Burning Fates

Chapter 1 - Rituals of Regret

Ba-dump

An almost ephemeral beat of a heart was the only thing that existed in his mind besides pain.

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A pain so overwhelming that no other feeling seemed able to penetrate the consciousness of his mind.

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So he clung to the heart beat, refusing to let go of the sound lest his consciousness fade completely.

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After an unknown amount of time new sounds penetrated the fog of his brain, voices distant but approaching.

“...left after those bastards came through.”

He tried to move, to call out, yet no part of his body seemed able to respond through the pain radiating out of his chest like a molten poker.

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“...survive them it will be the sisters.”

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“...worse than outside, only it don’t make my head hurt looking at em for some reason.”

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Something heavy crashed down, sending a vibration through his body that momentarily caused the pain to spike even higher, the sudden shock of it sending a surge of adrenaline through his body in a way that seemed to drive back a small part of the haze covering his brain.

“Guessin we found the sisters, preacher.” One of the voices muttered in muted horror. “Or what’s left of em at least.

Again he tried to move, to reach out, do something, and for a moment it felt like something twitched before another spike of all consuming pain shot through his body.

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“Disguisting.” A different voice growled, and for a moment the sound of heavy footsteps on stone echoed out. “But at least we can take solace in the thought that whatever foul ritual they were attempting here seems to have failed.”

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More heavy footsteps, these approaching closer. “You sure about that, preacher? I’d bet a week's thrones that big squiggle on the floor was painted with the sisters blood.”

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“The scent of corruption does not linger, Corporal. Nonetheless, it would likely behoove us to dismantle as much of the foul work as possible and lay the remains of the sisters to a proper rest before we do anything else here.”

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“Well, you heard the preacher boys. Dekker, Kleiss, try an get the body in the middle of the squiggle off that giant spear. Vorn, see if you can find a mop and bucket somewhere to clean the blood up. Rest of you boys, set up a perimeter around the convent, good as place as any to dig for a bit given everything else going on.”

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“No karking way I’m stepping foot in that thing, Vesker. You saw what happened to Moraz. So either do it yourself or shoot me now, cause either way I’m not going in there.”

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The footsteps once more returned, this time ending close enough he felt like if he could move he would be able to reach out and touch their owner.

“See, nothing to be afraid of. Now get in here and help me with this thing.”

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“Now pull.”

Suddenly the molten feeling of pain in his chest increased ten fold, and the barest hint of a scream escaped his lips.

“Emperor's Balls! Preacher! She’s alive!”

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Tension seemed to leave him as a soothing golden warmth flowed into his body, the pain that had been his constant companion for who knows how long being swept away in its wake as the darkness of true unconsciousness at last took him in full.

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Corporal Vesker Warden desperately tried to find something to focus his eyes on other than the golden glow surrounding the two inch hole in the woman’s sternum. A task much easier said than done given it had been a three inch hole less than a half hour ago. Finally however he was able to do it, focusing instead on the other man in the sacristy. 

Preacher Marcus Macharius had never been a particularly imposing figure, a somewhat short five foot eight, thinning brown hair, and a belly that suggested he was probably a bit too liberal with the ceremonial Amasec. He had been assigned to their backwater of a world a little over three standard years ago to replace the previous preacher who had tried to get a bit too close to one of the sisters and ended up with a bolter round in his head.

“You’re absolutely sure she’s not gonna turn into one of those things, preacher?” Vesker asked, shivering at the thought of the tentacle-limbed creatures that had wrecked so much havoc on the planet's sole guard regiment.

“In the face of a miracle how can one be sure of anything?” Marcus put forward, pausing in his chant to stare into Vesker’s eyes with a fervent intensity that made the Corporal stomach flip. “But the Emperor's light still burns bright in her, so we must stand strong here for as long as we can.”

That wasn't going to reassure the rest of his men any, they'd stopped at the convent because almost everywhere else in reachable distance had been overrun already. With the general hope being that the dozen battle sisters that called the place home would have fared better against the crazies than the rest of the local holdings.

