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“Mortals plan, the gods laugh.”
Eldar saying
In my long and misspent life, I’ve often found myself in hideous scrapes and thinking “If only I had known this might happen, I would have happily endured X horrible thing for the sake of avoiding it.” Encountering Necrons, for example. Few hyperbolically awful things would be too awful for the sake of avoiding those soulless mechanical monsters.
Indeed, I’ve often found myself in hideous scrapes through my attempts to avoid other hideous scrapes—the Hero of the Imperium’s terrible luck once again coming into play. There are many times when I’ve volunteered for an unpleasant mission on the understanding that it would avoid some other, more unpleasant mission, when it would instead ultimately lead to a far more unpleasant and murderously difficult mission instead.
It kept happening, yet I kept trying. Never let it be said that I’ve shirked the challenge of shirking a challenge.
Upon discovering myself to be dead, in the Warp, and likely an Imperial saint, however, I had to admit that I was stumped for alternatives. What could I possibly have done differently to shirk this, aside from never dying at all?
I did suppose—as I rested there in the warm darkness of nonexistence with the terrible sense that I had once again personally been targeted by some creatively vindictive evil power—that I could have taken steps to kill the myth of the Hero of the Imperium. It was as the Hero of the Imperium that I had been feted, honored, commemorated, and now offered to after death. If only I had had the guts to ‘fess up, I could have been decently and quietly executed and not left to worry about the Warp getting its tendrils into me.
But in all honesty, I rarely sought to grow that fraudulent reputation once I’d been saddled with it. Laurels were quite comfortable to rest on, and I knew it. Occasionally feeding the reputation a few morsels to keep it alive was all I aimed for. It was my bad luck that had done the rest, feeding that reputation to the bursting point.
Oh, I could have killed it easily enough. If I didn’t mind killing myself. If I had done the various things that might have deliberately ruined said reputation—such as letting Jurgen be eaten by tyranids—then I would have ended up in the Warp far sooner and in worse condition.
So I’d tried to maintain a balance of “alive, and liked enough to stay alive.” It seemed I’d overbalanced and landed on the side of … saint?
St. Ciaphas. What a frakking joke.
But as I took stock of my circumstances, I found my spirits (hah) rising. If not specifically alive, I was nonetheless conscious, and capable of defending myself when the need arose. I was not currently being called to task before the Golden Throne for my various lies and acts of cowardice. It seemed judgment on my immortal soul (such as it was) had been deferred for the moment. Since I preferred the possibility of survival to the near certainty of having the Emperor of Mankind issue His personal views on my conduct and subsequently having the aforementioned soul blasted to oblivion, then alive or not, I favored continued existence.
And finally, there was the matter of those called on me.
I served with Valhallan regiments for a long time. Though I ultimately made my home on Perlia, it was with the Valhallans that I first developed my fraudulent reputation for heroism, and my experiences with them shaped the course of my life. Most of the poor fools never twigged to what a fraud I was; the only one of them who ever voiced his suspicions had died many long years before me. Of the few real achievements in my long, worthless life, the unity of the Valhallan 597th was my finest.
It could be no coincidence that Valhallans called on me. Hadn’t I written, oh so proudly, that Cain’s Round was still a tradition there? Hadn’t I asked for tanna on the march across Perlia? Combine that with a few years, a dose of superstition, and the desperation of a tyranid attack, and it made a terrible sense that the men and women who believed in the Hero of the Imperium would offer tea to call him back.
And now I was a frakking Imperial saint. And I didn’t even have bloody Jurgen at my side to smooth the way.
The thought of Jurgen brought me up short. Until now, my awareness of the current mess had come on gradually, punctuated by the battles that called me back and forth—like slumbering peacefully until you’re prodded into momentary consciousness by your lovely blonde sharp-toed bedmate. Now that the pieces were connected and I found myself looking towards an uncertain and terrifying future, it became clear that I would be facing that future alone.
Jurgen was a Blank, after all. Soulless, if you believed that possible in a living being or listened to Amberley’s Rakel on the subject. And as soulless beings had no presence in the Warp, his death had meant the true end of him.
Bollocks to that.
Despite his nature as a Blank and his attendant odor, skin diseases, and collection of porno-slates, I couldn’t believe that Jurgen was actually a soulless creature. Necrons were soulless, and they were unyielding, silent horrors draped in the flesh of their victims. Jurgen was efficient (if not in his personal hygiene), dogged, competent, loyal, faithful, a capable scrounger, a fine marksman, and a champion brewer of tea. No. Jurgen had a soul.
