Chapter 236: The Light of Wisdom
Psychic fire couldn't be extinguished by physical means — but water could wash away the unactivated sanctified liquid before it reacted, reducing the total burn. Silentium worked at it for several minutes before the flames finally died down. The Tzeentchian daemon hung on the wall looking thoroughly cooked, eyes rolled back, tongue out, a portrait of something that had experienced too much theology in too short a time.
"He was giving me knowledge — he can't die!"
Silentium was very distressed. He produced one of the Regen-Bolts Kian had supplied previously and administered it to the charred daemon.
It did nothing. Wounds inflicted by the Emperor's psychic resonance didn't respond to standard biological healing. The Regen-Bolt sat there being ignored.
Kian watched this with his arms folded.
"Stop wasting supplies. He was dangerous as a psyker and he's worse as a daemon. He ends here."
Silentium hesitated.
"But the things he told me — the immaterium theory, the energy manipulation techniques — those were real, I could feel the accuracy in them—"
"You trust a daemon's information. The Blue Parrot God's servants are constitutionally incapable of telling the full truth about anything. Whatever he gave you was either fabricated, selectively incomplete, or both. That's not knowledge — it's bait."
The charred daemon's eyes snapped open with considerable indignation.
"I am a native of the Empyrean itself, a servant of the Lord of Truth! The knowledge I carry is the most fundamental truth this reality possesses!"
A faint blue luminescence began bleeding from his eyes, and something wove itself into his words — a subtle harmonic, an immaterium-sourced frequency that made the air feel slightly different, that made listening feel like the obvious and correct thing to do.
Silentium, who wanted immaterium truth more than most people wanted anything, went very still and leaned forward.
Kian felt the pull, assessed it, and dismissed it. He had no particular interest in cosmic truth, and his mental discipline was sufficient to recognise the sensation for what it was.
He hit Silentium across the shoulder, hard enough to stagger him.
"Focus. You were about to go under."
Silentium blinked. Then the cold sweat arrived.
He had been completely gone — every faculty pointed at the daemon's words, nothing held in reserve, all defences abandoned. If Kian hadn't interrupted, he would have sat there being fed Tzeentchian theology until his body failed.
The daemon looked at Kian with concentrated fury. This one had no hunger for truth, no intellectual vanity to exploit, and enough psychic resistance to shake off the compulsion without apparent effort. Useless.
Kian said: "Kill it. Daemon in our base is danger to everyone here. And if Imperial authorities find we've been hosting one, the response will not be proportionate."
Silentium wavered. The daemon immediately began talking.
"Don't listen to the muscle! Consider what I've already given you — the nature of the soul-sea, the techniques of energy refinement — was any of that false? Could you not feel the truth in it?"
Silentium began wavering again.
Kian identified the pattern. Early-stage seduction — throw out something the target genuinely wants, establish credibility, then increase the dependency incrementally until the soul is committed. Every entity in the warp used a variation of this method. It had worked on beings considerably more disciplined than a young unsanctioned psyker.
Kian held up a hand.
"You claim truth. Let's test that claim. Demonstrate genuine mastery of truth, and perhaps I reconsider."
Silentium brightened.
"Yes — he's very clever, his understanding of immaterium structure—"
"You. Quiet."
Kian looked at the daemon.
"Here's your examination. Logic and argumentation. Ready?
First question: I maintain that spaghetti should be mixed with Type 42 industrial concrete, because the length of the relevant bolt directly affects the torque capacity of an excavator, and when applied with sufficient force this instantaneously generates large quantities of high-energy protein, colloquially abbreviated to UFO. Please explain why."
The daemon stared at him.
Kian clicked his tongue.
"Don't know that one. Second question.
My brother and I are each other's sisters, but we are also father and son in the biological sense, and we each experience gender identity uncertainty. What industry does my employer operate in?"
The daemon's expression suggested something had gone wrong inside its head.
"Final question.
Given that SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star are close friends, and the Grey Wolf wishes to eat sheep, and Timber Jack wishes to cut down trees — why does the aeroplane want to fly into the Twin Towers?"
Silence.
Complete, resonant, philosophically significant silence.
Silentium looked at Kian. Looked at the daemon. Looked back at Kian.
"Answer him! You said you had the truth! Answer!"
The daemon's jaw moved. Then moved again. Its eyes cycled through several colours.
"You— I— he— I, I, I—"
A sound escaped it that was not language in any meaningful sense.
Then it passed out.
[End of Chapter 236]
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