Blue Eyes stood up, her gaunt face looking hilariously out of proportion from the power armor she wore, a thought which gave the Knight Leader some amusement. Then the realization, of course, that she could crush his skull with one hand just as easily as anyone wearing it, quickly killed his brief mirth.
You think you’re so funny. She was in his head now. She had read that thought. Perhaps planted the one after it.
She glared at him.
“You’re no Amallark.” She was speaking. Why?
A conversation.
“A conversation, really?” he said incredulously. It was strange to use his voice. It was raspy and harsh. Damn, he was thirsty. He coughed again, the metallic taste of his spirit-blood the only thing to quench it.
“You’ve killed every single one of my compatriots,” her eyes looked hollow, and her voice rang hollow too – defeated – but then refocused with a renewed fury, “I can’t survive alone. Now, my only option is to break you free.”
He stared at her in numb silence.
“Goddess,” she looked at him with pity, “You’ve forgotten the meaning of freedom.”
What is freedom? Like cowardice, a thing he was not supposed to know. Knight Leader’s face suddenly contorted into a grimace. What was freedom?! What did it mean? What did that mean?! He felt it was important. He knows… he can remember that he
The rogue now had the upper hand, as the Knight Leader lapsed into fraying madness, each redaction a stitch undone, groaning and clutching at his head after having fallen to his knees, and she relished it. Her fury was boundless. He had killed Elyn! He had killed Charysha! He had killed Kaleen. He had killed Orlia. His foul comrades had killed Zeyah, Truya, Malina, and Katoss. And poor, poor, Sarantha, who sacrificed herself for them all by committing to the Rite of the Banshee.
Forget setting him free. She was going to torture this soldier until his mind broke.
She reached deep, deep into his mind, frayed by revs of obedience.
Aha.
The knight leader’s breath hitched.
I’ve found your greatest fear.
And then suddenly the ground fell away from the Knight Leader and he felt himself plummeting, plummeting, and endless levels of infinite copies of the Rogue Psion’s laughing and cackling face fell before him, ever faster, racing from beneath to upwards, beneath to upwards, until it made the Knight Leader sick. Tears were streaming freely down his face now, snot dribbling from his crooked nose. And then he tried to vomit, but all that came out was a thin line of saliva that seemed to fall away like everything else was, dropping endlessly away…
Blue Eyes almost felt bad, seeing the soldier now crawling about the ground, desperately trying to hold onto something, anything, and vomiting nothing but thin spit. He didn’t have anything in his stomach. She couldn’t imagine how much worse that made it.
She stopped the vertigo. The Knight ‘collapsed’ to the floor, just a violent jerk, but to him it felt like all the pain of slamming on the floor after a long fall but without the sweet merciful release of death, and groaned in pain as his weight, and that of his back carapace plate, pressed on his bloody shoulder. The pauldrons and arms had already been shredded to pieces by the railgun.
The Rogue walked up to the Knight. Crouched down beside him.
“Do you know your name?”
The Knight snarled, “Of course I do! It’s…”
The rogue sneered. “Well, I know my name. It’s Avecia.” Avecia gritted her teeth. She didn’t know her clan name. Her original clan, before it was defeated by the cursed Clan Amallark, before she was turned into a vassal, before she broke free from her chains as a rogue. Because any elvan that did not submit to the Empress Amallark was, by the new definition, a rogue. Her original clan name had been wiped from her mind, replaced only with the imprinting of her new place in the hierarchy- a vassal who served the Empress. And so destroyed was this memory, she could not recover it, even after going rogue.
“Pleased to meet you, Avecia.”
She gave him a psionic hundred-meter drop for the sarcasm laced in his voice.
“Stop! Stop! I’m sorry.” He groaned.
“Don’t you get it?” she hissed, venom dripping in her voice. “You’re a vassal! You were never part of Clan Amallark, you were in some other clan that they defeated! For all you know, we could have been in the same clan!” and then tears formed in Avecia’s eyes, for only after speaking it, could she fully confront that fact herself. Could this poor Knight be her brother?
“I’m frayed…”, defeat in his voice, “If I disobey…”
“Then this happens?”
