Entity: P1-5

A 40K: Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader Based Story

              Laid about a sterile room were ornate teacups and platters decorated with brilliant colors enough to distract from hairline cracks and minute chips obtained through age and indifference. The quality could be considered insulting by the standards she’d grown accustomed to at the palace, but the rarest of porcelain sets were never cared for with the devotion these mismatched dishes displayed. Even the parchment napkins likely nabbed from a near cafeteria were meticulously folded for her. Realizing her hunger, her hand extended out to the food to reveal the chains strapped around her wrist.

             “I apologize for your current restraints, but I figured it was a necessity until I’m confident you won’t escape.”

             Startled by the soft, smooth breath of a voice, she dropped the morsel of food she had nabbed. Her neck turned about, but only an empty, excessively organized room answered.

            “Don’t hinder yourself from eating. You are most welcome to whatever you wish. I was unsure what you would want to eat so grabbed a sampling of all the cook offered. Granted, the flavor may be lacking, but he makes due with what’s available on the ship.”

Following the voice upwards, she found up amongst the ventilation ducts, a man sat inverted, indifferent to the idea of gravity. However, his long ashen hair fell beneath him, blown and played with by the air vents’ exhaust. Recognizing his leaden green eyes and gaunt, narrow face, she grimaced.

“You again. I thought I saw the last of you when the roof caved in.” There was coldness to her as she spoke. She raised her head more, giving a small frown. “Sir Halonoire Saladin, wasn’t it?”

“All formality ended when my regiment’s ship declared exterminatus on your master’s palace last night. Please, just call me Halo.”

The woman’s violet eyes expanded suddenly, “You mean your measly little party did that! I thought it collapsed by Praxus’s doing.”

“Oh, he did a fine job destroying his palace on his own with that shiny object of his. But my inquisitor felt the job would be improved with high powered canons.” His voice was monotone, but a playful, almost manic edge was hidden away with each sentence.

“Are we on his ship now?”

Nodding his upturned head eagerly, he continued, “Yes, and if anyone asks, I’ve been professionally interrogating you this whole time.”

Her eyes flitting about to her chains strapped to an industrial cot and to well-polished las-guns mounted to the wall, she looked angrily up to him.

“Why am I here! If I’m prisoner to the Imperium, I demand to be in a properly supervised holding cell, not your personal sleeping quarters!”

“If I turned you over to my crew, you would be subject to an inhospitably unmerciful brute of a tech priest with a torture compulsion,” Halo responded harshly. “This would be without your injuries treated and most likely used against you to increase your torment. If this is what you wish, I won’t hesitate to surrender you.”

She lowered her glance to see the clean bandages applied beneath her bindings. Grateful but ultimately uncomfortable, she wrapped her arms across her chest, trying to ignore the sudden surge of pain her movement brought.

“You didn’t…do anything to me while I was out, did you?”

Releasing a low chuckle, Halo dropped from the ceiling and fell perfectly onto his feet. Standing upright, he approached the bed before apprehensively halting.

“No. No, I did not. But I do wish to talk to you about our earlier encounter before you are turned over to my regiment for official review. I was not quite myself…or perhaps I was myself? An unadulterated self without social norms and order to confine me. Nonetheless, I beg your forgiveness. I made a terrible assumption you were someone else, but perhaps this mistake is what saved your life.”

Nodding in slight understanding, she fell against her pillow, her eyes playing memories of the evening. Looking back to him, she saw there was no remorse in his eyes, rather the pain poorly concealed from unspoken agony. Pity forced a response, “You called me Spectra. Who is she?”

When Halo smiled, small cracks broke across his face akin to his frail collection of tableware. His eyes looked off and away, eyes absent of any spirit beyond despair.

“Who is she? I’ve spent a lifetime trying to answer that very question.”

* * *

When the lights flicker, the shelves illuminate with the gleam of black glass eyes and colorful patches of fabric. The walls are covered in fanciful paper, stripes and flowers in a calming yellow. Pages of coloring books shutter in the escaping bluster of stale air from a rusting vent. It is the air to stir her awake. The odor of sulfur and formaldehyde concealing the must of mold and decay. Her eyes open further, still heavy with exhaustion and a seeping numbness like sludge crawling through her veins. Even as she comes to recognize the room, begins to fear the haunting dawning of her predicament, she cannot bring herself to run.