If his soul had gone to the Emperor (and his unquestioning belief would surely get him to the front of the line), then there would be no finding him again. Or if all of those things I had known about him were false and he had no soul, then he was as dead as anything possibly could be.
Either way, I would be going on by myself.
Which begged another question: going on to where?
It took an eternity, but I finally forced myself to open my eyes. Inwardly, my gut quailed at the thought of what I might see. This was the realm of madness, where hideous things that made origami out of men’s guts lived. One sight of a Warp-spawn was enough to last a lifetime … Which I no longer had, so perhaps the point was moot. Nonetheless, like a fool who can’t resist touching a hot engine block, I knew I had to open my eyes sooner or later.
For all that effort, my first clear-eyed sight of the Warp was a bit of a disappointment. It was dim and misty and warm. I floated in silence, surrounded by nothingness. If I had to assign a color to it, it was a sort of greenish-purple.
I waggled my legs a bit, astonished to find I still had them. In fact, I seemed to have all of me. Looking down at myself, I saw the uniform of a commissar, with scuffed boots and that persistent worn spot in the leather of my right glove where the chainsword tended to rub when I gripped it too tightly. The chainsword was there, too—a proper Argus Mark 3, the model I’d carried through most of my career. They were putting the Mark 4s into active service around the time I retired to Perlia, and the Mark 4.1s had an adjusted grip, but good old Arg Three was the one I knew best.
Everything felt real, even as I floated in the vaguely purplish void. I patted myself down, checking that everything was in place—both the uniform and the contents thereof.
“What the frak?” Two of my fingers were augmetic. I squinted at them in the dimness of the void. I wasn’t even alive any more, but I still had scuffed boots and augmetic fingers?
Later, I would learn that my new form was partially dictated by my own thoughts. The Warp is the land of mind and soul and nightmares, and someone with a strong image of himself stands a better chance of retaining solid form. Somewhere in my head, I was still Commissar Ciaphas Cain of the 597th, probably on deployment to some nightmare world and in the middle of an assignment I would’ve preferred to shirk. And Commissar Ciaphas Cain had had augmetic fingers much longer than he had natural ones, ergo …
(Mind you, Amberley’s savant would probably tell you that that’s all wrong. I leave theology and philosophy to the scroll-sniffers.)
At the time, it all felt like a bit of an insult. Imperial Saints were said to be transcendent, terrifying things, robed in flame and the glory of the Emperor. Troopers spoke of them in hushed whispers. Officers and the Munitorum declined to speak on the topic, fearing of treading into heresy. The sight of an Imperial Saint should strike terror into all who beheld them.
They must have been disappointed when I showed up.
* * *
Now that my eyes were opened (in more senses than one), it seemed foolish to close them again. They say ignorance is bliss, but “they” must be pleasure-world elites, because ignorance has always been frakking terrifying to me. If something out there wants to eat me or steal my soul, I want to know it, so I can hightail it in the other direction. The thought of trying to put myself back to sleep in the Warp felt like visiting a Tyranid hive with grox sauce on my clothes and a dinner bell around my neck.
Lacking other options, I picked a random direction and started walking. There was nothing underfoot, so I paddled my feet rather uselessly in nothingness for a few moments, but then the Warp seemed to catch on. A road appeared under my feet, reassuringly solid permacrete.
The road was flat and blank at first. When I looked closer, it began to develop cracks and crevices, like a road on any Imperial world. If I looked away, the details would linger for a moment before fading, and take a second or two to return when I looked back. The Warp responded to my thoughts, shaping things as I pleased.
That gave me a frakking bad turn. Once you realize that that the things you think of are real, how can you not think of horrors?
Emeli popped into existence, ten feet tall and naked as a blade. I made a noise like a startled traki and leaped a mile before I realized she had none of the terrifying presence that I’d associated with the Slaaneshi sorceress.
“Ciaphas,” she crooned. “I hoped you’d call on me.”
“You’re not her,” I told the illusion. “You’re some kind of holo I’ve conjured up. Frak off.”
“Oh, that’s no way to talk,” she said. “Come play with me.”
The full hips swayed as she sauntered towards me, her bared sex at face-height. I kept my gaze turned resolutely away and muttered a few words of the Litany of Chastity—one I’d never seen much use for in my professional career, but which suddenly seemed very important. Emperor, where was Jurgen when I needed him?
