"Stop Rico, let them finish the search. We will go in when they finish. Go back down, and wait for orders. I know how much this is costing you, but keep calm and let your training take over."
Does the whimpering of the man sound like the crazy bugger that I met earlier here today.
I continue to move toward the room where I last saw Sunshine fearing the worst. I also take a long look down the hall toward Emrits office. What does the damage look like to the two rooms from my angle?
Over the microbead. "Cover our exit. This was a professional hit. Eyes will be watching for us."
A flash of recognition almost startles Savalos. The plaintive whimper sounds exactly like the indigen with the nightstick who confronted you earlier today when you first arrived at the Mercy.
From where you stand behind Iacton, you can see that the door to the surgery where you left Sunshine is still closed, but the door to Emrit's office hangs from its hinges, as if wrenched from them by some powerful force. The stench is wafting toward you from somewhere in that direction.
Over the microbead. "I know the voice. We can fetch him after everything is secure. How's the street look?"
I signal to Iacton that I am going to try the handle of the closed door. So I will swing the door open without standing in front of it. I am not sure what to expect when I open it. I hope Sunshine is alive and okay. But deep down I have a bad feeling
"Knock, knock Sunshine."
Iacton stands ready on the other side of the door, not willing to risk clearing two rooms at the same time.
Albrek's voice follows yours over the microbead.
<Street is clear; no hostiles in sight.>
Albrek's voice follows yours over the microbead.
<Street is clear; no hostiles in sight.>
Ishmael and I go to a position where we cover Savalos and Iacton.
With Savalos and Iacton in position in front of the surgery door, Uriah follows, Ishmael walking protectively in front of the psyker. Once the pair are close enough to render cover for their fellows, Uriah nods his assent to open. He hears the sound of quiet footfalls following behind him.
Uriah turns to find the arbitrator standing almost directly behind him. Rico regards the psyker with a cold stare, then looks to Savalos, his eye contact wordlessly communicating his desire to know if Quincus was left in the room beyond.
Psyniscience(60) =
Psyniscience(60) = 1d100
Uriah feels his skin crawl, a prickling sensation rippling up his spine like a scuttling insect before stopping at the junction of his brainstem and skull. There is no question that the taint of the Warp pervades this once sacrosanct place of healing, lingering from whatever it was that passed through here. The consecrated quality the hospice may have once possessed has been corrupted in some way by the taint of the Immaterium. The charred, burnt smell is nearly overwhelming for you now, heightened as it is by your sensitivity to psychic phenomena. A powerful wave of nausea passes over you, a presaging of things to come, as the others do not seem to be affected.
The psychic malaise this feeling leaves behind makes Uriah's intended reprimand of Rico seems pointless, even foolish.
Johnnie's emotions are all a jumble.
He wants to scream, Quincus name but can't. The Evisecerator or his copycat would just love that.
He keeps his voice level, as he voxes, "What's the status?"
After taking a deep breath attempting to clear my head, over the Microbead: "Savalos, Iacton, be careful, the taint of the immaterium is here and this place has been corrupted somehow."
Making the sign of the Aquila.
I answer with the slide of my pump action. Had enough of those damn toilet bowl terrors.
Over the microbead. "Druuthers been vented. Put up a good fight. Sunshines status is currently in doubt."
Iacton exchanges his knife for his sword, determined to not falter in his duties again.
With the others assembled around him, Savalos reaches for the door to the surgery. One hand, sweaty with nervous anticipation remains clutched around the pistol-grip of his shotgun, the other slowly turns the knob. Filled with trepidation, unsure of what to expect inside, he pushes the door open. The overpoweringly anxious presence of Johnnie standing behind him seems to burst like a dam, and the arbitrator is pushing by him almost before the door is fully open.