“You must remember this place,” a low voice whispers, his words almost squealing with excitement. She gasps at the sound and begins to flail her body about, revealing the chains restricting her. “This was my daughter's room,” the voice continues. “They let her stay with me so I could work here. Work, work, work, WORK!”

Leaping from the shadows, a man nearly all machine appears. His body is covered by a lab coat and black apron with glistening patches of a freshly spilled liquid, but where his clothing breaks away exists three stitched and welded limbs. Only one hand still maintains a near perfect, untouched construction. Even his scarred face is dotted with cybernetic enhancements and his wild red hair stuffed with pieces of broken operation tools. The most haunting feature to him is also the most human: a sinister grin stretched in exuberant excitement.

“Yes, my dear, it's ME!” He trails on the last syllable like it is a song and even lifts his coat to reveal his attempts at tap. “You didn't think you could just stop by to visit my little pets and not say hello to your favorite little acolyte, could you? Ovelia...” He utters her name as a curse, detesting the sound so he grabs at his ears and tries to laugh hard enough to forget the way it echoes constantly in his head.

“What are you doing? You can't keep me like this. I was helping you, remember?” Ovelia's meager voice cries out. She does not feel the pain of the chains or the tranquilizer still poisoning her. It is the unfamiliar sensation of hopelessness consuming her.

“Helping me? Why would I need your help after you so rudely left me behind without so much as a letter of resignation? That is company policy, you know? Right, Mr. Flufferkins?” He reaches to the bookshelf beside him and picks up a child's toy. Through the dim light of the dangling florescent fixture, it may have been a stuffed dog, but it's fur had been trimmed poorly away and hypodermic needles stuck in almost every free space available in its head. “WHAT! Mr. Flufferkins didn't give you the proper orientation? I guess he's fired.”

Snapping the fingers of his mechanical hand, an illuminated gas shoots from a tube connecting into his back and combusted at his fingertips. The toy ignites immediately in a blaze so hot the embedded needles begin to melt and the metal of his hand glows red. His still human hand remains unscathed as a perfect yet unseen barrier keeps the fire away. Any embers left get smashed into ash between his fingers and fall to the floor beneath. Ovelia sees what she once thought to be dark wooded floors to be uncountable scarlet stains made by the bloodied scrapes of hands.

“Tehe! Fired.” He turned back to Ovelia with his sneer. “I never liked him. He'd get so disgustingly drunk at holiday parties.”

“I know you're upset with me, but I'm not your enemy. All I ever did was to try to help you. You have to see that, don't you? You know I always cared for you and your family.”

“Did you now?” he questioned as he extended his metal hand out to her face. The jagged metallic frame did not puncture her skin, only gliding across with the most affectionate caress. His eyes smiled and he playfully pulled back his head with a beaming expression. “Daughter, do you think Auntie Ovelia did a good job protecting you and mommy from the bad man?”

A low warble, animated and machine-like, answered from a darkened corner. Ovelia's face turned anxiously to see a circular droid wheel it's way from the shadows. It was a metallic black with a faint glow of red circling an optic lens, and a continuous foreboding hum reverberated across it's plating. In it's probing armatures was a mangled clockwork contraption shining out an iridescent blue light.

“You probably don't recognize her now that she's grown, but you remember my daughter? I couldn't bare the thought of her leaving me the way her mother did or running away like you. So I removed that troublesome human body and replaced it with this handy-dandy, shiny-whiny service bot. Not to mention it's a version six-point-oh limited edition release with improved alloy framing, tarnish resistant plating, and the finest machinery blessed by the Omnissiah's priests. Only the best in artificial interfacing for my little angel! Right darling?” he cooed affectionately. His machine answered back with more low tones and beeps and started to move towards his voice. “And now she always will stay by my side.”

His head jerked back around and his face contorted with a sudden embittered scowl.

“You on the other hand are just as bad as the rest of them. You tell me you are here to protect me, here to keep that bad man away, here to help me with my work...but what do you do?” He leaned his head in closer to her and hisses into her ear. “You leave like everyone else. My favorite assistant, my only friend while forced to work in this prison up and leaves without so much as a good bye!”

“You knew I worked with other psykers besides just you. And my master needed my help. I wouldn't have left you if I had known this would have happened to you.”

“Wrong-o! See what I did there? I let you think I would be fine, you know, dealing with the dead wifey, the sick daughter, and the angry boss, Mordecai, while working with the most secret of governmental procedures. Then POOF! I'm a psycho! Gotcha there!”

