Old Man Thirst Hotline

Well, sickness be damned to the void! His place is in the vanguard. Whatever horrors the Governor and her ilk have conjured up, he shall do his duty and shield his Lord Captain from —

Perfectly in sync with his impassioned inner monologue, a hazy figure shambles past, just a few standard Terran meters out of reach.

The entire chamber is cast in this purple gauze, making it difficult to make out individual features, but the glow is thickest closer to the floor, swirling at ankle level, grabbing at the figure like misshapen ghostly hands. From what is visible of their silhouette, the wandering stranger themself is, likewise, misshapen. Seemingly heedless of their surroundings, they are swaying dumbly on two half-bent... legs? And waving around appendages that could only be called arms because Low Gothic lacks the words for what they truly are: one withered, shrunken down to a feeble claw, just strong enough to hold up a dark wineglass; and the other, resembling the pincer of an oversized crab, bulbous and heavy and sagging down till it vanishes in the purple fog. Clothing once sewn for a human is tangled around the wretched being's wobbly knees, and as the silhouette weaves aimlessly round and round, at certain angles it's possible to make out the outline of an engorged penis. Fully exposed and apparently stuck in a perpetual erection.

The disgrace!

A soft noise — not quite a gasp of shock, not quite a gag of disgust — escapes the thin lips of the retinue's new xenos... companion. Yet another criminal against the Imperial Creed whom the Lord Captain has taken under her wing for some bizarre reason. But even here, Abelard would not be... quite surprised to discover someday that her judgement was well-placed.

"Corrupted by She Who Thirsts," the xenos hisses through her teeth.

The Lord Captain nods, and a cloud passes over her usually carefree countenance, pushing down the corners of her soft lips (well, that's how anyone who looks at her would describe them! It's hardly Abelard's fault he has eyes to see!).

"I know these fumes," she says, before abruptly putting out her arm to bar Abelard from standing between her and the Chaos abomination.

"Inhaling them is a disastrously bad idea. If you have helmets with you, or masks, or anything, put them on... And yes, that includes you, Kibellah! Yes, sweetie, I know your cult probably microdosed you on every drug in existence, but I am your Domin and I am not taking any chances! Please be a dear and use that thing with goggles I got you from our last loot haul... I mean resource collection. For the dynasty."

"Yes, Domin."

The young Spinner nods dutifully, and without warning, all Abelard can see (perhaps already addled by Slaanesh's foul vapors) is his youngest daughter, the way he still remembers her from decades and decades ago, with her face crinkled in a pouting grimace, suffering through Quatharina's fussing over her winterwear.

"Now, the rest of you sweethearts!" the Lord Captain points a demanding gilded finger. "Hurry up! We don't want to miss all the cultist-killing fun, do we?"

"The Omnissiah has blessed this unit's respirator with a filtration system of superb quality," whirrs Master Haneumann, sounding as close to giddy as he ever gets.

Van Calox is likewise smug.

"Wise course of action, Lady Lumen, but I can biomantically seal my mouth and nose as required," he says with the smallest of bows.

"And what, die on us when your fancy lungs run out of air?" scoffs Mistress Tlass, busy wrapping a scarf around the lower half of her face. "Don't be a show-off, ice man; wear a damn cover like the rest of us peasants."

"You can borrow my helmet, darling, if you promise not to swab it for bio samples to send to your boss," the Lord Captain offers, diving deep into her seemingly bottomless pack.

She sounds like she's' back to her usual playful chirpiness; but the warmth in her voice does not quite reach her eyes. Her gaze keeps darting to the roiling fumes, unsettled by something she will not divulge.

"The Inquisition already has all the genetic information it requires, duly collected during your sanctioning," van Calox states matter-of-factly.

He is still finishing the last word when Abelard interjects… In such a haste that he himself is taken aback.

"If you must part with your helmet, wear mine, Lord Captain!" he blurts out.

Throne, he must sound like a schoolboy trying to one-up a classmate that's been circling around a girl he likes. What has gotten into him? What is this ridiculous helmet-juggling?!

