The Librarian's Nose

[glayvin34]

Black Library has open submissions this month and next, so I've been trying to come up with something to send them over the past few weeks. Here's the beginning of what I've come up with, any C & Cs much appreciated. There's quite a bit more after this, but I wanted to hear any reactions to this first bit.

 

--

 

Epistolary Lucian Marcos knelt by the pool of blood. It was old, dried up at least a week. He smudged it with his finger and rubbed it into a thin layer over his gauntlet. Allowing his eyes to see past sight, Marcos inspected the patch of deep violet, seeing the fear and pain stained there streaming out and fading into the ether like blood in a fast flowing river. As he closed his eyes, the Librarian placed a few flakes of the dried blood on his tongue, and the world imploded.

 

He saw a farmhouse, austere and pleasant. A wife and child waved slowly from its short porch. Lucian’s hands were small but hardened as they pulled crops and inspected insect invaders. This was the entire battlefield now, the farm a bulwark to protect the family from starving, and crops his only weapons. Suddenly, something wrong impinged, from an undefended angle ragged forms with mad eyes swept in and defiled the farm. Despair wracked his soul as he was bound and forced to watch his animals and then his family tortured to death. Fear was absent as the evil ministrations were turned on him, for the sight of his property and family being desecrated so totally brought a profound defense of defeat, a deep sense that he had made an error in keeping his family in this place.

 

Marcos snapped back to reality, the coppery taint still lingering on his tongue and the sense of guilt from the farmer lingering on his soul. Marcos swirled the blood in his mouth and swallowed a portion. Within seconds his omophagea began to speak.

 

His talent for Psychometry had also enhanced his ability to read information gathered by that particular implant. While his brothers could glean a corpse's last moments or common routines from swallowing brain matter, a taste of genetic material revealed volumes to the Librarian.

 

First he sifted through the basal stench memories of the monocellular creatures that fumbled about in the organic stew, then carefully drew a perceptual ring around the myriad invertebrates that squirmed and suffocated as they were inundated with his mucoid enzymes. What remained was a small sample of physical matter, but a library was a small sample of physical matter in comparison to the culture of which it spoke volumes. The farmer's genetic legacy opened up to Marcos, and he saw men and women working hard and praying hard, breaking their backs through many generations. They had immigrated from a gorgeous island paradise bursting with resources but also fraught with danger. He sensed the sadness at the loss of their paradise, but also a resolute will to find somewhere to live safely and shepherd future generations. Hence the guilt of the farmer- the destruction of his existence had dredged up these ancient ancestral emotions and he blamed himself for not moving further on than his ancestors did to seek a safer home. If only he had kept at it, kept moving forward to find a better paradise.

 

Sergeant Vepi's voice in his ear broke the trance. "Sir, are you done over there? We have movement on the Auspex at 5 klicks."

 

Marcos snorted and stood up from the dead bodies swarming with flies. He keyed his vox and responded to his second. "Are you sure?" The Psyprisms had been playing merry hell with the auspeces all day.

 

"4 or 5 vehicles of varied configuration and moving at a fair clip. Same signatures as before, probably another Teeth of the Mareed patrol."

 

"Good, keep an eye on the Psyprisms and tell Inquisitor Throckmorton to get ready. Same drill."

 

"Aye, sir."

 

--

 

Lucian Marcos had a unique set of psychic talents. Too be true none of the Emperor's many children could manipulate the arcane energies of the warp in precisely the same way, but Marcos excelled in areas few others did and was woefully inadequate in most others.

 

He was a fair diviner, Marcos’ combat trance was something to be feared as he dodged and struck a half-step ahead of any dueling opponent. The deeper currents of warp, while mostly hidden, did occasionally grant him a view of greater events in the future, but he was no oracle. Rather, his true talent lay in Psychometry, or the ability to see the past, as opposed to the future, of an object.

 

Since gaining the rank of Epistolary and working for decades on the mysteries of the flesh with experts from Sanguinary Priests to Magos Biologos, Marcos learned to blend his Astartes Physiology with his psychic potential. Now a taste of fresh cerebrum could reveal an entire life. But the true potency, perhaps handed down to him by his Primarch, was in blood. When in trance, a drop of fresh blood could reveal not only one man's life, but the events in his ancestor’s lives that had lead him there. Guardians of children passed on indelible psychic imprints, and it was all there for the tasting.

 

But this incredible power over what he ingested came at a price. Marcos's powers were completely passive outside his own body. He was unable to affect the world around him. Even Force weapons, the icon of his station, were no more potent in his hands than in the freshest Neophyte's carapace gauntlets. It mattered not to Marcos, though. During one of the many collaborations with his brother Chapter the Blood Angels, their chief Librarian, the Lord of Death himself, had gifted him with a rare and powerful weapon that he only used in rare circumstances such as this.