All of you are uncertain as to what it was exactly that you expected to find, but the imagination is a powerful thing, and when the worst of your fears are dispelled by the apparently innocuous empty room, there is a moment of anticlimax, a false sense of relief that fades just as quickly when you realize that although no warp-spawned horror awaits you, Quincus Dauln, Sunshine, Dove, is gone.
The surgery is much as Savalos remembers leaving it, the long stainless steel table that dominates the small room, stained on its edges with burnt-orange rust, still has the blood-spattered, paper-quilted, disposable cover that Kirsch placed upon it for Quincus. Also, many of the medicae supplies used in her procedure still sit upon the nearby shelving, including the anti-septic coagulant gun and stainless steel tools used by the doctor to seal her wound. The room seems to have largely avoided the carnage that the gun battle in the rest of the hospice suffered from, the exception being a pair of bullet holes high up on the left hand wall.
Savalos notes with unease that Sunshine's Judicium vestments remain where they were tossed aside on the counter by Kirsch prior to her treatment. He was explicit in his instructions to Kirsch to burn them.
After the grim understanding that Quincus is nowhere to be found in the room sinks in, everyones eyes are unconsciously drawn back to the stainless steel operating table. Something that you didn't initially perceive when you first entered the room is now overpoweringly evident, even ominous in its placement.
An near seamlessly erected, perfectly aligned, pentagonally-shaped house of cards stands in the center of the table. The cards are weathered and old, their edges tattered and well-worn, the manner of the structures precise construction hiding their faces, only the lusterless midnight blue and vibrant gold labyrinthine designs on their are backs evident. Five cards form its outer wall. Two have been placed cross-wise, parallel to the table over the top, forming the 'roof' of the house, making it almost a container of sorts. The pattern on the back of the cards is almost hypnotic to gaze upon, all maze-like angles and intersecting spirals.
The entire presentation suggests a perfectly wrapped gift box.
As your minds make this analogy, you are filled with an awful foreboding of what is hidden inside.
A numbing sensation washes over me as a stare at the cards. There is only one man who held them other than myself. He was the one who took them from me. The message he is sending is loud and clear. I careful look at the cards to read the pattern he laid out for me before picking them up. Trying to glean what kernel of truth he is trying to show me before putting the cards away in my pocket.
"Lets hurry up, and scan the rest of the level, and grab the wimpering guy. We have to move." To think my act of humanity saved Sunshine, and killed my friend. Don't need to see his body. I already know. I move to grab a plastic bag, and I throw Sunshines ruined clothes in it. I will burn them myself.
"On the way down I will grab the autocannon, and what left of the ammo."
I will not stop him, his instincts are good.
Iacton stands ready, knowing that they will have to see what is under the house of cards eventually.
Johnnie chambers a round into the combat shotgun ready to rush in a moment's notice.
Savalos steps forward, hesitantly at first, circling the stainless steel table while examining the house of cards with a mixture of speechless bafflement and irresistible curiosity. The pentagonal design is flawless, exactly equilateral, and arranged by what can only be the unmatched precision of an artist's hands. They intersect one another at perfect looking seams, with the two arranged at the top completely covering the space between the "walls", although it hurts your eyes to look at them doing so, as it seems physically and geometrically impossible.
Unable to help yourself, the others serving as mute witnesses, you draw the topmost card, turning it over in your hand to see the face.
You look upon The Great Eye, a staring, malefic well of blackness like a midnight sun, staring its blind, idiot god stare into the vastness of the Immaterium, somehow beyond good and evil, destroying all that is comes into contact with by its very presence. The Void itself made manifest.
Your left hand, holding the card, begins to shake, so you use your right to pick up the other card laying flat across the top.
Turning your eyes away from The Great Eye proves difficult; you find yourself gazing raptly into the ebon oblivion that seems to violently convulse and remain so pristinely placid at the same time. Somehow you manage, and turn the card in your right hand to face you.