Finding out they hadn't had been a blow to what little moral they had left, and even their miraculous survivor wasn't likely to change that unless she was the fourteenth coming of Saint Celestine herself.

“So tell the men to fort up here for the long haul.” 

“I'm sure that won't get me shot.” He muttered sarcastically under his breath as he left the sacristy.

The chapel was thankfully less of a mess then they had left it, a good half of the strewn about body parts looking to have already been gathered up while Vorn was at work moping up the blood squiggles with a fierce determination that was almost worrying given the large man's normally lackluster approach to his duties.

“Marcus still saying no to having miracle girl looked at by Cass?” Dekker asked as Vesker approached the pile of recovered weapons the man was going over.

“Pretty sure he doesn't want her looked at by any of us.” Vesker admitted, trying really hard not to think about the stripped down and blood covered state they'd found the woman in. “But the man doesn't have the balls to say that directly given everything else going on.”

Dekker scowled. “Yeah, well, he can eat a bag of dicks. Cause there ain't no way we're losing our one possible ticket outta this mess now that we found it.”

“She's one half-dead sister, Dekker.” Vesker warned the man, not liking any of the possible directions those words might have been heading. 

“She's a half-dead sister with woo-woo powers that someone wanted dead real bad.” Dekker shot back. “That makes her a lot more valuable than a few dozen lowly guardsmen like us.”

Vesker chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying anything, because the man wasn't wrong. If whoever had wiped out the rest of the sisters came back they would be well and truly boned if it came down to a fight. And even if by the Emperor's grace they somehow managed to survive long enough for reinforcements to arrive, things could turn real bad real fast if the preacher decided to place the blame on them for what went down.

“I'll tell Cass she has a new patient.” He nodded. “Marcus has a problem with it, he can bring it up with my laspistol.”

“Just like the Sergeant.” Dekker agreed with a smirk.

Scowling, Vesker glared down at the man. “Keep tellin ya that wasn't me. Bastard ate his own gun.”

“And you can be sure the rest of us will keep telling that to anyone who asks.” Dekker grinned knowingly. 

Letting out a sigh Vesker let the issue drop, knowing at this point it was unlikely any of the forty-one remaining members of the regiment would believe him. 

“Anything good?” He changed the subject, glancing over the weapons pile with a critical eye.

“Bolters are all fucked.” Dekker shook his head. “Looks almost like someone took somethin like a sledge to em.”

“Somethin like a sledge?” Vesker repeated, eyeing the partially crushed weapons with thinly veiled trepidation.

“Yup.” Dekker nodded, fiddling some more with the remains of one of the guns. “Didn’t know better I’d think someone stomped on em with a giant boot.” He eyed Vesker. “But even with everything going down ain’t seen nothin like that around here.”

“And Emperor willin we won’t.” Vesker nodded in agreement before turning and heading towards the large blasted open double doors, pausing at the doorway to glance over his shoulders at Vorn.

“Keep up the good work!”

Glancing up, Vorn gave a thumbs up before returning to his mopping.

Making his way down the ornate hall that branched out to the rest of the convent, Vesker hung a left down a side hall and continued on for a couple dozen meters more before arriving at the building's infirmary.

Knocking on the large wooden door so the pair inside wouldn’t be spooked, he put on a lazy look that he really hoped would mask the creeping dread he was feeling and strode in.

The convent’s infirmary was small, maybe a tenth of the size of the one they'd had at the regiment barracks. But then, there had only been a dozen sisters here, and they hadn't been the type to accept local walk-ins, so he supposed they wouldn't have needed anything more.

A trio of beds stood up against the right side wall, empty of course given they’d been forced to leave anyone too wounded to walk on their own behind. And on the opposite side a series of plasteel cabinets the target of his trek was carefully going over.

“So we strike aces or dregs?” He asked the stout blonde woman that was their regiments only surviving medic.