The Lord Captain is not a territory to be marked, not a bone to snatch from under the nose of a younger pup; she is this genial with everyone; she —

She has graciously accepted the helmet that Abelard has nearly shoved against her chest... And in return, she has unstrapped one of the several knives she wears at her hip (she always makes a little show of hiking up her frock when she does that, which means nothing! nothing!). With a practiced, fluid motion, she's then cut a broad strip of fabric off her cloak... which she is now handing to Abelard. And he’s scarcely even noticed!

"I am out of spare gear, I am afraid, but will you kindly accept this as a mask, my dear Seneschal?"

"Of course, Lord Captain."

Abelard makes every effort not to sound too breathless when he accepts this... token of hers. And even if his words do come out hoarse and winded, the retinue can always write it off to the sweltering air. Surely!

She gently pulls at the front of his coat, coaxing him to lean down. He obliges with the instinctual efficiency of an advanced servitor, and she secures the fabric under his eyes, her golden-tipped fingers deft and lightning-fast.

Of course a former criminal would be this adept at crafting makeshift disguises to conceal one's face.

Abelard supposes that, as a decorated veteran of the Navis Imperialis, he should be outraged at the notion, but his days of being outraged at his mistress are so long past him... He even lets his self-discipline lapse enough to relish in the soft, swift touches of her hands over his temples and around his jaw — and in the scent of the fabric now covering his nose.

Through the Emperor's grace, and the benevolence of his Lord Captain, this sliver of cloth — which smells like her, oh, damn his wandering mind, it smells like her! — protects him throughout the fight that follows. Allowed at last to jump in front of his mistress, he could not be gladder to shield her, to take the brunt of the damage upon himself, while she and Mistress Tlass rain fire and lightning from cover, and van Calox and Master Haneumann support them with scorching laser bursts.

Ever the dutiful Seneschal, marked with a piece of Her Ladyship's cloak, he readily takes on every monstrosity from beyond the Warp, every crazed cultist. He unleashes his chainsword, sparks dancing hungrily off the spinning blades — second in his zeal only to Kibellah, who has lost herself yet again in her vortex of crimson. But formidable as the young Spinner is in doling out death, Abelard gets the honor of skewering the heretic he once respectfully bowed to as Governor. With not a flinch of hesitation, with not a moment wasted, he ends her deplorable existence before she can raise a grasping clawed hand against his Lord Captain.

Yet the battle is not over, and eventually, in a single terrible instant, his mistress' protection slips. A daemonette, summoned by the Governor's so-called "assistant", lunges at him, clawing at his face.

Between one tortuous heartbeat and the next — between two twists of a jagged drill through his heart, which wash the back of his throat with copper — he realizes that the cursed thing has torn off the fabric.

Next thing he knows, there is a flurry of spiky, corpse-grey limbs, and he is toppled to the floor, into a sea of stained cushions. His elbow presses into something glistening and decidedly phallic-shaped. A discarded bottle rolls away from him into the bowels of the purple fog — which, down here, is at its most condensed. It shoves its way up his nostrils like a pulsating slug; it bleeds past his gritted teeth. A wave of a thousand red-hot needles chokes him, and then dissipates. He barely registers a droplet of drool from the daemonette's hungry leer splatter down on his bare cheek, as nausea begins to rock him from within.

No! No, no, no! He won't let this foul miasma overtake him! He won't become a mindless, lecherous beast like that unfortunate in the fog! He has served in the Navy for over a hundred years! He has been showered in bubbling, liquid meat that was once his comrades-in-arms in the wake of an acid belch from xenos jaws! He has stood beside two Rogue Traders as they battled twisting nightmarish masses of eyes and teeth! He can keep his mind intact... He... He can...

With a muffled cry of "I am here, Amic'Abelard!", Kibellah sweeps the daemonette, and then her deranged summoner, into her dance of swooshing silver and raining red, and soon enough, Abelard is drenched in far more than drool. Ah. Just like in his war memories.

He gathers up every last ounce of his brain matter, which now seems to be floating in purple ooze, and forces himself to focus on the dark blood clots that droop off his sleeves. On getting up. On wiping off the viscera... Probably to Kibellah's disapproval, but when he tries to decipher her facial expression past her goggles, it is as if he's looking at her from the wrong end of a telescope... Or... Or kaleidoscope?

"That's all of them, I think. Now we must return upstairs and tell the court that... Abelard! Are you all right, my darling?"

The Lord Captain's voice.

