Chapter Text
Sometimes, very difficult problems call for very simple solutions.
This realization dawned on me many times during my long, cursed life, and yet somehow it never wormed deep enough for me to remember those little moments of grand clarity - and my own foolishness. Of course, being of a legion that reveres intellect above all can easily make one despise simple solutions - after all, what glory, what proof of one’s expansive mind is there in such? I, like many others of the Thousand Sons, denied the genius of simplicity for what it was: the fairest of the children of inspiration, one that could have perhaps saved us from damnation millennia ago. But nevermind that - this is no meditation on our past sins, rather a declaration of my own stupidity and - I dare say - humanity.
Give me Ashur-Kai.
Nefertari often begged me to give her my brother so that she may satiate her hunger for torment, and I in my ignorance never gave a deeper thought to that request. My conclusion was always simply that Ashur-Kai was off-limits for her for I still needed him, and that I had to find a suitable replacement so that she could feast. I schemed and calculated, hunted and herded slaves so that my Nefertari would feel relief if only for a second, never pausing to consider that I already had someone of Ashur-Kai’s eminence I could give her.
Myself.
“Nefertari?”
My voice echoed within the darkness above, carried by soft tones reserved for my bloodward alone. While I did not see her, I knew that she watched me, and I enjoyed that moment of curious scrutiny. My mind touched hers in the mechanical canopy; I felt her suffering.
“Nefertari,” I repeated my plea to the jungle of electrical wires, and though I did my best to conceal it, my voice oozed urgency. I ended up grateful for that moment of weakness, as it brought down a storm of feathers from which Nefertari emerged, graceful and dazzling as ever. Oh Nefertari, how stubbornly I insist on calling you mine, when it’s always been you holding me in your claws.
“You don’t come to summon me to battle,” she noted as she prowled about, for once struggling to decipher my intent, “there are no screams, no fear clinging to the walls, no incessant bickering. Why have you come, Khayon? Where is Gyre?”
Gyre. No, I could not have brought the daemon. She would’ve neither understood nor approved.
“I—I have been thinking,” words failed me, trapped by a sudden surge of embarrassment, “I have mused on the nature of your… condition. I considered what you said, your desire for my brother.”
There was barely any light in the chamber, yet I could see the glint in her eyes. She stopped to face me, to try and read me. I was going to show her, but not yet.
“I have not swayed you before,” her tone was cold and suspicious, “and for good reason. I hunger, but I do not starve. Not now.” She paused. “Something is amiss. Khayon…?”
The ceramite plates of my gauntlet clicked as I tightened my grasp on the warp staff I bought with me. “You wish to toy with a psyker, and not just any psyker. You want to feel an expanding mind swell with torment, let it embrace you as it shivers in agony. Such a sea of sensation would dwarf the torment of any worthless slave I bring to you. Am I correct?”
Nefertari relaxed somewhat, sure that she had solved the riddle of my coming. “Perhaps. You cannot truly understand, voscartha, but it is charming that you try.”
She was mocking me, but she did not lie about being charmed. There was another ceramite click as she stepped closer; I was losing my composure.
“You will not give me Ashur-Kai,” Nefertari whispered, “but you have something, someone else. You wish to offer me something, a pact or a promise.”
A slow nod was the only answer I gave. Her gaze turned from curious to ravenous, insatiable, insane, and that should have been my cue to abandon my foolish plan, to turn and leave without another word. But it was not, by all the dark gods of this forsaken galaxy, it was not. The clicking turned into a metallic creak as my fingers slid down the stave, ornate plates clanking and filigreed fabrics gently rustling as I slowly lowered myself. There had only been two times in my life that I had knelt before anybody - once before my Primarch, and once before the Corpse Emperor. Neither was my master anymore; perhaps it was only right that I sought another.
Nefertari stepped back and froze in place. A wave of emotion washed over her, and though I could not fully read her mind, I could feel the ripples of confusion, fear, distrust, of satisfaction, of triumph.
“Khayon?”
“How often have you wished to die, Nefertari?” I asked, my stare pinned to the ground, “how often have I come to you only to find you in anguish I cannot and do not want to fathom? I thought myself merciful and sentimental for wanting to grant that wish, selfish for never having done so. Instead I had you survive on scraps so that you would remain by my side.”
She said nothing, and so I continued: “I cannot give you Ashur-Kai. I cannot give you my brother for a fleeting moment of peace, no matter how much you and I would relish it. But I can give you another. Sink your fangs into me, Nefertari. Take what you need and condemn me to survive by a single thread, just as I have condemned you.”
A long silence followed. When she finally spoke, her voice was trembling like the day she died, full of tones I only barely understood: “Iskandar Khayon, you sorry fool. You idiot mon-keigh. You would—? Why would you…?”
She was frustrated with me, and I was tired and terrified of the uncertainty that lingered between us, so I put an end to it. I never was a master of the precise and subtle art of mind magic, even less so now with my senses riding on the heat of my quickening breaths, and so I sent all my sorrow, guilt and affection to her in a chaotic torrent of shared thought. Fortunately, it did not even stagger her; no, my Nefertari was of the elder folk, wielding emotion on a spectrum I could never even begin to imagine, and it was hardly an issue for her to weave my crude revelations into something clear and comprehensible.
Her shoulders dropped. I looked up only to see her delicate lips give way to a suppressed smile.
“Very well,” she allowed at last, reaching for something at her hip. She made a few tentative steps to my side and then behind me, into the dark. I tried to turn to follow her with my eyes but my attempt was immediately thwarted; Nefertari’s spiked whip cracked in the air just before coiling around my throat, and between that and my bloodward suddenly digging her heel into my back, I had little space to maneuver.
“I have two conditions, however.”
Anything. I would have given her anything. “Yes?”
“You will thank me for every bone I break,” she growled to force me further into submission, a motion wholly and utterly unnecessary. I could not bow any deeper before her. When she finally realized this, she stopped straining my breaths and instead came back to me, to caress and to whisper.
“And I want you to beg,” her voice was like a silk-wrapped dagger, a soft promise of pain. Her whip hung loose about my throat as she ran her crystalline claws down my armour, leaving faint claw marks in its golden foil. I thought saying what I was about to say would be difficult, but I was wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
“Please, Nefertari,” I obeyed her command without a second of hesitation, “break me.”