The Dream of Trinity

[Phoebus Apollon]

Hello pals,

I wanted to share with you my first short story written in English, which I created as part of our Inquisitor campaign and the PnP that goes with it. It tells the story of Idomenea Casryn, an inquisitor and pursuer of the Horusian ideal, and the price one must be willing to pay to save the Emperor's soul.
A scene only, a brief moment born of the melancholy and loss that the holy Ordos of the Inquisition impose on their most faithful servants.
Have mercy on me that english is not my mother tongue. I hope you enjoy the words as much as I enjoy the writing process.

Best regards from Germany
 

 

The Dream of Trinity

"The final nights, in the dreamers barony
In fair Caracalla, where we lay our scene,
From ancient hopes break to new heresy,
Where honest thoughts make honest souls unclean."

- Elegies of the Double Sun, About the Esoterica Trinitae

 

+…Before the swollen gaze of the Dark Eye, do I stand. I hold for He who long ago sacrificed for man. I will yield no ground, I shall take no step back. In His name and for His will, I will never surrender…+

 

The otherworldly hiss of the shapelessness lurked like a snare of thorns over the cramped chamber of the Teleportarium. The center of the arcane facility was animated by approximately forty men and women, all clad in exquisite armor and rifles, invocations of the Golden Throne silent on their lips - a contrast to the cacophonous shrieks and labors of the Machine God's adepts performing the ritual procedure of the Run-ups performed like the Mass of St. Drusus on the core worlds of Lycandos.
If the pious warriors were ready to carry out their cruel orders at the behest of their mistress, the scratching of the presence could be heard, felt, felt at the edges of their perception. They were soldiers of the XVI. Iodura Charbytei, an elite cohort of the Tempestus Scions and officially declared "perdidit in inundationes", lost in the tides with their vessel, the "Lion of the Last Kingdom", a Sword-class frigate. As much as this may often be true, it is not always the case: instead of the tides of the Empyrean, She took into her service according to her power as the Emperor's representative. The proud soldiers of Tempestus erased their colors as did their coats of arms, only to swap them for the black and crimson of the Inquisition. The noble symbols of Charybtei victories on their cuirasses have been replaced with esoteric hypersigils and pentagram sketches painted with blessed-cursed dust from the shrine world of Sebastea. Since then, they have served the Veiled Lady as loyal warriors to fulfill her dream of the Trinity. And yet they could only defend themselves exhausted, panting and silently wailing against the snare of thorns.

 

+…Pierce my flesh, break my bones, take my life. These matter not in my sacrifice, ye of the Despair shall know defeat. For even in Death shall we be triumphant in His name…+

 

Each of the soldiers had gone through the hells of depravity as well as of their own conscience for the veiled lady. Some died, others committed atrocities for the fulfillment of the Trinity. The cases of those who showed the taint of the Otherworld on body and soul were ended with holy earnest within the warriors. But no one gave way, no one despaired. And yet the noose of thorns tightened around their souls, leaving scratches and bleeding.
Tempestor Salim averted his gaze from the crimson shape that undulated gently across the floor of the sacred teleportarium like the sea breeze of sunrise on Kardesh Secundus. Her blades, each blessed by devoted preachers of Sebasteia to the glory of Terra, floated in tight, intricate patterns around her body, forming in their slowness a complex yet hypnotic pattern that seemed like the indecisive invocation of a figure half holy and half ugly.
The teleporatium's arcs of energy were still charging, the frantic screeching of the Machine God's Adept muffled in the background. But Salim had eyes only for his neighbor's cuirass, knowing full well that the same spectacle was taking place on his armor: the hypersigils, occult symbols of protection against the corruption of the Otherworld, blistered and peeled off like old paint on the walls of a manufactory.
And the voice in his head grew louder, the rasping of the loop of thorns in his mind more oppressive.

 

+…Angelus! I have fallen in battle for He and his flock. Prepare my place, O Lord! I shall stand by thee side until the End Times. Until Thy will be done…+

 

They were verses of pious prayer, catechisms of holiness, recited in the distant, weary, yet unbroken voice of a Pious Servant of the Golden Throne. Little more than the icing of the frost, which turns the presence of the floating entity into a moment in every life that one tries desperately to shake off and yet is unable to. The purple glow in the empty eyes of the veiled skull gave an idea of ​​the powers that the veiled lady subjugated to create her personal Erinys. And yet it's the details that let Tempestor Salim recognize suffering in the thick brew of fear. Weathered adherents to the cult of the double-faced sun, rusting prayer brooches of solid gold, crests like long-smeared gleams of the man they had been.

 

The declaration of eternal friendship.
Pious praises of the Golden Throne´s benediction.
The insignia of an interrogator.