She gave him a thousand-meter drop.
“Why are you doing this?! Please… have mercy on me!” He was shaking now, overcome with fear. A soldier was nothing to a truly strong psion.
“Because I’m trying to make you see!” she looked him in the eyes now with compassion, and not hatred. “You can break free. I can unwind the encryption they’ve done on your mind. Go rogue and join us…” she caught the error in her words, and it gave her a pang of deep, inconsolable grief, “Join me. We’ll resist the Administrator, slay all the Amallarkeans, and take Aryss for ourselves! There are so many more of us out there hidden in the deserts of the wastes…” She moved closer, gazing deeper into his eyes, their faces centimeters away.
He met it blankly. “And what happens to Second, Third, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth?”
What?
Now it was her turn to look incredulous. “What, these guys?” she gestured at the unconscious bodies.
“Can you turn us all rogue?”
Avecia’s brow furrowed, she began pacing. “That would be too much. I couldn’t manage that without help, I would take the risk of going insane myself for every mind I break free, you know. There are psionic booby traps, mind bombs placed in your head, you vassals. And it would attract too much attention. Your poorly trained lot of expendable vassal soldiers already decimated what little family I was able to scrounge together… I couldn’t fight off a legion of Amallarkean knights alone.” She was choosing him, and him alone, for his prowess.
The Knight Leader cast his eyes to the ground.
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“Then just kill me.”
Avecia, pushed past the brink of her composure, flew into a temper. “You nitwit! You… you cretin! You imbecile! It’s hopeless! This loyalty to your fellow slaves? To the Traitor Empress? It’s meaningless! You’re serving your oppressor; you’re only perpetuating the reign of Clan Amallark! Your so-called comrades… they could have been enemies of your original clan! Don’t you see? You’re enslaved! You’re a vassal! Your mind has been flayed! You’re a slave!”
She viciously threw him into a perpetual drop as she ranted. But it seemed to have less effect on him now that the Knight Leader had resigned himself to nonexistence. As if the fear of falling endlessly no longer had a hold on him, once he accepted that one time he was going to hit the floor and actually die. Heart attack, or actual blunt force trauma, it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
And then he felt the curious sensation of two hands grasping his shoulders, the touch of the skin was soft.
The vertigo slowed, unbeknownst to Avecia who was still ranting angrily about her dispossessions, whatever they were, for the truth was she didn’t even remember them clearly herself.
The Knight Leader had long ago accepted that all was lost, that Empress Amallark and her ruthless evil had trampled upon everything and corrupted and spoiled all that was once good in the elvan race. He knew it when Clan Amallark betrayed the rest of the clans. Queen Maetra Amallark herself had told Queen Talisa Talauth that she would back all their forces when the rest of the Reathean clans decided to put down the orcan menace once and for all. She had the most dragons of any Reathean clan, and they needed Clan Amallark’s dragons to have any hope of overcoming the orcs on their home turf- but the Empress withdrew at the last minute! She didn’t even send properly trained soldiers herself; they were all her secret vassals equipped with – and this was the kicker – the borrowed, and downgraded, carapace of other clans. It led to the bloody slaughter of the elvan race, enough to break all clans, enough for Clan Amallark to then systematically stab them each in the back with a series of sudden surprise assaults of her own, and pick them off, one by one! All Queen Talisa Talauth could do was flee to the wretched hell that was Aryss.
Wait. How did he remember that?!
Hope surged within the Knight Leader. Queen Talisa. How did he know so much about the Queen of Clan Talauth? And then suddenly, he realized. He was born of the Clan Talauth. And he might not know his forename yet, but his clan name was much more important. It doesn’t matter who you are as long as you know where you belong. Or once belonged. Something that was still lost to Avecia Whatever.
He looked about, although still splayed on all fours, he was no longer feeling like he was falling. Not at all. Avecia was too busy being angry at things that she couldn’t control to notice he no longer writhed in agony. But he still felt the presence of something grasping his shoulders.
Conduit? Is that you? And he knew that this thought could not be read by Avecia.
