- Oct 9, 2005
- 4,771
- 435
- 126
As always please give me feedback!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The eagle shaped ship swooped through the arches of the sky seminary effortlessly as it descended towards the designated landing zone. It was only a part of the larger inquisition fleet awaiting orders in orbit of the massive gas giant, Centurion IV, the golden holographic crest of the lion embossed on its side glowering in the purple haze of the planet’s twilight.
This world, this particular religious seminary had been existence for millennia, as it dealt with the rendering and tending of holy relics from times past. The priests of Centurion IV were once renowned for their piety, their skill and their devotion, but all that had now changed and that’s what the Inquisition council wished to find out about.
“It looks so ordinary…” remarked Octavia Linus, the naval observer to her companion as they stood watching the approach of the landing port.
“That’s how they all look! Greater the heresy, the more inconspicuous they make themselves! Lord knows what lurks within!” growled High Inquisitor Tartus Beil as he stood in his ceremonial wargear, encased in red and golden nano-armor. It was his duty to seek out, condemn and purge heresy from all levels of fiftieth century mankind. It was the only way to survive this great time of desolation when man was in war with an unstoppable, undefeatable enemy manifested from the depths of Hades itself.
Atleast that is what the inquisition view about the war was and High Inquisitor Beil followed it to a fault avoiding deviation at any point. He provided himself no quarters when it comes to following the protocols as handed over to them by the ancients who had served his Savior and certainly gave none when the time came to judge those who had violated them. All in all, Beil was the perfect combination of piety with passion, an all encompassing warrior cum priest entrusted with judging, condemning and executing the deviants and his psychological profile suited him well for this unpleasant task he undertook as his destiny.
On the other hand, Octavia Linus was more of secular bent of mind. Devoid of any theological training, she went on with her business with the methodology of a doctor curing an infection. With a dispassionate outlook towards the infection itself, she lacked the hatred for the enemy and served with a professional sense of duty towards the institution which had nurtured her, the Grand Armada which battled the great enemy in all spheres of existence, land, air, space and the continuum, the greater reality which encompassed, yet remained independent of all possible timelines which constituted the universe as we comprehend. These traits proved her invaluable to the role she had been suited into today, acting as the liaison between the theologicians who rooted out the enemy within and the navy who battled the great evil from beyond.
“Is it possible there is none, Inquisitor? No heresy to speak of in this place.” questioned Linus as she turned towards Beil who stood impatiently waiting for the bay doors of the craft to open. Behind them was a legion of Natium Inquidista: soldiers conditioned not to violate the protocols while carrying the vital task of the inquisition. These soldiers were built for survival in any environment and the only part of them which remained human were their cranium stems, integrated with nanobots primed for repair and regeneration. Each of them had been a volunteer for the greater cause of their savior, the inquisition and had accepted their loss of humanity with all the sacrifice expected from men of exception character in these desperate times. Nanobots replaced blood cells in their arteries and veins, itself made of indestructible fibers instead of cellular material, neutronium intervived armor took place of skin, nano-mechanical organs distributed throughout the body avoiding localized organ failure in case of catastrophic damage. These men were the true embodiment of fighting machines of the fiftieth century, the inquisition versions of those only capable of surviving a conflict with the enemy from beyond.
Beil mulled over Linus’s question for a moment and growled again. “There are rumors about this place. A priest managed to defect and bring word to us, rumors about contamination…”
Linus’s eyes widened. “Contamination? Here?” The news caught her surprise. It was becoming more apparent that Beil was withholding vital information from the military, an unacceptable situation in her eyes. She wondered who authorized the secrecy surrounding this place, the Inquisition Council or just Beil himself and why. Either way, this was a major breach of the way the war was fought. She had to file a complaint as soon as this matter was dealt with.
“That’s what we suspect. The fleet stands above us ready to annihilate this world if our suspicions prove true. We cannot risk letting this infection get out of this place.” replied Beil turning his attention back to the baydoor. It will open any moment now, once the cabin pressure autocorrects itself between the craft and the atmosphere of this planet.
“Surely the navy has to be involved here too if it comes to that!” objected Linus as she mulled over Beil’s reply. Eradicating heresy was one thing, destroying planets was something different altogether. Octavia Linus was swelling up in rage at what she thought was the slighting of the institution which had nurtured her all her life. The inquisition cannot usurp the functions of the Navy!
Beil charged back. “The seminary is the inquisition’s matter! These are men who had sworn to serve our Lord and Savior! And when they stray and bring that great evil upon us, it is us who will dispense justice! Not your kind with your honor and duty!”
