Work Text:
Breathe.
In. Out. In. O –
Another flash of blindingly bright light interrupted the dim flickering, accompanied by the sound of screeching metal, harsh and grating and strangely distorted over the speakers. Another flash of pain as her body seized, the bitter, metallic taste of blood filling her mouth from where she must have bitten her tongue.
Curled up on the cold floor, eyes clenched shut and hands pressed over her ears, Helena tried once again to steady her breathing as the pain faded into the familiar dull throbbing that had become her constant companion on this journey.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In…
Helena’s body tensed in anticipation of another burst of light and sound assaulting her senses, her jaw aching from tightly clenched teeth, but nothing came. She tried to count to a hundred, but the effort made her head hurt with whatever drugs they had pumped into her, and so she went back to breathing, in, out, in, out, until her curiosity won and she carefully opened her eyes, squinting and ready to close them again in an instant if there was another flash of light.
Her cell was dark. Even the dimly flickering lumens had gone out, and only the silent crackling of electricity came from the speakers in the ceiling. Her head still ached and her body was sore from the days – weeks? months? – of tension and near-constant seizures, but the black fog on her mind had lifted ever so slightly, the prickling purplish hum of her powers weak but no longer entirely suppressed.
Cautiously she opened her mind, reaching out beyond the walls of her cell, past the holding vaults stifling-full with the bitter smog of her fellow psykers’ agony and despair, and towards the upper decks of the massive black ship she was being held on.
She tasted fear, confusion, the exhilaration of battle and the sharp, tangy crackle of sorcery, but before she could sense more she was slammed into a wall as the ship swerved suddenly, grav-plates humming as gravity reasserted itself. Helena tried to push herself up into a sitting position, but the attempt made her dizzy and so she remained curled up on the ground, something warm and wet dripping down her temple and onto the cold metal floor.
Something had gone wrong. Perhaps the Gellar field had failed, and they were all about to warp and mutate into something unspeakably horrifying. Helena considered that thought for a moment, and came to the conclusion that she would prefer that to spending another minute on this ship. She didn’t think unspeakably horrifying somethings got headaches.
She could not say how long she lay there, the darkness and silence a welcome respite even as her head continued to throb, fading in and out of consciousness while the warp-tendrils of her psy-sense crept through the vaults and hallways beyond her cell, the taste of battle and fear lingering on her tongue, though strangely now tempered with something almost like relief, faint and brittle and half-drowned by the ever-growing tang of sorcery but there nonetheless.
Power began to leak into her cell, bluish-purple and sharp and potent enough to make her skin prickle, and Helena thought that this, perhaps, was the Warp come to claim her at last.
Then there were voices in the corridor, low and distant and almost human.
“Master, we must go,” said one, quiet and urgent. “There is no time.”
“I will not leave this one behind,” the other replied, calm and steady. “Go on ahead. I will catch up with you.”
Footsteps approaching down the hall, the source of that strange power growing closer, making her head swim and her warp-senses purr, and then the heavily reinforced metal door of her cell was torn away as easily as cardboard. Light poured in, bright enough that she had to squint while her eyes adjusted, and there, in the cold flicker of the crackling blue warp-flame in his hand, she saw him.
A man, impossibly tall, so broad he had to turn to fit through the door and armoured like a tank. Only his head was not covered in teal and gold plate, his skin a cool brown, his hair red and coarse and tied back in thick battle-braids, his right eye burned away by the warp-fire just beneath his skin. There was blood on his armor, a sword and bolter strapped to his side, and he all but radiated psychic power, enough to drown out a shipload of psykers, but Helena did not fear him.
He had come for her, after all. I will not leave this one behind, he had said, and the knowledge, the simple fact that someone had come for her, the witch, the heretic, the accursed mutant, was enough to drown out all her pain, and without a conscious thought her powers reached for him.
“Yes,” he said, low and soft and gentler than anyone had spoken to her for as long as her scattered brain could remember. “Yes, you are powerful indeed, and well worth any risk.”
“Lord…” The word had left Helena’s cracked, blood-stained lips without a conscious thought, her voice hoarse from disuse, barely above a whisper.
The ship shook again, and the man looked up sharply, his eyes distant, as though listening to something far away.
“There is no time to linger,” he said. “Can you stand?”
Helena tried, holding onto the wall for support, forcing her weak and aching body to move, but her legs gave way beneath her before she could so much as take a step towards the door.
Strong arms caught her ere she could fall, effortlessly lifting her up and settling her against the man’s chestplate, holding her as though she weighed nothing. He carried her from her cell and through the maze of corridors that made up the bowels of the ship, his stride sure and confident, each step ringing loudly on the metal floor. Soon they had made it past the cells and containment vaults and up, to a higher level of the ship.
Here bodies littered the hallways. Guards, their blood staining the floor, some fallen to swords and bolters, others hideously warped, their faces twisted in agony. Helena felt grim pleasure at the sight. Let them suffer, if only for a moment, what she and the other psykers had suffered on this ship.
“We will make them all suffer,” the man said in a low growl that was comforting rather than frightening. “For Prospero, and for you.”
They had made it almost to the end of this hallway when the man tensed and shifted her in his arms so he was holding her with one hand, the other reaching for his bolter, and moments later Helena heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps around the corner.
“There he is!”
Helena grit her teeth at the hated voice of the Inquisitor, who rounded the corner with a unit of guards at his back.
“Kill the traitor!” he ordered, sparing Helena not a glance. “Let no heretic scum escape!”
For a moment her guardian stood still, and Helena felt the psychic power gathering around him like lightning crackling in the sky before a storm, and then, without warning and seemingly without fear, he charged.