The thought barely crossed my mind before Jurgen appeared beside me. He looked as he always did in my mind: still dark-haired and somewhat young, eternally unshaven and malodorous, with a flask of tea in one hand and a meltagun slung over his shoulder.
“You called, commissar?” he said. The phantom Emeli pouted and faded into shreds of mist, which dispersed into the vague darkness on either side of the road.
“Thank the Emperor!” I said. “Are you all right? This seems to be …”
And then I remembered, and looked at the figure next to me. Bad-smelling, certainly, but not catastrophically so. And the odor wafting from the tanna flask was a mere shadow of its ordinary enticing self.
“You’re not him,” I said.
“No, sir,” said the phony Jurgen placidly. “Tea?”
“What are you? Some kind of Warp spirit?”
“Don’t know about that stuff, sir. Maybe ask the Inquisitor?”
He—it—had barely said the words before a shape began to form in the air. A slim, sleek shape with a flash of blonde. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to think of anything else: hives, tunnels, blood on the ice, cave falls, those horrible interminable receptions with the governor’s council on Comnenos III. The slim shape dissipated before it had fully formed.
“Anything else you need, commissar?” said the shadow of my aide.
For a moment, I considered keeping it. The mere fact that I’d not been immediately slaughtered by Warpspawn suggested that my new powers of sainthood protected me in this place; nonetheless, I was walking an imaginary road simply for the sake of walking it, and there could be no possible destination or company here. Even the vague approximation of Jurgen, carrying a vague approximation of tanna and a melta, would be welcome.
But it wasn’t Jurgen, and I didn’t intend to let the Ruinous Powers get even a shred of an inch of a hold on me. Nurgle, after all, is the vile god of complacency and stagnation. If I leaned on the image of my aide as a crutch, I could be inviting something much smellier into my vicinity.
I sighed. “No. Dismissed.”
The false Jurgen nodded and faded away. Despite my determination, I felt a stab of regret at the silence. I would miss having someone by my side. Even an animal would relieve the silence.
At which point, my imagination immediately conjured up a raging ambull.
It took some time to get my wild thoughts under control, and it was a damned good thing I couldn’t die of exhaustion or fear in this new form. I must have covered a good ten kloms of Warp while running for my life from everything that lived in my own memories.
* * *
I stopped at a camp by the side of the road, which didn’t exist until I imagined it. I pictured a plain canvas tent like the ones we’d used on Perlia, and the Warp supplied it, complete with a patch of Perlian desert dust and a lantern that cast a cheerful orange glow into the dimness around us. I hadn’t changed my views on sleeping in the Warp—not when my imagination still kept randomly popping Necrons into existence—but I needed something, anything, to break up the monotony.
As I sat down, though, a thought occurred to me. And I laughed out loud.
Necrons! By the Emperor! Necrons were soulless. If Jurgen couldn’t be here, Necrons were certainly barred from the Warp as well.
This time, I deliberately pictured a Necron. The ugliest one I could think of, covered in flayed flesh. It appeared, as gruesome as ever.
I rose and looked it straight in its dead eyes. Then I waved a hand.
“Dismissed,” I told it.
The Necron vanished.
I could have sobbed with relief. I was still trapped in the Warp, still facing an uncertain future, still a coward and a liar—but the blank-faced mechanical horrors that had haunted me for over a century were gone. As long as I remained here, in this place of souls, the Necrons couldn’t reach me.
As I sat down on a camp stool that obligingly manifested itself, I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. The Emperor’s grace, or the Valhallans’ strength of belief, protected me from the monsters of the Warp. And the Warp itself, by its very nature, protected me from the Necrons.
I stretched out to put my feet up, but something tugged at the back of my coat. My palms began to tingle. Something was drawing on me. The Warp shivered around me and cracked like a cheap wineglass.
For the first time, I heard the prayers.
“-- please, come to us—“
“--you marched across—“
“--accept this offering—“
The Warp gaped open. I fell as gravity took hold of me again. I drew my chainsword and stretched out my wings.
Wait. Wings?
The exultation of my sudden fearlessness melted away as I landed on dry, cracked earth. I looked up, ignoring the people around me, and tried to twist to get a good look at myself and my new additions.
Yes. Wings. Not white, like those on the icons of the Holy Sanguinius. I suppose that wouldn’t be appropriate. Mine were black with a dull sheen, but their tips were gilded like the skull on a commissar’s cap. The whole affair was lit with a burning glow, like hot metal. Rather dramatically tasteless. I suppose it’s what you get when you ask grunts to imagine a commissar-saint.