You look upon the Inquisitor. A tall figure, shrouded in a flowing robe and mantle, his face a baroque harlequin's mask divided into light and dark, mad and sane. In his right hand he holds the sacred Aquila, in the other the eight pronged star of the Ruinous Powers. A regicide board stands before him, the pieces arrayed in such a way that it shows the endgame is nigh.
Seeing the cards from the doorway, Ishmael shouts into the room at Savalos.
"You hold in your hand the works of a heretic, look not upon them, for they are fit only to be burned! They are a perversion of the sacred tarot of our savior!"
"What is happening?" Johnnie mutters.
Forbidden Lore(The Warp)(41) =
I do not recognize it.
Awareness(40) =
I am too distracted by Ishmael to be aware of anything.
"I know full well the nature of these cards Ishmael. Trust that I am there handler, and I follow HIS will in this endeavor. In other words shut up for a minute to I can read the message that was left for us."
I try to refocus on the cards to glean the message that has been left before me.
2d100
Savalos appears too distracted by Ishmael's sudden outburst, and the others weren't looking at the hollow in the remaining five cards stacked upon the table.
There is a small ivory colored object in the center of it, vaguely cylindrical in shape, standing upright, tapering from bottom to top.
"Wait." Iacton steps up to the table and slowly reaches into the house of cards, grabbing the object within.
I stop as Iacton moves forward. "Don't knock the cards. We can't afford to loose this message."
Iacton carefully snatches up the object from within, doing so in such a way as to not disturb the pentagonal wall of cards that remains. He holds it up in one hand to examine it more closely, Savalos on one side, Rico on the other.
The object is small, not even an inch in length, made of a hard but surprisingly light material, yellowish-white in hue, like ivory. It is vaguely conical in shape, with the bottom serving as a base of sorts. It has been meticulously carved, or rather scrimshawed to represent a man and a woman closely embracing, as if tightly holding on to one another in the face of some awful tragedy. Her head rests in the hollow of his gathering arm, and his face rests somberly upon the top of her shoulder. Iacton turns the small sculpture over in his hand, nearly dropping it when he sees the bottom, which isn't smoothly polished like the rest of the miniature, but porous, ridged, and cracked as if cut away from something else. It is also stained with what can only be the umber colored vestiges of dried blood.
Johnnie realizes and comprehends what the object is just a moment before Iacton, because the former arbitrator recognizes who the posing lovers are. He even recognizes when the pose was struck. It is a testimony to a moment in time forever etched into Rico's memory. An exact depiction of him comforting Quincus Dauln following the 'death' of the Eviscerator, as they stood over the serial murderer's lifeless body. A memory from the vantage point of a dead man.
Juan Rico's eyes go wide, his chest heaves with an agonizing hitch of some emotion between crushing grief and horror. His eyes welling up, consumed by sorrow-filled rage.
It is only then that Iacton understands he is holding the tip of a human finger bone.
I continue to study the house of cards. I try to glean whatever I can before Ishmael knocks it aside and destroys useful information. I will look at what Iacton removed afterwards.
Johnnie barely manages to keep his composure.
Mustering his rapidly diminishing reserves of willpower, Johnnie somehow manages to maintain some measure of equanimity in the face of the abject horror of seeing his beloved Dove's mutilated finger in Iacton's hand. Instead, a cold, emotionless, all-consuming rage begins to rise in him, so much so that he takes the bone fingertip from Iacton's hands, having been fully prepared to dash the head of Krade's agent against the table until he relinquished it if he had been met with even the most token resistance.
For Iacton's sake and his own, he is glad the man gave it up so easily. Johnnie reigns in his seething anger when he sees that Iacton has only pity in his eyes.
Examining it more closely, he tries not to weep. The likeness would be almost beautiful for its composition and execution in other circumstances. It is difficult for the former arbitrator to know what to feel. He is assured of one thing: Dove is not dead. He is certain this is merely a message, a lure, a morbid reminder from the Eviscerator himself that the matter at hand has not been settled yet, that the game is far from over.
