothic now " How come you Imperials always have to name your ships like you've got somebody to impress? Pillar of Penitence sounds like the nickname of some horny cardinal's dick." Scythius sat straight up in his cot, an expression Silas was all to familiar with on his face; that of self righteous indignation. Aaww shit, I just did it again didn't I? " We name our ships," The preacher began "With words of devotion to the God Emperor and the Echlesiarchy." Just be nice. Don't antagonize him, take a breath and defuse this before you start another fight. "Yeah? I bet your god really appreciates it too." shit

Something clicked in Scythius's head at that moment. Did he hear Silas correctly, surely he was just hearing things, or maybe his acquaintance was simply too drugged to think properly, he had to be sure. It was perhaps a lucky day for everyone in and around the medical bay, for this mix of potential excuses and the Psyker's drug-induced state were the only two things from forcing righteous anger to spark within his mind. "I can dismiss your disrespect of the customs that surround you, Silas. It is only natural of a man in your state to trail off and say things against his better judgement, no matter how it pains me to hear," while calm and collected, the way in which these words echoed throughout the room could easily be determined as a far less than appeased tone. "However, I am... Worried at what my admittedly dulled perceptions just assumed. Did you just refer to the Emperor as a God that is not your own?"

Silas knew he was on very thin ice. Should I lie? Just roll over and play like some lame, leadable sheep? No. I can't betray myself like that. I can't betray everything that Jeb and the Black and me were. We were free. Free, and glorious and that means something, gorramit. Silas braced himself mentally before speaking. "You heard right, Preacher." Silas forced his voice to remain calm as the ice broke. "I pay no homage to your emperor. I don't live by the tenants of his clergy. I live by a basic sense, an instinct of right and wrong. They used to call it a Moral Compass, now they call it heresy. I have nothing against your god, Preacher, he's never done anything to harm or help me. But his people - people like you - have given me nothing but sorrow. Wherever I've gone they have insulted me, degraded me, accused me, done their damnedest to kill me, and butchered every living person I have ever called friend. And all because we just wanted to be left alone. I refuse to be a part of a religion that slaughters children and carves the aquila in their skulls for offences their grandparents weren't even old enough to have seen. I don't hate your god Preacher, I hate his church." Scythius sat, apparently dumbstruck by the audacity of what he had just heard. Great, I've just committed suicide by echlesiarch

Scythius fell deathly silent and had remained in such a state long after Silas had finished. It could have been mere seconds that had passed, or perhaps minutes, the Psyker could not tell in this intoxicated state of thought. A clenched fist made its way before his eyesight, the other hand stroking a rune of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica upon his wrist, barely visible under the clothing. "You carve your own path, using the opportunities given to you to... To do the best you can," the calm, almost sad tone in his voice gave no warning for the act that came next. Fist clenched tightly, some loose items to Scythius's right were struck off their supports, surfaces or whatever else they clung to during the impact. Scythius's face, stained with anger and a hint of other emotions glared towards his companion's. "This is exactly the problem with what we call humanity!" Silas may have been able to detect real passion within these words, not just determination and faith. "We think we all know what is best for us, that so long as we put up tiny mental barriers against what we consider impure everything will be fine!" His head seeking shelter within his hands, the voice turned to a sadder tone, though one still laced with spite, "We think that, despite the darkness that surrounds us, we're strong enough to resist. We're not! We're lonely beings amidst a sea of Daemons, I've watched too many leave the Emperor's ark to pursue some unknown light, never to find it, dying or falling with the abyss mocking their intentions as it shows them their powerlessness!"

Did he just.... Silas watched as anything near the Preacher that wasn't nailed down flew off in random directions. A medicea orderly ran by him shouting "What did you do?" as he wrestled Scythius back down onto the cot while another worked the sedative control board at the foot of the side of the station. As he watched the preacher slump down and the orderlies walked away Silas spoke. "Your wrong friend. There is still light in the universe. There is still hope. You wanna know how I can tell?" Scythius was barely consiouse now, he probably didn't here any of this. "Because we're still fighting for it." End: Interegna III