Since he had confirmed they could be teammates, Lynn took the initiative, turning back to rummage through his bag: “Sister, would you like something to eat?” She hadn’t found much edible food here, and these past few days, she must have been nearing her limit.
Although Sisters of Battle have high combat prowess, they are still mortals and need to eat.
Lynn dug out the dry rations and protein blocks from his bag and shared half with Cecilia.
Cecilia politely thanked him, and then the two of them sat facing each other, separated by the dancing flames, eating together around the fire.
In the meantime, Cecilia was constantly observing Lynn.
A Sister of Battle’s eyes were trained to complete a full physical assessment without alerting the target.
Lynn’s hands bore no calluses or scars from long-term hard labor; his skin was fair, and his nails were trimmed neatly.
His posture was relaxed, with one hand resting on his knee and the other holding the dry ration as he ate earnestly, completely lacking the flinching readiness to flee characteristic of people who survive long-term in the wilds of the Warhammer world.
His face was young and handsome, and his hair was in excellent condition, thick and black.
He was around twenty years old, with smooth skin, no traces of wind and sun exposure, no sunken features from malnutrition, and even his stubble was just a thin layer.
…This person didn’t grow up on a battlefield, nor did he crawl his way out of the slums at the bottom of a Hive City suffering from starvation.
The common environment in Warhammer 40k is a brutal grinder that turns people to dust, but he wasn’t part of it; he was likely from the upper echelons.
To so easily share food with a complete stranger meant he grew up in a safe place, where someone fed him, someone clothed him, and someone probably taught him to read and write.
He was perhaps a scholar or a noble from the upper echelons of humanity who had somehow ended up here.
Isstvan III had fallen tens of thousands of years ago.
Cecilia decided to ask Lynn directly, “This is Isstvan III; how did you get here?” Lynn’s hand paused mid-bite on his dry ration, almost dropping it.
He looked up, staring into Cecilia’s vertical pupils, his brain suddenly filled with scrambled code as if someone had hit fast-forward.
Isstvan…
III.
As soon as Isstvan III was mentioned, Lynn knew.
It was the outbreak site of the Horus Heresy, the place where the Sons of Horus and other traitor legions committed a devastating massacre against the loyalist legions.
The Drop Site Massacre: viruses, bombs, flames, and corpses.
In 30k, the four Gods incited the rebellion of the human Warmaster at the time, Horus, Primarch of the Sons of Horus.
The Sons of Horus and several other rebel legions launched a sudden attack on the three million loyalist warriors fighting alongside them.
The loyalist warriors never imagined their brothers would betray the Emperor, and, caught completely off guard, the number of corpses was enough to clog all the rivers on Isstvan III.
He had forgotten the name of this Hive City, but Cecilia’s next sentence filled it in: “Hive City Choral City.” Yes, the infamous Choral City.
It was actually here?
Lynn looked back at this place that had once changed history.
The loyalist legions and civilians were slaughtered by the traitors.
Later, the planet was corrupted by the Warp and soaked in blood, the Hive City was abandoned, and the ruins of the Hive City became a holy site for Chaos forces.
No wonder there were so many Chaos cultists wandering around.
Those cultists came here on pilgrimage, to sacrifice, and to seek opportunities for corruption.
Lynn rubbed his face.
The Drop Site Massacre cinematic was truly tragic.
The Horus Heresy marked the beginning of the decline of the Imperium of Man.
This feeling was truly bizarre; he had basically witnessed the fall of this planet from ten thousand years ago with his own eyes.
Cecilia saw that he understood the history of Isstvan III.
He was indeed an educated person.
“How did you get here?” Lynn said with a bitter face, “I don’t know, Sister.
I was originally on Terra (another name for Earth), and somehow I woke up and was brought here.” It was probably the Emperor’s draft, or else human trafficking by the system.
Cecilia’s vertical pupils flickered slightly.
Terra was the capital of the Imperium of Man, the place where the Emperor’s Golden Throne resided.
Cecilia’s mind filled in the blanks with power struggles or an Inquisition trial.
Bringing someone from Terra to Isstvan III wasn’t something ordinary people could do.
