Favorite Section in a book.
Started by
Roxas
, Aug 20 2011 11:59 PM
22 replies to this topic
#1
Posted 20 August 2011 - 11:59 PM
For start, I took some text from one of the last chapters of a new book I got.
It's Called 'Lord of the Night', by Simon Spurrier. It's from the Sci-Fi fantasy universe 'Warhammer 40.000'.
It's about a leader of the super solider legion 'Night Lords'. Called 'The Talonmaster'.
I really liked this part of the book, it remind me WHY I like the Night Lords.
It it a few A5 pages long, so please bear with it. Enjoy.
She found herself within a world unlike any she had seen before. Purple skies raged like bruises; tormented clouds swirling and gathering together - defying the logic of what little breeze there seemed to be. Faces leered from their gaseous topography: half-seen grotesqueries that Mita neither recognised nor cared to see fully.
The ground itself seemed more solid: a porous sheet of sand and rock that, against all sense, felt spongy to the touch. A charge filled the air, a greasy static that clicked in the ends of her ragged hair and oppressed her skull, like a coming storm.
Nothing seemed real, here. Distant mountain peaks wavered like uncertian mirages; wobbling in their foothill roots; vanishing and reappearing at the whim of...
Who?
For a fearful instant Mita wondered if she had somehow travelled to a daemon world. She had heard of such places: confused realms where physics held little sway, where every aspect of every molecule was inseparable from the stuff of Chaos itself. Such worlds were the dreaded rumour of the Inquisition, and as Mita stumbled across fractured landscapes, negotiating ethereal gorges and sudden rivers that oozed from nowhere, the fear that she had somehow been trasported to one lay heavy in her mind.
But, no... this was no chaotic realm. The more she observed its howling skies and its weird tides of light and dark; the more she studied the scenes that shimmered in the surfaces of puddles and the images borne on the crest of rocks; the more she sent feelers from her own mind tasting at the sand itself, the more she came to realise where she was. She recognised this flavour.
As if to double check, she paused and stared at her hand; concentraiting, altering her perceptions, working hard to focus on her psychic self.
'Sword,' she said.
A bright sabre appeared in her palm. She nodded, unsuprised, and walked on., casting the blade away. It vanished before it landed.
She found the Night Lord, as she had known she would, at the peek of a plateau, ringed by a cauldoorn of rocky outcrops, set opon a cross of stone. Chains bound his arms ro the rock, snaking between his ankles and his wrists, pinioning him like a butterfly upon a page. His armor and helm were gone. His claws has been taken from him.
For the first time, unconcealed by shadow or night, unmoving and unresisting, she saw him clearly. His skin was so pale as to be almost translucent, revealing along arms and legs every blue vein, every inner augmentation, every limpet-like crater where some ancient injury had marked his flesh. Across his shoulders and chest the skin was concealed, hidden behind an exterior layer of black plating that, in places, dipped beneath his flesh, intermingling with muscle cords and bony outcrops.
She had never seen so many scars in her life. Most remarkable was his face. She has expected a countenance of malevolence. Of unrestrained and unrepentant evil. She had expected snarls and burning embers for eyes; a daemonic visage that brandished its curruption openly, like a festering wound.
Instead she found herself meeting the gaze of of a troubled child. Oh, his face was that of a man - sallow and gaunt, perhaps, twisted by too many years of frowns and rages - but his eyes were that of an infant's. Impossibly old, and yet so full of bewilderment. They were the eyes of a youth that has never been allowed to grow old, that has been plucked from its humanity at an early age and never since allowed to return.
'Where is this?' the crucified man said, and is he retained any sence of trauma from the madness of the gallery room, or the rage that had gripped him at the moment the eldar warlock had attacked, he gave no sign of it. He seemed to Mita to be in shock; his voice monotone, his eyes unblinking.
He was a pathetic thing, she though, spread-eagled before her.
'This is your mind', she replied, unable to bring herself to hate him. 'A dream, if you like. You are trapped here.'
'And you?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know. Perhaps I'm trapped too.'
He considered this. For all the surrealism of the situation, for all the horror of finding oneself crucified and stripped of their armour, he seemed remarkebly calm.
'The eldar did this?' he asked.
'In a way, yes... They made you do it to yourself.'
He nodded as if unsuprised. 'Yes. Yes, they've done it before. Though not on my mind.'
Mita frowned. 'Oh?'
A distant look stole the Night Lord's gaze. 'At the start,' he said. 'The assassin killed my master. She took the price, s-so I followed. You see? I took it back from here, but the eldar came.'
'The prize? you mean the Corona Nox?'
'The Corona, yes... Yes, they tried to steal it, but I prevailed. I would not let them have it, witch, you understand? So they tricked me. They trapped me. My ship. All of us, deep in the warp.'
'What is the Corona Nox?' Mita asked, giving voice to the question that had tormented her so long.
For the first time since she entered this weird realm, his face creased in a frown, eyes dripping to meet hers. He looked as if her ignorance wounded him deep within. 'You don't know?'
She shrugged. 'It... it looks like a crown.'
'Ha! Just a crown?' He shock his head, black eyes flashing. 'No, little witch, it's more then that. Fashioned by the Night Haunter himself, forged from the adamantium core of Nostromo, his birthworld. He wore it through his life, and when he would have screamed with insanity and terror, it calmed him. When he would have listened to the whispers of the Warp, it deafened him. When he burned with vengeance for the injuries his father wrought upon him, then it tasted his anger and stored it away. It's all that remains of my master, witch. Imbued with his devine essencem sealed within a perfect bloodstone. It is no mare crown.'
'It is the captaincy of the Night Lords. He bequeathed it to me on the day he was murdered.'
Understanding came to Mita piece by piece, and with it came disbelief.
'But... but that's... Konrad Curze was killed millennia ago...'
His frown deepened. 'Ten Millennia. Oner hundred centueries. I have been imprisoned a long time.'
And she knew as soon as she heard it that he spoke the truth. She sagged to her knees, astonished, overwhelmed by the ancientness of the creature before her.
He has been hating for Aeons.
