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1.
It was all pain. All Balthiel could feel were just different textures and flavors of agony, hot and cold, grating and slicing, tearing and compressing, all at once. He couldn’t even put words to it, or to himself, his own name just a distant thing, like a ribbon dancing over a pyre of blue hot flame.
He had gone too far, he knew. He’d known it at the time, but what choice had he had? To conserve his power, the job unfinished, return to his awareness too weak to fight with his mundane weapons? To then die, one hand’s breadth short of the goal?
But he still hurt, which meant only one thing: he still lived.
It did not feel like a consolation, but it was. He was still alive, and under the pain he could hear something, a soft rumble like a thunderstorm or waves, pushing him or bearing him…somewhere in the roiling darkness.
“Gggnnnnh.” A sound of grit-toothed misery, and it took Balthiel a long moment to recognize that that stretched sound was his own voice.
And then movement, and he recognized it as his own body, shifting and writhing, trying to find a way away from the pain.
The thunder rumble stopped, paused, like a wave held in abeyance somehow, and then words, words that took time to coalesce from some random sounds. “Nisroc is coming.”
He made a sound back, and even to his own ears it sounded pathetic, so he bit down on it, spending his thin attention in trying to refind his awareness in his body–legs, arms, skin still crackling and tight with cold.
Warp sickness. That’s what it was. He had pushed too far, spent too much time and too open in his draw in the Warp, and his body was wracked with it. He concentrated on trying to see, and vision began resolving–the soft glow of candles, a hulking shape next to him, that had the feel of another Astartes. The source of the voice, and the source of the thunderous rumbling earlier, he realized, as the voice began again, a book open on his armored thighs, reading over a litany of the Librarius.
A litany, to protect him, Balthiel, while he lay, wracked and unable to defend himself. The litany could have failed, and he could have fallen to the Warp, daemons using his soul to tear his way inside the Victus.
A memory bubbled up to him: lying on the ground, his clothing–not Astartes armor but the tunic and pants he had donned to fit in to the cult–clotted with gore, sticky and reeking, and the pulse of his teleportation beacon like a slow heartbeat, dragging him under into sus-an, but something felt wrong. It was taking too long and he was slipping, and the hard yank of teleportation that he’d been bracing for wasn’t coming, and he looked over and his beacon was damaged, probably from him pulling himself out of synch with time.
Stupid, he had thought. Stupid to be the careless instrument of one’s own destruction.
He could faintly hear the sounds of combat, approaching: the rest of the cult coming to the aid of their dead comrades no doubt, armed and ready to kill, and Balthiel helpless to do anything about it, reduced to merely eyes that could fadingly see and ears that could faintly hear.
And then a boom, like the earth splitting, and then he felt hands on him, and he braced for the wounds that would come, but the hands on him were dull red, armor, and he took the last of his strength to tilt his head back, to see a helmet, a dark Astartes helmet, heavy with laurels, looking down at him, the faceplate spattered with vitae, the sound of power armor achingly familiar. The other tapped his own teleportation beacon, flaring out bright, undamaged, as he bent to scoop up Balthiel’s broken, unarmored form. Harahel’s voice, and Harahel’s ornate armor. “Got him. He’s still alive.”
“Dangerous,” he said, or tried to say, his voice coming out cracked and strained. Dangerous. Foolish. Both coming for him then, and now, risking himself to speak prayers to safeguard Balthiel as he lay helpless.
The voice did not stop, and in the flickering glow of candles he could start to make out more details, beyond the armor--gouges on the pauldrons, the head of helmet-flattened wheatblond curls, the head still bent over the book as one hand reached beside him to hold up a volkite pistol, and lay it down again. An answer to Balthiel’s protest--a weapon that would have ended the threat in one blue hot burst of plasma.
Balthiel managed a snort that came out his nose with a bubble of blood.
“Smarter than you look,” he managed, trying to claw his way back to himself.
“Shut up,” Harahel said, pausing between verses of his litany, before his voice once again settled into the steady rumble of prayer, the sound that had pulled Balthiel from the abyss of the warpsickness, that had kept his soul safe until he was, as he was now, able and ready to take over that responsibility himself. “Shut the hell up, Balthiel.”
2.
“My day would be much improved if you would stop being an idiot.” One problem with being an empath in the Flesh Tearers, beyond the obvious (being an empath in a Chapter built on unreasonable rage) was that everyone seemed, at times, dedicated to making his life hard. He had his own rage to deal with, without the extra burden of others’.
Case in point: Harahel right now, pacing back and forth, his huge form already filling the room, forcing Balthiel back to the edges to avoid getting bumped into.
“We need a way OUT of here!” Harahel yelled, his voice rocketing around the small room, which didn’t improve anything, and certainly didn’t create a magical way out. Balthiel would point that out to him, except that he could feel that Harahel, caged, trapped, his skill set helpless in getting them out of this.
The decking had given way under them–under Harahel’s weight, most likely, but Balthiel knew better than to point that out–and they had tumbled, together, down, slamming through rusted construction, metal grating piling over them when they landed in a space that was not supposed to be a room, but an area in the ship’s generatorium, and the weight of all they had fallen through forming a jagged, groaning roof and sidewall.