“I wanna say aces.” Cass offered as she turned to him with a conflicted look on her face. “But I’m a field medic, so I got no idea what two thirds of this shit is.”

“And some of the shit in here's just weird.” Quinn put forward, drawing Vesker’s attention to the room's far wall where the thin man was leaning with a faux casualness that was belayed by the tight grip he was keeping on his lasrifle. “Like, what kind of battle sisters keep scar removal cream?”

“Obviously the kind that want to keep themselves lookin pretty.” Vesker joked before focusing back on Cass.

“Grab anything you think might help with blood loss and a chest wound, I’m overridin the preacher so yer gonna be on makin sure the sister stays alive duty.”

“Emperor praise, an SO with common sense.” Cass muttered, grabbing a handful of bags with some sort of clear liquid in them from one of the cabinets.

“I’m not a senior officer.” Vesker snapped. “Don’t go putin that idea in people’s heads more than it already is.”

“Yer the highest ranking officer left.” Quinn pointed out dryly as he pushed off the wall. “That means yer the SO.”

“The kark I am.” Vesker scowled, utterly refusing to accept that given just what it would mean for their long term survival prospects. “There’s still what’s his face up at the Governor's fort.”

Cass shot him a skeptical look. “You find a carton of lho-sticks and not share with the rest of us? Cause there were at least three of those big claw things heading towards the fort when the command bunker fell.”

“Can you at least leave me my dreams, Cass?” Vesker whined.

“If ya wanted to dream ya shouldn't have joined the guard.” Quinn quipped as he walked past into the hall.

“See now,” Vesker offered to Cass with a grin. “If I was the SO I'd have ordered him onto latrine duty for that comment.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Now come on.”

Walking back into the sacristy with Cass in tow, Vesker was relieved to see both Marcus and the sister in the same general state as he had left them. 

“Corporal,” Marcus began, looking up from his prayers only to scowl as his eyes fell on the medic accompanying Vesker. “I thought I told you the sister would have no need for mortal medicines?”

“You did.” Vesker nodded, motioning to Cass that she should get to work. “But I decided otherwise.”

The medic took a step towards the dais they'd turned into a makeshift bed for the sister only to stop dead in her tracks as Marcus rose to his feet and turned a baleful glare on her. “You will not.”

“She will.” Vesker said, resting a hand on his laspistol to emphasize his point. “And you don't got nowhere near the authority to stay otherwise.”

Marcus's eyes flicked to the weapon before a scowl found its way onto his lips, and for a moment Vesker feared the preacher was going to make him follow through with this threat.

“Fine!” He held up a finger and shook it threateningly at Vesker. “But know, the Emperor will judge you for what you do this day.”

With those words he stepped to the side, glowering at Cass as the medic cautiously made her way over to where the sister was laying.

“Celestine's tits,” Cass muttered in shock, as she took in the sister’s state. “How the kark is she still alive?”

“Don't know, don't care.” Vesker said, ignoring the scowl Marcus shot him at that. “Just do your best to make sure she stays that way.”

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He fell towards an island almost entirely covered by a great golden city. The land the only that seemed to exist within the seemingly endless purple ocean that stretched out beneath him.

The seeds of acrophobia induced panic died before they could sprout as he sluggishly realized that he could only be dreaming.

“I must be on some really good drugs right now.” He mumbled under his breath.

It was the only thing that made sense. He'd been hurt, badly. The distant echoes of that pain enough to make him shudder even in this dream. However the only thing he could feel right now was a warm all sufficing fuzziness. 

“Feels like there should be a giant mecha sword fighting a kaiju with a monado.” He muttered as he continued to fall towards the island.

“Wake up!”

As if his words were a trigger, a Kaiju sized vulture descended out of a nearby pink tinged cloud. Its razor sharp claws, each larger than a city bus, reached out towards him only to jerk back as a golden spear with a teardrop shaped blade pierced across the space between them.

“You need to wake up!”

