The Pains of the Dark Kin - 1. Chapter 1

I am Darius Arahman, primaris psyker to the 25^th Cadian regiment; I am recording this message into my vox recording chip in the hope that the Emperor may guide it to the enlightened Imperium.

My sanity is all but spent, I can hear them come once more and I fear that my strength of will is becoming tenuous.

I am currently a captive of the Dark Eldar, during a dusk raid by the foul xenos on a nearby village on the planet SED-23, several platoons were dispatched, myself a member of one of the platoons.

Supported by scout sentinels we started to have success at driving the foul aliens back, alas they spotted me and my powers and somehow I was attractive to them and they redoubled their effort, this time to capture me.

This time, their assault proved too much and we made a fighting retreat but not before one of their flying jet bikes swooped above me and I was caught.

I was drugged and chained up, unable to record the journey in any detail apart from the transfer into a Raider transport tank. I realised I was in the foul city of Commorragh.

Vast spires and ever shifting skies filled my eyes, even the very air exuded malice and pain, there was nothing but evil in this place.

I was quickly bustled into the Raider and the other Dark Eldar were hesitant around me.

As I saw into their souls with my aether sight I saw that under their androgynous beauty lay the dark, twisted and withered souls that they truly were. I found out soon that while psykers were prized as playthings here, they were also held with a slight hesitancy because of the ability to communicate with She Who Thirsts, the immortal enemy of the Eldar race.

I was blindfolded from this point on and so it pains me to say I cannot provide any visual description until I found myself bound in chains in what looked half dungeon and half surgery.

Vicious looking tools and instruments lined the walls and agonised wails pierced the corridors for hours at a time. I could hear drills and saws working away at bone, my time as an interrogator for a brief time with Inquisitor Asera taught me that sound well.

The barest amount of food and water was given to me to stay alive and I had lost track of how many Earth days had passed I had no sense of time passing here.

Eventually some...thing came to greet me.

It introduced itself as Haemonculus Drazfar and it was a thing of horror and nightmares and wished to be called Master Haemonculus.

The Master was supported on mechanical tentacles with small ‘feet’ on the end of each one, the mechanical limbs had completely replaced his legs. His face was deathly pale and the skin was stretched over his face tightly giving him a spectral appearance.

It was his eyes that truly terrified me. They radiated a sense that he was merciless, remorseless and had no regard for human idealised morals.

He admitted that a Dark Eldar’s main fear after She Who Thirsts was boredom. His Wracks, Dark Eldar which had deliberately undergone painful surgery to become the Master Haemonculus’s puppets and slaves emerged from the shadows. He said they had gone through that willingly, the idea of being at the will of someone provided a new kind of stimuli.

He made it gleefully obvious he would torture me; and he started that day, injecting chemicals into my blood that burned through my entire system. My head felt like it wanted to burst from the pressure.

Over the coming days he came back again and again, offering little insights into Dark Eldar culture, why he was doing this I didn’t know but after brief discussions he would inflict some new form of agony upon me. This time he told me that Dark Eldar fed their souls off the pain and suffering of others and to witness the final death agonies of a being that had been tortured to their last breath was a delight.

I had a nasty suspicion this would happen to me. My body was on fire constantly, drugs had been injected into me to simulate hallucinations of drowning, of burning alive of being stung by a million scorpions before my mind arrived back in the dungeon, my mind a wreck and my body drenched in sweat which seeped into my raw wounds and made them sting even more.

Day after day I would see him chatter through the entranceway and I would try and prepare myself for the session at hand.

I was nothing more than a test subject to him, a new toy to play with, to test my limits.

Each day I silently prayed to the God Emperor for a way out of this situation but so far nothing.

Half my skin was hanging off of me, literally. Master Haemonculus had teased my flesh away from my bones and during the hours that it had taken, my mouth had gone raw with screaming.

Sleep wouldn’t come, the drugs that coursed through my veins kept me in a dizzying half state until he came back each day.

In my mind the despair that they didn’t even want anything apart from my screams of agony made me scratch at my sanity and I couldn’t even connect to the warp here, anti psyker defences were in place.

Death was still a way away for me I thought, and several days later my fears were confirmed, I was still being kept alive.

My dried blood, faeces, urine and a dozen other splashes of chemicals adorned the floor creating a dizzying stench that I actually inhaled with grace as it took my mind off the pain slightly.

With my body a mess, the scars from the dissection the Haemonculus had performed, whilst I was still awake was evident on my chest. He had done it merely because he was curious as to what a ‘Monkeigh’s ‘ anatomy looked like inside.

Whether it has been mere weeks or months my mind, and my body is tired, battered and in agony and I feel I cannot last much longer. The agony is too much to bear.

As I hear him approach yet again bringing a casket this time and I have heard much about these anti psyker caskets, how they drive psykers to the brink of insanity and how they claw at their heads to rid themselves of the pain brought about by it, I fear this will be the last time I can sanely record a message into this.

And so I leave you now, and may the Imperium of Mankind, and the God Emperor, loved by all, protect me.

May this vox chip in my head reach the forces of Mankind that can deliver retribution against the xenos that are the Dark Eldar.

I pray that the Adeptus Astartes can purge the galaxy of this foul race. I have faith in the Imperium, I have faith in the God Emperor and I have faith in my soul.

May the God Emperor protect us all.

Vox recording ended M40.940 date unknown..

Word was sent to the 6^th Great Company of the Space Wolves and a plea sent to the Howling Griffons Chapter from an astropath of the 25^th Cadian regiment.

Fighting is now still ongoing; psyker Arahman’s insight via his implant has greatly benefitted the Imperium’s war against the alien, the heretic and the daemon.

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