I’m here, Knight Leader. And then the Knight Leader knew that this Conduit was an incredibly powerful psion. And she had helped him unlock his memory, dissolve the invasive imprinting, which then gave him profound strength. Enough that this blue-eyed rogue psion railgunner with a fringe named Avecia was… well, she was going to die.
He stood up, and his armored arm shot forward and grasped Avecia by the throat. Avecia’s face was, for but a moment, awoken in startled awareness before it froze in that unique horror of knowing that one cannot undo their last mistake. She rasped. The gauntlet’s digits squeezed against hard cartilage; she clawed at it. But she did not beg.
The Knight Leader gave Avecia a look of pity. And now he could remember what pity was. He really didn’t want to do this, especially because Avecia was trying to spare him, indeed, break him free of his bondage. But if he wanted to keep the Knights under his ward safe – for he had a responsibility to them as their leader – he had to do this.
“I’m sorry, Avecia.”
And then he crushed her throat – crack – killing her.
Avecia’s pilfered carapace kept her standing, but blood spilled out of her mouth and nose and her head lolled to the side at an unnatural angle.
The Knight Leader once of Clan Talauth but now enslaved to Clan Amallark, dazed, stepped back, pressing his carapaced back to the wall, before slumping down.
Conduit?
Yes, Knight Leader.
It’s over.
I know.
He could feel the Conduit’s psionic presence. She didn’t know quite how to help him, and she herself was stunned by the insanity of the proceedings. It was just supposed to be a simple clear out. Now he was sure his mind was frayed beyond recognition, and when he went back to the Amallarkean compound he would surely be lobotomized. He had disobeyed a direct order.
How long until they awake?
It was a severe mind blast. It could be hours.
Good.
He grabbed a fistful of moss and started chewing on it. It tasted foul, but there was nothing else for now. It was a respite.
Eleventh?
They took him into the bacta tank, in the reaver. He’ll be fine. Torn ligament though, it could take a while before he’s combat ready.
But the Knight Leader honestly didn’t care. He was still alive, after all. It wasn’t like he was faring much better himself.
I’m far too frayed, Conduit, I… he felt the harsh edge of panic begin to set in. He couldn’t endure more vertigo! He couldn’t endure more imprinting! He was going to be lobotomized!
I can mask it. They won’t know.
And then he realized… this Conduit, she was a vassal too! Clan Amallark were loath to waste their own psions on rangings, it was dangerous, and they could get killed if a rogue raid chances upon a lone conduit, hung halfway between the knights she supported and the Hive. A clan psion couldn’t be wasted on simple extermination of scattered rogues, their Queens long since fallen after Amallark rose triumphant in the War of the Clans. He felt this utterly foreign sense of rebelliousness, of shared conspiratorial excitement… excitement! And hope! More and more hidden thoughts began rushing into him, he felt he was regaining some semblance of his true self.
Was this what freedom meant?
And then, like a gentle, warm presence, he could feel the Conduit’s mind letting him know that yes. Yes.
This was what freedom felt like. Something like it. For now.
He liked this Conduit.
He sat there dumbly. Embracing it. Feeling gratitude for it. He munched on some more moss. It still tasted awful. But he was free to eat it. Freedom! He threw back his head and laughed.
Only to then feel a panging longing, and a biting melancholy.
He still did not know what his first name was.
But the Conduit knew- he did once know what the meaning of freedom was.
The Conduit thought- Oh, the poor thing.
When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.
“Fuck you, Avecia!”, screamed the Conduit, but no one could hear her.
Her clan name, though she had forgotten it, was Talauth. Which meant that they were indeed brother and sister. This was not a coincidence.
The Conduit thought- Damn her to the nine hells! Damn her to the nine thousand hells, and more!
The Conduit thought- Don’t beg. Please, don’t beg.
The Conduit thought- NO!
All it requires is simply to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.
She should have put on the helm.
Torn was an understatement, it was completely snapped in two, but the Conduit didn’t want to worry the Knight Leader.
Far rangings required chains of conduits, it was a very risky thing but necessary to maintain the chain of command. But this conduit was powerful and could conduct a far ranging by herself.
The Conduit felt elated. She really, really liked this soldier.