10:i

Never too late

No matter how many times he sorts the cards, the sorcerer keeps getting the same reading. The darkness of the collection has drawn in so tight, it feels as though the four of them are occupying a small tent of night’s blackness, lit by the single light above the table. Even that is beginning to fade. The rest of the collection is lost from view, if it is even still there at all.

They gather around the reading table and watch. Since he turned Despoiler, Ahriman has assayed a variety of spreads: the Leonormal, the Peerpoint, Zeeker’s, the Trionti, Mortaliti, the Roche Exegesis, along with a number of more abstract schemes that lack recognisable symmetry or pattern, and don’t seem deliberate at all.

Each time, the result is identical.

The Daemon, The Daemon, The Daemon, The Daemon

‘Why this repetition?’ Sindermann asks. He pulls in the only other chair, and tentatively sits facing Ahriman, staring at the cards as they turn. Fear still clings to him, both fear of the Prosperine warlock and of their plight in general, but it has been tempered by intent academic curiosity.

‘Because that is all there is to read, Kyril Sindermann,’ Ahriman replies, his voice a soft hiss.

‘This is not something you’re doing?’

‘Of course not. Why would you think so?’

‘Because you’ve made your cards perform all manner of tricks,’ Sindermann replies. He reaches out to touch one of the cards.

‘Don’t,’ says Ahriman.

‘Will it disturb the reading?’ Sindermann asks, glancing up at Ahriman as he anxiously withdraws his hand.

‘You’ll die,’ replies Ahriman. His skull gleams beneath the ghost of his flesh.

Sindermann swallows and nods.

‘B-but if the reading is changing the cards… How does that work?’ Sindermann asks, shaken by his unwitting brush with death. ‘These wafers are objective tools of analysis. What they read may change. But why does what they read change them?’

‘It is a little late in the life of your civilisation to start learning such things,’ Ahriman responds, shuffling again.

‘It’s never too late,’ Sindermann insists.

Ahriman shrugs. His eyes glow like blue lamps in the deep sockets of his skull.

‘Well then,’ he says. ‘We are within the warp, and within the warp, there is no linear sequence. No before and after. Effect can prompt cause. What is being read can determine its reading.’

He draws again.

‘Is this true of all… things in the warp?’ Mauer asks nervously, unwilling to say the word.

Staring down at another spread of The Daemon, Ahriman nods.

‘Crudely, yes,’ he says. ‘From a material, linear perspective, a daemon may die long before it is born. It is a loop, an eddy, an ouroboros cycle, that is alive and unliving simultaneously.’

‘How is a daemon born?’ Sindermann asks.

‘I th-thought you wanted to know how to k-kill one?’ the archivist murmurs at his shoulder.

‘That too.’ Sindermann nods. He looks across the table at the sorcerer. ‘So?’

‘What you refer to as a daemon, Kyril Sindermann, is in fact…’ Ahriman trails off. ‘I’ll keep it simple. Daemons are not born. Not ever. But they start, and sometimes end. In layman’s terms, the Neverborn are vibrations of immateria, a small part of the aeternal whole suddenly given focus and discernible form in response to a negative material event. A death, for instance. An ending. An infamy. A massacre. Grief. Pain… Anything that emanates a fiercely adverse emotional vibration.’

‘A murder here creates a daemon there?’ Sindermann asks.

‘We are all there currently, but yes. A powerful, violent occurrence in realspace produces a reactive coalescence in the warp. Like a small flask of lead lifted from a molten mass and suddenly cast and cooled into a solid form. And the more violent, abrupt and heinous the crime, the stronger the reciprocal formation. The most powerful Neverborn are often the product of something unnecessary, something especially cruel or vindictive. What you might consider unexpected, or shockingly wrong, breeds the foulest echoes.’

‘So, an outrage? An atrocious act?’ asks Mauer in a whisper.

‘Indeed.’

‘So what is happening here?’ asks Sindermann, gesturing towards the latest spread, but careful not to touch the wafers.

‘It would seem,’ the sorcerer replies, ‘something quite inhumanly wicked.’