Linus glanced at him coldly as she swallowed his words. She understood his point, atleast a part of it. The seminary was really his business, Beil had been bought upon on a life of piety and devotion and when he saw men who betrayed that path, it got real personal with him. She could understand his rage, his anger, it was likening to a mutiny within the Navy, a strictly military affair to judge and render punishment.
The door opened upwards and they found themselves staring at a troupe of priests headed by the Archdiocese Bishop waiting to receive them. The Bishop, a red haired old man with the wind blowing over his face welcomed them sarcastically. He said. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
Inquisitor Beil wriggled his hand. “That’s for me to find out, Bishop and you to regret! If what I heard are true, you shall pay for the defilement of this holy place, all of you!”
A younger man, apparently an aide to the bishop stepped forward and tried to explain. “Inquisitor, let me clarify your misunderstanding. We are not in violation of any protocol…”
Beil brushed aside the aide, it was the Bishop he was after. He signaled the soldiers to follow him outside the craft and gestured towards them the party of priests assembled on the landing canopy. The men knew what to do and immediately started to restrain the former holy men who had abandoned their paths. They did so without meeting any resistance, none of the priests were about to fight nearly invincible soldiers.
Octavia Linus followed Beil out of the craft and the first thing she noticed was a foul smell laden in the air. A stench she was familiar with in many of her naval campaigns, one she immediately recognized.
She hustled towards Beil and hissed. “The contamination, its here!”
Beil nodded and walked ahead followed by his personal guard into the seminary, two of his soldiers dragged the fallen Bishop alongwith them, he himself would be the best witness against his own heresy.
The inquisitor’s eyes swept the place for the signs of contamination and it found them in plenty, the open sores in the skins of the priests, incurable by any treatment of even fiftieth century medicine, the wide, gaping eyes of being possessed by the evil from beyond, the aforementioned stench prevailing in the air.
Linus pointed him to another sign, a priest armed with an extreme temperature blow torch vaporizing a part of the wall until there was nothing left, but a gaping hole in the ceramic structure. She said ‘Substratum fluid! They are trying to cleanse it! The contamination, its trying to collate the serpents here!”
Beil erupted in fury. “There is no choice! This system must be imploded!” The inquisitor turned towards the Bishop and grabbed him by the collars. “Before I give you the death you deserve, you shall tell me why you betrayed your brothers! You shall confess now!”
The Bishop smiled. “There is no need for threats, Inquisitor! You shall understand why I did what I had to do, just give me a chance to explain myself. A chance to show you the significance of what we achieved here! Here in this holy place, a path revealed to us by our Savior Cherin himself!”
Beil exclaimed in fury again. “Foul Wretch! You shall not defile his name in your heresy!” The inquisitor raised his hands to strike the Bishop down when Linus stopped him. She said. “Wait! There must be a compelling reason why this man did this. I suggest we let him speak…”
Beil shouted. “Speak what?! What truth can come out of his foul mouth besides lies and blasphemies?” Saying so, the inquisitor pinned the Bishop to wall ready to snap his neck into two. The Bishop choked out the words in great difficulty. “Mankind can never win this Great War against the evil from beyond, that very possibility is undone in the protocols itself, unless… unless…” The Bishop gasped for breath, being strangled slowly by the Inquisitor’s giant palm.
Linus, intrigued by the words uttered by the fallen man pleaded with Beil. “We must let him speak. Give him a chance! Then you can render judgment.”
Beil released the man and let him fall to the ground. It took a moment for the Bishop to collect his breath and recover. He said. “To understand what we done, words aren’t enough, you must see! Come with me and you shall understand.”
The Bishop led them deeper into the seminary through a set of passages growing narrower as they proceeded along. Linus and Beil made sure not to let themselves brush against the walls at any point of time, they couldn’t risk letting any residue of the substratum fluid befouling their bodies.
The contamination, an evil from beyond this universe itself, a blight from outside the realm of reason or morality of this reality was here, that fact was established beyond doubt. But what was the contamination itself, what was the evil which could strike terror in the hearts of the most powerful of men?
The supposed first contact with the evil was established two millennia ago when learned men of science started to somewhat successfully experiment with the newly accepted protocols of Astartes, the codes of law governing morality, ethics, aesthetics and art fundamentally embossed into the space time structure of this reality. Having met with much failure in translating the codes, they took to retorting to what mankind does best in face of futility, testing the limits of the laws and then deducing the medians from the results.
While at the higher end of the spectrum they uncovered results which couldn’t be made sense of, testing the other extreme proved catastrophic. They uncovered beings which while sentient were subject to the polar opposite of our morality. One such species of beings existed in a reality where entropy flowed opposite to the flow of time and thus to them from their laws, birth came from chaos and death from a structured sense of order.