Abelard knows, of course, that she has plenty of pet names to spare, for her allies and enemies alike (particularly sugary in the case of the latter). It's a habit she shares with that Heydari character; as if it's something they teach to aspiring thieves. A quirk of character, nothing more. Yet right now, with the heretical cult's fumes seeping through his lungs — no, no, he can resist, he will resist! — as he hears the word "darling", shaped by those soft, beautiful lips... Will they feel as delicate as rose petals on his skin?... Oh, right now, every sound she makes in his vicinity, every softest breath, stokes a rising fever underneath his skin. His trusted armor suddenly feels too tight, too clammy; more constricting than the poisoned air around him ever did. If he could peel it off, if he could bare himself before his Lord Captain...

Abelard raises a shaking hand to his throat, aiming to strangle himself for this unspeakable heresy. What is he thinking?! He... He breathed in too deep, didn't he? It's affecting him; damn, damn it all, he is supposed to be stronger than this! The vanguard, the shield, the dynasty's first line of defense!

He tries to straighten his back, to stand at attention, to remember who he is. Yet his throat still runs dry; and a wild pulse still radiates down from the pit of his stomach. His innards feel pulled taut, like strings on one of those antique lutes he has seen played on garden worlds. And the song only has one word.

Want.

Want.

Want.

"That is not his blood, Domin."

"Yes, I can see that, dear... Oh. Oh shit."

The rough, hoarse drop in her voice does nothing to sober Abelard up. Instead, it makes him think of those metal-capped fingers, so gentle with him but moments ago, locking around his throat; of her elegant boot, stepping on his chest with enough force to crack plasteel armor; of him thanking her all the while, out of air and out of reason...

No. Resist. Resist!

"I feel perfectly well, Lord Captain," Abelard clings on to every laboriously enunciated syllable, as if he were one of the junior officers desperately pretending not to be hungover as he reprimanded them during morning roll call.

"It will take more than a little smoke to shake this old officer."

The golden Aquila upon his mistress' brow makes it impossible to see if she is frowning. But her eyes do narrow, and so does the line of her lips.

"Please, darling. I thought we'd agreed that you'd trust me."

Throne, he'd trust her. He'd trust her to toss him back onto those cushions, to pick up one of the many ritualistic implements scattered all over the floor, and to ravish him with it until he is too sore to walk. Please, please, please —

Somewhere far away from his burning body, on another planet, he feels himself being steered away from the cushions, away from the smoke.

He must have made a few drunken stumbles on his way up the first few steps, because he hears the warped, underwater bubble burst of a laugh. Idira bloody Tlass.

Then, another sound comes, bobbing back and forth, further and closer away, like a paper boat in a rain-swollen gutter.

The xenos is speaking. He thinks.

"So even the most respected mon-keigh elder is quick to give in to his base instincts."

"Yrliet... Please not now. We need to get him somewhere he can lie down and sleep it off."

"I do not need to lie down!" Abelard protests... And chokes on his own half-slurred words, as something, once again, moves in the fog.

It is not the... randy crab creature from before; that wretch plopped pathetically down into unconsciousness shortly after their fight with the cultists began. Does... Does Abelard look the same to an outside eye? Are his clothes still on? He believes they are. He can feel them press against him, robbing him of the freedom to move, to hold, to intertwine...

Blast it all! Focus! Focus, Werserian! What is that thing slowly gliding towards him?

Slowly, the dancing kaleidoscope before his eyes assembles itself into the soft curves of a marble statue. He vaguely recalls seeing them scattered around the cultists' layer: marble likenesses of young women, all in various stages of undress, with an old Terran toga carelessly draped over one shoulder at the very best. And now one of these outrageous figures has sprung to life, slid gracefully off her pedestal, and is coming closer and closer, white curls cascading down her shoulders, scant clothing flowing behind her, its carved folds now softer than silk.

A second statue follows her, waves of purple smoke rolling back to reveal her round bare breasts, the tantalizing soft mound of her stomach. A third walks close beside her, and her lips look so soft, so humanly warm when they curve into a smile on her round marble face. The Lord Captain's face.

Abelard, in vain, croaks for air. They are not real; they cannot be! He swears he's had, and weathered through, more convincing hallucinations during warp jumps!

And yet. Here they come. Reaching for him. Following him upstairs. Falling in rhythm with his heavy, shuffling steps.

