The Priest – Part 2
Men like me were trained to deal with those who bargained against their own humanity. The universe was a vast place, filled with a surprising number of men quite willing to embrace abomination for the sake of their twisted goals.
While training would prepare you to respond, it was no guarantor of survival.
But survival wasn’t necessary for a Purification Priest. Death was another slippery relative term.
Damnation was another thing altogether.
The abomination reached within me, slipping through the wards and sigils that should have protected me from lesser demons. Its burning fingers caressed my soul, offering power in exchange for submission. For a sweet moment, I felt the power of temptation. I felt sin, and I understood.
The path of abomination was strewn with power. For the small price of my integrity, all obstacles could be cleared, all desires met, and all hopes fulfilled. In that moment of horror, I watched my own will yield to the promise of those that lurked on the other side of the immaterium. For that moment, I considered giving up my humanity.
The automatic routines fired in my cortex, disconnecting my free will from my body. Defense mechanisms beyond my own understanding triggered, and automated machines battled a demon for possession of my soul.
Consciousness returned to find me sprawled upon the floor, smoke rising from the scorched claw marks on my armor. Ocular displays flashed crimson, noting various override states in my systems. A single flashing icon denoted my intact spiritual purity.
And I was foolish enough to believe it.
Rolm stood over me with a blaster aimed at my head. “You’re making a mistake, Ragnusen.”
I nodded. “Give our current positions, I’d have to agree.” I let the diagnostics play out on my eye, watching my various systems reboot. “You have the Sin of Logan about you, Rolm.”
Rolm shrugged. “Some call it a sin. Fanatics. Weaklings.”
“Sane men.” I finished. “We are fanatics for good cause.”
Rolm stared at me for a moment, and I sensed that he was looking deep within me. Flickering systems suggested an intrusion, but a benign one. He smiled. “I see you have tasted it.” He lowered the gun.
“I have. But it didn’t win.” The purity icon continued to flash on my retina.
“Not today, Priest. But nonetheless I have won.” He flipped the blaster around and dropped it on the ground next to my head. “Time will take care of the rest. My work here is done.”
Figuring I had nothing to lose, I rose to my feet. Rolm had me, and if this was some trick, I’d be just as dead either way. He stood there calmly, watching me stand and steady myself. I kicked the blaster away. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Someday you’ll know. It is a convenient time to die.”
I covered him with my plasma canon and pulled a small globule from a belt loop. “I have a necro. Death isn’t going to save you.”
Once again, he smiled. “I’ll take the risk.” And with that, he dropped to the ground like a puppet with severed strings. The fast acting toxin was already boiling away the bones in his jaw, working outward from the hollow tooth he had crunched. His soul was already making the transition before his body had stopped moving.
I activated the necro, interfacing with the containment system that held the soul of a dead Priest. Time dilated as our conversation took place in an accelerated reference frame, but even so, each millisecond took Rolm’s soul a little farther from reach. “Brother Kharm, I have a quarry for you.”
The dead Priest stirred himself from slumber and answered. “I hear you.”
I downloaded the information file on Rolm, including a complete list of his crimes. “He has been consigned to the purge. Find his soul and eradicate it. Death can be no haven.”
Kharm emerged from the containment of the necro. He faded from my sight, but I heard the psychic echo as he slipped through the veil between the living and the dead. “I see him.”
And with that, my duty had been discharged. I looked down upon the smoking mound of charred flesh that had been Rolm.
Little did I know that I had just condemned billions to death.
Or more importantly, the festering seeds of damnation had taken root, with far more dire consequences for humanity.
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