It wasn’t long before that perverted reality became entangled to our very own and these beings started crossing over to our side of the universe. Unlike human beings who had three dimensions of freedom of movement in space and only one in time, these beings had three dimensions of freedom in time and only one in space. This meant in our reality while they are localized to one particular spot of contamination, they are free to move back and forth in time and also through parallel realities differentiated by the choices we made in our lives.
Attracted to what we understand as evil (negative affinity as codified in the Astartes protocols) in our minds, these beings soon began to contaminate entire worlds reducing them to congealed pools of substratum fluid, a vile substance from which arises the serpents, the avatars of these beings in our reality.
The serpents are the living embodiments of the contamination, the agents of their perversion. They can assume any form or shape as needed by circumstances, whether they are hideous venomous demons to devour men or massive floating barges to transport the arisen demons to other worlds across the universe.
The key is the substratum fluid which leaks from their reality into ours, it would glow in a poisonous green shade, slowly devouring all matter in its surroundings, converting them into agents of destruction as the situation demands it, as it was happening in the seminary before their very eyes.
Linus could see the trickles of the fluid flowing down the seminary walls, accumulating in pools of glowing green hues. Some of these pools even exhibited signs of congealed forms of the arising serpents, some parts even began to twitch and move. Soon the process would accelerate exponentially.
Linus knew they hadn’t much time left, it was only a matter of moments before the serpents were assembled into fully formed selves and began to wreck chaos. She suddenly wished she hadn’t given the Bishop the time he requested, perhaps he was only stalling them to fulfill the bidding of the evil.
The Bishop lead them to a massive chamber at the end of their journey through the dark corridors of the seminary, a vast round room hastily evacuated from a former sepulture. This room hoisted devices off all unknown purposes, tubes circulating fuming chemicals which appeared to be volatile.
In the centre was a glass enclosure with a woman immersed in a blue suspension fluid. It was apparent that the entire purpose of this chamber was devoted to her care and her survival.
Beil’s eyes widened. He demanded “Explain this, infernal! What foulness you dared to make befall this holy place!”
The Bishop moved towards the glass enclosure. “This, inquisitor is the answer to all our problems! This test subject...this woman holds the key to our victory against the contamination!”
Linus fascinated by the man’s words said. “Go on, explain yourself!”
The Bishop stammered. “Years ago, I…no…the priests of this seminary had a vision. We, all of us shared that moment of glory, the communion with our lord and Savior Cherin!”
Beil grimaced menacingly. “I told you not to befoul his name in your treachery!”
For the first time, the Bishop spoke back to the Inquisitor, he knew he had found an ally in the naval observer, atleast for now. “I beseech you to hear my words, the vision of our lord appeared to all of us and spoke of a way to end this menace once for all.”
Linus asked. “To end the contamination?”
The Bishop turned towards her, it would be her to whom he will now speak from now on till the last breath of his life. “Yes, the Lord told us of a way. Apparently it had to do with invoking the Nemata, the disjointed spirit of his great mortal enemy, the enemy who had almost succeeded in dissolving the reality as we cognize it today. It is said that through our lord the great enemy codified the Astartes protocols, but this knowledge was lost in during the course of the cataclysm, this much we know through unproven rumors, rumors you term heresy…”
Beil wouldn’t tolerate this anymore. “You dare invoke one foul beast to destroy another? You deserve a million deaths and more…”
The Bishop justified himself. “Sometimes it takes one evil to destroy another, Inquisitor. I do not care for your judgment, only how history will judge me.”
Linus reminded the Bishop. “You haven’t finished, Bishop, how shall this ancient enemy of our Savior help us in this war?”
Bishop pointed towards the woman. “The woman…this woman is a descendant of that enemy. Through years of research, we managed to trace the individual bloodlines and accumulate the genetic data together to produce the female copy of him. In her we were able to conceive a male child and invoke within the stillborn the ancestral memories of the great enemy. In his memories lies the key to codifying the Astartes, in his memories lies the key in destroying the realm from where the contamination stems from…”
Linus’s eyes shone. She exclaimed without thinking. “Brilliant! Bishop if this works…”
Beil spun around to face the observer. “You join him in this heresy?” he demanded.
Linus tried to reason with him. “Inquisitor, if half of what he says is true, then this is too important to destroy!”
Beil retorted back. “What he proposes is madness, this evil is what which attracted the contamination here and this evil he invokes will turn out to be no less than what we fight now. You join him in this endeavor too!”
Linus pleaded. “All I beg you is to give us a chance! Let me summon the navy here, the naval scientists can evaluate the child and its potential to codify the Astartes, then we can proceed as you wish, as the inquisition wishes!”