She knew she ought to destroy him, this atavistic relic of the Great Heresy. He was, after all, vulnerable before her. Naked; defenceless. Here, in the this realm os psychic material, trapped within his own brain as if sealed inside-out, here she could crush him like a worm. In her mind's eye she imagined a weapon forming within her hand, and sure enough a cold weight sagged into existance, gathering solidity.
But his eyes...
So lonely. So wounded.
'Who are you?' he said, derailing her thoughts. 'Who do you serve?'
She swallowed and hid the gun behind her back, diverting her dangerous thoughts towards his question, relieved at the distraction. 'I am Mita Ashyn. Interrogator of the Divine Emperor's Holy Inquisition.'
'You serve this... this Kaustus? The one who has stolen my inheritance?'
'Yes. No... I did. Once. Not any more.'
'He rejected you, yes? Cast you aside.'
'It's not that simple, I-'
'It's always that simple.' He looked away. 'For the likes of us, at least.'
'What do you mean?'
'You know what I mean, little witch. Little mutant. Little abomination.'
She shook her head, forcing herself to calm, clearing her mind. 'You won't anger me, traitor.' she said.
The Night Lord tried to shrug, chains tightening across shoulders and arms and returned his eyes to her face. 'I don't seek your anger,' he said. voice calm. 'Only your understanding. I ask you again: Who do you serve?'
'I told you. I serve the Imperium.'
'But they hate you.'¨
'The Emperor does not! Ave Imperator! The Emperor loves all who give him praise!'
'Ha. You truly believe that do you?'
The Words formed in her head as if automatic: of course she believed it! Of course the Emperor loved her! And yet even in the confines of her mind, unspoken aloud, such dogma sounded empty, thoughtless, the recitals of a simpleton who knew no better.
Fustrated, angered by her inner turmoil, she raised the gun and aimed at the Night Lord's heart.
'I don't have to listen to you, traitor,' she said.
The quaver in he voice was impossible to conceal.
And oh, oh warpspit and piss, she did need to listen to it. She did need to hear what the beast had to say.
Why? Why did she feel so obliged?
A self-appointed test of her faith, perhaps?
Or perhaps just the comfort of knowing she was not alone in feeling such doubts.
The crucified beast gave no sign of fear at the gun's wavering attention.
'So,' he nodded, brows arching, 'you have the love of one being, out of countless billions? And that is enough?'
'More then enough! You've understand if you hadn't turned from his light.'
He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen features. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'
'No, but-'
'No, they are interwined. One billion billion souls despise you. A single soul - so you say - loves you. You don't think this is a bitter ratio?'
'Without the Emperor's love there is nothing. Vacuss Imperator diligo illic est nusquam.'
She was reduced to parroting lessons of her youth, and the Night Lord's slow smile told her that he knew it.
'I used to think the same,' he said, as if conceding a generous point.
Then: 'Once.'
She racked the gun meaningfully, trying to find a reserve of conviction in her voice.
'Spare me your attempts at curruption. My faith is stronger then steel.'
He leaned down from his tall perch, eye brimming with earnest curiosity. 'Why do you fight me,' he asked, 'when we are the same?'
'I'm nothing like you!'
A petulant rage gripped her then, the last of vestiges of her tattered pride spreading wings of outrage at the very suggestion of her likeness to that... that devil... and before she could stop herself she'd squeezed the trigger of the apparanted weapon.
The shot struck the crucified figure in his side, tearing a strange slash of flesh clear, to boil off into the sky, dissolving as it went; and in this curious inner-realm what flowed from the rent was not blood, but light.
He gave no sign of pain.
'Of course you are,' he hissed, and any trace of shock was gone now; any sense of childish bewilderment was lost. Now his eyes glimmered with guile. 'You are the unclean filth that serves in His name. You are the hated one. They fear you, and they will loathe you, but still they use you...'
'No, no...'
'Yes. They use you up until you cease to be useful, you understand? And what then, little witch? You think they will thank you?'
'It's... you're wrong... it's not like that...'
'The only diffrence between us, little girl, is that where you still wear you yoke of slavery, my master broke me free!'
Mita almost roared, sudden venom choking her mind, clearing the clouds of doubt that the Night Lord has sowed. 'Free?' she snarled. 'You got your freedom by turning to Chaos! You got your salvation from Heresy, warp take you! That's not freedom - that's insanity!'
Such calmness, such ancient sadness.
'You're wrong child. We were never slaves to the Dark Powers. We fought beneth a banner of hate, not of curruption.'
'Hate? What did you have to hate? You fell from grace by choice, traitor, you were not pushed!'
For the first time real, honest emotion ignited behind his eyes. This was not a part of some elaborate game of words, she understood suddenly. This sentiment boiled from his guts and infected the air before him like a cloud of locusts; as heavy with conviction as it was with contempt.
'Hate for the acursed Emperor. Hate for your withered god.'
'I'll kill you! Speak one more ord of this filth and I'll-'
You ask what I hate? I hate a creature that speaks of pride and honour, that fosters the love of his sons, that smiles and scrapes at every obedient act, and then turns like a diseased dog and stabs his own child in the spine!'
'Shut Up! Shut up, damn you!'
'I hate a being so sick, so certain of his own brilliance, so twisted by the call of glory, that he repays the greatest of sacrifice of all with betrayal!'
Mita seized the flapping cords of the Night Lord's voice, struggling to pull herself free from the confusion gripping her.
'Sacrifice? Your master sacrificed nothing but his soul!'
The Night Lords eyes bored into her.
'He sacrificed his humanity, child.'
And suddenly his voice was melancholic, so deep and so calm, so bloated by sadness, that Mita found all her rage dissolved. The gun faltered in her grip as she lowered it, tears in her eyes.
'W-what?'
'He became a monster. He formed us, his Night Lords, in his own image: to spread terror and hate, to forge obedience through fear. He rescinded whatever purity he had, he cast off the humanity that was never intended for him... he risked insanity and damnation, and all to bring order to his fathers Imperium.'
