"Things are very seldom what they seem. In my experience, they're
usually a damn sight worse." -Inquisitor Titus Drake
M31.005 11:40/Volk Primus, the Volk System/Site Theta-13, Hot Side
"No."
"No?"
"That can't be..." I said
"It is. I can see now that you're leaking warp energy like a broken faucet." The psyker told me.
"No, but... it can't," I said, my head cradled in my hands.
"Why not?" The psyker, ever insistent asked.
"Any number of reasons!" I said, putting on a brave face to refute the psyker's impossible claim.
"Like...?" The psyker, infinitely patient asked.
"Uh... Uh..." I said, slightly fumbling, "Don't most psykers know when they're kids? They'll, like, have a big meltdown and destroy a hab block, right?"
"Is that what you think of your kindred? Dangerous destructive children? Or is that how you view yourself?" the psyker raised an eyebrow.
I sputtered failing to form anything coherent, "Answer me! Stop avoiding my questions!"
"Fine. No, not all psykers have large explosive meltdowns at a young age. Some have large mental episodes, or rather a period of smaller, less notable episodes of intense psychosis paired with a number of inexplicable phenomena, such as premonitions, or bouts of extreme luck." The psyker explained, "I can tell that some of that struck home for you."
"Uh... Uh... Uh..." I couldn't think of any counterpoints, so I tried my best to calm myself. "What can I do about this."
"What can you do? I assume you find your possession of such a useful skillset to be distasteful." The psyker said.
"Wouldn't you?"
"I did at first, though, I have come to accept it."
Fuck that. the little voice in the back of my head thought. Freedom never comes through surrender.
"What can I do about this?" I repeated myself.
"Receive training, learn to use your powers, you said you had several premonitions? Learn to use that, and to summon them on command, hopefully without dying in the process." He was so calm as he spoke of death I almost wished to jump up and tear him to shreds, but suppressed the instinctively violent response.
"And I suppose you aren't going to help me without payment?" I responded with gritted teeth.
"I cannot spare the time to give you personal training. Even with payment. Sadly, that leaves you with very few options. There are only five psykers in the system, one of them is me, one is you, and the other three are astropaths. Lucky for you, those astropaths will be short on work, so you could probably convince one of them to go over the basics of controlling your powers and dealing with your leaks." He explained, "I also have a few tomes on covering every psykanic discipline there is. You may have them free of charge."
He stood and walked over to a bookshelf, from which he retrieved a trio of leather-bound books. He handed one to me and I began to skim through it on instinct, but opened to the first page of the book with the light chestnut brown cover, I stopped when I saw the name on the first page.
"Kalestro?" I asked.
"Tis' I." the psyker responded.
"Ah. I was wondering how I was going to ask for your name." I said, slightly embarrassed.
"You could've asked at any time," Kalestro responded.
I began to feel incredibly stupid, "Well, yes, but... it didn't feel like the right time."
"Well, you also haven't told me your name yet." Kalestro pointed out.
I gulped, and steadied myself, "Einherjr Nathaniel Miles. But most people just call me Einherjr, or a number of other addresses."
"Well then, Nathaniel, it is a pleasure making your acquaintance." The psyker held out his hand.
"It's a pleasure making your acquaintance as well, Kalestro the Hermit." I said, realizing a second later that the right thing to do would have been to say, 'The pleasure is all mine,' and cringing a little.
"Do you still want that reading?" Kalestro asked.
"I... Sure." I responded.
"Wonderful." The psyker began shuffling his deck of cards with small tricks, needlessly dangerous tricks; if what I knew about the use of the warp was true.
Before me, he laid out five cards, their backs to the sky.
He flipped over the first card, "The Ten of Swords." he said, before continuing, "This position in the spread represents the past, and the Ten of Swords is an ominous past indeed, it is a message of failures past, of bitterness and a cold ending. It depicts a man, face down in the dirt with ten swords in his back. He is undeniably dead."
My stomach dropped at his explanation, but he continued, flipping over the next card.
"The Five of Swords." Kalestro said, his tone calm, "This position in the spread represents the present, and, much like your last card, the Five of Swords does not bode well. It depicts a man, triumphant in victory, yet still unsatisfied. The sky above him is tumultuous and cloudy, a storm brewing as two of his erstwhile opponents walk away from the battle scorned. A storm is brewing, and this battle will not be the last."