Beil wouldn’t listen. “This is insanity, I declare you have joined this heresy and will die with the rest of them..” He never got to complete his accusation, a sudden flash of movement behind them jerked them towards its source and they stood staring at a fully formed serpent which had arisen from a pool of substratum fluid.
The serpent was eight and a half foot tall elongated humanoid, with claws for its limbs and slimed silvery cartilage for skin. Its eyes shown fluorescent green in malevolence and it opened its sharp teethed jaws to let out the abominable scream of a hunter. In a sudden sprint it dove upon the Inquisitor who promptly tried to deflect it sideways, but failed to do so.
Linus and Bishop watched as the man and the serpent fought each other, interlocked in a mass of desperation. Beil screamed. “Linus, help me! I can’t reach for my blaster. Shoot the damn thing off!”
Octavia Linus heard him, understood what needed to be done and didn’t do a damn thing! Instead she stood with her weapon withdrawn and watched the fight as the serpent got the better of the man. She watched as the serpent plunged its claws through the man’s neck, wrenching it apart from his torso, killing him in a final moment of violence, spilling his blood all over the occupants of the chamber.
Having killed the Inquisitor, it left his limp body to turn its attention towards the Bishop. This was something Linus wasn’t prepared to allow the serpent to do, she wasn’t about to let it kill the Bishop, not while he was still valuable to her. She ordered him. “Run and hide yourself!”
Having raised the weapon, she shot at the beast, making it turn its focus towards her. She shot at it again and again, strafing around in circles, careful not to let it jump on her, a tactic she had been taught at the naval academy.
The serpent screeched and moaned in pain, but fought until its dying breath. It was rumored that the serpents had their memories etched in reverse, they had memories of their death and followed that path till their moment of doom, they knew in advance by whose hands they would meet their death and simply tracked fate to follow that timeline. It was a consequence of being an avatar of the contamination.
Having killed the serpent, Linus gestured towards the Bishop. “It’s okay, you can come out now!” The Bishop did so and proceeded to thank his Savior. She interrupted him in his prayer, she could already hear other gunfights breaking out through the rest of the seminary, most probably the Natium Inquidista combating the other serpents which must have arisen out of the fluid.
She said. “We don’t have much time left. The child you spoke of, where is it?” The bishop nodded and pushed a few buttons on a console behind him and out slid a panel with a baby wrapped in silk linen.
The Bishop handed the baby to the observer and said. “This child would either be the savior of the coming millennia or he would be the greatest enemy humanity would ever see. It all depends on how our destiny unfolds, the choices we makes, the choices he makes…”
Linus nodded as she accepted the screaming child. She had made up her mind to secrete it away from this terrible place and raise it as her own until its time comes.
The Bishop said. “Everything that has to be done here has been done, now go! Go far away and tell none of what happened here! As for the child, its destiny will come about on its own. That’s what the Savior promised…”
Linus nodded again, had one final look upon the place, the immobile woman suspended in the fluid, the Bishop and ran. On her way back to the ship, she had to dodge the combating serpents, the defending Inquidistas and the hapless priests caught in the middle of the firefight.
She made her way up the ramp into the ship and shouted. “Move, this system needs to be obliterated! Now!” The commanding officer of the ship asked her. “Where’s High Inquisitor Beil, we need him before we leave!”
She replied. “Beil’s dead, killed by one of those abominations.”
The commanding officer swallowed her explanation without batting an eyelid, its what was expected from men in these desperate times and he was sure Beil would have been content with his own sacrifice. The officer pointed towards the baby in her hand and asked further. “And who just that might be?”
Linus lied. “An unfortunate child whose mother was given refuge in this wretched place. The mother died, but I’m taking charge of the child. Not doing so would violate the protocols…”
The commanding officer nodded and turned back to order his men to retreat back to the ship, he had more things to worry about in his mind than screaming infants.
The craft lifted itself off the cloud seminary slowly, it would accelerate more and more as it would make its flight towards the waiting Inquisition fleet in orbit. Soon this entire system will be no more as the compressor ships in the inquisition fleet would collapse the planet’s, the star’s and the entire system’s mass into a super dense ball of matter, ultimately turning it into a black hole, the only proven way to decontaminate the evil.
None of this matter much to Octavia Linus as she continued to stare at the baby as it lay sleeping in a cradle she had replicated onboard the ship. She would never know that the baby she helped survive would be crowned the anointed one, the greatest Prophet ever who reveals the codes of Astartes mankind has been seeking all along. She would never know what the baby was destined to be, the next Savior of mankind in this millennium and the greatest villain ever to be in the millennia to follow that. She would remain innocent to all this fact and so would we be because its all another story.