His head panned in search of whoever had thrown the weapon and got a distant glimpse of white feathered wings before a spotlight shone out from the golden city washing out everything with its near blinding light.

“Gah!” He jerked awake, hand going to his face to try and block out the bright light that was shining through his eyelids.

“Holy mother,” A female voice exclaimed. “She's awake!”

Trying to crack open an eye, he instantly regretted it as the light seemed to partially drive back the fuzziness that was clouding his thoughts and preventing the throbbing ache in his chest from fully registering.

“I thought you said she was gonna be down for another day at least?” A male voice growled.

Doing his best to ignore the ache, he tried again, and this time his eyes had adapted enough that he could squint and make out a somewhat fuzzy form in a green outfit standing over him.

“She should be!” The woman snapped. “I gave her enough Morphia that even Vorn would be out of it for a good half-day.”

“Mmm not Vorn.” He mumbled, his tongue feeling thick in this mouth for some reason. 

“We know that, Sister.” The man offered in a voice tinged with the slightest amount of amusement.

“Not Sister either.” He corrected, the haze over his thoughts fading a bit more at the word.

It was obvious from the vaguely recognizable uniform that the woman was some kind of soldier, probably national guard given his still sluggish brain couldn't think of anyone else that might around whatever hospital this was.

“Lady Vess?” The woman tried cautiously.

“I use that name.” He giggled, the thought of how they had gotten that one running circles in his brain for several seconds before a sluggish realization hit that made him giggle again. “Must be a sunday.”

That was when he played the character in his Rogue Trader group after all.

The ache in his chest briefly spiked, dragging his attention off the silly thought to the more important matter at hand. “What… What happened?”

“You were impaled.” The woman put forward, pressing a hand down on his shoulder as he tried to rise from the hard bed. “And I'm gonna need you to stay laying down till the Morphia wears off enough that you aren't giggling at your own name.”

Which was a funny enough thought that he couldn't help but giggle again. “All right, but I better get at least five hundred exp for almost dying.”

There was a small pinch against his arm, and the ache faded a bit as a blackness began to edge into the corners of his vision. “You know what…” He slurred as consciousness began to fade once more. “I appreciate you drug giving lady…”

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“Yer sure she's out?” Vesker asked, giving a silent prayer of thanks to the emperor that Marcus hadn't been in the room to see that little show.

“As sure as I can be.” Cass said, glancing down at the seemingly unconscious woman before letting out a breath. “She must have the metabolism of a Beremoth though.” Her brow furrowed in compilation. “Maybe an implant the diagnosticator didn’t pick up?"

“Seven hours ago she had a giant hole through her heart.” Vesker returned dryly. “I think it’s safe to assume she’s on the opposite end of normal.”

Cass chewed on the bottom of her lip in a way that Vesker knew meant she was about to say something he probably wouldn’t like. “Are we sure she is? I mean, you’ve heard the same stories about the sisters that I have. And this is right in line with the sort of stuff that happens in those.”

Vesker gave a tired sigh at having called it. “Sure, but I also remember how those stories tend to end for the valiant guardsmen accompanyin the sisters. And most of us are nowhere near pretty enough to be the handful of survivors in that.”

“Maybe you're not.” Cass scowled. “But I don’t care if I have to strip down and lick the sister like a sweet-stick, I’m karking living through this.”

That was an imagined image that wasn’t going to leave Vesker's brain any time soon, and the thought must have shown on his face as Cass just rolled her eyes.

Coughing into his fist to distract from that he continued. “Yer lucky day then. Cause if things start headin south I want you to drag the Sister down into that vault we found and lock yourself in till you get either the all clear on the vox or start runnin outta supplies.”

“Things outside getting that bad?” Cass asked worriedly. 

“The fires down in the city look like they’re startin to die down.” Vesker said gravely. “Means either our side won,”

Cass let out a strangled laugh that matched Veskers opinion on that likelihood.