'He sacrificed his soul to the dark, and-'
'You arn't listening. You weren't there. I tell you, little witch: he sacrificed his soul at the Emperor's behest. He became the tame monster the Imperium needed. And how was he repaid? He was reined in. He was humiliated before his brothers. And then? The assassin's kiss.'
'He went too far! The histories do not lie! The excesses of the Night Lords are famed thr-'
'Excesses? We Obayed every order! We did what was asked of us! Listen to me, child! The ''excesses'' of the Night Haunter were sanctioned!'
'No...' her mind rebelled at the suggestion, light flashing before her eyes. 'No, no, no... the Emperor would never countenance th-'
'He needed order, where only savagery could bring it. He sent in the Night Lords, and we gave him the order he yearned. And then he made us his scapegoats. He cried with false outrage, and the Imperium cried with him.'
'You've wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong...'
'My master craved nothing but pride from his father. And all that he ever recived was scorn. Little wonder he threw his lot with the Heretic rabble. Little wonder he marched to war beside them, sensing that they might weaken his father's grip. He was wrong.'
'...no no no no no...'
'Look at me, child. Look at me!'
Mita's head snapped up at the command, the empty mumblings falling away from her mouth. It was all too much to take; too much to absorb. Too much for a single mind to contain.
'My master was killed by an assassin. You know this, yes?'
She dredged details from long-gone lessons, struggling to recall histories that has seemed so unreal, so mired in the soup of myth.
'Y-yes... yes, she was sent to kill the fiend w-when the Heresy was over... The other Legions fled in... in disarray. Not the Night Lords. The High Lord of Terra, they... they thought if Curze was slain the Legion would dissolve...'
'Half truths. Half truths and lies.'
'I... I don't understand...'
'Do you know what the Night Haunter's final words were to me were? Do you know what he said, as he seated himself and awaited the assassin?'
'N-n-'
'He said ''See how the mighty are fallen.'' '
'W-why?'
'Because he had finally realised what nobody else had ever seen. That his father, his glorious Emperor, his Divine Creator, was just as vicious, just as terrible , just as merciless, as the Night Lords themselfs. See how the mighty are fallen. See how divinity lowers itself to dispose of the monster it created.'
One final pulse of rebellion - alone and drowining in a sea of doubt - struggled to be heard in Mita's heart. 'L-lower itself? By sending an assassin? After all that Konrad Curze had done? After the horrors of the Heresy? What else could the Emperor have done?'
For an instant the doubt seemed to retract. For an instant she felt she'd somehow scored a point; landed a blow.
The Night Lord remained resolutely unphased.
'What else? Nothing, to be sure - if, as you say, the killer was sent to avenge the terrors of the Horus Heresy.' He leaned forwards again, as far as his cains would allow, and his black eyes were pools of oil, sucking her soul down into their lightless depths. 'But, child, the assassin that killed the Night Haunter was not the first to seek him out.'
'W-What?'
'She was the last of a long line. A line that he had evaded at every stroke. A line whose endless attempts has exhausted him beyond his desire to retaliate. He had endured enough, do you understand? He was the Haunter! He was the first, and the mightiest! He ruled the shadows! He reigned in the Dark! And then his father rescinded his sanction, and at the end of the Great Crusade, before the Heresy has even begun, he was brought before his lord and brothers, humiliated, and held to account. Did he betray the Emperor's honour, then? Did he excuse his actions by telling the truth? By revealing to his kin that their father's duplicity? No. Loyalty gripped him still, and he endured his father's derision withb boundless humility.'
'I remember the tales...' Ancient text swarm though Mita's memories, the echoing spaces of dusty libraries vivid in her mind. 'He attacked one of his brother-primarch, Rogal Dorn. Where was his loyalty then, Night Lord?'
'Dorn's pomposity infuriated him. Was it not enough that he had toed his father's line, without the chiding of ignorant fools? Of course his temper snapped. Whose would not have?'
Mita opened her mouth, a suitably acidic reply prepared, but stalled herself. There was little acid left in her, and that which remained was certainly not directed at the melancholy creature suspended above.
'What happend?' she breathed.
'My master was confined to his quarters. He sought time to meditate, to confer amongst his honour guard.'
'And?'
'And the conference was interrupted by a black-suited devil. An assassin, child. You Understand me? Send to kill the Night Haunter. Sent to silance his outbursts. Who else could have sent him? Who else but your holy, righteous Emperor? And, witch, remember: this was long before Horus unveiled his treachery and turned from the light.'
'That's... that's impossible...'
'The attack was foiled and my master flew into a rage. Finally he recognised the truth of his father's so-called ''justice''. He fled from the conference to gather his strength, to consider his movements, to fume at the insult of the attempted murder,
'It was the first of many. Before, during and after the Heresy. On Tsagualsa the Night Haunter stopped running. He built a palace that he knew would be his mausoleum, and he awaited the bitch that would take his head and crown.
'So do you see child, the Haunter was not killed for his part in the Heresy. He was not kiled to halt excusses or unsanctioned behaviour. No... no, he was killed by a father who thought of nothing [i]of using him. Of twisting him into a hated monstrosity. Of demanding atrocities and horrors from him to scare his enemies into submission. Of taking from him everything that was pure, everything that was human, and then repaying the sacrifice with betrayal.
'So tell me this, little witch. Do you still believe you arn't being used? Do you still think you'll find some... some reward in death for your loyal services? Do you still think the hatred of the masses are irrelevant?
'Do you still think your Emperor loves you, girl?'
If she'd had a stomach, if this uncorporeal realn had taken form and replaced her astral self with a physical body, she knew she would be vomiting blood at the disgust that gripped her. Disbelief battled certainty; the doubts spiralled and flocked to dominate her whole soul, and like a island sinking beneth the sea, like a ship that has been considered impregnable splintering apart and slipping down into cold and lightless depths, every shred of faith that Mita Ashyn had ever felt in the Emperor of mankind crumbled to dust.
She peered though her tears, raised the gun, and fired.
The chains that bound the Night Lord to his crucifix splintered and unravelled.
Zso Sahaal smiled a savage smile, and tore free from the prison inside his own mind, to reclaim what was his.