It was probably a metaphor, but Balthiel didn’t have the time or patience for that. Not with Harahel, for the fiftieth time, storming around the enclosed space, his armor’s lumens picking up scratches in the metal, wild swings as it followed Harahel’s pacing. They had tried pushing, and Harahel had tried one abortive attempt at shooting their way out, but the high WHIIING of the ricochet had convinced even him that that was not an experiment to be repeated.
“We won’t yell our way out,” Balthiel said, trying to be reasonable. Trying to, because it was a struggle to even try at this point, Harahel’s rage suffusing the air like the stink of fresh blood.
“The battle is out there!” Harahel howled, and pointed, and then realized he was pointing at the only blank solid wall in the place, and then swung his hand around, angrily, elsewhere. The battle was raging outside of their trapped little bubble of rage, and he, the Company Champion, was stuck in here, waiting, helplessly for rescue.
It was humiliating, it was frustrating, and it was driving him mad.
“You will be still!” Balthiel yelled, his own voice ringing around like a secondary ricochet. He needed time and peace to think, to reach out with his gifts, find where others were, maybe find a solution. He needed just a few minutes with his head clear, and without the weight of Harahel’s wrath pummelling against his concentration.
Harahel took it, as he did almost everything, as a challenge. “Or else what?” He rounded on Balthiel, hands curled into massive fists.
Balthiel was in no mood for it. “You will calm yourself,” he said, stepping closer, a snarl curling his own lips, “Or I will reach in and calm you down for you.”
“You will stay away from my head, witchblood.” The fists tightened, so much that the bodyglove’s fabric squeaked in protest. He had intended the name to hurt. Which was why Balthiel refused to let it, letting his snarl turn into a sour grin. “Then control it yourself, Champion.” It didn’t have the same ring as ‘witchblood’ but it did recall Harahel to himself, somewhat, with an accusation of what he should be living up to.
Harahel shoved Balthiel backwards, against one of the support columns that had held the crashing panels away from them, his eyes red and hot.
Balthiel shoved back. He didn’t need his gifts to realize that Harahel was on the brink of being lost, and so he pushed, to create space between them.
He tried to tug his glove off, realizing too late that the fall had damaged his armor, crimping the ceramite too tightly for him to remove without aid. Problem.
Easily sorted, though he hated to think about it.
So don’t think, he told himself, tugging one of his spare knives from his other vambrace. He used his power to push Harahel backwards, against the far column, pinning him still. Stillness, at least, if not silence, as Harahel snarled at him, eyes wild over a mouth curled into a sharp toothed snarl as Balthiel approached.
“No.”
“My blood or my touch.” He wasn’t thrilled about it either. It would be easier, quicker, less…awful to just reach into Harahel’s mind, leaching the worst of the rage away before it caught fire and he was too far gone. And he hoped that his ultimatum would get through to Harahel, his thoughts clouded by frustration and the curse of their chapter.
Harahel’s eyes followed the movement of the knife’s blade raised to the side of Balthiel’s neck, slicing through the thick collar of his bodyglove, exposing the side of his throat, and there was something about the way his eyes lingered on the exposed spacer-pale skin of Balthiel’s throat that gave just enough warning which option he would take.
Harahel lunged, his mouth scalding hot on Balthiel’s throat, his canines two small pinches through the skin, fast and flawless in aim. Balthiel tilted his head out of the way, baring more of it, offering more of his skin to Harahel, feeling the sharp pull as Harahel sucked out some of his blood, and then the slow linger, as the blood hit Harahel’s senses. The rage ebbed, flooded out, replaced by the memories from Balthiel’s blood. Balthiel didn’t know, didn’t want to know, didn’t even want to imagine what a non psyker would pull from his blood. All their kind fed on memories from the blood--it was part of the attraction of it, the need of it, not just the chemicals of iron and plasma, but the life that had lived it, the heart that had circulated it.
Harahel stepped back, detaching slowly, first loosing his hands that had gripped around Balthiel’s Librarius blue armor, then shifting his weight back, mouth still partially open, Balthiel’s blood glazing his lips, the red haze of madness fading from his eyes.
Balthiel could feel the final trickle of blood against his throat, welling along the remnants of his bodyglove collar, the twin wounds already healing, hating the vulnerability, both physical and through his blood, that he had just endured.
“Good,” he said, stepping back from Harahel, bringing one still-gloved hand up to his brow, drawing upon his gifts, finally, unclouded by Harahel's wrath. “Let’s get out of here.”
3.
Balthiel hated tyranids. Ever since Baal, he had developed a loathing for them that surpassed any other. He was sick of the sound of them, the smell of them, the way they clotted through the warp, making his draw of power harder and dirtier, like drinking from a polluted stream.
It didn’t stop him from fighting them, and fighting well, with the fury of someone who had seen the creatures almost overwhelm a world, seen them overwhelm entire units, destroying proud legacies of valor with their repugnant, single-minded hunger.
He had forged his way to the front of the battle line, under the initial excuse of escorting Nisroc to the wounded, under a hard kine shield.