The first row of guards raised their weapons, but before they could fire one began to scream, his eyes widening in horror as his body warped and twisted, his flesh melting and reforming. His screams echoed through the corridor as several of his companions fell to the same fate, but the remainder quickly recovered from the shock and opened fire, the rapid gunshots deafening in the narrow space.
Most of their bullets glanced off harmlessly on the man’s power armor, and even when one pierced his defenses and buried in his side he did not falter but continued to advance with his sword raised, and then he had reached them, cutting through their ranks with ease.
He felled them all. More and more came to take their place, but he waded through them like through grass, towering above them, all but impervious to their weapons, warp-flames flickering purple-blue on his armor.
And yet, immersed in the fight as he was, he did not see the inquisitor approaching from behind. Helena felt his presence before she saw him, zealous fury in his eyes and his slender blade in hand aiming for the man’s throat – and still not sparing even a glance for her.
The tempest raging within her grew louder, crackling-hot power clamoring to be unleashed upon this man who had taken everything from her, who had forced untold suffering unto her and countless others and who now tried to kill her savior, the one who had raised her from her torment and would take her from this wretched place.
Not on her watch.
She never could have done this had he looked at her for even a moment, but all his attention was on the man cutting down his soldiers like grass, and by the time he realised his mistake it was too late.
He did not even have time to scream as blood began to pour from his eyes, his mouth, his blade glancing harmlessly off the teal-and-gold armor as he fell to his knees, clutching his head as visions of the warp assailed his mind and his organs twisted within him. He met her eyes, a horrible gurgling sound escaping his throat, and lightning sprang from her fingertips, cutting it off in an instant.
His blade fell to the ground with a clang and her savior turned, seeing the charred remains of his would-be killer on the ground, still crackling with warp-fire.
The last remaining guards had fled, and for a moment it was quiet in the corridor, though Helena knew there would be more enemies before long. Still her savior took a moment to study the Inquisitor’s corpse, turning his face with the tip of his boot to look at the grotesque mutations wracking him.
“You saved my life,” he said, calm, matter-of-fact, but Helena thought she could hear a hint of surprise in his tone.
“You saved mine first,” she said, her throat still sore but her voice stronger now.
“How do you know that what awaits you with me is not worse than the fate I have taken you from here?”
She laughed, a dry, painful sound. “Nothing can be worse than that. If I must suffer and die, I’d rather die for you than the Imperium.”
He did not reply, but there was a flicker of approval in his eye, the corner of his mouth raising in a half-smile.
“We should go,” he said. “Our enemies may be driven back for now, but they will rally again before long. My brothers cannot hold them off forever.”
They hurried on. Helena rested her head on his shoulder, exhaustion taking hold even as her skin still prickled with the power she had unleashed. She had almost forgotten how good it felt to call upon the warp-tempest within her, to force reality itself to bend to her will, and to finally be free from the shackles placed on her mind and this close to a sorcerer so powerful the air around him crackled with energy was exhilarating.
The ship was labyrinthine, stairs and lifts and branching corridors stacked in a seemingly neverending maze, but her savior did not hesitate even once, his warp-senses guiding them so surely that they did not encounter more than a handful of guards, all easily dispatched of, until they reached the airlock.
There the Imperial forces were gathered in force, an entire regiment of guards along with the unit of battle-sisters aboard and the survivors of the Inquisitor’s retinue, all firing at the ship docked here. Men in teal and gold armor, all equally tall and broad as her savior, defended the docked ship, holding back the attackers with swords and bolters and psychic powers that shook the entire room, but Helena knew that they could not hold out forever.
“Macarius,” one called to her savior across the din of battle. “What shall we do?”
He looked around the room, warding off attacks with his psychic might alone, and Helena knew he had come to the same conclusion as her. He could not fight his way through such a force of enemies and reach the ship before it was overrun – not while also protecting her.
“Go,” he called to his brothers. “Bring our tribute to the Crimson King. Fate will provide for me.”
They obeyed without question. Moments later the latch of the ship had closed, the airlock shut, and Helena and Macarius were alone in a room with the full force of the Imperium aboard this ship.
His remaining eye met hers. “Do you trust me, little psyker?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He grinned, mirth in his eye and warp-fire flickering under his skin as he began to chant in a language as alien as the warp and as familiar as her own mind, and she felt his sorcery wrap around them both.
“Hold on tight, my friend.”
The Imperial forces charged at them but he paid them no heed, raising his arm above them and twisting his hand, the grating screech of metal almost lost in the clamor. Some of the guards turned in alarm as the floor began to shake beneath them, but too late.
With a final crack the hull of the ship tore open, and all that remained between Helena and the Warp was her savior’s protective shield.
The Imperial forces were not so lucky. They were dragged along as the air rushed out of the room, some torn apart by the sheer force of it, others already beginning to mutate as they drifted helplessly in the Immaterium.
Helena laughed, the sound bursting from her as the reality of her situation set in. She was alive, she was free, and those who had tried to cage her now suffered her agony tenfold while she floated in a sea of wonders, safe behind a shield of sorcery.
The Warp was beautiful and terrible all at once, awesome and awe-inspiring, so indescribably wondrous that to even think about it made her head swim, to put it into words impossible.
She could not say how long they drifted through the Immaterium, Macarius guiding them along its currents with unfaltering ease. Minutes or millennia might have passed by the time they entered realspace in the shadow of a great tower built upon an asteroid, the ship on which Macarius’ brothers had escaped docked at its spire and many-colored flames burning upon its peak.
Behind it lay an expanse of space filled with scattered stars and many-hued nebulae, vast and beautiful and shrouded in a shield of sorcery of near-incomprehensible power.
“Welcome to the realm of Magnus the Red,” Macarius said, his voice reverberating in their shared sphere of air. “Welcome home.”