The melted wards on the Tempestus Scion's cuirass ran in contrasting clarity down the midnight-black breastplates like a distant mother's tears succumbing to madness. The first groans could be heard from the pious warriors, as the thorns pressed themselves unintentionally and unprotected into the tender flesh of their hardened souls and mutilated the fine fiber of their salvation with their barbs of corruption. But they did not falter, none of Salim's soldiers. He was proud, ignoring the taste of brass on his tongue.

 

+…Take heed, ye who have surrendered to the Darkness. I shall be unbowed and unbroken. For where there is darkness, His light shall shine and the darkness shall retreat… IDOMENEA?+

 

The dissonant ending of the litany roused each of the warriors in the teleportarium from their stoically endured agony. The Psalms of Endurance floated like distant echoes through time and space, echoing through the eternity of the souls of the Tempestus Scions. Relieved for a moment, the swollen eyes of the soldiers, hidden under their helmets and visors, glided to the entrance of the teleportarium, now seeing what the Erinys already saw coming, felt, prophesied:

 

Realizing the paradox of elegant power armor, a woman entered, clad like the soldiers in midnight black and inlaid with pure gold, her crimson cloak billowing behind her like the faithful retinue of its lord. A dead blade at her side, it was her face that caught the attention of her soldiers: suggested contours of a beautiful, yes, innocent face, hidden as if beneath a veil whose fibers seemed so unreal as to be tearful. It was no salute, not even a hinted nod of her veiled head, that was meant for her followers, her souls that would in a few moments lead themselves into the hellfire of pandemonium, in order not to let the dream of the trinity die. It just wasn't necessary. Not a word, not a declaration of appreciation for their loyalty to the Inquisitor. Tempestor Salim and each of his subordinates knew it.
And yet she spoke. The voice of Idomenea Casryn, commonly known as the Veiled Lady, found its way into the teleportarium. Sounding far away, echoing like the last, sighing note in an orchestra hall on Esseles, who combined beauty and melancholy with too few syllables:

 

“Prosperina?”

 

The word, more question than utterance, found its way through the veil, and for a moment it seemed as if even the shrieking Techadepts were brought together by the word of the Inquisitor - as a follower of the Horusian ideal reviled by many of her peers and hunted by some - to one moment of dignified silence.

 

"...Idomenea..."

 

The swords, circling in intricate patterns around the Erinys, paused in the air. Hidden beneath the veil, the skull of the crimson-tinted monster bent toward the Inquisitor. Her otherworldly voice, uttering the litany of endurance in a tortured, pained manner, driving the Tempestus Scions like rusty nails into their souls the moment the hypersigils failed, seemed changed. She sounded younger, female, yes, human. And exhausted and distant in a way that no listener could have imagined.

 

"Not for long, Proserpina. The dream of the Trinity is about to be fulfilled. We're almost there."

 

The Inquisitor's words took the stage with measured strides, where only she and her Erinys reigned supreme, the elite soldiers relegated to supporting roles and the screeching tech-adepts to a silenced orchestra. They were neither beseeching nor benevolent, but their intention was evident even to the bleeding souls of the Tempestus Scions waiting in agony deep in their hearts. She was neither an order nor a flattery. Rather a pleading.

 

"...I can hardly do any more. It hurts so bad. He wants me, my beloved... he just wants me for himself..."

 

As if in reply, the sounds of a gusting death wind came alive around Proserpina, the Veiled Lady's triple-bound Demonhost. The rusty chains around the ankles of the hovering monster lashed the floor of the teleportarium, as if angry entities wanted to replace the silent orchestra and want to end the scene, the conversation between two sisters who were in love and who were both wounded in their own way. A tiny sparkle only, nothing else was visible under the veil of Idomenea Casryn.

 

"Hold on, my strong, my noble heart."

 

The soldiers' visors could scarcely recognize it in their coarseness. And even if technology allowed them to do so, believing that the Inquisitor would shed a tear would be impossible and unbearable at the same time. A tear for a human being who, being stronger-willed, more mature, wiser, chose to accept the necessary yoke of damning one's own soul in order to enable her younger companion to fulfill the dream of the Trinity. To free the Emperor's soul from the agony of the Golden Throne.

 

"Hold on... Proserpina."

 

+ "We who have bled shall be redeemed. We who have fallen shall be exulted. We who have sacrificed shall be rewarded. We who have died shall be avenged..." +

 

No more words of sorrow. No more words of affection, of missing her loved one. Only the catechism of endurance, intoned in invisible pain from otherworldly lips, knowing full well that the self-chosen damnation could call no salvation its epilogue, only the horror of the heralds of the Empyrean, challenged and bound by human courage and occult instruments that only the most radical of the Ordo Malleus knew, could know, were allowed to know.

The last hope that Proserpina Dellacosa, once a brilliant interrogator of the Holy Ordos, could cling to was that the moment, when she could no longer resist the corruption and its insinuations, was not in vain. That the Trinity would come, she herself might be dressed in never-ending darkness.e

Edited May 30, 2022 by Phoebus Apollon