Kalestro flipped another card, "Judgment." He clears his throat, "It depicts Hymdeil blowing the Gyalerhorn, calling all to Ragneroc, so that they may test themselves in battle for the final time. It takes the position of the future in our spread."
Kalestro moved to the next card, and spoke aloud, "The High Priestess, reversed. This card depicts Freya, goddess of death, war, love, and nature. She is the supreme mediator, she represents a true neutrality, so that even though she represents many extremes, they cancel out leaving her level and intuitive. Though reversed, this card's meaning is inverse, meaning instability, and a failure of your intuition. Its position in the spread seems to represent the underlying cause of your problems."
Finally, he flipped the last card, "Death." He paused, letting a chill run down my spine, "Do not worry, death is no worse an omen than the Five of Swords. Its art brings messages of the inevitability of death, but truly, in this context, death is simply a metaphor for change. Its position in our spread is that of the opportunity and potential of the situation laid out before you."
I expected him to say more but was disappointed and instead attempted to process the load of information he had given me. Failing, I decided simply to ask.
"What does all that mean?"
"Truly? A costly disaster in the past, a terrible storm brewing in the present, a final judgment in your future. Its underlying cause is a failure of intuition. And the opportunity presented by this... I'll be honest, the grim situation is that of a great change, or perhaps an ending of a cycle."
"You said the woman on the fourth card was Freya?" I asked, a small hidden nugget of meaning coming to me.
"It is."
I thought about that for a moment.
* * *
"You didn't tell me you had any siblings," I told Freya (the Princess) as we walked back to the awaiting Arvus lighter.
"I thought it was common knowledge." She said, still suspiciously eyeing the leather bookbag Kalestro had given me to carry the tomes I had been gifted.
"Not to gutter trash." I said, "Never really had time to catch up on the Sokarin Tabloid or the Daily Goss. Too many thrones to buy a copy, and you can't eat it."
"Well," She said, "I have three sisters and four brothers, you've met two of my brothers already."
"Wait," I said, rewinding my memory, trying to think back to any time I could've been around royalty, "When?"
"Well," She began, "You remember the Tech-Preist you met right before you found out that you were allergic to opiate pain medication?"
"No." I said, shaking my head, "Really?"
"Yup, fr-4-Y, most call him Fray though. He's the second oldest." She said, nodding, "And you met my oldest brother in Vrantanius. I distinctly remember you held your Volkite Serpentia1The 'correct' classification for a pistol-like Volkite weapon. to his head while you held him by the collar. There are quite a few picts of it still going around. I heard a well-known painter in Sokarin had decided to make his next work in the likeness of that moment."
I stopped for a second, processed, and realized. "THAT WAS YOUR BROTHER?"
"Indeed."
I was dumbfounded.
"Why?" I asked.
"We share a mother and a father." She said. She had stopped ahead of me and turned around.
"No, I mean, why did you fight him? Why the war?" I asked, still feeling a little stupid.
"I fought because hated the concept, the idea, that the young men and women of Volk would be sent off to a faraway system to fight on behalf of an Emperor no one who has ever lived on this planet has seen, who would kill and die to make another system subservient, and docile, to make another people submissive, willing to give up their children to die, so that they may do the same in an ouroboros of suffering and destruction." She said, staring off into the distance like she was reading off an invisible script, the kind that you practice on nights you can't sleep.
She looked back at me, "My father knew this, he taught me it because he could not teach my brother. So when we stood at the precipice of preparations that had been made since I was only eight, my father knew that his eldest would not stand for it, he knew that Fray wouldn't lead, too busy fussing with archeotech, and so he settled on me, the eldest child who agreed with him, and was willing to do something about it."
"But, wouldn't, I don't know, familial love keep you from killing each other?" I asked, genuine curiosity leaking into my words.
"Ha!" She lauged, "No."
I waited for her to continue, but she just stared at me.
"Really?" I asked, feeling like I'd been doing too much of that recently.
"No, we're royals, only a step up from nobles, and both are famous for having disagreements that end in bloodshed," she explained, clearly frustrated.
"Oh," I said, my voice small after realizing that I may have hit a nerve.
"Come on," she waved, "We don't want to stand out here forever, I can give you a long and deep explanation of Volk's politics another time. If it doesn't bore you too much, that is."
I shrugged and followed her back to the flyer.
Better than I thought it would be keep it coming tho I would like more of description for the characters including our trans space marine katla