Chapter 421: Oh Hey, Who Left a Consecrated Dagger on My Desk
Over the following days, with nothing else pressing to do, Kian stuck around the bunker, mingling with the Astartes.
The bunker served as their temporary forward base, where every Astartes cycled back for rest. They stayed busy constantly, deployed in squads of three or four, barely resting half a day before heading back out to fight. Out of a hundred-strong company, no full roster was ever present at once.
Certain specialized roles, though, didn't rotate out daily and stayed behind to keep the base running: Captain Doron, Chaplain Reisach, and Librarian Budas among them. The three of them split their time between overseeing operations, crafting Purity Seals, and providing medical support.
Kian used the opportunity to work his way deeper into the group.
He started with Chaplain Reisach, who kept a small prayer chamber inside the bunker, housing an Emperor's shrine and stacks of parchment. Reisach worked there constantly, praying while inscribing fresh Purity Seals onto the parchment by hand.
Kian watched him build one from scratch. The Chaplain's craftsmanship was genuinely skilled, each seal carrying far more of the Emperor's psychic power than anything a mortal priest could produce, easily ten times the potency. Against daemons, that difference actually mattered.
Once Reisach finished, Kian struck up conversation, asking how sacred items were actually made.
"The key is devotion," Reisach said. "So long as your heart holds true devotion, free of any unworthy thought, you can channel the power of His Most Holy Majesty directly into an object."
Kian took out a cigarette, gave a lazy flick of his wrist, and a small flame of golden psychic fire flickered to life at his fingertip. He lit the cigarette with it and nodded seriously. "Truth."
Reisach's eyelid twitched.
Kian blew out a smoke ring. "Say, I've been meaning to ask. Working in your line of duty, you must run into daemons pretty regularly, right? How do you usually handle them?"
Reisach said, "The key is devotion. Faith alone can overcome any darkness."
Not the answer Kian wanted.
"Look, what I'm after here isn't spiritual guidance, more like something practical. Let me set it up. Say a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend accidentally cracked open a Warp portal and let a swarm of daemons loose into reality. And say I, blessed as I am by His Majesty's favor, happen to be able to craft weapons that kill daemons. So this friend of a friend borrowed a few of those from me, rigged up an automated turret rig, and mounted the sacred blades right onto it. Every daemon that stepped through the portal got skewered the instant it appeared. You got anything like that? Any tricks of the trade?"
Reisach's expression shifted, slowly.
"Any contact whatsoever with a daemon is an act of heresy, full stop. Who exactly is this friend of your friend of your friend of your friend? Give me his address. Once things settle down here, I'll be paying him a personal visit."
Ecclesiarchy priests, as a rule, tended toward the fanatically zealous, and Astartes Chaplains took that a full step further. Their hatred for daemons ran bone-deep, and anyone who so much as summoned one, or anyone connected to one, could expect nothing short of brutal reprisal.
Kian pulled a massive combat dagger, standard Astartes-issue, out from behind his back and dropped it onto the floor.
"Oh no, Chaplain! You dropped your sacred, daemon-killing combat dagger, the one carrying His Majesty's own power! Quick, quick, pick it up!"
Reisach glanced down at the dagger, then back up at Kian. His mouth opened, closed, and after a long, awkward pause, he finally muttered, "Ah. Yes. My dagger. Must have slipped. My apologies, a genuine oversight."
He scooped it up quickly and tucked it away, then gave Kian a long, loaded look. Now he understood exactly what Sergeant Nor'n's warnings about this man had meant. Absolutely fearless, the way he could bring up daemons this casually, out loud, no hesitation whatsoever. In the Imperium, sometimes you didn't even need to do anything wrong. Just laying eyes on a daemon could get you burned at the stake. Sometimes you didn't even see one directly, and a daemon showing up on the far side of the street from your own home was enough to get your purity called into question and end with an execution squad at your door.
This man threw the word "daemon" around like it was nothing, in and out of every sentence. Any ordinary man would've been dead eight hundred times over already for talking like this. And yet he practically radiated a golden glow, the Emperor's own favor draped over him for reasons Reisach couldn't fully account for.
Seeing that this stubborn presence wasn't leaving until he got what he came for, Reisach thought it over and finally relented.
"I have a certain sacred rune. Inscribe it onto an object, and it renders you indistinct to a daemon's perception, distant enough and it can't perceive you at all. Since the Count is favored by His Majesty, I'll pass the rune on to you."
Kian broke into a grin. "Excellent, excellent."
A few days later, having learned to craft the daemon-concealment rune, Kian left Reisach's prayer chamber thoroughly satisfied.
Reisach watched him go, then quietly drew the sacred dagger back out from behind his robes.
"Perhaps... I could build one of these automated turret setups myself?"
He caught himself immediately, stunned at his own thought. Daemons were something to avoid at all costs, engaged only when there was truly no other choice. The very fact that he'd entertained an idea this reckless, automated daemon extermination on tap, filled him with immediate shame. He dropped straight into a meditative posture on the spot and began reciting scripture to cleanse the thought.
Meanwhile, having gotten what he wanted from the Chaplain, Kian went off to bother the Librarian next.
A Librarian held a critical role within any Astartes Chapter. Thanks to their superhuman physiology, they wielded psychic power far beyond what any mortal psyker could manage, and given their extended lifespans, most had accumulated a genuinely eccentric library of arcane techniques over the centuries.
Librarian Budas was meditating in his quarters when Kian strolled in like they were old friends.
"Lord Budas, teach me a couple of psychic tricks, would you?"
Budas opened his eyes and studied Kian up and down. "Psychic power is unpredictable and dangerous. It must be wielded with the utmost care. Handled poorly, even a skilled user can suffer psychic backlash."
Kian laughed and pulled a small censer out from his belt.
"No argument there. That's exactly why, every time I use my own psychic abilities, I light this censer first, one infused with His Majesty's own power, so I've always got His protection riding alongside me."
Budas's eyes went wide, fixed on the censer, unable to look away. It was steadily releasing pure, sanctified psychic energy, driving off Warp taint and sharpening whoever breathed it in.
Ever since Kian's own Emperor's Shrine had gained the ability to sanctify objects, he'd taken to tossing all kinds of miscellaneous junk up on it whenever he had a spare moment. This particular censer, once sanctified, had the effect of settling and sharpening the mind of anyone who breathed its incense, while boosting resistance to daemonic influence.
Kian already had his own supply of Coolant Balm and had no use for the censer himself, so he'd brought it purely to test one of the Chapter's senior members.
Budas licked his lips, the rigid, dogmatic edge in his expression softening just slightly.
"But then again..."
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