“You don't have to be this way! I can help you! Raveneye can help you!”

“Pssh, why would I want his help? I'm happy now. I get to do freelance work, get paid considerably, and I get off in time to tuck my daughter into bed with the toys I make for her. I'm living the dreeeeeeeeeam.” A mechanical hook detached from his arm and reached back to the shelf, coiling about with great dexterity until it snagged another toy away. “My daughter never liked the new toys we got her. She always liked the old stuffed animals she'd find abandoned about the district. And she'd always say, 'Daddy, this toy is broken. We must fix it so it can be happy again!' Then I would always tell her I'd fix it later. Daddy was too busy to fix her toys. Then she didn't care so much about the toys and just said 'Daddy, my heart is broken. Can we please run away from this place and be like mommy and Ovelia so I don't have to feel this pain anymore?' Daddy was too scared to leave this place and couldn't fix her little broken heart. But then his daughter got too sick, and it was something Daddy couldn't fix. Daddy was still too busy working, still to being scared of the life he had no control over.

“But then I decided to take control of my own life. I would become someone so powerful they could never control me again. So I fixed my daughter. Fixed her right up so she would never have a broken heart or get sick again. I also got time to fix her toys!”

His crane retracted back to him, and he extended a stuffed bear out to Ovelia. The plush limb that had fallen away was replaced with a rotting stretch of skin and its eyes were now actual human eyes. She felt her stomach heave from the sight and she began to choke back her hysterical emotions.

“See! All fixed thanks to the new assistant they gave me after you left. They give me all sorts of fun little assistants to cut and paste back together. They're all my little toys. I fix them...make them better!”

“What are you going to do to me?” Ovelia mustered with what little bravery still existed.

“Well someone as beautiful as you, someone who tried so desperately to help me is too perfect to just fix! How could I ever do anything to you? You are the light in my life. My beautiful Spectra, returned to me to fill my life with her radiant glow...” his words softened and he dropped his macabre collection of toys onto the blood-stained floors. His shoulders sunk, and his face relaxed as he approached closer. He raised his one human hand up to her face and gently stroked away a cascading tear from her cheek. “You are always a light to me. A glowing beam to save me from all of these shadows entombing me. You were like this for many others and they certainly must love you for it. And you loved them. You always loved them.”

When he uttered those frail words, a peculiar feeling filled Ovelia's thoughts. Gone were her fears, her thoughts of the other psykers she meant to help, and any other concern in her mind. She could see his face, his once gleaming green eyes and the rare smiles he wore when he used to speak to her. Now she could scarcely remember his elation, the peace he used to feel around her. The remaining memory of him was only the devastation of their final encounter. Of all the pain in her life, of all the regrets she never lived down, his memory remained the most heart-wrenching.

“I'm sorry,” she suddenly stammered, unable to even make out the face before her as she could only see the anguished reflection of her memory. “I'm sorry!” burst out from her with a new serge of tears.

“Oh, Ovelia, with your big heart. You were always filled with so much love!...I never much liked that about you. It distracts you so much.” Decided, he fell back to the wall and pressed his hand to a lever aside his robotic contraption. Ovelia felt her hands pulled above her head as the chains constricting her were hoisted into the air. Her feet began to raise off of the ground until she suspended in the center of the room. As she rose into the air, every terror, every regret freed itself from her, leaving only the looming regret of his face.

“So I think the best way to fix you is to replace that faulty heart of yours so you don't ever leave me for anyone else again!” he chirped excitedly. The room suddenly quieted as the hoist halted and even the robotic assistant ceased movement.

Ovelia bowed her head, closed her eyes, and breathed a final wish, a final utterance with the hope he could hear.

“I'm so sorry, Thirteen.”

Her whisper still hung in the air as a mechanical armature fell from the ceiling and impaled through her heart.

* * *

Walking along the floor grates, an armored guard tried to ignore the resounding screams tearing through the corridors of the compound. The only cease to the torturous echoes was the loud hum of machinery about the boiler room. His thunderous steps made by dense armor and compressed pistons alerted another guard reaching out for a corroded wall switch.

“I got your comm. What’s up?”

“Damn psykers are getting more creative in their suicides.” Indifferently, the guard pointed up to barbed netting above before hitting the switch down. Electrical white pulses once dancing through the wiring fizzled away as the approaching guardsman looked up. The last of the energy fissured about a dangling body entangled in the netting. The wires had lacerated his gray skin, releasing trickles of blood trailing across his mangled flesh and onto the floor. More blood existed on the tattered uniform the boy wore, but it had dried long before.