And every single one of these living statues — fully rendered in milky white stone, save for the gold adornments on the forehead and at the fingertips — looks like the Lord Captain.

He saw her fully nude exactly once, when her bath chambers were flooded with a squelching stream of mutant blood.

When he burst in, ready to shatter the spine of every single enforcer that had let this happen, he thought of nothing but protecting his mistress, who stood there, with one hand on her hip and only stains of gore for modesty, looking more bemused than terrified. But to his astonishment — and to his shame, oh, Emperor have mercy, his heretical visions are bringing him so much shame — his memory has retained even the tiniest details of what she looks like, underneath her usual shimmering cocoons of lush brocade. He can still trace the placement of birthmarks on her breasts and stomach — which the statues also have, as a smattering of tiny golden flakes. He remembers those lovely little folds above her waistline, and just over the bushy curls between her legs. The soft dip of her hips. The dimples on her thighs. And now, it is all coming back. Fully rendered in living marble.

While he keeps on staring over his shoulder, transfixed — no better than a foolhardy sailor from the ancient tales, falling prey to the sirens of Terra's long-gone oceans — the real Lord Captain, fully dressed and oblivious to his lecherous fantasies, keeps on

talking.

"I have dealt with Slaaneshi cultists before. I know what they do to their victims. Don't look at me like that, Heinrix, you'll burn a hole in my best dress! Don't your people have it all on file? How I was captured by a cult and escaped to lead a glorious life of crime?... Anyway, I don't think he's inhaled enough to start peeling off his own skin...''

"A profane perversion of sacred flaying in the Undying One's name!"

"Yes. That. Kibellah, Idira, will you watch him as he recovers? I really need to settle this mess."

"It shall be done, Domin."

"Only if I get to make fun of the old man later!"

"I do not need watching over! I am perfectly capable of —"

Abelard tries to move his mouth, but no words come out. The real world — or what he thinks might be the real world; some manner of upstairs bedchamber where he was steered, half-blind with lust — dissolves into a cloud of jittery specks, like white noise on an idle cogitator screen.

If Idira, or Kibellah, or anyone else, is here with him, he cannot see them anymore. The only beings that exist now, that matter now, are the marble twins of his Lord Captain.

They smile so sweetly as they gaze down upon him. There’s at least… half a dozen of them, crowding round the lone island of solid matter — a bed? he remembers those — where he lies, limp and useless, half-reduced to liquid, floating in nothingness like space debris.

White knees sink into whatever mattress he's been placed on. Golden fingers travel down his throat, soothingly cold against the feverish flame of his skin. Lily-petal lips trail along his jawline; an ethereal voice giggles into his beard.

He pants, desperately feeding air to his hammering heart. One of the statues crawls across his lap to stare into his glazed-over eyes, teasing his parched mouth with an almost-kiss. His panting turns to moaning. Blood rings in his ears, blooms over his sweat-slick skin, rushes down to his crotch.

Some last fraction of reason clings on to the walls of his smoke-filled skull, like a rebellious lower-decker, being vented by the enforcers out the airlock. Where is your honor?! it wails, unheard in a sea of mind-numbing miasma. Where is your dignity?! These are daemonic manifestations, they should have no power over you! You serve the Emperor's Anointed!

There are scarce, fleeting moments when he almost heeds the voice... But the shades of the Lord Captain, so resplendent in white and gold, speak to him louder.

"My darling Seneschal," they whisper in unison, while many pairs of hands — far beyond his current capacity for counting — touch him tenderly through gaps in his armor.

"My sweet Abelard. You have been so faithful. So steadfast. And as a reward… For as long as you live, as long as you serve, I will always be there. Nothing will take me away from you. Neither sickness, nor murderous heretics. With me, you won't ever have to suffer loss again."

"Promise," he whimpers, clutching at the bedsheets, arching his back. "Promise that you won't leave me..."

"I promise, my darling, I won't," coo the voices. And the mouths from which they trail — sweet as nectar in a lily's heart — press against his lips, drink in the wild beating of his pulse under his jaw and on his inner wrists, lick along his shaft through straining fabric.

The release comes not as some violent burst of bestial fury, the last shattering blow against his self-respect — but as a gentle sigh of relief. The marble arms wrap around him one last time, and melt away into darkness.

