Lost in a foreign world, chapter 2: Librarian

“Why I didn’t just simply killed her? Why did I hesitated?” Luxor said, through gritted teeth, sitting  outside, right to the entrance of the cave, while looking at the night sky. His train of thought was interrupted when he heard the door opening revealing the figure of Akmella looking at him expectantly, but none of them said nothing. He turned momentarily to see her and then turned to see the sky again. Before the silence turned too uncomfortable, Akmella spoke:

“Hey, you should go to sleep, you haven’t rested since you woke up, I can watch over you if you want”. She said, taking a step forward.

“…” No answer from him.

“OK, come on, are you even list…??!!”

“I heard you,” he said, getting up and facing her. “and no, I don’t need to rest, am perfectly fine”.

“Then why are you so upset about me?” She said suddenly.

“What?” He said, looking confused.

“I rescued you and your comrades, and you are acting like if I were some kind of freak!! Did I do something wrong!!??” She said annoyed, pointing at him.

“Do you think you know how a freak looks like? Do you think that am angry at you for helping us, or because you say you are a Monster??!! You have no idea…” 

“Well, you seem troubled for some reason though, is there something wrong?”

At that, he lowered his head in defeat “*sigh*The others would be mocking me, especially Fyodor”.

“Who is he, and why he would mock you…for not killing me?” She said nonchalantly.

“Oh…so you heard everything*sigh* I will regret this, won’t I? OK Akmella, since you have  proven trust worthy enough, I think you deserve to know about who we are, so, have a seat with me”.

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Luxor and O’erick were born on the frozen world of Fenris, home world of of the Space Wolves Legion, in the north and only continent of the planet, Assaheim. neither of them met their parents, they were raised by an old woman in an orphanage, some of the townsfolk even said she was a witch, why so? Mostly stories and rumors about her doing…things, nothing particularly suspicious they were kids by then.

O’erick’s life was pretty simple, play around, eat sleep, all that kind of stuff, Nothing special about him. But Luxor, he was a whole different story, he learned how to read when he was 3 years old, and for some reason he really enjoyed reading the old woman’s book. He never really talked about what he read on those books, but there was something on them that lured him to read them.

And then, one day, the tragedy occurred, one day during a walk through their town, for some reason long forgotten, during a childish tantrum, Luxor unleashed his psychic abilities for the first time, he used the warp energy and casted a lightning bolt to a near house, destroying it and its occupants on the spot.

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“Wait wait, a lightning bolt you said? Because here that is called magic…”

“No Akmella, am one hundred percent sure it is not magic, I have fought against sorcerers before, even psykers that were sorcerers, believe me it’s not the same thing, a…”

“Wait, so, what is a psyker then?” She asked, clearly showing interest in the topic, “because I have a friend in the human’s village”.

“But you said humans hate monsters, how then…”Luxor started.

“Oh no, she isn’t human, she is a dark mage, she looks exactly like a normal human”.

“Interesting” he said “anyway, as I was saying…

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A psyker was  basically an individual that could use the energies of the immaterial realm known as the warp. There, the emotions, feelings, beliefs take form and can sometimes manifest in the material realm, sometimes when an emotion was highly, it would gather, creating entities that could think and cause different types of effects in the material realm. the psyker’s abilities could vary depending on various facts, either the choice of the psyker, the environment…or even sheer luck.

The bad thing about psykers, is that because they are a link between the immaterial and the material realm, some of the warp’s entities would try to use them as vessels to manifest in the material realm, and of course, many of this entities had malign intentions.

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The notice about Luxor’s powers spread like a wildfire, and soon reached the ears of the space wolves, who sent a chaplain to investigate. When he met Luxor at the orphanage he was surprised to see how a young kid like him managed to do that, when most of the others psykers had to train for years in order to be able to do what Luxor did. For the chaplain, this was proof of his potential, and decided to took Luxor away and train him to become a runic priest for the space wolves.

this is where life turned into a living hell for Luxor, because apart from the already deadly training of the aspirants, does who were to become runic priests were pushed even harder.

When Luxor turned 10, he was forced to train day and night, just to keep his powers in check, he then was taught survival skills. When he turned 15 he was left with a bunch of aspirants like him in a wild planet to see which candidates would be selected to become space marines. During that time Luxor had to fight everyday just to survive, facing all kind of dangers, since man eating beasts, the extreme weather, and the constant fights with the other aspirants.

