Warhammer 40,000: Scavenge, Strike, Extract — Hive Tenebris

In the end, Kian threw up his hands.

"Fine, that's just how it is. If you're convinced I'm tainted by Chaos, then go ahead, ignore the plain fact that I saved your entire Chapter, throw human decency and basic morality out the window, and play out the space opera version of the farmer and the viper by cutting me down right here. Live with the guilt afterward, the self-loathing, the regret eating you alive from the inside for the rest of your days.

And then someday, when you fall to some stronger foe and your soul returns to the Golden Throne, you'll kneel before the Emperor and ask him: Your Majesty, your children are suffering, why didn't you save them?

And the Emperor will look down at you and say: My child, I sent a living saint to save mankind. And you killed him.

And you'll weep. You'll sob and wail, you'll retch, you'll scream into the void, you'll slide dramatically down a wall clutching your chest, shaking uncontrollably, gasping for breath, collapsing to the floor, tearing at your own hair, pounding the ground, howling like a banshee, hyperventilating, drowning in your own tears, curling into a ball, crying until your vision blurs, slamming your fists against the floor again and again, screaming loud enough to shatter eardrums."

Chaplain Reisach smacked his own palm against his face, wearing an expression of pure exhaustion.

"Enough, enough! I'm begging you, stop talking!!"

Facing this man felt like standing in front of a Greater Daemon. He talked entirely too much.

"I never said I was going to do anything to you. The Emperor's light still shines on you clear as day, there's no way you've betrayed him.

But it seems something evil has its eye on you too, and that's something I can't just overlook."

Under Kian's watchful gaze, Reisach pulled out a special scripture text and a set of ancient-looking tattooing tools.

"Count Voss, you carry the Emperor's favor. His psychic power lives within you.

But your enemies may have noticed that favor too, and they'll want to snuff you out to further their own dark ends.

Which means you need to strengthen your protection."

Kian eyed the scripture and the tools warily. "You're not about to tattoo that whole thing onto me, are you?"

Reisach nodded gravely.

"This scripture was written by a living saint who spent his entire life hunting daemons. Reciting it brings calm and clarity, and drives out daemonic whispers.

Tattoo it onto your body, and it will guard both your flesh and your soul."

Kian frowned. He wasn't fond of tattoos. He liked his skin smooth, thank you very much.

"Can we do something else? I'm not really a tattoo guy."

Reisach had already picked up the tattooing tools. Seeing Kian's reaction, he said, exasperated:

"It's just a tattoo. Why are you acting like this is a death sentence?

Some of the Ecclesiarchy's most devout would kill for the chance to have the holy texts inked across their whole face and body. It's practically a badge of honor."

Kian shook his head like a rattle drum.

"Not doing it. Gives me the creeps.

Have you seen the size of that book? It's thick enough to use as a brick. If you tattoo the whole thing on me there won't be an inch of skin left."

Reisach snapped, "This is for protection against daemons! Have some sense of priorities!"

Kian pulled up the system for a quick glance. In just this short exchange, his Chaos corruption had already ticked up another two points.

He thought it over, then said, "The scripture just has to be on me for it to work, right? Does it have to go on the skin? Can it go somewhere else?"

Reisach nodded.

"It can, technically. But it's a lot more painful.

We'd need to cut your skin open, burn the scripture into the muscle underneath with a branding stylus, then lay the skin back over it. That way the text won't be visible anywhere on your body. Happy now?"

Kian nodded eagerly.

"That works, that works great. Let's do that one!"

Reisach called in a few medical servitors as assistants. Kian lay down on the advanced medical bed, rubbed on some numbing balm, and let the servitors go to work peeling back his skin.

Once the skin was folded aside, Reisach took up a self-heating stylus-blade and began carefully inscribing the scripture, line by line, into Kian's raw exposed muscle, muttering to himself as he worked:

"This is sacred inscription, an acceptance of the Emperor's blessing.

The one receiving it should forgo any pain relief, and let the suffering itself teach him the true meaning of that blessing."

Kian, meanwhile, had a handheld game console out and wasn't even looking at Reisach.

"Ha, no thanks, we don't need to suffer for it. We tough it out because we're Imperial citizens, is that it?

The Emperor never said anything like that. You people just made this rule up yourselves. There's numbing balm right there, why grit your teeth through it like an idiot?"

For three straight days, Kian lay on the medical bed, letting the servitors keep his skin peeled back while Reisach worked the self-heating stylus across his muscle, line after line of scripture.

When it was finally finished, Kian's skin healed back over, smooth and unmarked, not a trace of a tattoo or a scar anywhere.

But underneath the skin, layered across the muscle, the scripture now covered him entirely.

Reisach set down his tools and said, "Now, join me and recite the scripture with reverence, and the Emperor will shield your soul and your body from the reach of Chaos."

Kian took stock of the change in his body and said, "No need."

While Reisach watched, puzzled, Kian channeled his psychic power and pushed it into the scripture layered beneath his skin.

The next instant, the inscription lit up with a faint golden glow, the light shining straight through skin and tissue, visible on the surface of his body.

Kian looked down at the golden script glowing across his skin, felt the wave of raw sanctity pouring off it, and checked the system. The Chaos corruption reading had dropped straight to zero.

He found it fascinating. The scripture branded into his muscle apparently had a psychic amplification and retention effect.

Whenever he channeled psychic energy into it, the script would flare gold, saturating his internal state with the Emperor's holy power.

And in the face of that concentrated divine energy, the accumulated Chaos corruption simply couldn't hold on. It burned away naturally.

The catch was that the moment he stopped feeding it psychic power, the golden script on his skin would fade, and the corruption would start creeping back in.

Which meant he'd need to periodically "recharge" the scripture to zero out the corruption.

Kian thought this was actually pretty cool. Every time he charged it up, the script beneath his skin would flare gold and shine through onto the surface.

It reminded him of one of those old holy portraits of the Emperor. Genuinely divine.

☆☆☆

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