That had been true, and Nisroc had been grateful for it, in his way, and Balthiel had taken the moment to slip closer, muttering the litanies of control to stabilize him as he opened up more of his will to the Warp.
It felt polluted, by the tyranids, like showering in sewage, but it was Warp energy nonetheless, dirty but powerful, and he found a kind of vile fierce joy in flinging the contaminated energy back at those who had polluted it.
He had read, during his studies of biomancy, that at one point there had been sorcery designed to heal, and it had puzzled him then, as it did now, thinking, ‘what luxury did these people live in where they could use their gifts to do anything other than simply survive?’ It had surpassed his understanding. It still did, but sometimes, even in the middle of combat, he wondered: If he could do so much damage, could he do also so much healing?
A question he knew he’d never have an answer to, because there would never be time to dig out those tomes from the Librarius and try to bend his mind and his will that way. Time and study were rare, and each moment off the battlefield had to be spent honing all the weapons in their arsenals.
There simply wasn’t time.
And sometimes he thought that even that distant regret was a weakness to be expunged, a softness, unbearable, in him.
Which goaded him to fight harder, in an attempt to burn it out of him.
And then, the battle was over, and everything was the reek of the dead xenos, cooking in their own filth, and it was all Balthiel could do to stagger back to the Thunderhawk, blood streaming from his eyes and nose, and fold himself down, like a child, among the emptied ammunition crates for the ride home.
“You.”
A hand, hauling him up, and Balthiel could feel the fading thrum of the Thunderhawk’s engines as they cycled down. They were back on board the Victus, and he had…rested during the trip, managing to fold his hands into one of the mudras of strength, muttering one of the incantations of strength to goad himself to recover.
“You,” he said, back, trying to grasp at some dignity as Harahel hauled him bodily off the ground. If he didn’t know better, he would have speculated that Harahel had some latent psyker ability of his own, solely aimed at his prodigious strength.
He could feel Harahel’s eyes on him, studying the flaking streaks of dried blood on his face, and there was a pause while Harahel unsealed his helmet, lifting it off, so Balthiel could feel that gaze under Harahel’s cornflower blue eyes, as well.
“You push too far, Librarian,” Harahel said, and Balthiel remembered, suddenly, the time he had had to offer his blood in the space hulk to cool the rising thirst in Harahel. It had been a last resort, and Harahel had studiously avoided him since, so he'd imagined his question about what his blood would give to a non psyker had been answered in deed, if not in word.
At least he thought.
“I do what we all do: fight with everything I have.” He managed a sharp nod at Harahel’s armor, stained and damaged, scored in parts by the vicious claws of their tyranid foe.
“I risk only death,” Harahel countered. “You risk–”
“Do not condescend to teach me what I risk.” He knew, all too well. Every draw on the Warp was a gamble, lighting up like a flare to the Ruinous Powers. He could feel them, from time to time, huge and heavy, swimming by him in the aether. It was always and ever a matter of time and luck that he survived. His mouth twisted into a scowl. Witchblood, Harahel had called him. Witchblood he was: a mutant, one born with unnatural powers, dangerous powers. “My ‘gift’ is anathema. What better use for it than to burn it out in duty?” And hope, wanly, thinly, that the Emperor would protect what was left?
Harahel said nothing, for a moment, as if digesting the words along with the memory of blood, and then he moved, and Balthiel could have darted away, but there was no place to move to, surrounded by crates. Harahel jammed him up against the crates, his armor’s power pack ringing against the empty crate, and then Harahel’s mouth was covering his before he could even formulate a sound of surprise.
Balthiel felt the heat of Harahel’s mouth on his, the sharp flick of his tongue against Balthiel’s own fangs, insisting and teasing by turns. Harahel’s hands briefly cupped under Balthiel’s chin, palms against the sides of his throat, feeling the suddenly racing pulses of his hearts, guiding him into the kiss.
One hand dropped, then, curling around the tasset of Balthiel’s left hip, jerking him closer, before the fingers slid behind the armor to graze over Balthiel’s thigh.
It felt electric, somehow, as though the air was charged between them, and Balthiel felt the rage and confusion drain out of him, replaced by some softer, but equally insistent heat. A soft sound, like a moan, built in his throat, his own hands clinging, suddenly, to the hard ceramite pauldrons of Harahel’s heavy armor.
Harahel withdrew from the kiss, just a few millimeters, just enough for the air to become words between them, his eyes lidded with an unspoken want. “Shut up, witchblood,” he muttered, before closing the distance between their mouths again, tongue exploring and insistent. But this time the term wasn't an insult somehow, but an intimacy, and an acceptance.
Balthiel lifted one hand, running it through the soft golden curls, sweat-flattened to Harahel’s head, the hair soft and pliable, unlike its owner, gleaming even in the dim light of the cargo bay, and he arched himself closer to Harahel, feeling the heat seeping out through gaps in his armor, almost begging for hands to touch them, and he felt a surge of some inchoate want from Harahel, a protest flattening to a need, as he reached into Harahel's mind to retort.
+No.+