There can be no question in his mind, regardless of the new affectation of the playing cards, knowing what he knows as a person and a professional, after seeing the statuettes in the Evidence Vault, who left this awful calling card, this time so personally, for him.
The question now was, what would he do about it?
I continue to study the house of cards. I try to glean whatever I can before Ishmael knocks it aside and destroys useful information. I will look at what Iacton removed afterwards.
So preoccupied is he with the cards on the table, and their message for him, Savalos scarcely notices Johnnie's reaction to the artistically carved fragment of bone. Ishmael, perhaps surprisingly, holds his ground, but the cleric's expression remains one of self-righteous loathing for the heretical placards.
Moving forward, Savalos cranes his head around to examine what the five cards comprising the walls of the free-standing pentagon depict. They are as follows:
The Daemon
The Shattered World
The Prisoner
The Pestilence
The Heretic
I will be initially focus'd on the Heretic Card since its the unknown to us. Considering what I just encountered I will look at the Pestilence Card, and the Daemon Card. Though I will not be happy about it. I will whisper a prayer to Saint Trobriund as I examine those cards. The same prayer I said when I was in the Gear Box. I will follow with looking at the Shattered World. Lastly I will look at the Prisnor Card. If at anytime my mind plays tricks with me, or I start to wig out I will step away from the cards and take a respite.
"Iacton, cover us."
I step up to look at the cards.
"Johnnie, I'm sorry for your loss.", Iacton says stiltedly. Iacton then does as he is told and moves to the door.
"Johnnie, I'm sorry for your loss.", Iacton says stiltedly. Iacton then does as he is told and moves to the door.
"She's not dead yet." Johnnie snaps.
Johnnie takes a look at what Sav is looking at.
"The Daemon
The Shattered World
The Prisoner
The Pestilence
The Heretic"
"The cards seem to tell that there is a daemon loose on this planet a prisoner here but whose presence or interference will cause a plague, all because of one who betrayed his oaths. A heretic."
"I think I know who or what the Heretic represents. It is time we talked with the Intelligencer."
Iacton passes Johnnie, offering his condolences and accepting the arbitrator's biting retort without responding, the assassin understands better than most what such a loss truly means. He passes Ishmael, who shakes his head angrily and turns away from Uriah, all of the good will the two built up during their conversation in the Choir gone an instant when the psyker moves forward to examine the cards.
Trade(Soothsayer)(41) =
Missed by 5
"I think I know who or what the Heretic represents. It is time we talked with the Intelligencer."
Ishmael seizes upon Johnnie's comment with barely tempered spite.
"Aye, we know who the Heretic represents; you need only look around at one another or in a looking glass. If we keep upon this path we will be truly damned. Only the pure can survive the coming firestorm."
His piece said, he then steps out of the surgery into the hall with Iacton to keep watch over the hallway.
"I think I know who or what the Heretic represents. It is time we talked with the Intelligencer."
Ishmael seizes upon Johnnie's comment with barely tempered spite.
"Aye, we know who the Heretic represents; you need only look around at one another or in a looking glass. If we keep upon this path we will be truly damned. Only the pure can survive the coming firestorm."
His piece said, he then steps out of the surgery into the hall with Iacton to keep watch over the hallway.
"Yes, yes, but the Intelligencer tried to have me killed while I was at the precinct, and he is the one leading the investigations into the recent killings."
"There are no coincidences don't you agree? Don't you see providence in the meaning of the cards? One who broke his oath, one who tried to have me killed, one who is probably in league with the Eviscerator."
Keeping my eyes on the cards I speak. "Sunshine is a fighter Johnnie. The Throne has cause for her yet otherwise she never would have survived the trip to the Mercy in the first place."
"There's more than one faction at work here. The Eviscerator had nothing to do what happened to Krade. The Gear Box was proof enough of that."
Over the Microbead. "Ivanoov, once we get to a more secure location I would like to review that tape of Krades abduction."