Also, they were definitely new. I didn’t remember much of some of my sojourns in the materium, but I definitely didn’t have wings. They would have thrown off my balance.
As I turned, I began to get a better look at the faces around me. Not Valhallans this time. Tallarns.
Frakking Tallarns?
I was on a desert planet, under a cloudless, hot blue sky and twin scorching suns. The earth had been boiled so dry that it wasn’t even sand, just hard cracked clay. I was surrounded by a good hundred Tallarn guardsmen, all lower-ranked. There was only a single chaplain with them, and he was white as milk under his heavy tan, gaping like an agri-worlder getting his first look at a hive.
“What in the steaming sump is going on here?” I wanted to say. But the power of their belief had me in its grip. I simply couldn’t make the unheroic, unSaintly words leave my mouth.
In a wave, the Tallarns fell to their knees. They bowed their heads and raised their hands in the holy aquila, chanting my name. The chaplain shook like a leaf as he held up a cup of tea.
I looked around. Nothing seemed to be attacking the Tallarns: indeed, this little farce seemed to be playing out on the edge of a well-fortified camp in the middle of nothing and nowhere. The lack of officers and the dearth of chaplains (Tallarns had chaplains like Valhallans had samovars) suggested that this wasn’t an official exercise.
“G-glory to the Emperor!” the chaplain choked out. The teacup shook in his trembling hand, threatening to spill the liquid. My throat ached, horribly dry.
“What need do you have of me?” I said. I meant to say “Explain yourself, frakhead,” but once again the Sainthood choked me.
“We—we, we wished to see …” The chaplain’s grip on the cup was white-knuckled. “To see, and to put the lie … put the lie to the rumors …”
I looked around at the kneeling men. More than one had his face buried in the dirt, praying as if his life depended on it.
And once more, as I had with Drere, I saw them. My unnatural senses opened their minds and histories to me like a general-access dataslate.
I saw men of faith. Men of a hard, hidebound faith, who believed very little that came from the other, degenerate regiments of the Guard. Who heard, and could not believe, that a Saint had come to the drunken fools of the Valhallans.
Their officers and leaders said nothing about it to them. The rumors were ignored. But the rank and file were outraged by the stories. Why would the Valhallans witness the manifestation of the Emperor’s Will, while His most faithful servants received no such sign? What trick do they say summons this so-called Saint? Get the tea, Corporal Sayyid, and we’ll prove them liars!
I was right. This lot deserved commissars like Beije.
But they believed in the Emperor. They believed so fervently, so fully, that their strength of belief was enough. They believed that if a Saint would come to the Valhallans, it must come to them.
And apparently, they also revered me as a prophet.
It’s a damned good thing they were all busy being flattened by the manifested glory of St. Ciaphas the Two-Faced, because black-winged flaming glory or no I must have gaped like a dying fish when I plucked that little tidbit out of their minds. Decades before, some fool sergeant of theirs had witnessed my confrontation with Emeli (the real one) and carried it back to them. The higher-ups officially condemned it, which meant it spread like wildfire among the men.
I was highly tempted to see if I could do some smiting. Saints were always smiting things in the stories. But my thirst was burning me up, and the sheer fervor of their belief kept me behaving myself.
With effort, I stopped myself from immediately reaching for the tea.
“Hear this,” I said. You frakking Emperor-bothering groxheads. “The Emperor’s servants are not to be toyed with.” Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m not a damned commissar. “Be thankful you are spared this day.” If I ever get my hands on your souls, you’ll be scrubbing the entire immaterium with your toothbrushes.
“Y-yes,” the chaplain stammered. He held up the teacup. “W-we thank you, oh great one …”
The belief jabbed at me. I took the teacup and lifted it to my lips.
Only Sainthood kept me from screaming as the tea touched my tongue. Something terrible had happened to the tanna. It was cold and sweet, steeped to death and laced with some kind of tart juice. A slurry of sucrose filled the bottom of the cup. It was cold-brewed heresy.
Already, the Warp was calling me back. The bargain was fulfilled: the Saint disappeared once he drank his offering. But I summoned all of my will and crushed the teacup, scattering sticky-sweet ceramic shards all over the ground. The Tallarns flinched and scrambled back.
I was never so happy to fall into the Warp in all my life. My tongue and throat felt coated, like I’d drunk a gallon of syrup.
It seemed there were more downsides to immortality than I’d ever imagined. Hopefully, St. Celestine didn’t have to put up with this nonsense.