Only one thing she knew for sure, that she and the child had survived this ordeal by sheer sense of purpose: the child by its latent destiny and she, by divine will.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The eagle shaped ship swooped through the arches of the sky seminary effortlessly as it descended towards the designated landing zone. It was only a part of the larger inquisition fleet awaiting orders in orbit of the massive gas giant, Centurion IV, the golden holographic crest of the lion embossed on its side glowering in the purple haze of the planet’s twilight.
This world, this particular religious seminary had been existence for millennia, as it dealt with the rendering and tending of holy relics from times past. The priests of Centurion IV were once renowned for their piety, their skill and their devotion, but all that had now changed and that’s what the Inquisition council wished to find out about.
“It looks so ordinary…” remarked Octavia Linus, the naval observer to her companion as they stood watching the approach of the landing port.
“That’s how they all look! Greater the heresy, the more inconspicuous they make themselves! Lord knows what lurks within!” growled High Inquisitor Tartus Beil as he stood in his ceremonial wargear, encased in red and golden nano-armor. It was his duty to seek out, condemn and purge heresy from all levels of fiftieth century mankind. It was the only way to survive this great time of desolation when man was in war with an unstoppable, undefeatable enemy manifested from the depths of Hades itself.
Atleast that is what the inquisition view about the war was and High Inquisitor Beil followed it to a fault avoiding deviation at any point. He provided himself no quarters when it comes to following the protocols as handed over to them by the ancients who had served his Savior and certainly gave none when the time came to judge those who had violated them. All in all, Beil was the perfect combination of piety with passion, an all encompassing warrior cum priest entrusted with judging, condemning and executing the deviants and his psychological profile suited him well for this unpleasant task he undertook as his destiny.
On the other hand, Octavia Linus was more of secular bent of mind. Devoid of any theological training, she went on with her business with the methodology of a doctor curing an infection. With a dispassionate outlook towards the infection itself, she lacked the hatred for the enemy and served with a professional sense of duty towards the institution which had nurtured her, the Grand Armada which battled the great enemy in all spheres of existence, land, air, space and the continuum, the greater reality which encompassed, yet remained independent of all possible timelines which constituted the universe as we comprehend. These traits proved her invaluable to the role she had been suited into today, acting as the liaison between the theologicians who rooted out the enemy within and the navy who battled the great evil from beyond.
“Is it possible there is none, Inquisitor? No heresy to speak of in this place.” questioned Linus as she turned towards Beil who stood impatiently waiting for the bay doors of the craft to open. Behind them was a legion of Natium Inquidista: soldiers conditioned not to violate the protocols while carrying the vital task of the inquisition. These soldiers were built for survival in any environment and the only part of them which remained human were their cranium stems, integrated with nanobots primed for repair and regeneration. Each of them had been a volunteer for the greater cause of their savior, the inquisition and had accepted their loss of humanity with all the sacrifice expected from men of exception character in these desperate times. Nanobots replaced blood cells in their arteries and veins, itself made of indestructible fibers instead of cellular material, neutronium intervived armor took place of skin, nano-mechanical organs distributed throughout the body avoiding localized organ failure in case of catastrophic damage. These men were the true embodiment of fighting machines of the fiftieth century, the inquisition versions of those only capable of surviving a conflict with the enemy from beyond.
Beil mulled over Linus’s question for a moment and growled again. “There are rumors about this place. A priest managed to defect and bring word to us, rumors about contamination…”
Linus’s eyes widened. “Contamination? Here?” The news caught her surprise. It was becoming more apparent that Beil was withholding vital information from the military, an unacceptable situation in her eyes. She wondered who authorized the secrecy surrounding this place, the Inquisition Council or just Beil himself and why. Either way, this was a major breach of the way the war was fought. She had to file a complaint as soon as this matter was dealt with.
“That’s what we suspect. The fleet stands above us ready to annihilate this world if our suspicions prove true. We cannot risk letting this infection get out of this place.” replied Beil turning his attention back to the baydoor. It will open any moment now, once the cabin pressure autocorrects itself between the craft and the atmosphere of this planet.
“Surely the navy has to be involved here too if it comes to that!” objected Linus as she mulled over Beil’s reply. Eradicating heresy was one thing, destroying planets was something different altogether. Octavia Linus was swelling up in rage at what she thought was the slighting of the institution which had nurtured her all her life. The inquisition cannot usurp the functions of the Navy!
Beil charged back. “The seminary is the inquisition’s matter! These are men who had sworn to serve our Lord and Savior! And when they stray and bring that great evil upon us, it is us who will dispense justice! Not your kind with your honor and duty!”
Linus glanced at him coldly as she swallowed his words. She understood his point, atleast a part of it. The seminary was really his business, Beil had been bought upon on a life of piety and devotion and when he saw men who betrayed that path, it got real personal with him. She could understand his rage, his anger, it was likening to a mutiny within the Navy, a strictly military affair to judge and render punishment.
