Amateur Megalomania

The path of damnation is seductive at times.  It whispers promise and potential, luring the traveler with sweet murmurs of glory.

Other times, the path is disguised in the trappings of duty.

These thoughts were far from my mind on the day I killed Rolm.  The recognition of my particular path would not have stayed my hand on that day, and even now, many years later, I’m not certain I would have turned away from the path that has led me here.

The consequence of damnation can be relative, as I have learned.

Rolm had taken refuge in the Crypt of the Mendicants on Solaris III, cloaking himself in the Obscurum.  I spent three years tracking him to this point, and nothing would stay my hand.

As you might guess, in my youth I considered myself a man of action.

Time has taught me that action also includes appropriate inaction.

Rolm had burned three of my acolytes on the final day, bottling their souls in a demonic engine and restoring himself.  While such a loss was an embarrassment, it did rid me of the weaker members of my entourage, while providing a valuable lesson for those with more promise.  I finally tracked him to an access tunnel providing the decorative ichors for the crypt’s oozing animated frescos of damnation.  The Mendicants were too demonstrative for my tastes, but how one chooses to portray the afterlife is one’s own concern.

The afterlife didn’t concern me, neither then or now.  That might seem strange coming from a priest, but I haven’t been a normal priest for centuries.

“Turn back, Ragnusen, and I’ll spare your soul.”

Rolm was speaking in my forebrain, slipping through my psychic screens with the proficiency I had come to expect from him after long years of pursuit.  I could feel him tickling the fear centers, arousing a primal terror that had served our savannah-dwelling ancestors well.  I triggered the firewalls on my implant and shunted my conscious from my organic brain and into the parallel system riding in the core of my skull.

The voice stopped.  Not even a psycher of Rolm’s power could reach the core systems of a fully augmented Priest.

Rolm, however, had no such protection.  I reached out through the psychic tendrils and fed the fear back to him, adding my own force of will to the torrent of power.  I felt him erecting his own shields, and while it wouldn’t affect him directly, the shielding cost him some effort.

Any advantage would be welcome in what was to come.

“Citizen Rolm, I have been looking for you for a long time.”  I called out, adding a psychic echo to my words to obscure my position.  My voice seems to emanate from everywhere.  “You have been judged excommunicado and consigned to the purge.  I have been charged to carry out the sentence.  Show yourself.”  I added the Impetus to the last, and for an instant I felt his mind begin to obey.

It wouldn’t be that easy, of course.

“Where are your lackeys, Ragnusen?  I need to feed again.”

I ignored the obvious source of his voice crouched behind a pump in the cramped corridor.  Rolm probably wasn’t even in this chamber, but he was close.  “They are reducing possibilities elsewhere, Rolm.  We have your ship.”

I moved past the pump and walked through the low arch.  The corridor opened to a grotto with various statues of forgotten gods, left over from some past civilization.  My crucifix radiated enough light to make out dim shapes in the alcoves.  Rolm had to be here.

A blast of energy stuck me in the chest, dissipating on my plastron.  I stepped back, absorbing the kinetic shock of the strike while my shields energized to fight the surge.  My automatic systems were already responding, bringing my hand up and launching a blast from my plasma cannon back along the incoming vector before I registered the attack.  Tactical overlays appeared in my field of vision, painting possible locations in red.

I overrode the automatic system and regained control of my hand.  Neither one of us would be killed in such a simple exchange of fire.  Rolm had something else in mind.

I felt the portal begin to open behind me.  The immaterium thickened and began to open a door into the other reality that no rational mind could comprehend.

Abomination stepped through.

Rolm had indeed planned ahead.

Next Part

Filed under: Writing