“I was watching the room when he jumped from the overpass. Damn mess he will be getting down. Thanks for the help.”

“I’m not your custodian. You get him down,” the other guard growled. Despite the defiance he displayed, he still plucked a ladder from a wall of tools and handed it to his partner. Ungrateful, he snatched it away and brought it beneath the body. From this new angle, the psyker’s young face could be seen despite his mangled dark hair and new gashes across his face. His jade eyes were fully dilated but still wet with tears.

“I had to clean up after this same kid a couple months ago. Tried to slit his wrist on a plate of metal from his bed. Ungrateful bastard managed to survive, so I made him clean up the remains of one of the girls who accidently set herself on fire,” the guardsman laughed slightly. Looking up to the entrapped body, he suddenly frowned. “Damn this bastard! He did it again.”

“What?” the man on the floor approached.

“Go fetch the medic. I just saw him blink.”

Sure enough, a faint breath came from the boy, expelling more blood down the side of his face.

“He wanted to die. Why not just let him or sacrifice him to the Astronomican?”

“Can’t. This one is number 1326. He’s a special one according to the inquisitor. That’s why the others torment him so much.”

The other guard nodded in comprehension and left to radio the medic. Now left alone, the man began to cut the fallen boy free, uttering, “Don’t know why you do this, Halo. I stick my neck out to help you where I can, and you try to take the easy way out. Well, guess what? Where you think you’re going ain’t going to be any better than here. The universe is a miserable place without what the Black Ships or Terran training are doing to your kind. But if we’re dead, do you really think we’re going anywhere better? Whatever haven or void we go to created this universe and all of the horrors in it. What make you think they’re any better? Or maybe they just stopped caring about us because of the horrors we created for ourselves.”

With a final cut, the wires gave way and released the tattered being into the guard’s metal hands. Cautious in his decent, the guardsman walked down to the floor and positioned Halo across his outstretched arms. Words were now absent as he somberly carried the boy into the halls still resounding with tortured cries of other young psykers. Vision slowly returned to the boy as he passed beneath a teetering light on the shadowed ceiling. In succession, a light would appear above him before abandoning him to the darkness. At first he heard the approach of the other guard and a medic but their voices faded along with his vision.

A blinding light hovered before him, flickering like a delicate flame of pure white. The glow began to shift and features began to develop as a soft face began to assimilate. Turning his face away, Halo found his chin caressed gently by white fingertips. He jerked his head forward to behold an uncorrupted pair of crystal eyes beaming hopefully to him. More so than the beauty and rarity of her stare, Halo felt most surprised by the look of love and concern she held for him. Her white lips parted in an elated smile when their eyes locked.

Can you see me?

* * *

Holding a flashlight between a tower of cargo boxes, the light suddenly flickered before extinguishing entirely. Frustrated, he brought his frail wrist against the back of the power cell but nothing stirred. He gave a small sigh and placed the light into a canister of cleaning supplies. His bored eyes looked over his array of liquids and rags reeking of chemicals and sterility. Having the constant odor of the cleansers stained into his clothing and skin was almost soothing after a short life of only cleaning. While his mother and sister busied themselves in one of the ship’s restaurants and his father and brother at the helm, Halo was commissioned to work with cleaning the endless amount of dirt dragged into the main cargo room. There was not much to such a life, but he had only recently begun to loathe the monotony.

Looking up to the labyrinth of crates overshadowing him, the darkness beckoned to be explored. The child quietly tucked away his cleaning supplies before darting into the realm between the boxes. Here, in the weak shadows from stifled light, he had created a world of his own like those he briefly heard mention of as the orbital obtained travelers. Some days, the boxes were the towering structures of a hive world when other days they were pillars of sand of a feral desert’s ground. Other days, they simply were a barrier between his imagination and a glum reality. The only playmate to a young child aware of the futility of his dreams.

As he held his fingers in the dancing beam of a light escaping through a rotting wooden lid, voices came from the cockpit mounted above the cargo haul. A single ladder led up to the controls where two walked about to examine different screens of coordinates and incoming ships. The tall, somber man Halo knew to be his father but found him rather absent from the roll. Seldom with the family, he was instead always communicating with the crew or numerous arriving passengers. When business was less demanding, he still remained in the helm studying inventory away from his children. Illuminata as the oldest had come to help his father organize the merchants and handle the ship as they made the mundane orbit about the void of space. At one time, Halo once held the dream when he was older he may be taught to fly the ship and work with his father. As the years grew, only Illuminata joined him and Halo realized the smiles their father wore never were offered in praise to anyone but the eldest son.