“Or the crazies have finished mopping up. Either way though, we’re gonna have a bunch of people thinkin that nice old convent full of sisters who didn’t lift a hand might have something worth taking."

Which was a big part of why he really hadn’t wanted to stay in the convent once it became clear the sisters had fared even worse than the rest of them. But the place lacked that all persuasive feeling of hopelessness that had begun to creep in alongside the attack. And given just how close his men had been to breaking prior to their arrival, he really didn’t want to try and tempt fate by ordering them to leave.

“What about Marcus?” Cass asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I heard him talking with Dran about sending a squad out to try and get in touch with the governor.”

Vesker’s eyes widened as a surge of anger raced through him. “What!? Is he scrambled!?”

Not even waiting for any answer to that he stalked out of the sacristy and rushed down the halls to the kitchen.

It was a large room, more like what you would expect from a guard commissary instead of a place expecting to serve a few handfuls at most, but he supposed it might have built when expectations had been a bit larger then the dozen sisters who hand ended up calling the location home.

“Merk!?” He yelled the Quartermaster's name, causing the small almost forgettable man to glance up from the large cookpot he was stirring.

“Yeah, Corporal?"

“Where's Dran!?” Vesker demanded, sure the man would know given the way he always seemed to keep track of that sort of thing.

Merk shrugged. “Last I heard, he was poking around the dorm rooms. Probably hoping to grab something of miracle girl's he can turn into a charm.”

Dragging a hand down his face, Vesker let out a groan. “Emperor's balls, I should have seen this coming when we figured out who she was.”

There had been paintings of each member of the Sisters of the Ardent Spear hung on the walls of the convent's chapter house. And the woman's crimson red hair had made matching the portrait of Liandra Vess to their sole survivor an easy enough task.

“From here on out make sure everyone knows the dorms are off limits.” Vesker said, trusting the man to be able to get the word out. “And if anyone complains, remind em that Sister Vess is very much still alive, and likely to be lethally unhappy if she finds out someone was pilferin her or her dead sister's personal belongings.”

The sister’s dorms were only a single hall away from the kitchen, and there were clear signs of a rushed egress from the rooms that suggested the attack had come as something of a surprise to the women who called the convent home. Scattered clothing trailing from rooms, melee weapons left to lay on floors, and at least two whole suits of ominously standing armor were some of the sights he passed on the way to the room they had tentatively identified as sister Vess’s.

“Dran! Get your ass out here!” He yelled as he neared the room.

Several seconds passed before the almost rat-like man stuck his head through the doorway across the hall from Sister Vess's. “Something up, Corp?”

Vesker scowled, turning his full glare on the man. “What ever you took, put it back. We have enough trouble already, so we don't need no pissed off baby saint adding to it.”

“It's just a couple little things, Corp.” Dran whined pityingly. “Not like the dead'll notice anyways.” He finished under his breath.

“You wanna bet your life on that?” Vesker asked, his eyes flicking across the empty rooms with wary caution. “Cause after seeing what happened to the third recon squad I certainly wouldn’t.”

They’d been killed in an ambush by about twenty of the cult crazies early in the fight, only for their ghosts to show up at the field command outpost as part of the attack that had wiped out the Colonel and his entire command staff.

Dran cringed, a hand going up to one the pockets on his flak vest almost protectively before he purposefully lowered it to his side. “Yeah, alright. Probably should have waited till after the preacher finished up givin the sisters remains their last rights anyways.”

“That where he is now?” Vesker asked at the reminder of just why he had been searching out Dran in the first place.

“Should be.” Dran nodded. “He wanted ta send me, Hal, an Folker out ta the Governors fort. But I told him where he could shove it. Need ta be an order from the Emperor himself before I’d wade back out into that Beremoth shit.”

“You an me both.” Vesker agreed, letting out a sharp breath of relief. “Still gonna need to make it extra clear to the preacher though that he’s not gonna be riskin the rest of us to try and figure out just how dead Governor blowhard actually is.”