He managed to came on top of all of it, When the chaplain returned to the planet to take the survivors with him back to Fenris, only three of the original group made it: Fyodor, Luxor and Harald.

When Luxor was about to become a runic priest, he refused to do so, saying that he was well aware of his abilities and wanted to be acknowledged as a librarian, just like the other chapters do with their psykers. Doing this made him gain the immediate hatred of Fyodor, who had developed a rivalry with him during their time on the planet.

This could have gone worse if it wasn’t for the chaplain’s intervention, he who had witnessed Luxor’s powers first hand. He was convinced that he held a great potential within him. He let Luxor be remain as a librarian. Luxor then then asked the chaplain to put O’erick under his command, since he had joined the imperial guard some years ago…

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“Well, that’s basically the story of mi life, you now know enough of me…can you now see why I am troubled, I am not a leader, but despite that, am extremely loyal to the things I believe in…that is the reason why I decided to let you live, but make no mistake, for if I have the slightest doubt about you, if you try to harm any of us, you’ll see what am I capable of”. Luxor said with a piercing gaze at which Akmella simply stood quiet, perplexed for what she just heard.

“Wow, I-I don’t know what to say, so that means that you had to kill the other aspirants?” she asked.

“Some of them, at least, not that am proud of it though…I simply did what I had to do to survive, so what if you tell me something about you now? Do you have any, err, family I guess?” He asked, looking away.

“Oh, well, now that you mention it, no I don’t have any family left, my parents passed away a few years ago, you and my dad would have been good friends, am sure about it!” she said with a toothy grin.

“Huh, really, why so?”

“He was a merchant, he used to import all kind of things, some of them were very rare and exotic, spices, drinks, and even, he once brought an aphrodisiac that was more powerful than mom’s barbs, huuuuu…” 

“Hey hey, slow down there” he said raising his hands in defense “did you said your mom’s barbs, what, was she poisonous or something?” he asked suddenly, showing more interest.

Satisfied with Luxor’s response, she smiled before continuing “oh well, not poisonous in the deadly way, the barbs wor…”

“Wait, hold on…” he said before getting up and entering the cave, returning shortly with a small book. ” OK, now continue”.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking at the book.

“Let’s say it’s just a hobby”. After a few hours of explanation from Akmella, Luxor decided that it was enough information and went inside the cave to wake me and the soldier up. And of course, by waking me up, I mean throwing me out of the bed. After gathering our things, we departed to the northeast early in the morning. There wasn’t much talk apart from the occasional question from either Akmella or mine.

“So, Akmella, how did you get all this things?” I asked, seeing all the things she kept in the cave.

“I got them from a friend in the town we’re heading to”.

“Wait, but you said that th…” I started.

“Long story,  stay focused” Luxor suddenly intervened.

After walking under the scorching sun the whole day, we decided to rest for a while during the midday.The soldier and I quickly started eating some of our supplies (they were not the most tasty) since we haven’t eaten anything in almost a day. Akmella seemed content with simply lay down and enjoy the sunshine, while Luxor simply stood there, looking at…well, I wasn’t really sure, he seemed to be staring at the nothingness.

*rustle* Akmella quickly got up to see where that noise came from “did you hear that?” she asked looking around us, but finding anything out of the ordinary “I swear I heard something moved over there”, she pointed to a spot on the sand, we took our weapons and I approached to inspect, but I didn’t find anything.

“There is nothing here” I said, turning to Akmella “you sure that y…” I was cut off mid sentence when something bursted out of the sand and pulled me closer to it. “GAAAH, HELP, SOMETHING’S GOT ME” I shouted in desperation.

“For the emperor, what is that thing??!!” the soldier shouted “I can’t shoot, O’erick is in the way” And then I felt a hand stroking my hair while the thing…giggled? What was this thing? And most important, how was it holding me back?

“Oh, it’s a pity that things had to end like this” a woman’s voice said from behind me “well, I think it can’t be helped, you guys should really be careful when you roam this lands, you never know what you might run into…” I turned my head to see my captor, and saw the face of a tanned woman wearing some sort of mask covering her mouth and nose, only exposing her purple eyes

‘How can she be that strong, she is just a woman’ I think to myself before realization fell upon me. I looked down in mute horror to see what could only be described as the pincers of a scorpion holding me tightly against her, “you have three seconds to let him go” Luxor said aiming right through me at her.