The door opened upwards and they found themselves staring at a troupe of priests headed by the Archdiocese Bishop waiting to receive them. The Bishop, a red haired old man with the wind blowing over his face welcomed them sarcastically. He said. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?”
Inquisitor Beil wriggled his hand. “That’s for me to find out, Bishop and you to regret! If what I heard are true, you shall pay for the defilement of this holy place, all of you!”
A younger man, apparently an aide to the bishop stepped forward and tried to explain. “Inquisitor, let me clarify your misunderstanding. We are not in violation of any protocol…”
Beil brushed aside the aide, it was the Bishop he was after. He signaled the soldiers to follow him outside the craft and gestured towards them the party of priests assembled on the landing canopy. The men knew what to do and immediately started to restrain the former holy men who had abandoned their paths. They did so without meeting any resistance, none of the priests were about to fight nearly invincible soldiers.
Octavia Linus followed Beil out of the craft and the first thing she noticed was a foul smell laden in the air. A stench she was familiar with in many of her naval campaigns, one she immediately recognized.
She hustled towards Beil and hissed. “The contamination, its here!”
Beil nodded and walked ahead followed by his personal guard into the seminary, two of his soldiers dragged the fallen Bishop alongwith them, he himself would be the best witness against his own heresy.
The inquisitor’s eyes swept the place for the signs of contamination and it found them in plenty, the open sores in the skins of the priests, incurable by any treatment of even fiftieth century medicine, the wide, gaping eyes of being possessed by the evil from beyond, the aforementioned stench prevailing in the air.
Linus pointed him to another sign, a priest armed with an extreme temperature blow torch vaporizing a part of the wall until there was nothing left, but a gaping hole in the ceramic structure. She said ‘Substratum fluid! They are trying to cleanse it! The contamination, its trying to collate the serpents here!”
Beil erupted in fury. “There is no choice! This system must be imploded!” The inquisitor turned towards the Bishop and grabbed him by the collars. “Before I give you the death you deserve, you shall tell me why you betrayed your brothers! You shall confess now!”
The Bishop smiled. “There is no need for threats, Inquisitor! You shall understand why I did what I had to do, just give me a chance to explain myself. A chance to show you the significance of what we achieved here! Here in this holy place, a path revealed to us by our Savior Cherin himself!”
Beil exclaimed in fury again. “Foul Wretch! You shall not defile his name in your heresy!” The inquisitor raised his hands to strike the Bishop down when Linus stopped him. She said. “Wait! There must be a compelling reason why this man did this. I suggest we let him speak…”
Beil shouted. “Speak what?! What truth can come out of his foul mouth besides lies and blasphemies?” Saying so, the inquisitor pinned the Bishop to wall ready to snap his neck into two. The Bishop choked out the words in great difficulty. “Mankind can never win this Great War against the evil from beyond, that very possibility is undone in the protocols itself, unless… unless…” The Bishop gasped for breath, being strangled slowly by the Inquisitor’s giant palm.
Linus, intrigued by the words uttered by the fallen man pleaded with Beil. “We must let him speak. Give him a chance! Then you can render judgment.”
Beil released the man and let him fall to the ground. It took a moment for the Bishop to collect his breath and recover. He said. “To understand what we done, words aren’t enough, you must see! Come with me and you shall understand.”
The Bishop led them deeper into the seminary through a set of passages growing narrower as they proceeded along. Linus and Beil made sure not to let themselves brush against the walls at any point of time, they couldn’t risk letting any residue of the substratum fluid befouling their bodies.
The contamination, an evil from beyond this universe itself, a blight from outside the realm of reason or morality of this reality was here, that fact was established beyond doubt. But what was the contamination itself, what was the evil which could strike terror in the hearts of the most powerful of men?
The supposed first contact with the evil was established two millennia ago when learned men of science started to somewhat successfully experiment with the newly accepted protocols of Astartes, the codes of law governing morality, ethics, aesthetics and art fundamentally embossed into the space time structure of this reality. Having met with much failure in translating the codes, they took to retorting to what mankind does best in face of futility, testing the limits of the laws and then deducing the medians from the results.
While at the higher end of the spectrum they uncovered results which couldn’t be made sense of, testing the other extreme proved catastrophic. They uncovered beings which while sentient were subject to the polar opposite of our morality. One such species of beings existed in a reality where entropy flowed opposite to the flow of time and thus to them from their laws, birth came from chaos and death from a structured sense of order.