It's Called 'Lord of the Night', by Simon Spurrier. It's from the Sci-Fi fantasy universe 'Warhammer 40.000'.
It's about a leader of the super solider legion 'Night Lords'. Called 'The Talonmaster'.
I really liked this part of the book, it remind me WHY I like the Night Lords.
It it a few A5 pages long, so please bear with it. Enjoy.
She found herself within a world unlike any she had seen before. Purple skies raged like bruises; tormented clouds swirling and gathering together - defying the logic of what little breeze there seemed to be. Faces leered from their gaseous topography: half-seen grotesqueries that Mita neither recognised nor cared to see fully.
The ground itself seemed more solid: a porous sheet of sand and rock that, against all sense, felt spongy to the touch. A charge filled the air, a greasy static that clicked in the ends of her ragged hair and oppressed her skull, like a coming storm.
Nothing seemed real, here. Distant mountain peaks wavered like uncertian mirages; wobbling in their foothill roots; vanishing and reappearing at the whim of...
Who?
For a fearful instant Mita wondered if she had somehow travelled to a daemon world. She had heard of such places: confused realms where physics held little sway, where every aspect of every molecule was inseparable from the stuff of Chaos itself. Such worlds were the dreaded rumour of the Inquisition, and as Mita stumbled across fractured landscapes, negotiating ethereal gorges and sudden rivers that oozed from nowhere, the fear that she had somehow been trasported to one lay heavy in her mind.
But, no... this was no chaotic realm. The more she observed its howling skies and its weird tides of light and dark; the more she studied the scenes that shimmered in the surfaces of puddles and the images borne on the crest of rocks; the more she sent feelers from her own mind tasting at the sand itself, the more she came to realise where she was. She recognised this flavour.
As if to double check, she paused and stared at her hand; concentraiting, altering her perceptions, working hard to focus on her psychic self.
'Sword,' she said.
A bright sabre appeared in her palm. She nodded, unsuprised, and walked on., casting the blade away. It vanished before it landed.
She found the Night Lord, as she had known she would, at the peek of a plateau, ringed by a cauldoorn of rocky outcrops, set opon a cross of stone. Chains bound his arms ro the rock, snaking between his ankles and his wrists, pinioning him like a butterfly upon a page. His armor and helm were gone. His claws has been taken from him.
For the first time, unconcealed by shadow or night, unmoving and unresisting, she saw him clearly. His skin was so pale as to be almost translucent, revealing along arms and legs every blue vein, every inner augmentation, every limpet-like crater where some ancient injury had marked his flesh. Across his shoulders and chest the skin was concealed, hidden behind an exterior layer of black plating that, in places, dipped beneath his flesh, intermingling with muscle cords and bony outcrops.
She had never seen so many scars in her life. Most remarkable was his face. She has expected a countenance of malevolence. Of unrestrained and unrepentant evil. She had expected snarls and burning embers for eyes; a daemonic visage that brandished its curruption openly, like a festering wound.
Instead she found herself meeting the gaze of of a troubled child. Oh, his face was that of a man - sallow and gaunt, perhaps, twisted by too many years of frowns and rages - but his eyes were that of an infant's. Impossibly old, and yet so full of bewilderment. They were the eyes of a youth that has never been allowed to grow old, that has been plucked from its humanity at an early age and never since allowed to return.
'Where is this?' the crucified man said, and is he retained any sence of trauma from the madness of the gallery room, or the rage that had gripped him at the moment the eldar warlock had attacked, he gave no sign of it. He seemed to Mita to be in shock; his voice monotone, his eyes unblinking.
He was a pathetic thing, she though, spread-eagled before her.
'This is your mind', she replied, unable to bring herself to hate him. 'A dream, if you like. You are trapped here.'
'And you?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know. Perhaps I'm trapped too.'
He considered this. For all the surrealism of the situation, for all the horror of finding oneself crucified and stripped of their armour, he seemed remarkebly calm.
'The eldar did this?' he asked.
'In a way, yes... They made you do it to yourself.'
He nodded as if unsuprised. 'Yes. Yes, they've done it before. Though not on my mind.'
Mita frowned. 'Oh?'
A distant look stole the Night Lord's gaze. 'At the start,' he said. 'The assassin killed my master. She took the price, s-so I followed. You see? I took it back from here, but the eldar came.'
'The prize? you mean the Corona Nox?'
'The Corona, yes... Yes, they tried to steal it, but I prevailed. I would not let them have it, witch, you understand? So they tricked me. They trapped me. My ship. All of us, deep in the warp.'
'What is the Corona Nox?' Mita asked, giving voice to the question that had tormented her so long.
For the first time since she entered this weird realm, his face creased in a frown, eyes dripping to meet hers. He looked as if her ignorance wounded him deep within. 'You don't know?'
She shrugged. 'It... it looks like a crown.'
'Ha! Just a crown?' He shock his head, black eyes flashing. 'No, little witch, it's more then that. Fashioned by the Night Haunter himself, forged from the adamantium core of Nostromo, his birthworld. He wore it through his life, and when he would have screamed with insanity and terror, it calmed him. When he would have listened to the whispers of the Warp, it deafened him. When he burned with vengeance for the injuries his father wrought upon him, then it tasted his anger and stored it away. It's all that remains of my master, witch. Imbued with his devine essencem sealed within a perfect bloodstone. It is no mare crown.'
'It is the captaincy of the Night Lords. He bequeathed it to me on the day he was murdered.'
Understanding came to Mita piece by piece, and with it came disbelief.
'But... but that's... Konrad Curze was killed millennia ago...'
His frown deepened. 'Ten Millennia. Oner hundred centueries. I have been imprisoned a long time.'
And she knew as soon as she heard it that he spoke the truth. She sagged to her knees, astonished, overwhelmed by the ancientness of the creature before her.
He has been hating for Aeons.
She knew she ought to destroy him, this atavistic relic of the Great Heresy. He was, after all, vulnerable before her. Naked; defenceless. Here, in the this realm os psychic material, trapped within his own brain as if sealed inside-out, here she could crush him like a worm. In her mind's eye she imagined a weapon forming within her hand, and sure enough a cold weight sagged into existance, gathering solidity.