This was life, though. Halo rather at least have a fruitless life than waste it away wishing for something as trivial as love. Or he rather waste it on dreams of acquiring his own ship to travel the world with. As far as these dreams went, Halo made sure he was well versed in managing a ship by eavesdropping on his brother’s lessons. And in his years of doing this, he knew well enough to never use the rickety step ladder to watch from. The best place was from an unused cargo crane perched beside the opening. It was a sheer climb most grown men couldn’t make, but call it a knack, the boy could scale the ten meters effortlessly. Every gliding step was as faint as the wind and just as quick before he was sliding down the chains to the crane’s head. Clinging happily to the machine, he peered into the cockpit and watched his father and brother.

Illuminata, or Lumin when you wanted to be quick, was older by three years and barely a teen. His hair was cut short like Halo’s to protect from mites, but Halo felt himself envying how his brother didn’t look like an emaciated animal with the cut. He’d come to accept Lumin was the type of son a father would be proud of: handsome yet strong, charismatic though controlled. Perhaps it was good such a son existed to take the burden of success and pleasing his father away from Halo. It gave him more time to focus on reading and cleaning and become cleverer with sneaking about. Denying it did little good when Halo knew he would forgo any of his traits and talents to just earn his father’s smile. The same smile his father gave before commending Lumin on another successful lesson.

Ducking down as his family descended the ladder, Halo kept close watch from above before they exited into one of the busy public halls for the evening meal. Debating if his presence would be missed, Halo looked between the empty control room and the span of the depressingly familiar cargo haul as if there was actually a choice to be had. After feigning the appropriate amount of consideration, Halo leapt from the crane to the railing of the cockpit. Before him in the room was a treasure trove of control panels, monitors, and even more numerous buttons lining the walls. The orbital was an older one first commissioned to run between a Shrine and Hive World by his grandfather. New façade was recently built over the public space but the helm still was equipped with the lackluster, timeworn technology from before the Strife. And as such a location would inspire, Halo ran to the controls and pretended to punch buttons as he took invisible fire on unseen Chaos ships. Lack of weapons mounted to the ship was irrelevant.

Darting between various screens and a table laden with maps, Halo stopped his games when the ladder behind him began to creak from steps. Alarmed, but not about to miss a beat, he began to neatly stack the papers and instruments atop the table. Eyes still wandering, he saw as a small framed figure emerged into the room. Both looked at each other, startled but surrendered their guard when they recognized each other.

“Halo? What are you doing up here?” his brother asked. Lumin wore a silver crew uniform fitted with a pilot’s badge, giving him a daunting image amongst the rags pilgrims and refugees wore about the ship. Uniform or not, his scowling, young eyes were enough to intimidate Halo as he mustered up a reply.

“I wanted to clean up here before dinner,” he answered quickly with a shrill voice. Lumin looked to him questionably, but accepted the response.

“Did you see my journal up here?”

Under the pile of books there was a small, leather bound volume, so Halo hastily retrieved it for him. When he extended it out to him, his brother’s green eyes widened apprehensively.

“Halo! Your eyes!”

Not phased, Halo looked to a reflection on a darkened screen to see black stains around the creases of his eye wells. Wiping away the liquid with his fingertips revealed a rusty crimson color of blood.

“I told you I don’t ever want to see you doing those little ‘tricks’ of yours again or I’ll tell father. If father sees you like this, he’ll quarantine you again. And you’re lucky I don’t report you to security!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Halo answered with a defensive tone.

“Don’t lie to me, Halo. I saw what you did with those pottery sets you almost dropped last week. Your fingertips bled that time.”

If that was the only other thing Lumin noticed, Halo counted himself lucky. Though he found he had a knack for good fortune, each act was balanced through a consequence out of his control. Lately it was some illnesses, but it wasn’t always confined to himself. Once a restaurant lost power for an hour. Other times, pipes burst or a misplaced gale flew through the corridors.