 

Mephiston gave him a psycannon, an esoteric weapon crafted almost exclusively for the use of the mysterious Grey Knights Chapter for fighting Daemons. It was an oblong device adorned with scrimshaw litanies and hexagrammatic wards. The thing looked heavy and unwieldy, but when he placed his gauntlet on the firing hilt, a low murmur issued forth as anti-grav generators within powered up. The psycannon was actually quite easy to move, seeming to weigh a few pounds. Coupled with the heavy Eviscerator chainsword he carried in place of a force weapon, and his ancient suit of Mark 5 Plate, Epistolary Lucian Marcos was a dangerous force on the battlefield indeed.

 

--

 

Inquisitor Karl Throckmorton finally admitted to himself that he was bored. Lucian the Librarian was off putting rancid and rotting flesh in his mouth, an activity of which he seemed never to be able to get enough. Karl was well aware of the chaste nature of Astartes, but when Lucian’s eyes rolled back in his massive skull at the sampling of a rare putrefied vintage, his ecstasy ringing around in the ether was almost lewd.

 

Once the Epistolary got back from his rounds they could set up an appropriate ambush and then hopefully get out of the farmlands and to one of the mildly more interesting places on this Emperor-forsaken backwater planet. Some idiot parchment jockey on Terra had named the place Completia, which was some kind of joke, because the place didn’t have anything that was complete. There was half of a hive near the equator which held 90% of the planet’s population, and several island archipelagos that held another 9.99%.

 

Then there were these vast tracks of farmland with one homestead every hundred klicks. Karl was from Cadia, so he had no memory of anything other than a pointed training to be inducted into the next regimental position. First the basic combat training, then the Youth Army, then the Whiteshields, then an untimely pluck by the Inquisitor Etna, but that was another story. His Cadian upbringing colored the whole of Completia as lazy and unfocused. Citizens fell into their roles and floundered about until they became too old, then they died, all without structured purpose. Despite the fact that such existences were the lifeblood of the Imperium, it didn’t make them any more exciting than a whispering ecclesiarch with a stuttering problem.

 

At least activity in the burnt-out barn of the farmhouse had increased since the detection of bogies on the auspex, but one wouldn't know that from a distance. Karl had pulled another device from the Ordo's bag of tricks and set up a tech field to hide what was left of the structure from view. Even now he eyed Adept Willis as the bespectacled lexmechanic carefully placed smoking incense around the Shroud Generator. Bits of sacred ash fell from the long sticks as his palsied hands shook. For some reason the man refused to use the array of powerful mechadendrites that lay nuzzled against the massive harness on his back when placing his votive offerings. When queried, the hunchbacked creature would mumble the same words every time, “I must never forget my imperfection in the eyes of the Omnissiah.” Karl tended to shrug at such responses, he was concerned with results, not odd techniques to achieve them, hence his ability to tolerate the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 

Karl stood and shook out his long coat, the flat doubled-sided blades with their exaggerated clip-points that lined it catching some of the solar rays that filtered through the insubstantial walls of the barn and reflecting whitish blobs of light on the floor as he looked outside. The Astartes Sergeant, Vepi, was standing by himself amidst burnt crops just outside the barn shell, custom storm bolter held in one hand as he peered at an Auspex in the other, his deactivated power fist making the device look like a small toy. Vepi's light skin stood out against his deep rose armor and the bat-winged blood drop with a leering skull on his shoulder. The whole icon was surrounded in intricate bas relief script detailing Vepi’s various honors as a nine decade veteran of the Angels Vermillion Chapter. His Librarian commander was wandering through the fields toward him, lost in thought, his essence a bright and concentrated pinprick in the ether.

[Ufthak]

Sounds good :D You have a fairly good style of writing, keep it up!

 

"Black Library open submissions"? What exactly do you mean by that? How do you send them your works (without knowing they'll just throw it in the bin because they get flooded with stuff)?

[glayvin34]

"Black Library open submissions"? What exactly do you mean by that? How do you send them your works (without knowing they'll just throw it in the bin because they get flooded with stuff)?

Ha! They probably look at one in ten of the submissions they get, but from May 4th to July 31st, you can send them anything you want, and they might even look at it if it's formatted correctly. Here's their page where they talk about it: BL Submissions FAQ

 

EDIT: Gems include

"Rejected submissions will not receive a response"

and

"I’ve written a book of poetry, will you publish it?"

"No."

[glayvin34]

If anyone is interested in reading, here's the next piece about Epistolary Marcos:

 

--

What have you discovered, o mighty Astartes? Karl conveyed to Marcos with a sense of extreme levity.

