For a psyker, every recovery after meditation is not so much an awakening as a rebirth.
It had always been like this, out of trance, Melissa Springer had always allowed subtle perceptions and concepts to escape her attention, moving her thoughts from the inner realm to the outer earthly realm of tradition. the realm of perception and thought.
She returned to her physical self, like an eagle returning to its nest, breathing in the sweet scent of honey and enjoying the slow trickle of physical sensations that felt like blood coursing through hungry arteries.
In the Academy of Psionics, she had learned to call it the Father's Gift: the brief moment of warmth and contentment that followed the meditation of divination, like a reward from the Emperor's hand.
She let it flow into every limb, flexing her toes and arching her back.
The Acolyte Master taught – enjoy every moment of it.
After all, there is only one aspect of telepathy that qualifies as a "gift," and all other aspects are more tantamount to a curse.
The gift of the Father does not last, it disappears in a very short time, and in that unpleasant moment, all the strong memories of the trance will rush into the heart and overwhelm her.
After that, she opened her eyes and focused on a dim candle in the center of the divination ring, breaking through the mud of memories.
Her first thought was this: something was coming out of the other side of the curtain.
The meditation room is very modest.
Four rock walls arch overhead, forming together a crude dome, at the center of which is a bronze needle: the conduction point of the astral body.
But that was not the case in her old meditation room, but gone were the scriptures painted in gold, silver and marble on every wall, gone were the abstract star maps and incantations on the soothsayer's dome pattern, the humming incense Gone, too, was the great twisted shelf of the skull.
She had had a nourishing life on Terra, and this humble cube was far from what she had expected, and considering the indifference her new master had shown her, she thought she should be grateful for anything, but Still... there are limits.
A wizened servitor poked her shoulder with a stunted limb, while a pale eye twitched convulsively.
It tried to speak, but the rune-carved nails on its lips and chin only elicited wet gurgling sounds from him while a long string of drool swayed from its chin.
On Terra, her meditative awakenings were tended by living servants, and although those smooth-skinned subordinates had their tongues removed and a sign of ownership nailed to each eye, they were still alive and knew what was going on. She wiped her sweat away when she tired, massaged her shoulders, and lovingly recorded on scented parchment any insights that came from her meditation.
On Terra, her meditation chambers were crowded with locust-like automatons with emerald eyes and ruby chins, colorful streamers of psychoactive pheromones dripping like musk behind them.
In Terra, there are a dozen cogitators who serve only to explain her visions.
In Terra, the majesty of her quarters was matched by the view from the central attic, and between assignments she could spend hours gazing at the distant mountains.
In Terra, her family was able to project their influence through art and money.
Therefore, her current situation is a bit uncomfortable.
Here, that one-armed man, machine with a tech pen and slug is the best the Inquisitor has to offer.
It poked her again, leaving a stupid streak of ink on her exposed skin, and looked away, rolling its eyes.
Above it, a malfunctioning servo drone moved haphazardly on the ceiling, exuding a cheap scent, before it crashed frustratingly against the wall, and Melissa found herself mindlessly counting - , for a moment... it's like a plastic heart beating.
Here, anything could distract her from her memories.
The gift of her father had passed, there was nothing left to enjoy in this dreary little room, and the growing pressure behind her eyes could not be contained forever.
Melissa sighed, draped a simple robe over her shoulders, clenched her chin, extinguished the candle, and focused on the details of meditation, her mind still burning brightly.
"Record."
She waved the command, and the servitor straightened up immediately. The stylus rested on a swinging fortune-telling stone and made a prepared sound.
"Next comes the narrative."
She rolled her eyes, ignoring the murmur of the minion's joints.
"In the name of the Emperor, the First Presage under Inquisitor Lennart Meyerstus, who stalks the worlds of the Imperium, serves the Most Blessed Inquisition, and is loyal to the Golden Throne, I bear witness with my soul Wherever this account comes from, and I swear that it is true beyond all doubt—or may my master judge me.”
After saying that, she took a deep breath and shivered in the slightly cold air.
"Bless his throne and rule, praise the Emperor!"
She watched as the servitor scrawled the inscription with mechanical twitches, scrolling the dataslate to a clean line.
She took a moment to compose herself, pursed her lips, and continued.
"The third time, referring to the previous records, meditation began with... a high degree of perception."
She closed her eyes and thought of the cold, the abyss gaping in all directions, the dizzy feeling of nothingness, the frost condensing on her skin.
As a psyker in training, her power is called "visionary eye", which is a kind of prophecy that favors short-term accurate perception. Usually, such power is used in the Astra Militarum to provide strategic deployment for the generals. Be supportive.
Lost in memories, she continued to talk, using the skills she had been taught since childhood.
"I...I feel like I'm standing on a very high place...the ground around me collapses, like on a lonely peak. I can't see anything except...a mountain made of metal , so many colors, but I knew if I walked too far in any direction, I would fall... I would fall, never stop, straight down into the bottomless darkness... It was dark there, I couldn't see anything, but... I knew something was there, I could feel it, and there was a moment of fear, but..."
She smiled dryly, with a certain pride.
"...Although today, for the first time, I didn't vomit."
She then continued her narrative in a formal tone.
"Something is approaching, passing through the curtain and the ice. Although I am scared, I still stand where I am..."
She bit her lip, her eyes wet.
"Perhaps I was more afraid of falling than of the approaching presence, and I...I don't know, from the meditative state I had been in before, I had woken up at this point, and my efforts to know more details were thwarted, Today I... persisted, and I'm sure I caught a glimpse... of something in the shadows that I didn't realize until now seemed to be me."
She looked up and realized how ridiculous that sounded.
No matter how insightful the servitor was, he would not show it and would just wait for her next words as blankly as ever.