“Fine, you can keep lying to me and everyone else about your abominable little magic tricks, but one day you’re going to get caught and no one is going to help you.” With his final words, Lumin tucked his journal under his arm and went to the ladder. While Halo was too young to understand the consequences any psychic abilities displayed, Lumin knew exactly what the risks were. Despite the danger, he found himself more angered by Halo having such a gift. If he indeed was a psyker, he would eventually be reported and collected on the Black Ships. Then through intense watch and training, Halo would someday emerge from Terra permitted to travel the universe, fight for the Imperium, and live a life Lumin could never obtain. Perhaps, if Halo felt his abilities were a curse, he would suppress them and remain on the orbital for the rest of their mundane lives.

Thinking quickly, but led only by a begrudging envy, Lumin looked to a security camera aimed into the helm. If Father could see Halo’s capabilities, he could intervene and stop him before his powers manifested more. The spark of a scheme ignited when he saw an empty glass bottle near the ladder. As soon as Halo returned to his “cleaning”, Lumin snatched the bottle up.

“Halo, look out!” With a quick alert, Lumin catapulted the glass at his brother’s head. Halo looked up in scarcely enough time to see the projectile flying towards his face. To Lumin’s horror, the bottle struck into Halo and burst into hundreds of shards. The force was so great, debris flew back to Lumin, slicing through his gloves and sleeves as he concealed his face.

“Halo! Are you alright? I didn’t mean to hit you!” Lumin darted to Halo’s side and grabbed him by the shoulders. Despite the new scarlet tears, when Lumin held his brother’s narrow face, there were no scrapes from the shrapnel. In a fleeting second, he looked to their side and saw the glistening of glass shards suspended in the air, reflecting the flickering lights of the room as thousands of prisms. Before he could reach out for them, the shards fell flush against an unseen barrier as they plunged to the floor. All the pieces dropped and shattered further in unison with Halo’s outstretched hand.

“Why did you do that!” Halo cried out, horrified.

“I’m sorry, Halo! I wanted to test you to see if you could stop it. And look! You did! See, you’re perfectly fine.” Lumin optimistically pointed to the line of glass resting on the floor, desperate to prevent his brother from retaliation.

“You don’t understand! It’s very dangerous for me to use so much power!” As Halo wailed, more blood seeped from his eyes as a loud ripping sound deafened their ears. “Run, Lumin!”

Petrified and confused, Lumin watched as the glass along the floor and the objects littered about the room began to pulsate. Along the crevices of the machinery, dark crimson drips of blood began to escape down the walls. Instinctively, Lumin began to raise his heels, ready to flee. But his sight fell to his brother standing alone and abandoned in the middle of the room. Forgoing the ladder, he ran to Halo’s side.

“I’m not leaving you!”

When Lumin reached to his brother’s hand, all of the room stopped shaking and the blood suddenly reversed its flow and dissipated away. In sustained motion, Halo’s head turned to Lumin, revealing an emotionless face and glazed over white eyes. Light radiated from his small form, increasing as his lips parted slowly as if to speak. Instantaneously, Halo burst with a crackling scream that propelled bolts of fire and light into the room. The screens of the equipment were incinerated, and Lumin was struck off of his feet and flung from the room.

The light ceasing, Halo’s eyes adjusted to the influx of darkness. The only illumination came from emergency beams and the static of malfunctioning monitors. The low buzz of an alarm resounded throughout the haul as Halo took a step forward to the edge of the room. Not seeing Lumin, a weight churned in his stomach as he ran to the railings. As he neared, guards entered with flashlights into the cargo room led by Halo’s father. Lights still flickering and machines spitting sparks, long shadows were cast along the floor and concealed a small form strewn amongst broken crates. As the investigating party approached, their brought lights reflected on blood stained wood and the small glints of ivory bones. From the injuries and the burns across the body, the guards investigated cautiously, doubting Lumin’s survival. As his father pushed through the crowd and saw his fallen son, he dropped to his knees in painful despair.

While they will continue to praise the Emperor for the moment the company saw Lumin move with a frail clinching to life, a heavy cost was exchanged for his survival. If a price or quantity can at all be assigned to innocence and happiness, it was paid by Halo as he fell inconsolably to the floor. His own life may still exist in all physical meanings of the word, but he could since from the empty look his father gave from the ground, Halo’s part with this ship, this family, this reality would forever cease.