It required a ship, a Warp travel route, the ability to withstand Warp storms, and the landing coordinates for Isstvan III.
Within the Imperium’s systems, only a few organizations could do this; the Inquisition was one of them.
That was quite normal; wasn’t she exiled too?
Cecilia asked, “Are you a Psyker?” Lynn thought about it and decided to use it as a cover for the system: “Yes.” It was as expected.
Cecilia felt her assumptions were correct.
Because Psykers can communicate with the Warp, they are particularly susceptible to Warp corruption.
The Imperium’s policy regarding Psykers is brutal: the useful ones are kept, fitted with mental locks, and drafted into the Imperial Navy or the Astra Militarum’s psychic auxiliary units; the useless ones or those deemed too high-risk have parts of their brain functions excised through surgery, or they are exiled to barren worlds to fend for themselves.
Not everyone is qualified for exile, either.
The energy spent on exile costs money, right?
Those unqualified for exile are turned into mindless servitors in mining colonies who only know how to execute orders and work.
He must have been exiled by the Inquisition because he was a weak Psyker of no use, and, being the youngest son of some scholar or noble family, they couldn’t just turn him straight into a servitor.
Cecilia comforted him: “It’s fine; I was exiled too.” Cecilia introduced herself; she was a former Sister of Battle.
“During the Ophelia Crusade, my squad was surrounded by a daemon legion of Khorne.
The battle lasted for three days and three nights; my sisters fell one by one, and in the end, only three survived, including me.” She reached up and touched her eyes.
She didn’t know if it was the influence of the battle or if daemon blood had splashed into her eyes.
She was severely wounded and unconscious at the time, and when she woke up, her pupils had turned into this.
Because she developed the vertical pupil mutation, the Inquisition deemed her a mutant.
However, she retained full human sanity and was a former war hero, so she was merely exiled.
They confiscated her power armor, holy vestments, and weapons, dumped her on this planet, told her to undertake a Crusade of Redemption for the Emperor to prove her loyalty, and left.
In reality, everyone knew this was an execution in disguise, only slightly better than a public execution.
Lynn understood the Inquisition; they could indeed do something like this.
While he understood this was “better to kill by mistake than let one go” for the sake of human safety, he still had to say the Inquisition really was truly inhuman.
But Cecilia’s vertical pupils were indeed a bit scary.
Lynn asked, “Then how do you guarantee you haven’t been completely corrupted?” Actually, this question was a bit offensive to hear.
But Cecilia didn’t get angry.
Her expression remained completely unchanged as she whispered, “I am a Sister of Battle, and a Sister of Battle does not turn traitor.” “Saint Celestine teaches us that faith is immortal, and the holy light shines upon me at all times.” Her tone was low and tranquil, like reading from the Bible.
She looked at her hands, turned them over, and looked at the calluses and scars on her palms worn from long battles: “As long as my soul can still control this body, my soul will never turn to the Chaos faction.” Lynn looked at her.
Her vertical pupils were a bit frightening, but the way she sat was very quiet.
She sat there, her back straight, like a stone statue that had weathered wind and rain for hundreds of years yet still stood tall; a corrupted person couldn’t sit like this.
Lynn remembered a name he had seen somewhere before.
In the Warhammer community, someone would occasionally bring it up as an extreme case of a Sister of Battle being corrupted, and every time it was brought up, it would spark a debate about whether a Sister of Battle could truly turn traitor.
Miriael Sabathiel, the corrupted Slaaneshi Sister.
She was captured by the Emperor’s Children and subjected to unimaginable torture; her body was destroyed, her soul was torn apart, and finally, Slaanesh shoved another soul into her body, forcibly turning her into another person—only then was she finally corrupted.
Before that, she endured all the torture without betraying the Emperor, not even bending a single finger in submission.
Lynn felt that if Miriael Sabathiel could have said one last sentence before being corrupted, she would probably have said: A Sister of Battle does not turn traitor.
What she said was true.
A Sister of Battle will never be corrupted.
Alright.
“I believe you.” Lynn shuffled a bit closer to her.
Thaniel_a_goodchild.