To Serve

Inherited Sin

Eager to get back to work, you blew through scores of your fellow scholiasts on your way out of the Fifth Chambers. A few of your armored masters gave you warning looks, but you only just registered them before you were already several feet away. Lead by the levitating servitor, all the muscles in your legs were dedicated to catching up with it, sparing little mind for anything else. Whatever words Lord Rhacelus pumped into its head sent it flying not towards the main gates, but down a winding, secluded hallway that you swear tilted downwards at a deceptively subtle angle.

More than once you had to arrest a fall, but there was not the benefit of a railing or any decoration. The walls were blank dull stone, colorless in the shadows. Torches did not light the way by fire, but rather a series of lifeless vibrating lumes casting cold white rays that barely reached the floor. With your feet enveloped in a river of darkness, you didn't realize your servitor had come to a sudden halt until you smacked, bodily, into a flat wooden door. Disoriented, you immediately peeled yourself away and was fixing to panic. The door had no handle, no seam in which to fit your fingers into. You had, essentially, been lead to a dead end. You were preparing to take it out on the servitor when you realized it wasn't completely silent.

A series of strange syllables spilled from the vox grill embedded in its fleshy throat, forming words that you suspect you weren't supposed to hear. The completely ordinary wood reacted immediately. Crimson threads wove through the grain, forming a perfectly luminous etching that took form even as you watched, gaping. Then a sound like the dull tolling of a bell came from the material. Wood splintered violently, pelting you and the servitor.

Flecks of wood fanned around your feet as you stared at the bas-relief forcefully blasted into the surface. A majestic image of a howling angel you had, at first, thought to be Sanguinius but the look of lifeless violence behind the deep set eyes remind you more of Lord Mephiston...

Cringing back violently, light flooded into the abandoned corridor as the door threw itself open. Without any sort of prompting, the servitor glided through, dragging you with it. Indignant and surprised, you had not given it any such order but once your soles were across the threshold there was a pop of air. Behind you was a wall, not a door. You were, in fact, back in the private scriptorium you occupied last night. On the verge of hyperventilating, you could do little else but tremble. The room was exactly as it had been before, framed by the billowing white robes of your servitor as it moved to carefully set down the tome it had been holding. Then it left.

Without orders.

Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. The chamber was shadowed, but not dark. The doorless entryway was illuminated from the outside, broken only by the passing of other blood thralls. None had witnessed what you just did. None addressed the very out of place servitor.

Behind you, the wall was remained firmly in place. No glowing threads, no dead, staring eyes promising death and glory. Ahead of you, your table and precious tomes awaited. You sat down, deciding to forget about what happened. Translating and transcribing would ease your obviously exhaustion riddle mind...

The doorway darkened. All shadows beyond the door paused. Literally frozen in place. Lord Mephiston had come among you again and everything behind him fell victim to a cease in time. The ritual repeated itself. Head pressed to the table, fingers tented across the parchment.

"Rise." He ordered, and you did so even if looking at him invited fresh horror.

While he was not clad in his battle-plate as he was yesterday, his robes of office were somehow worse. Hanging on a frame that was towering and gaunt, the garment exposed enough of him to view skin that was grey as a corpse. His armor didn't simply play tricks on your eyes like you'd thought, no. He was truly as reanimated as he looked. Something that had risen from the grave bathed in fire and ash.

He moved to stand beside you, fixing you with a hard, but placid glance. "You are wise to fear me. But not here. Not now."

Mephiston gestured strangely and the sconces lining the ceiling blazed to life. The pallor of death abandoned him just as surely as you swore it had been there. Eyes dark and hooded but otherwise normal no longer held the eyeless stare of something dead and hateful. You relaxed, if only a little.

"Do you know why I gave you this task instead of one of my Lexicanum?"

The question physically threw you. Out of anything you were expecting him to say, it wasn't that. It took you several moments to reply. "I was...always curious but assumed it was because I am one of Imola's descendants?"

"What do you remember of your mother?"

The shock almost made you vomit. Fingers curled into tight fists within your sleeves. "My mother?"

When he did not elaborate, the sickness in your stomach was forced to settle and words spewed forth inside of bile. "...my last memory of her was...was Sector Deputy Mort dragging her out of our cell. She'd been howling all night, I tried...to help, but I guess someone complained."

His gaze fell and a sort of guilty look crossed his pale features. It lasted so shortly you weren't sure what it meant. "She was my personal scribe."

Mother had never told you that. Even before her mind slipped. Mephiston didn't wait for you to process the emotion. "Never once had she feared me. Even when she was young she had a fire in soul seemingly fueled by Baal itself. When the invasion came, she stayed at her post, stubbornly refusing to leave the tomes she'd spent her life around. In the end it was what saved her when all others perished. The lower levels where most of the scholiasts evacuated to was broken into and devoured."

"All of those nightmares she woke up from..."

Mephiston nodded. "Yes. Guilt ate her from the inside out. I spoke to her, briefly, when sanity was still with her and she confessed. I do not hold her bravery against her. She secreted a vast number of important tomes away with her, hiding in the same hall you emerged from."

"Why are you telling me this?" You asked, unable to contain the burst of anger rotting through your throat. You weren't sobbing, but almost.

He let out a very slow breath. "You remind me a lot of her. She was as dedicated to the work as you are. All blood thralls are, but it consumed her intellect. It was never enough to merely complete her duties. Literature was everything to her. Understanding not just the words, but the meanings behind them. All of them."

Gradually, the ball of muscle clutching your pharynx unwound. "I am like that too, I think. It helped me cope with her disappearance. I didn't have any friends so I turned to the scriptorium and never looked back."

You understood him then. A shared, harmonious loss. A lack of closure souring the heart and soul. While you weren't as damaged as your mother had been, the anxiety and self-imposed isolation was very real. You, the child of the woman who had unintentionally survived the death of her fellows, inherited perceived sin. For a while, you secretly lived hating her, hating her empty, terrified stares in the middle of the night even as it slowly broke your heart. You had begged her to tell you what was wrong, but she always refused. Now you understood why. The hate was shameful. Misunderstood. Unfair.

Maybe you hadn't known her at all. Maybe she hadn't known you, either. Such emotional barriers couldn't be crossed, even by love. Had she loved you? She must have, right? So many questions wanted to spring to your lips, but to ask them of the Chief Librarian was absurd and inappropriate. You doubted he would be able to tell you much anyways. Much had been answered, yet so much left unanswered.

Biting your bottom lip until it hurt, your coiled fists pounded mutely into your work surface. "I will finish this tome, my lord. By tonight. I promise. I'll bring the journal and everything I have on the transcriptions."

A flicker of pride lit his eyes with white flame. "I will hold you that, scholiast." His familiar, almost warm tone only pressed you further. The moment his feet left the room and time crawled forward once more, your pen was already put to parchment.