* * *

Surveying the looming trusses delicately supporting the heavy stone ceiling, she admired the way the sunlight danced through the dust and shadows of the massive structure. Though a cold world shrouded with overcast clouds and sharp mountain shadows encasing her valley village, the smallest of escaping light held enough fervent energy to revive the spirit of the locals. She could hear them pulling carts about the cobblestone alleys of the market or trekking through the abbey courtyard on their route to the orchards. Their minds were too occupied on the rare weather to care about the escalating voices coming from the walls of the manor they passed beside. With another loud shout, the young woman refocused from the sounds outside to the heavy wood door closed to her across the hall. Her delicate foot taking a step forward and her lavender robes draping over the uneven floor of tiles and stone, she neared to the room. The white blonde strands of her hair caught against the rough surface of the mortared walls as she tried to listen to the voices within.

“You cannot take her now of all times! The people adore her and look to her for hope in these bleak times. I need her with me, especially so close to the start of Assembly. I have no heart for these petty political meetings, but with her by my side, the Council is enslaved by my ideas and her words,” a deep voice boomed forth defensively before suddenly soothing. “And for pity’s sake, she is my wife. Do I not have any say in her future?”

“Firstly, her association with the Assembly is highly inappropriate as she is a woman, and your political enemies will someday use her imminent weaknesses against us. Second, if she is not handed over to the Imperium now, we will have bigger issues than tax rates and political unease.”

Recalling the second voice to be the brother of the last speaker, the woman gave a displeased frown he was able to attend the discussion over her.

“She managed to elude all of us with her abilities long enough. Why can’t she just use it to avoid them?”

“You are a fool, Temor! She should have been turned over long before you married her. It is her parent’s fault for giving you a wife cursed with this witchcraft!”

“We did not know she had these abominations! No one in our family has ever been a psyker, and she used this to manipulate us all into believing she was fine. I would not have sold Ovelia to you had I known of her treachery.”

Hearing the voice of her father put her at unease. She had not heard him speak since she was given to the Baron Temor two years ago as he insisted she must marry him. And Ovelia in return insisted she was unfit to be with the noble, but her father thought she was only being selfish and wanted to focus on her education. Ever since she was twelve, she had begun to understand her thoughts could seep from herself and absorb into those surrounding her. Whether they became persuaded to listen to her commands or she could understand their tucked away secrets, Ovelia knew she had a peculiar gift that needed to be controlled. But her parents only could see a charismatic, beautiful young daughter to exchange for better political standings.

And it was not if Temor was a terrible dictator of a husband to have. His age was nearly double the young child scarcely past her fourteenth year when they married, but he never mistreated her. He lavished her with riches and attention to her ideas normally not given a second listen. Even if he only saw her outgoing nature a political ploy to gain the trust of his villagers, Ovelia knew her life would never be happier. So happy she remained until one of her abilities surged beyond her control and revealed her to be the creature she struggled to contain from her sheltered life.

“I am sorry for the shame my daughter has brought to your household, but certainly there is a way around it. There are many honorable psykers that exist in the other communities. Tell your people she will return to you after her years in training and will be more powerful after. They will be more overjoyed by her potential abilities to accept her absence.”

“That is a decent idea. Temor, I hope you will be wise enough to consider this. The only issue is it may be a decade or longer before her return. She has not yet bore you a child, so perhaps you shall tell your public she is barren and unsuitable to remain with. And of her presence, say she has gone to a shrine world to become a Sister. We can contain Ovelia in a secluded prison to the south of here in wait for the Black Ships to collect her.”

Try as she might, Ovelia could never convince herself to like Temor’s brother. Knowing his mind too well tainted her opinion of him long ago. Her husband’s will remained thankfully different, but was easily swayed by his brother’s sly reason. Pressing her ear closer against the cold wood of the chamber door, she desperately tried to hear Temor’s response as it was uttered like a faint draft.

“I do not have the patience or the want to have the likes of her return to me after so long. I shall have a quick annulment, seek a new wife, and this entire ordeal can be someone else’s memory.”

Despite her uncertainty to what was to come and the bitter sting of Temor’s ease of surrender, Ovelia was able to step away from the door with a strand of hope towards her future free from this life. An escape to the outdated world of feudal systems and suppression. This whole ordeal, though unknown of the perils to come, would be a welcome change to her life. The indifferent family and husband could be left behind. The bleakness of her future finally was in her own hands. But with this hopefulness came a new realization of a faint doubt she had long tried to suppress. Did the optimism she always retained come from her true feelings, or was it a deceptive act brought on by the powers she had yet to tame? If during this entire time Ovelia had maintained her powers so well that she could convince everyone around to trust in her and abandon all reason, what gave her own mind freedom from this ensnare?