Trade(Soothsayer)(41) = 1d100
Missed by 5
The three acolytes gather about the table, the curious collection of archetypes that they represent almost something of a divinatory array in and of itself had they been their representative cards. Arbitrator. Psyker. Ganger. Three of Many. Vocations. Uriah chuckles wryly when he recognizes their relative positioning would represent a "Fool's Errand" in a linear pattern of the Imperial Tarot.
Both Savalos and Rico defer to Uriah to determine what the cards may portend. The pair can only surmise given the disturbing images on the cards that whatever truths they represent are of the darker variety.
Uriah is able to divine slightly more, but he is more accustomed to the true Emperor's Tarot, not this bastardized corruption so favored by the less than pious. Looking at the The Great Eye and The Inquisitor cards that were placed face up beside the five-sided house by Savalos, he considers the entirety of the spread. The array is a modified pentafex, an archaic and oft-frowned upon array in most circles. In the Imperial Tarot, it is usually a single card placed upon the top of the others, to emphasize its importance in the overall reading. In this case it was two cards, perhaps suggesting they are equally dominant in the divination or at least codependent in some way.
Generally, when the cards are placed in a structus pattern, it denotes that those placed perpendicular to the table and against one another are inherently connected in some way, and in some respect dependent or supportive of the overlay or "roof" cards, relative to the overall interpretation. Without knowing the relative position from which the person dealt the cards, it is impossible to know which of the five sides of the pentafex is the "outcome" card. Although, if the person was in Uriah's present position, a reasonable assumption given the position of the table relative to the door, it would be the The Shattered World, truly an inauspicious card in such a pattern, representative of an impending catastrophe. That would make The Heretic on one side of the "inward point" of the pentafex in opposition to The Prisoner on the other, suggesting they are rivals, and diametrically opposed. As The Daemon is beneath The Heretic it is said to be its "progeny" either figuratively or literally. The Pestilence, by the same interpretation would be the issue of The Prisoner on the opposite side. Their figurative conflict of these two sides ending in The Shattered World.
It is difficult given the strange orientation and corrupted representations that the Heretic's Wake deck portrays for you to divine much more of the individual cards significance. All you can say for certain is that each of the cards represented in this array is traditionally perceived as a harbinger of dark things or otherwise ill-omened regardless of their positioning.
You consider Rico's spontaneous utterance from a moment ago:
"The cards seem to tell that there is a daemon loose on this planet... a prisoner here whose presence or interference will cause a plague, all because of one who betrayed his oaths... A heretic."
Amazingly, his words, spoken with such spontaneous conviction, have the ring of the truth to them.
Over the Microbead. "Ivanoov, once we get to a more secure location I would like to review that tape of Krades abduction."
Ivaanov answers promptly, his bland good humor still ever present, oblivious as he is to the discoveries in the surgery.
<Of course, Savalos Thul, I warn you again, though, it is not for the squeamish.>
When everyone has there fill at looking at the cards. I will take them up and put them in my pocket.
"We need to clear this floor quickly, and take the survivor with us. Like I said before I think we are being watched."
"Ivaanov, I am sure I will have enough nightmares after what happened at the Gear Box. Doubt the recording will add much more to it."
"There's more than one faction at work here. The Eviscerator had nothing to do what happened to Krade. The Gear Box was proof enough of that."
"I agree, there is at least two factions involved that are in conflict. If this conflict is taken to its ultimate conclusion, The Shattered World is the result. The Daemon and The Heretic is one side and The Prisoner and Pestilence is on the other.
The other cards represent a Fool's Errand in a regular Imperial Tarot.
This all fits what I have been seeing in visions I have been having. We will talk about that later. And I will give the rest of you our Master's instructions."
"So Iacton, Johnnie, what was in the center of the house of cards? Its positioning will be relavent."
"So you already heard back from the Old Man, or is it some protocal that was tripped with everything that has happened?"