But his eyes...
So lonely. So wounded.
'Who are you?' he said, derailing her thoughts. 'Who do you serve?'
She swallowed and hid the gun behind her back, diverting her dangerous thoughts towards his question, relieved at the distraction. 'I am Mita Ashyn. Interrogator of the Divine Emperor's Holy Inquisition.'
'You serve this... this Kaustus? The one who has stolen my inheritance?'
'Yes. No... I did. Once. Not any more.'
'He rejected you, yes? Cast you aside.'
'It's not that simple, I-'
'It's always that simple.' He looked away. 'For the likes of us, at least.'
'What do you mean?'
'You know what I mean, little witch. Little mutant. Little abomination.'
She shook her head, forcing herself to calm, clearing her mind. 'You won't anger me, traitor.' she said.
The Night Lord tried to shrug, chains tightening across shoulders and arms and returned his eyes to her face. 'I don't seek your anger,' he said. voice calm. 'Only your understanding. I ask you again: Who do you serve?'
'I told you. I serve the Imperium.'
'But they hate you.'¨
'The Emperor does not! Ave Imperator! The Emperor loves all who give him praise!'
'Ha. You truly believe that do you?'
The Words formed in her head as if automatic: of course she believed it! Of course the Emperor loved her! And yet even in the confines of her mind, unspoken aloud, such dogma sounded empty, thoughtless, the recitals of a simpleton who knew no better.
Fustrated, angered by her inner turmoil, she raised the gun and aimed at the Night Lord's heart.
'I don't have to listen to you, traitor,' she said.
The quaver in he voice was impossible to conceal.
And oh, oh warpspit and piss, she did need to listen to it. She did need to hear what the beast had to say.
Why? Why did she feel so obliged?
A self-appointed test of her faith, perhaps?
Or perhaps just the comfort of knowing she was not alone in feeling such doubts.
The crucified beast gave no sign of fear at the gun's wavering attention.
'So,' he nodded, brows arching, 'you have the love of one being, out of countless billions? And that is enough?'
'More then enough! You've understand if you hadn't turned from his light.'
He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen features. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'
'No, but-'
'No, they are interwined. One billion billion souls despise you. A single soul - so you say - loves you. You don't think this is a bitter ratio?'
'Without the Emperor's love there is nothing. Vacuss Imperator diligo illic est nusquam.'
She was reduced to parroting lessons of her youth, and the Night Lord's slow smile told her that he knew it.
'I used to think the same,' he said, as if conceding a generous point.
Then: 'Once.'
She racked the gun meaningfully, trying to find a reserve of conviction in her voice.
'Spare me your attempts at curruption. My faith is stronger then steel.'
He leaned down from his tall perch, eye brimming with earnest curiosity. 'Why do you fight me,' he asked, 'when we are the same?'
'I'm nothing like you!'
A petulant rage gripped her then, the last of vestiges of her tattered pride spreading wings of outrage at the very suggestion of her likeness to that... that devil... and before she could stop herself she'd squeezed the trigger of the apparanted weapon.
The shot struck the crucified figure in his side, tearing a strange slash of flesh clear, to boil off into the sky, dissolving as it went; and in this curious inner-realm what flowed from the rent was not blood, but light.
He gave no sign of pain.
'Of course you are,' he hissed, and any trace of shock was gone now; any sense of childish bewilderment was lost. Now his eyes glimmered with guile. 'You are the unclean filth that serves in His name. You are the hated one. They fear you, and they will loathe you, but still they use you...'
'No, no...'
'Yes. They use you up until you cease to be useful, you understand? And what then, little witch? You think they will thank you?'
'It's... you're wrong... it's not like that...'
'The only diffrence between us, little girl, is that where you still wear you yoke of slavery, my master broke me free!'
Mita almost roared, sudden venom choking her mind, clearing the clouds of doubt that the Night Lord has sowed. 'Free?' she snarled. 'You got your freedom by turning to Chaos! You got your salvation from Heresy, warp take you! That's not freedom - that's insanity!'
Such calmness, such ancient sadness.
'You're wrong child. We were never slaves to the Dark Powers. We fought beneth a banner of hate, not of curruption.'
'Hate? What did you have to hate? You fell from grace by choice, traitor, you were not pushed!'
For the first time real, honest emotion ignited behind his eyes. This was not a part of some elaborate game of words, she understood suddenly. This sentiment boiled from his guts and infected the air before him like a cloud of locusts; as heavy with conviction as it was with contempt.
'Hate for the acursed Emperor. Hate for your withered god.'
'I'll kill you! Speak one more ord of this filth and I'll-'
You ask what I hate? I hate a creature that speaks of pride and honour, that fosters the love of his sons, that smiles and scrapes at every obedient act, and then turns like a diseased dog and stabs his own child in the spine!'
'Shut Up! Shut up, damn you!'
'I hate a being so sick, so certain of his own brilliance, so twisted by the call of glory, that he repays the greatest of sacrifice of all with betrayal!'
Mita seized the flapping cords of the Night Lord's voice, struggling to pull herself free from the confusion gripping her.
'Sacrifice? Your master sacrificed nothing but his soul!'
The Night Lords eyes bored into her.
'He sacrificed his humanity, child.'
And suddenly his voice was melancholic, so deep and so calm, so bloated by sadness, that Mita found all her rage dissolved. The gun faltered in her grip as she lowered it, tears in her eyes.
'W-what?'
'He became a monster. He formed us, his Night Lords, in his own image: to spread terror and hate, to forge obedience through fear. He rescinded whatever purity he had, he cast off the humanity that was never intended for him... he risked insanity and damnation, and all to bring order to his fathers Imperium.'
'He sacrificed his soul to the dark, and-'
'You arn't listening. You weren't there. I tell you, little witch: he sacrificed his soul at the Emperor's behest. He became the tame monster the Imperium needed. And how was he repaid? He was reined in. He was humiliated before his brothers. And then? The assassin's kiss.'
