Chapter 30: Take the Wafer, Seeker
"The voices... they're gone! The screaming... it's silent!!"
The Rogue Psyker froze, his bloodshot eyes wide with a shock that quickly transformed into an explosion of hysterical, sobbing joy.
Since the day his "gift" had manifested in late puberty, his mind had been a playground for the Warp. The whispers had started small, eventually growing into a deafening roar of filth, obscenity, and the wet, rhythmic screeching of things that shouldn't exist. He hadn't slept in years. His soul had been twisted into a knot of agony, his identity erased by the constant mental rape of the Empyrean.
But now, with his hand pressed against this man's throat, the static had been cut. The silence was absolute.
He stared at the "rat" in front of him—this man he could have torn into molecular dust with a flick of his wrist. For the first time, he could hear the cool wind blowing across the Great Aquifer. He could hear the rhythmic chirping of the night-insects. To a man who had heard only the screams of Daemons, the sound of a cricket was as sweet as a mother's lullaby.
Tears cut through the grime and blood on his mutilated face. The monster who had slaughtered hundreds suddenly collapsed forward, burying his face in Kian's chest and sobbing like a child.
Kian stood there, his arms awkwardly outspread, his Tactical Cogitator pinging with confusion. I'm being motorboated by a faceless, mutilated Warp-freak. Emperor, just kill me now. I didn't sign up for psychic therapy.
But before Kian could push the "patient" away, the night exploded.
CRACK!
A lone gunshot echoed through the frosted grass, followed immediately by the rhythmic, deafening roar of a hundred autoguns.
To the rear lay the lake; ahead was a dense, dark forest. The tree line erupted in a staccato of muzzle flashes. Over a hundred Secessionist rebels were hidden in the brush, pouring a concentrated wall of lead toward the rock where the two figures stood.
"PURGE THE ABOMINATION! FOR THE SECTOR!" a rebel officer screamed.
The rebels weren't stupid. The Monitoring Station had been their regional command hub until the Psyker appeared. He'd slaughtered their officers and turned their garrison into a graveyard in a single afternoon. They had organized this "Extermination Squad," gathering every functional autogun in the sector for a midnight execution.
Kian watched as thousands of rounds of high-velocity lead shrieked toward them. He closed his eyes, bracing for the "Respawn" screen.
But the Psyker didn't even lift his head from Kian's chest. He simply exhaled.
The air around them turned thick, like invisible molasses. Kian watched in awe as the bullets entered a three-meter radius and instantly lost their momentum. Thousands of metal slugs hung suspended in the air, glowing with a faint, purple Warp-sheen, forming a shimmering, hemispherical curtain of lead.
The rebels' fire sputtered and stopped as they stared in horror at the impossible sight. Their "Extermination" was a failure.
The Psyker finally looked up from Kian's rags. His face was still wet with tears, but his eyes were now burning with the cold, lethal light of the Warp. He turned toward the forest, and the thousands of hovering bullets slowly rotated 180 degrees. Their tips were now pointed directly at their owners.
"Run... RUN!!" the rebel commander shrieked.
It was too late. With a sharp, violent gesture from the Psyker, the "lead curtain" detonated outward.
The kinetic energy the Psyker had stored was released all at once. The forest was raked by a localized metal storm. Rebels were shredded where they stood; bodies were pulped by dozens of simultaneous impacts, turning the treeline into a fine red mist. Trees were stripped of bark and leaves in three seconds.
The silence that followed was heavy with the scent of ozone and copper.
The rebel squad leader lay dying in the brush, his chest a ruin of holes. With his final, shuddering breath, he pulled the pin on an improvised frag-grenade. He threw it with the last of his strength, but the grenade didn't reach the target. It hit the invisible psychic barrier, bounced back as if hitting a wall, and landed right back in the commander's lap.
BOOM.
The commander was sent to report to the Chaos Gods in pieces.
The Psyker turned back to Kian. The psychic pressure had vanished. Kian found he could finally move his fingers.
"You are a miracle," the Psyker whispered, reaching out to touch Kian's face. "The Emperor's light... it flows through you. It brings the silence. Who are you?"
Kian looked at the weeping monster, then at the carnage in the woods. He realized he had just found the ultimate "Bodyguard" for his raids. If he could keep this guy sane, he could walk into the Governor's Palace and no one could stop him.
He reached into his satchel and pulled out another Sanctified Ration.
"You want the silence to stay, freak?" Kian said, his voice regaining its cynical edge.
The Psyker nodded frantically. "Please. Anything."
Kian held out the wafer. "Then take the Emperor's bread. Eat the wafer, and maybe I won't have to watch you cry anymore."
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