 

The Librarian’s mind was not able to project, but touching the surface of his mind allowed Karl to hear his topmost thoughts. That sarcasm ill fits a battlefield, Marcos boomed in return at first with chiding overtones then warmed by brotherly counsel. I have discovered that my Sergeant is picking up an approaching enemy detachment, prime your war machines. And there is other information, please prepare a psy-reactive crystal.

 

The Inquisitor trusted the Epistolary utterly, he was the epitome of Astartes calm rigidity. However, in the few telepathic communions he had undergone with Marcos, Karl had become wary of the chained power within his mind.

 

Throckmorton had never contacted a mind quite like Lucian Marcos’, and he had engaged in his share of psychic duels across the galaxy as a member of the Ordo Hereticus. The mind of a daemon, which he had extinguished on more than one occasion, could unsurprisingly be described as chaotic, a mess of roiling emotion that could, nay must, be overcome by brute force. The mind of the human psyker was totally different and had structure, a center where the ego lived, forward facing defenses with memories hidden beneath it all. He had even once had a mercifully brief psychic duel with one of the deceitful Eldar. Its mind had been sharply defined and far more evolved. Where a human mind was a brash young street brawler, the Eldar mind was a seasoned and talented veteran, a master of multiple fighting disciplines. Throckmorton still thanked the Emperor that the xenos had rendered him unconscious instead of killing him… or worse.

 

Lucian Marcos was not like that at all. When the Inquisitor first made contact with his presence, he had “knocked” on the outer wall of the Epistolary’s defenses. Instead of fading away completely like a relaxing muscle, Marcos’ mental barriers shifted aside like a massive vault door, inviting in the unwary astral form. When accessing the mind of a mortal or even a daemon, most of Karl’s body of light was expansive into the ether as he used the periphery of the opposing sentience to interact with the interior. There was no way to commune mind-to-mind with Marcos without going deep into his territory. Accessing the mind of Lucian Marcos was to be hemmed in on all sides by strong adamantine walls and forces capable of moving them with impunity. It was impossible to shake the feeling of being in the palm of a giant, who could flex his fist and crush you instantly at any time.

 

Ooo, other information? What other information? Tell me! Karl conveyed, his thoughts dripping with exaggerated lust. To be true, he usually didn’t toy with his Astartes companion like this, but boredom had got the better of him. Marcos stepped up to his role in the drama.

 

Inquisitor, you will simply have to keep yourself calm. Otherwise I fear I shall have to inform your superiors that one of their members has become clinically obsessed with the acquisition of knowledge and should be summarily mind-wiped to expunge any taint that may have taken hold. As he conveyed these thoughts with levity, Marcos passed the invisible barrier of the Shroud, the eyes in his wizened features abruptly focusing on Karl as the interior of the barn shimmered into his view, a slight smirk turning the edge of his leathery mouth. Vepi followed him in, still glued to his auspex as if it were displaying a holodrama.

 

The rest of the squad were taking up positions behind broken slats and checking their wargear. Karl had met each of the ten members of the 2nd squad from the 6th company that had accompanied Marcos down to Completia and committed their personal heraldry to memory so that he could call them by name and perhaps gain a degree of familiarity, but they were dry individuals, unable to have a conversation about anything but war or preparing for war. A few had an inkling of a personality, though, particularly the squad leader Vespius, who was an exception to the norm. Karl had shared more than a few jokes with the huge warrior, and had even shared some amasec with him. His preomnor implant neutralized most of the alcohol, but a little managed to make its way into his system and the memory of watching Vespius’ pupils dilate and his always careful bearing sway for a moment still caused Karl to force down a guffaw. The squad leader was a man who understood the value of camaraderie, which earned immense amounts of respect from Throckmorton.

 

About half of the Astartes had been left behind on the Ordo’s Super Light Cruiser, including another squad from the 6th company along with Techmarine Ren and his beloved Thunderhawk. Karl had a few conversations with the taciturn Ren, and found him to have a very active if very dry sense of humor that he loosed upon the oblivious members of the Adeptus Mechanicus with relish and abandon. The adepts never picked up on it, but it was clear that Ren was laughing it up behind his implanted vox-grille. All in all, compared to the glowering Ultramarines or clenched-anus Imperial Fists it was appearing that the Angels Vermillion were actually going to be fun to be around during this operation.

 

Emperor knows my other choice of companions have erased the term ‘fun’ and all its synonyms from their cold heads, Karl thought bitterly as he watched his small team of Artisans fussing over the massive flesh-and-steel gun servitors. There were four of the beastly war machines, massive ogryn frames on heavy tracked units outfitted with melta, missiles and heavy bolters. These were not the rotting, infected animated cadavers typically seen stagnating around the Imperium, Karl had gone to a particular Magos associate to acquire these combatants. They had a healthy pallor to their skin, and when they bled, they bled the bright red of well- oxygenated arteries. A few times, Karl thought he saw snarls of satisfaction develop on their faces as they poured destruction on the enemies of the Imperium. But he knew their brains had been shredded and replaced with targeting cogitators so that was not a possibility.