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The sound of arguing dragged him back to consciousness for a second time. And he spent a moment luxuriating in the fact there was only a dim shadow of the ache and fuzzyheadedness still remaining before pushing himself up.

Something on his chest shifted as he did, and his eyes flew open as several other odd and disparate feelings suddenly made themselves known.

“What the…” He stopped dead, clutching his throat in shock over the unknown voice that had come out of this mouth.

“Sister Vess!?” An older man's voice called out in worry.

Turning his head, and purposefully ignoring the crimson hair that sent briefly flopping into his vision. He bit back a silent scream at the sight of what was either the most accurate cosplayers he had ever seen, or an honest to god Ministorum Priest standing next to an Imperial Guardswoman.

“What… Who…?”

“I’m Preacher Marcus Macharius.” The older man introduced himself before motioning to the Guardswoman. “This is Guardsmen Cassandra Thraust.”

The Guardswoman cringed slightly. “Just Cass, please.”

Opening his mouth to try and more coherently ask for an explanation of just what the hell was going on, he stopped himself.

Assuming this wasn't a dream, and the odd feelings his body was sending him felt far too real for that to be the case, then those were two actual members of the Imperium of Man. A fascist theocratic regime that was one of the most dogmatically xenophobic governments in all of fiction. 

Meaning the best case scenario of asking questions like, why am I a girl, why are you calling me Sister Vess, or how did I get from twenty first century earth to here, was a bullet to the head. While worst case, they would hand him over to the Inquisition under the potentially accurate fear that he was some sort of possessor daemon. At which point he would be horribly tortured in ways beyond his ability to conceive and then have whatever was left handed over to a tech priest to experiment with.

Both of those possibilities he had the distinct desire to avoid at all cost, and that meant the only thing he could do was fake it and pray to the Emperor he could bullshit his way through things.

“That answers who you are.” He said, trying not to cringe at the almost melodic sound of his new voice. “But it doesn't answer what happened to me.”

Cass frowned. “What's the last thing you remember?”

Blinking several times, he wracked his mind for an answer that wouldn't immediately out him as someone other than who they seemed to believe he was. “Do you mean before or after the dream about an angel with a spear fighting a giant daemonic bird above a golden city?”

And he tried desperately not to think too hard about just what that might have actually been given the dangerous possibilities inherent in his current universe of existence.

“Before if you please, Sister.” Marcus said, smiling in a way that suggested he was more than a little pleased with what he'd just heard.

“Very little then.” He confessed honestly, glancing around the church themed room he had woken up in for several seconds before focusing back on the priest. “There was something stabbed through my chest…”

“You were impaled by servants of the great enemy as part of some foul ritual.” Marcus put forward with a frown. “I thought the Emperor's light had allowed you to escape unscathed, but if a curse lingers…” 

That… Was exactly what he needed on several different levels… An explanation for how he might have gotten here, and an answer for why he knew almost nothing that the person that he was supposed to be should have known…

It also however created a tiny niggling seed of doubt in his mind that what he thought was true might not be. Because making him, or her, think they were a guy from thirty-eight thousand years in the past was exactly the sort of thing Chaos bullshit could actually do. 

“It must.” He finally agreed before deciding to chance pressing things a bit more. “While little remains in my memory but bits and pieces, the name Vess is familiar to me. So my full name would be Liandra Vess, correct?”

It was a shot in the dark, but that had been his character's name in the tabletop Rogue Trader game he had been in. Or well, the tabletop Rogue Trader game his memories were telling him he had been in.

A look of relief flashed across Marcus's features before quickly vanishing into a genial smile. “Yes, Sister.” 

Liandra, because she would be damned if she thought of herself as anything else in a universe with psykers running around, offered the priest an uneasy smile in return. “Well that is something at least. I assume from my recovery that the Guard was able to drive back the heretics?”

