Awakening

[Imperium sine fine]

Pain, terrible blinding white hot pain, such as he had never known, but only for a moment. After the pain, numbness and a whiling, insane physical and mental jumble. Then this.

He remembered the events when? Before? Only groggily, his memories were clouded by a fog he could not clear. He wanted to move, and could not, none of his limbs would respond, all over he felt a terrible, cold numbness. Blindness too, he could not even feel his eyes open and knew only darkness. Unsure whether his eyes were open and unseeing or closed and unfelt.

"Am I dead?" He wondered, perhaps, was this the road to the Emperor's Side? Some reward, he thought churlishly for a moment, before chasing the notion away. Wounded perhaps? Encased in some arcane life support device? Or even, Emperor help him, crippled and comatose on the half-remembered battlefield. Defenceless, useless, trampled by the foe.

Frustration overtook him. "I must know!" Thought being his only faculty it seemed, he raged mentally "I must know!" Again, again. Mentally fighting this cold, unfeeling prison. Feeling his anger grow within him, growing stronger and stronger. No, not just anger, something else also. "I must know!" He thundered. his throat was suddenly unblocked and his voice startled him for it was not his own. Crashing and mechanical, it was the voice of an immortal.

Another voice, much smaller it seemed, shaking with emotion, "He is awake you fool! How long has he been conscious? Activate his systems!" Systems? Bright, hard light blinded him for a moment, as his darkness had been absolute so now was his vision. "Release me!" He commanded in his God-voice, unable to shake off the idea that his condition was one of inprisonment, unable to clear the fog. The numbness had not left him but he felt a new awareness of his body that had not been there before. He could not turn his head but knew the exact status and whereabouts of his every millimetre. Information assailed him, like the auto-senses in his power armour but many times stronger, bewildering him. He forced himself to focus, robed figures appeared to be fleeing from him, how small they looked! This must indeed be some kind of holding cell, and these his erstwhile captors, he took in devices around him that he did not recognise, torture equipment most likely.

One figure did not run. He fixated on this figure, taller and broader than the others. He fixated on this figure, feeling breath that was not breath and a heartbeat that was not of flesh fill his body. This figure was the owner of the small voice, it was shouting at him as it manipulated some sort of control panel, metallic limbs moving purposefully from its back. He would not be trapped again! "Brother!" The figure cried. "Stop!"

"You were awakened too early! You are still traumatised!" Brother? He glared down at the figure, all uncertainty fled now. "I name you traitor!" He roared deliriously, raising his left arm. Neither realising nor caring that it was no loger a hand bearing a chainsword he raised, but a fearsome array of diamond edged rending implements, capaple of tearing though armour as a man would tear paper.

"Die traitor!" He vocalised boomingly, the voice of a god! Bringing his drill-fist down with murderous force, almost salivating at the imminent obliteration of his tormentor. Then nothing, nothing at all.

Techmarine Alessio finished the emergence deactivation sequence and desperately flung himself clear, the mad dreadnought's siege drill grazing glinting scores in his armour even as the power died and the lethal teeth slowed. How long had the captain been conscious in there? Hovering in the very gullet of death? Unseeing and unknowing? Alessio patted the dreadnought's casing reverently, and set about organising the servitor conversion of his adepts.