 

Karl’s eyes brightened as the somehow light footfalls of Marcos's Power armor approached. "Lucian, my Adepts have really enjoyed having enough time to recite their machine spirit placations in triplicate, but I personally would like the opportunity to leave this bloody region of unending tedium. Is it time to do a little work yet?”

 

Marcos found the whole concept of sarcasm questionable, but seemed to understand it would have to be suffered if a good working relationship with Throckmorton was to be forged. "Yes, Inquisitor, it is, I have finally gleaned some information that leads off this flat and uneventful continent. The family that lived at this farm was treated to an unusual ritual prior to their death, one which generated a weighty warp-transitional emotion gradient. The subject of the ritual had a particularly strong connection to his ancestral psyche, so the ritualist was cleverly able to manipulate him into resonating with it. I don't doubt the fiend learned quite a bit."

 

"I love it when you talk like that. Details?"

 

"Yes, images of the equatorial region, what appeared to be the island chains Isolda or Imogine."

 

Throckmorton considered this. "Alrighty, Lexmechanic Fudious, if you please?”

 

A whip-thin figure apparently devoid of arms and wrapped only in a long red robe glided over. A thin wafer of crystal extended from beneath its hood, carried by a set of velvet covered manipulator arms. The gesture had the appearance of an oversized snake sticking out a forked tongue. “Ah, thank you,” said Throckmorton as he took the clear object from the adept. Translucent cerulean ropes jumped through the crystal as the bare skin of the Inquisitor came into contact with the surface.

 

With a hissing and popping, Marcos unsealed and removed his gauntlet, even his mighty Astartes hand looking awkward sticking out of the massive suit of crusade-pattern armor. Karl reached out and touched the back of his hand, bare skin to bare skin. The Inquisitor took a sharp intake of breath, always shocked at how the armor around the Librarian’s mind made a mockery of that around his body. Continental plates shifted about on the surface of his psyche, and Karl got peeks between them of industrial cognitive routines churning and processing information. The vault finally yawned open and revealed a nugget of verisimilitude. Karl reached into the maw and grabbed it, again feeling like he was reaching into a Carnodon’s jaws to grab a half-chewed morsel.

 

Karl quickly passed the verity into the psycrystal, images instantly blooming on and beneath the surface. He carefully inspected the smeared pictures. “Hm, hm, look at those distant peaks, past the greenery here- and here- this is one of the shattered regions, where Mesenchymus targeted his Terra-forsaken Armageddon Ordinatus. Did you pick up anything that could have been a catastrophe on a global scale?"

 

Marcos shook his head as he clamped and resealed his gauntlet. “No, nothing like that. Mesenchymus went rogue in M38, the visions I gathered can’t have gone back that far.”

 

Throckmoton pursed his lips as he considered what Marcos had said and murmured half to himself. “Hm, hm, hm, definitely Isolda, that place is full of angry natives. Some naked female ones, to be sure, but not enough to be worth it.” He shrugged. “Ah, well, I guess we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it, eh, Lucian?”

 

With that, he playfully slapped Marcos on the shoulder, which was like slapping a mountain, and sauntered off to pulse the psyprisms.

 

The psyprisms were contained in a black contraption that the Mechanicus had brought with them and drew power from the same portable fusion unit as the Shroud Generator. They claimed the device projected a scattering presence in the warp that would not hide their presence, but would make them very difficult to pin down. So the traitor sorcerers out there knew Karl and another potent psyker were nearby, but wouldn't be able to pin them down. Perfect for an ambush.

 

Karl placed his hand on a polished bronze dial on the face of the machine. He dialed it down completely, then back up, then down a few more times, varying the amount of power channeled into the psyprisms, effectively revealing their positions to any scouting minds nearby. That ought to start the party, he thought.

 

--

 

The traitors came over the hill traveling perpendicular to the lines of fire that Sergeant Vepi had laid out, their exposed flank betraying their continued ignorance of the Imperial forces carefully drawing beads on their units. There was a salamander command vehicle sporting a wicked flesh banner and two chimeras riding in a triangle formation, guarded by two defiled Sentinels sprinting along their flanks. A few minutes before Throckmorton had again fluctuated the energy fed to the psycrystals at random intervals to reveal their position slightly, fooling whatever sorcerous detection methods the traitors were using into thinking they were zeroing in on their target of their own volition.

[sergi]

I like the plot as of yet for this story. The Inquisitor character is fun to read about, and seems well developed, as do the other characters. Looking forward to see how this story develops. Is there a chance of seeing any more dialogue between the characters, there doesn't seem to be enough of the cooloquial lines that really show off the characters, which is on eof themost enjoyable things to read in your short story. =D. Sergi