'He went too far! The histories do not lie! The excesses of the Night Lords are famed thr-'
'Excesses? We Obayed every order! We did what was asked of us! Listen to me, child! The ''excesses'' of the Night Haunter were sanctioned!'
'No...' her mind rebelled at the suggestion, light flashing before her eyes. 'No, no, no... the Emperor would never countenance th-'
'He needed order, where only savagery could bring it. He sent in the Night Lords, and we gave him the order he yearned. And then he made us his scapegoats. He cried with false outrage, and the Imperium cried with him.'
'You've wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong...'
'My master craved nothing but pride from his father. And all that he ever recived was scorn. Little wonder he threw his lot with the Heretic rabble. Little wonder he marched to war beside them, sensing that they might weaken his father's grip. He was wrong.'
'...no no no no no...'
'Look at me, child. Look at me!'
Mita's head snapped up at the command, the empty mumblings falling away from her mouth. It was all too much to take; too much to absorb. Too much for a single mind to contain.
'My master was killed by an assassin. You know this, yes?'
She dredged details from long-gone lessons, struggling to recall histories that has seemed so unreal, so mired in the soup of myth.
'Y-yes... yes, she was sent to kill the fiend w-when the Heresy was over... The other Legions fled in... in disarray. Not the Night Lords. The High Lord of Terra, they... they thought if Curze was slain the Legion would dissolve...'
'Half truths. Half truths and lies.'
'I... I don't understand...'
'Do you know what the Night Haunter's final words were to me were? Do you know what he said, as he seated himself and awaited the assassin?'
'N-n-'
'He said ''See how the mighty are fallen.'' '
'W-why?'
'Because he had finally realised what nobody else had ever seen. That his father, his glorious Emperor, his Divine Creator, was just as vicious, just as terrible , just as merciless, as the Night Lords themselfs. See how the mighty are fallen. See how divinity lowers itself to dispose of the monster it created.'
One final pulse of rebellion - alone and drowining in a sea of doubt - struggled to be heard in Mita's heart. 'L-lower itself? By sending an assassin? After all that Konrad Curze had done? After the horrors of the Heresy? What else could the Emperor have done?'
For an instant the doubt seemed to retract. For an instant she felt she'd somehow scored a point; landed a blow.
The Night Lord remained resolutely unphased.
'What else? Nothing, to be sure - if, as you say, the killer was sent to avenge the terrors of the Horus Heresy.' He leaned forwards again, as far as his cains would allow, and his black eyes were pools of oil, sucking her soul down into their lightless depths. 'But, child, the assassin that killed the Night Haunter was not the first to seek him out.'
'W-What?'
'She was the last of a long line. A line that he had evaded at every stroke. A line whose endless attempts has exhausted him beyond his desire to retaliate. He had endured enough, do you understand? He was the Haunter! He was the first, and the mightiest! He ruled the shadows! He reigned in the Dark! And then his father rescinded his sanction, and at the end of the Great Crusade, before the Heresy has even begun, he was brought before his lord and brothers, humiliated, and held to account. Did he betray the Emperor's honour, then? Did he excuse his actions by telling the truth? By revealing to his kin that their father's duplicity? No. Loyalty gripped him still, and he endured his father's derision withb boundless humility.'
'I remember the tales...' Ancient text swarm though Mita's memories, the echoing spaces of dusty libraries vivid in her mind. 'He attacked one of his brother-primarch, Rogal Dorn. Where was his loyalty then, Night Lord?'
'Dorn's pomposity infuriated him. Was it not enough that he had toed his father's line, without the chiding of ignorant fools? Of course his temper snapped. Whose would not have?'
Mita opened her mouth, a suitably acidic reply prepared, but stalled herself. There was little acid left in her, and that which remained was certainly not directed at the melancholy creature suspended above.
'What happend?' she breathed.
'My master was confined to his quarters. He sought time to meditate, to confer amongst his honour guard.'
'And?'
'And the conference was interrupted by a black-suited devil. An assassin, child. You Understand me? Send to kill the Night Haunter. Sent to silance his outbursts. Who else could have sent him? Who else but your holy, righteous Emperor? And, witch, remember: this was long before Horus unveiled his treachery and turned from the light.'
'That's... that's impossible...'
'The attack was foiled and my master flew into a rage. Finally he recognised the truth of his father's so-called ''justice''. He fled from the conference to gather his strength, to consider his movements, to fume at the insult of the attempted murder,
'It was the first of many. Before, during and after the Heresy. On Tsagualsa the Night Haunter stopped running. He built a palace that he knew would be his mausoleum, and he awaited the bitch that would take his head and crown.
'So do you see child, the Haunter was not killed for his part in the Heresy. He was not kiled to halt excusses or unsanctioned behaviour. No... no, he was killed by a father who thought of nothing [i]of using him. Of twisting him into a hated monstrosity. Of demanding atrocities and horrors from him to scare his enemies into submission. Of taking from him everything that was pure, everything that was human, and then repaying the sacrifice with betrayal.
'So tell me this, little witch. Do you still believe you arn't being used? Do you still think you'll find some... some reward in death for your loyal services? Do you still think the hatred of the masses are irrelevant?
'Do you still think your Emperor loves you, girl?'
If she'd had a stomach, if this uncorporeal realn had taken form and replaced her astral self with a physical body, she knew she would be vomiting blood at the disgust that gripped her. Disbelief battled certainty; the doubts spiralled and flocked to dominate her whole soul, and like a island sinking beneth the sea, like a ship that has been considered impregnable splintering apart and slipping down into cold and lightless depths, every shred of faith that Mita Ashyn had ever felt in the Emperor of mankind crumbled to dust.
She peered though her tears, raised the gun, and fired.
The chains that bound the Night Lord to his crucifix splintered and unravelled.
Zso Sahaal smiled a savage smile, and tore free from the prison inside his own mind, to reclaim what was his.
#2
Posted 23 August 2011 - 03:11 PM
holy. ######.