***

Idira has been pointedly facing away from the old man throughout this whole debacle. Hearing her little whispers cackle and cheer after each of his moans was bad enough, thank you very much.

She's turned Kibellah to face away, too, though the pale little thing is much less perturbed by all of... this. The only thing that would have moved her from her weird little trance — sitting on the floor cross-legged, cut-cut-cutting away — would have to be something... meatier. Like the poor bastard turning himself inside out, splashing glistening red goop everywhere.

Well. Tough luck. All he's gotten away with was a boring little wet dream. Idira did not know he still had those in him!

There might be joke material in there somewhere, but she'd rather he buy her drinks when he comes to, so she might forget all the shit the whispers sensed in his messy thoughts. Lily petals, jiggly thighs, gold and marble... What a jumbled load of garbage.

She tells Her Little Ladiness just as much when she returns, vox caster in hand.

"…Yes, I have settled everything on Janus, provision shipments should resume shortly. Be a darling and project a report to Footfall, all right? Tell Liege Tocara that I will be honoring the deal. I accept payment in gold and in picts with live Incendia Chorda reaction. Thank you, Zach darling! You are a treasure!"

After she is done crooning over the vox (she even blows the old astropath a kiss before signing off), Little Ladiness turns to her other favorite old man's bed.

"Did I miss anything?"

"The residue of unholy vapors is gone; Amic'Abelard is partaking of the peace of oblivion," Kibellah sing-songs in that creepy voice of hers.

Little Ladiness turns greyish-pale.

"She means he's asleep," Idira explains. "Not dead."

And then adds all the stuff the whispers have been gossiping about, for good measure.

Little Ladiness claps her hands together.

"Well, that's amazing! Nothing shameful in a little wet dream! And trust me, it could have been so much worse!"

The whispers swirl around her, curious. Flashes of pink and red scorch Idira's eyes. Naked bodies, most of them just skin and bone, writhing and grinding against each other; tears bleeding from glassy eyes; moist, glistening skinless forms, on their knees, screaming. Then, a rising tide of flame, swallowing an entire planet, nothing left to save.

Little Ladiness winces. She's a psyker too; she must have sensed...

"You saw, then," she murmurs, avoiding Idira's gaze. "I was lured into my hive world's spires, with other..."

Her pretty lips curl as she mimes some Arbites bastard.

"...Juvenile delinquents. We were promised work, in exchange for pardoning our thievery. They did the same to us as Vistenza did to her poor servants. I gathered up the survivors and ran. Never looked back. Not until years later. Shared the coordinates with the Inquisition; thought there were still people to save. Turns out, the rot ran so deep by then, the only solution was Exterminatus."

Her voice drops to a resentful whisper. Good thing ice man is not around.

"So they told me."

"Hah!" Idira laughs bitterly. "You are right, a wet dream is nothing! The old man sure is lucky!"

"Yes." Little Ladiness looks up at her at last, eyes huge and wet as amber sap.

"Can I have a moment with him?"

"Our duty is done, Domin," Kibellah says solemnly.

Idira sighs.

"Old man's all yours. I'm off to get buzzed. Preferably on something not from this shithole of a palace."

***

When Abelard awakens, the disgusting spot at the front of his pants will have dried up enough to conceal, by standing around at awkward angles, until they are back on the ship and he is able to belt out some excuse or other and rush to his quarters to change.

Other than that, nobody from the retinue will ever speak of his disgrace. Van Calox will inquire pointedly after his health; Master Haneumann will make one of his endless remarks about the inferiority of organic flesh; and Idira will give him a lingering stare — odd, but not much odder than all the other stares she's ever given people. Beyond that, he'll be allowed to resume his post like nothing happened. Like he did not succumb to heretical filth. Nothing will remain but fragmented memories. The imprints of his delirium that he will quietly carry as a brand of shame.

He will mostly excel at it, too; ever the unshakable Seneschal... Except for one moment, once they all reconvene on the bridge. In that moment, that little lapse back into purple haze, the Lord Captain — flesh and blood, warm, enveloping him in that sweet scent again — will throw all of her significantly shorter self at him, and hold him in an embrace.

"Thank you for putting yourself on the line in that fight with the cult," she will say, with a startling sincerity. "That was very gallant of you, my darling. And I am... glad that you recovered."