“What do you want with me” I said struggling to break free from her grasp but failing. “Oh dear” she started “isn’t that obvious? I want you…oh, one gets very lonely in this wasteland, ever since the new governor took over that village, nobody crosses here anymore, it’s boring…by the way” she said, her smile was obvious through her mask “you people doesn’t seem to be from here, where are you from?”

“None of your concern, you g…ack!!!” she squeezed me harder before I could finish.

“You boy should learn not to interrupt the elderly while they talk”.

“Let…him…go, NOW” Luxor demanded, stepping closer to her “do it before I ran out of patience”. She pulled out a knife and pointed it to my throat.

“You coward…” I muttered looking at the knife. She leaned on my ear and whispered “Relax, I’m not planning to kill you, I just plan on having a very, very good time with you” to emphasize this, she caressed my cheek.

“You filthy creature, how dare you try to say such things??!!” I shouted, by now I was tired of being held by this creature and looked at Luxor who started to growl at her. I decided that it was enough “Luxor!!! Kill this damned creature!!!”

“Huh?” That was all she managed to say, because the next moment, Luxor sprang towards her at a blinding speed, unsheathing his sword, which started to glow alight as blue flames enveloped the edge of the sword. The girtablilu immediately panicked and dropped me so she could dodge Luxor’s blow. The edge of the sword missed my head for only a few inches, and landed on the floor as she jumped backwards. “How could…what the…” she said. Luxor wasted no time in picking his sword and instead punched her in the face with enough force to send her flying backwards and left a tray of blood on the sand below.

“AAAAAAGHHHHH” she screamed clutching her bleeding nose, looking at him with pure anger in her eyes “you bastard!!!” She charged forward at full speed ready to tackle him. She lifted her stinger and tried to hit him but failed as he jumped out of the way and quickly picked up his sword from the ground and took stance. She charged again towards him, but this time he didn’t move out of the way, instead Luxor let the stinger hit the left shoulder pad of his ceramite armor causing her stinger to bounce off. When she tried to attack again though, he moved to the left allowing the stinger to pass right next to him.

Luxor took the chance to cut the whole stinger off of her. This had the immediate effect of causing her to scream in agony as one of her limbs was severed from her body, but even then, she tried to cut him with her knife. He simply catched her arm by the wrist and immediately broke her arm using only one of his arms. Now desperately, she tried to punch him using her pincers, but finding nothing to hit. He then dropped his sword and took his pistol, aiming it straight to her chest. She tried to move the weapon away with her other functional arm, but she couldn’t come to overpower Luxor’s inhuman strength.

“Luxor, n-no, that’s enough, please let her g…” Akmella started.

*BANG* Everything went dead silent as that gunshot resounded everywhere. Luxor simply took a step back, revealing the girtablilu with a huge hole in her chest caused by Luxor’s bolter pistol, she staggered a couple times trying to support herself, she looked at him in the eyes for a moment and gurgled something until she fell slumped to the ground dead.

“Y-you killed her,w-w-why?” Akmella said, horrified by his acts, looking at the corpse. “Did you really thought I would trust that thing” Luxor replied sternly, while approaching me.

“You ok?” he asked calmly.

“Yes, thanks, that was really close, by the way, Akmella, what was this thing?” I asked dusting myself off, she stood silent a moment looking down before saying “i-it is a girtablilu, a desert arachne, that’s what my friend told me…”

Luxor took his notebook and wrote down what she just said, “ok, we’re leaving, I don’t want to run into any other surprise…”

“But sir, we barely rested, you sure w…” the soldier started.

“I said now,” he said looking over his shoulder “any objections, private?” Nothing. After gathering everything, we departed again to reach the town a few hours before nightfall.

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In the distance, a tall wall could be seen standing above the dunes, the highest buildings standing taller above the wall, and in the front was what apparently was the town’s entrance with two towers at each side of the gates, guard posts for sure. Some lights could be seen already in the windows of some buildings, indicating the approaching night.

“Well, so what is your plan? The town is well protected from the outside and there are patrols bordering the walls outside, I mean, even if we managed to get in, we don’t know what we might find inside” Akmella said, making obvious that getting in wasn’t going to be an easy task.

“I’m afraid she’s right, look over there, I count at least five armed men, any of them could rise the alarm” the soldier said pointing to a patrol bordering and inspecting the wall from the outside.

“And besides, you’re too noisy with your armor Luxor”. I said as a matter of fact.

Luxor considered his options for a moment, “don’t worry” he said putting on his helmet “I’ve got a plan” he said standing and looking at the patrol in the distance “they will never know what hit them”.

To be continued…

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