#4
Posted 23 August 2011 - 04:11 PM
I don't think I got any of that
#5
Posted 23 August 2011 - 04:46 PM
I am just waiting for someone to start quoting the bible.
#7
Posted 23 August 2011 - 05:57 PM
I don't read
#10
Posted 23 August 2011 - 06:55 PM
"More interesting than the fact that we have modified p = mv is what happens when we consider the part of the momentum vector that points off in the time direction. After all of the hard work we have investing, it is not hard for us to compute it. That part of the new momentum vector that points off in the time direction has a length equal to cΔt multiplied by m and divided by Δt/γ again which is γmc.
Remember, momentum is interesting to us because it is conserved. Our goal has been to find a new, four-dimensional momentum that will be conserved in spacetime. We can imagine a bunch of momentum vectors in spacetime, all pointing off in different directions. The might, for example represent the momenta of some particles that are about to collide. After the collision, there will be a new set of momentum vectors, pointing in different directions. But the law of momentum conservation tells us that the sum total of all the new arrows must be exactly the same as the sum total of the original arrows. This in turn means that the sum total of the portions of each of the arrows pointing in the space direction must be conserved, as should the sum of the portions pointing in the time direction. So if we tally up the values of γmv for each particle, then the grand total before the collision should be the same as the value afterward. Likewise for the time portions but this time it is the sum total of the γmc values that is conserved. But what do these two particular things correspond to? At first sight, there is nothing much to get excited about. If the speeds are small then γ is very close to 1 and γmv simply becomes mv. We have therefore regained the old-fashioned law for momentum conservation. This is reassuring since we hoped that we would arrive at something that Victorian physicists would recognise. Brunel and the other great engineers of the nineteenth century certainly managed just fine without spacetime, so our new definition of momentum really had to give rise to almost the same answers as it did during the Industrial Revolution, provided things are not whizzing around at too close to the speed of light. After all, the Clifton Suspension Bridge did not suddenly cease to remain suspended when Einstein came up with relativity.
What can we say about the conservation of γmc? Since c is a universal constant upon which everyone always agrees, then the conservation of γmc is tantamount to saying that mass is conserved. That doesn't seem a big surprise and it is in accord with our intuition, although it is rather interesting that it has popped out as if from nowhere. For example it seems to say that after burning coal in a fire, the mass of the ashes afterward (plus the mass of any matter than went up the chimney) should be equal to the mass of the coal before the fire was lit. The fact that γ isn't exactly one hardly seems to matter, and we might be tempted to move on, satisfied that we have already achieved a great deal. We have defined momentum in such a way that it is a meaninful quantity in spacetime and as a result we have dervied (usually tiny) corrections to the nineteeth-century definition of momentum while simultaneously deriving the law of conservation of mass. WHat more could we hope for?
It has taken us a long time to reach this point, but there is a sting in the tail of this narrative. We are going to take a closer look at that part of the momentum vector that points off in the time direction, and in doing so we will, almost miraculously, uncover Einstein's most famous formula. The finale is within sight. In following the book up to this point, you may well be juggling a lot of mental balls as you read this sentence. It is no mean feat, because you have learned a great deal of what a professional physicist might be expected to know about four-dimensional vectors and Minkowski spacetime. We are now ready for the climax.
We have established that γmc should be conserved. We need to be clear on what that means. If you imagine a game of relativistic billiards, then each ball has its own value for γmc. Add all those values up and whatever the total is, it does not change. Now let us play what at first seems a rather pointless game. If γmc is conserved then so too is γmc², simply because c is a constant. Why we did that will become clear shortly. Now, γ is not exactly equal to one, and for small speeds it can actually be approximated by the formula γ = 1 + ½(v²/c²). You can check for yourself, using a calculator, that this formula works pretty well for speeds that are small compared to c (i.e., it gives almost the same value as the exact formula: γ = 1/√1-v²/c²).
After making this simplification, γmc² is then approximately equal to mc² + ½mv². It is at this point that we are able to realise the profoundly significant consequences of what we have been doing. For speeds that are small compared to c, we have determined that the quantity mc² + ½mv² is conserved. More precisely, it is the γmc² that is conserved, but at this stage, the former equation is much more illuminating. Why? Well, as we have already seen, the product ½mv² is the formula for kinetic energy and it measures how much energy an object of mass m has as a result of the fact that it is moving with a speed of v. We have discovered that there is a thing that is conserved that is equal to something (mc²) plus the kinetic energy. It makes sense to refere to this something as energy, but now it has to bits to it. One is ½mv² and the other is mc². Don't be confused by the fact that we multiplied by c. We did that only so our final answer included the term ½mv² rather than ½mv²/c², and the former is what scientists have for many generations called kinetic energy. Therefore E = mc²."
This ######ing blew my mind when I read it in a book. Best part of a book I ever read.
Remember, momentum is interesting to us because it is conserved. Our goal has been to find a new, four-dimensional momentum that will be conserved in spacetime. We can imagine a bunch of momentum vectors in spacetime, all pointing off in different directions. The might, for example represent the momenta of some particles that are about to collide. After the collision, there will be a new set of momentum vectors, pointing in different directions. But the law of momentum conservation tells us that the sum total of all the new arrows must be exactly the same as the sum total of the original arrows. This in turn means that the sum total of the portions of each of the arrows pointing in the space direction must be conserved, as should the sum of the portions pointing in the time direction. So if we tally up the values of γmv for each particle, then the grand total before the collision should be the same as the value afterward. Likewise for the time portions but this time it is the sum total of the γmc values that is conserved. But what do these two particular things correspond to? At first sight, there is nothing much to get excited about. If the speeds are small then γ is very close to 1 and γmv simply becomes mv. We have therefore regained the old-fashioned law for momentum conservation. This is reassuring since we hoped that we would arrive at something that Victorian physicists would recognise. Brunel and the other great engineers of the nineteenth century certainly managed just fine without spacetime, so our new definition of momentum really had to give rise to almost the same answers as it did during the Industrial Revolution, provided things are not whizzing around at too close to the speed of light. After all, the Clifton Suspension Bridge did not suddenly cease to remain suspended when Einstein came up with relativity.
What can we say about the conservation of γmc? Since c is a universal constant upon which everyone always agrees, then the conservation of γmc is tantamount to saying that mass is conserved. That doesn't seem a big surprise and it is in accord with our intuition, although it is rather interesting that it has popped out as if from nowhere. For example it seems to say that after burning coal in a fire, the mass of the ashes afterward (plus the mass of any matter than went up the chimney) should be equal to the mass of the coal before the fire was lit. The fact that γ isn't exactly one hardly seems to matter, and we might be tempted to move on, satisfied that we have already achieved a great deal. We have defined momentum in such a way that it is a meaninful quantity in spacetime and as a result we have dervied (usually tiny) corrections to the nineteeth-century definition of momentum while simultaneously deriving the law of conservation of mass. WHat more could we hope for?
It has taken us a long time to reach this point, but there is a sting in the tail of this narrative. We are going to take a closer look at that part of the momentum vector that points off in the time direction, and in doing so we will, almost miraculously, uncover Einstein's most famous formula. The finale is within sight. In following the book up to this point, you may well be juggling a lot of mental balls as you read this sentence. It is no mean feat, because you have learned a great deal of what a professional physicist might be expected to know about four-dimensional vectors and Minkowski spacetime. We are now ready for the climax.
We have established that γmc should be conserved. We need to be clear on what that means. If you imagine a game of relativistic billiards, then each ball has its own value for γmc. Add all those values up and whatever the total is, it does not change. Now let us play what at first seems a rather pointless game. If γmc is conserved then so too is γmc², simply because c is a constant. Why we did that will become clear shortly. Now, γ is not exactly equal to one, and for small speeds it can actually be approximated by the formula γ = 1 + ½(v²/c²). You can check for yourself, using a calculator, that this formula works pretty well for speeds that are small compared to c (i.e., it gives almost the same value as the exact formula: γ = 1/√1-v²/c²).
After making this simplification, γmc² is then approximately equal to mc² + ½mv². It is at this point that we are able to realise the profoundly significant consequences of what we have been doing. For speeds that are small compared to c, we have determined that the quantity mc² + ½mv² is conserved. More precisely, it is the γmc² that is conserved, but at this stage, the former equation is much more illuminating. Why? Well, as we have already seen, the product ½mv² is the formula for kinetic energy and it measures how much energy an object of mass m has as a result of the fact that it is moving with a speed of v. We have discovered that there is a thing that is conserved that is equal to something (mc²) plus the kinetic energy. It makes sense to refere to this something as energy, but now it has to bits to it. One is ½mv² and the other is mc². Don't be confused by the fact that we multiplied by c. We did that only so our final answer included the term ½mv² rather than ½mv²/c², and the former is what scientists have for many generations called kinetic energy. Therefore E = mc²."
This ######ing blew my mind when I read it in a book. Best part of a book I ever read.
#11
Posted 23 August 2011 - 07:38 PM
Roxas, on 23 August 2011 - 06:43 PM, said:
Since I'm lazy, here is a version translated with google translator
A detail for the ones who are interested Electron's internal property, spin's, existence is based on an experiment made by Otto Stern and Walter Gerlach in the early 1920s. In the experiment a beam of silver atoms was focused (silver has one valence electron) in the travel direction of the atoms to inhomogenous magnetic field B = B(z)uz, the trajectory of atoms. A z-way force Fz = -µ
*m*dB(z)/dz was directed at the atom beam, as a result the track of the particle curved towards the magnetic field's gradient direction. Magnitude of the divergence depends on quantum ml. It should be noted that, the equation contains silver's only valence electron's quantum ml. the other electrons have settled in quite a static configuration, where their angular momentums and spins have magnitude of zero. Similarly, the kernel does not need to be taken into account, due to the large of the core the impact on the results would not appear until the third decimal place.
Since each of the l-space always corresponds to 2l + 1 different ml value, the segmentation of each particle odd number of showers. However, Stern and Gerlach experiment, even the fundamental mode, l = 0, the atomic parts of the jet broke up, exactly two parts. Wolfgang Pauli offered a bizarre explanation for these observations in 1924. According to him, an electron must have a new quantum degree of freedom, ie, who can get himself two different values. This idea was worked on Paul's students, George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit, who in 1925 published an article presented a hypothesis of internal electron angular momentum the number of spin. This idea is related to classical physics, according to the solar system model, in which electron buzzes like planets around the core (angular momentum of the track), but also rotates around its own axis (spinning). Uhlenbeck and Goudsmitin theory, the spin angular momentum behaves in the number of ways, so it is also kvantittuu in the same way:
|S| = h *sqrt(s(s+1)), Sz = hms, ms = -s,...,s,
where s = 1 / 2 and ms = + -1 / 2 Thus electron, whose spin is thus defined by two worthy; values + - 1 / 2 would mean something like "spin-up" - and "spin down" particle. Current state of knowledge, however, the electron is most likely punctuate the particle, so there is no physical axis around which the electron could be spinning. Thus, the rotation of the axis must be taken only in classical analogy, which is responsible for havainnoillistaa that the angular momentum quantities of various types. Spin also was pulled from sleeve, and may not be any way out of the Schrödinger equation. Thus, it is a purely quantum mechanical phenomenon
#12
Posted 24 August 2011 - 07:24 AM
Well at least I had the decency to wait a bit so that the second post in the topic wasn't TL;DR.
Is this the official copy pasta topic of random quotes?
Is this the official copy pasta topic of random quotes?
#16
#17
Posted 26 August 2011 - 04:17 PM
The End
#20
#21
#22
Posted 28 August 2011 - 03:18 PM
Be happy that you guys don't have to deal with such ###### like german literature from 17th century till 19th/early 20th century-.-
#23
Posted 28 August 2011 - 03:54 PM
Killerace, on 28 August 2011 - 03:18 PM, said:
Be happy that you guys don't have to deal with such ###### like german literature from 17th century till 19th/early 20th century-.-
the ###### we get taught in German classes is bad enough. I dread to think what 17th century german is like.
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