It wasn’t long before that perverted reality became entangled to our very own and these beings started crossing over to our side of the universe. Unlike human beings who had three dimensions of freedom of movement in space and only one in time, these beings had three dimensions of freedom in time and only one in space. This meant in our reality while they are localized to one particular spot of contamination, they are free to move back and forth in time and also through parallel realities differentiated by the choices we made in our lives.
Attracted to what we understand as evil (negative affinity as codified in the Astartes protocols) in our minds, these beings soon began to contaminate entire worlds reducing them to congealed pools of substratum fluid, a vile substance from which arises the serpents, the avatars of these beings in our reality.
The serpents are the living embodiments of the contamination, the agents of their perversion. They can assume any form or shape as needed by circumstances, whether they are hideous venomous demons to devour men or massive floating barges to transport the arisen demons to other worlds across the universe.
The key is the substratum fluid which leaks from their reality into ours, it would glow in a poisonous green shade, slowly devouring all matter in its surroundings, converting them into agents of destruction as the situation demands it, as it was happening in the seminary before their very eyes.
Linus could see the trickles of the fluid flowing down the seminary walls, accumulating in pools of glowing green hues. Some of these pools even exhibited signs of congealed forms of the arising serpents, some parts even began to twitch and move. Soon the process would accelerate exponentially.
Linus knew they hadn’t much time left, it was only a matter of moments before the serpents were assembled into fully formed selves and began to wreck chaos. She suddenly wished she hadn’t given the Bishop the time he requested, perhaps he was only stalling them to fulfill the bidding of the evil.
The Bishop lead them to a massive chamber at the end of their journey through the dark corridors of the seminary, a vast round room hastily evacuated from a former sepulture. This room hoisted devices off all unknown purposes, tubes circulating fuming chemicals which appeared to be volatile.
In the centre was a glass enclosure with a woman immersed in a blue suspension fluid. It was apparent that the entire purpose of this chamber was devoted to her care and her survival.
Beil’s eyes widened. He demanded “Explain this, infernal! What foulness you dared to make befall this holy place!”
The Bishop moved towards the glass enclosure. “This, inquisitor is the answer to all our problems! This test subject...this woman holds the key to our victory against the contamination!”
Linus fascinated by the man’s words said. “Go on, explain yourself!”
The Bishop stammered. “Years ago, I…no…the priests of this seminary had a vision. We, all of us shared that moment of glory, the communion with our lord and Savior Cherin!”
Beil grimaced menacingly. “I told you not to befoul his name in your treachery!”
For the first time, the Bishop spoke back to the Inquisitor, he knew he had found an ally in the naval observer, atleast for now. “I beseech you to hear my words, the vision of our lord appeared to all of us and spoke of a way to end this menace once for all.”
Linus asked. “To end the contamination?”
The Bishop turned towards her, it would be her to whom he will now speak from now on till the last breath of his life. “Yes, the Lord told us of a way. Apparently it had to do with invoking the Nemata, the disjointed spirit of his great mortal enemy, the enemy who had almost succeeded in dissolving the reality as we cognize it today. It is said that through our lord the great enemy codified the Astartes protocols, but this knowledge was lost in during the course of the cataclysm, this much we know through unproven rumors, rumors you term heresy…”
Beil wouldn’t tolerate this anymore. “You dare invoke one foul beast to destroy another? You deserve a million deaths and more…”
The Bishop justified himself. “Sometimes it takes one evil to destroy another, Inquisitor. I do not care for your judgment, only how history will judge me.”
Linus reminded the Bishop. “You haven’t finished, Bishop, how shall this ancient enemy of our Savior help us in this war?”
Bishop pointed towards the woman. “The woman…this woman is a descendant of that enemy. Through years of research, we managed to trace the individual bloodlines and accumulate the genetic data together to produce the female copy of him. In her we were able to conceive a male child and invoke within the stillborn the ancestral memories of the great enemy. In his memories lies the key to codifying the Astartes, in his memories lies the key in destroying the realm from where the contamination stems from…”
Linus’s eyes shone. She exclaimed without thinking. “Brilliant! Bishop if this works…”
Beil spun around to face the observer. “You join him in this heresy?” he demanded.
Linus tried to reason with him. “Inquisitor, if half of what he says is true, then this is too important to destroy!”
Beil retorted back. “What he proposes is madness, this evil is what which attracted the contamination here and this evil he invokes will turn out to be no less than what we fight now. You join him in this endeavor too!”
Linus pleaded. “All I beg you is to give us a chance! Let me summon the navy here, the naval scientists can evaluate the child and its potential to codify the Astartes, then we can proceed as you wish, as the inquisition wishes!”