Marcus's smile turned brittled, and a sinking feeling found its way into Liandra's gut. “I'm sorry to admit Sister that it was the other way around. The Guard were routed and fell back to this convent in hopes of securing you and your sister's assistance in their fight.” Closing his eyes for several seconds he let out a tired sigh. “Instead we found a slaughter, with you only seeming to have survived due to an Emperor gifted miracle.”

Which Liandra knew was entirely possible since the Emperor was both real and existed in a universe where structured manifestations of faith were entirely possible.

“He means a golden light closed up the giant hole in your chest.” Cass added in.

That sounded familiar for some reason, and Liandra wracked her mind for several seconds before it hit. 

“The favor of the God Emperor.” She muttered.

As far as characters went Liandra had been generally average pretty much across the board outside of a single point, her absurd fate score. Besides the base functions of the ability, that fate score had resulted in her possessing three Gifts of the God Emperor that would have been somewhat broken on a person with better dice luck than she tended to have. 

The first gift had been the Emperor's Protection, an innate force field with a protection rating equal to half her fate characteristic. The second gift had been Healing Touch, an innate healing ability that gave her regeneration equal to half her willpower bonus that could be temporarily transferred on touch to another character. And the third gift had been The God Emperor's Own, a handy thing that gave her the From Beyond trait, and added a malediction effect equal to half her willpower bonus to all of her attacks.

The golden glow that healed her wounds could have easily been the second of those gifts given how heavily the color gold tended to be associated with the Emperor's power. But of course, given all the other ways that healing like that could occur the only way to know for sure would be to test for the other gifts, and that was easier said than done.

“That is certainly an apt way to put it.” Marcus nodded in agreement before turning to Cass as a look of minor distaste flitted across his features. “Now that she is awake, I assume it will be safe for the sister to resume her duties assisting the Emperor’s faithful?”

Cass shook her head. “Even with her miracle healing I’d say she needs at least another day, preferably two, before doing anything strenuous like fighting.”

Liandra clamped down on the cringe that followed the guardswoman’s words, she knew with absolute certainty that fighting was unavoidable in the universe of Warhammer 40k. After all, the universe’s tagline was ‘in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war’. However her entire breadth of experience in the realms of combat related skills was some extremely rusty karate and point and shoot video games. 

And while she was fully aware that last likely put her realms above the average guardsmen with a lasrifle, it was still woefully short of what a Sister of Battle should be capable of displaying.

“Preacher Marcus,” She began in as contrite of a tone as she could muster. “While your confidence honors me, I fear my combat skills likely suffer from the curse cast on my memories as much as everything else.” 

“Of course, that would be too easy.” Marcus muttered under his breath as a series of conflicted expressions flashed over his face before settling into one of grim determination.

“Cassandra,” The man continued, turning a dire look on the guardswoman. “That the Sister suffers from a malediction upon her memories must be kept an utmost secret from the rest of those here. The impact on morale would be catastrophic and would almost surely end what little chance we have left of surviving this with our souls intact.”

Glancing between Liandra and Marcus several times, Cass chewed on her bottom lip for several seconds before giving a cautious nod of agreement. “We’re gonna have to tell Corporal Vesker if we want any chance of keeping things a secret, but you’re not wrong about what it could do to the rest.”

Liandra’s stomach choose that moment to give an unappreciated grumble at its currently empty state, causing both other people in the room to turn somewhat bemused looks on her. 

“While you do so,” Marcus began as the genial smile returned. “It may be good to bring the Sister something to eat.”

“If you could.” Liandra agreed in a small voice.

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Author's Notes: I expect several questions here. But to start out, no this isn’t going to be replacing any of my other stories. And update wise it will probably only come around when I run into writer's block on a chapter for one of my other stories.

That bit of preamble done, the general premise of this story has been nagging at me for awhile. After all, inserting yourself into a Sister of Battle who’s only standout quality is bullshit levels of fate. (That I jacked up even more as the characters cheat) Just has the potential to be endlessly entertaining given how horrible things go for most people in the universe of Warhammer 40k.