Beil wouldn’t listen. “This is insanity, I declare you have joined this heresy and will die with the rest of them..” He never got to complete his accusation, a sudden flash of movement behind them jerked them towards its source and they stood staring at a fully formed serpent which had arisen from a pool of substratum fluid.
The serpent was eight and a half foot tall elongated humanoid, with claws for its limbs and slimed silvery cartilage for skin. Its eyes shown fluorescent green in malevolence and it opened its sharp teethed jaws to let out the abominable scream of a hunter. In a sudden sprint it dove upon the Inquisitor who promptly tried to deflect it sideways, but failed to do so.
Linus and Bishop watched as the man and the serpent fought each other, interlocked in a mass of desperation. Beil screamed. “Linus, help me! I can’t reach for my blaster. Shoot the damn thing off!”
Octavia Linus heard him, understood what needed to be done and didn’t do a damn thing! Instead she stood with her weapon withdrawn and watched the fight as the serpent got the better of the man. She watched as the serpent plunged its claws through the man’s neck, wrenching it apart from his torso, killing him in a final moment of violence, spilling his blood all over the occupants of the chamber.
Having killed the Inquisitor, it left his limp body to turn its attention towards the Bishop. This was something Linus wasn’t prepared to allow the serpent to do, she wasn’t about to let it kill the Bishop, not while he was still valuable to her. She ordered him. “Run and hide yourself!”
Having raised the weapon, she shot at the beast, making it turn its focus towards her. She shot at it again and again, strafing around in circles, careful not to let it jump on her, a tactic she had been taught at the naval academy.
The serpent screeched and moaned in pain, but fought until its dying breath. It was rumored that the serpents had their memories etched in reverse, they had memories of their death and followed that path till their moment of doom, they knew in advance by whose hands they would meet their death and simply tracked fate to follow that timeline. It was a consequence of being an avatar of the contamination.
Having killed the serpent, Linus gestured towards the Bishop. “It’s okay, you can come out now!” The Bishop did so and proceeded to thank his Savior. She interrupted him in his prayer, she could already hear other gunfights breaking out through the rest of the seminary, most probably the Natium Inquidista combating the other serpents which must have arisen out of the fluid.
She said. “We don’t have much time left. The child you spoke of, where is it?” The bishop nodded and pushed a few buttons on a console behind him and out slid a panel with a baby wrapped in silk linen.
The Bishop handed the baby to the observer and said. “This child would either be the savior of the coming millennia or he would be the greatest enemy humanity would ever see. It all depends on how our destiny unfolds, the choices we makes, the choices he makes…”
Linus nodded as she accepted the screaming child. She had made up her mind to secrete it away from this terrible place and raise it as her own until its time comes.
The Bishop said. “Everything that has to be done here has been done, now go! Go far away and tell none of what happened here! As for the child, its destiny will come about on its own. That’s what the Savior promised…”
Linus nodded again, had one final look upon the place, the immobile woman suspended in the fluid, the Bishop and ran. On her way back to the ship, she had to dodge the combating serpents, the defending Inquidistas and the hapless priests caught in the middle of the firefight.
She made her way up the ramp into the ship and shouted. “Move, this system needs to be obliterated! Now!” The commanding officer of the ship asked her. “Where’s High Inquisitor Beil, we need him before we leave!”
She replied. “Beil’s dead, killed by one of those abominations.”
The commanding officer swallowed her explanation without batting an eyelid, its what was expected from men in these desperate times and he was sure Beil would have been content with his own sacrifice. The officer pointed towards the baby in her hand and asked further. “And who just that might be?”
Linus lied. “An unfortunate child whose mother was given refuge in this wretched place. The mother died, but I’m taking charge of the child. Not doing so would violate the protocols…”
The commanding officer nodded and turned back to order his men to retreat back to the ship, he had more things to worry about in his mind than screaming infants.
The craft lifted itself off the cloud seminary slowly, it would accelerate more and more as it would make its flight towards the waiting Inquisition fleet in orbit. Soon this entire system will be no more as the compressor ships in the inquisition fleet would collapse the planet’s, the star’s and the entire system’s mass into a super dense ball of matter, ultimately turning it into a black hole, the only proven way to decontaminate the evil.
None of this matter much to Octavia Linus as she continued to stare at the baby as it lay sleeping in a cradle she had replicated onboard the ship. She would never know that the baby she helped survive would be crowned the anointed one, the greatest Prophet ever who reveals the codes of Astartes mankind has been seeking all along. She would never know what the baby was destined to be, the next Savior of mankind in this millennium and the greatest villain ever to be in the millennia to follow that. She would remain innocent to all this fact and so would we be because its all another story.
Only one thing she knew for sure, that she and the child had survived this ordeal by sheer sense of purpose: the child by its latent destiny and she, by divine will.
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter