unfinishedlibrary | late night reading

Entry tags:

late night reading

Who: Konrad Curze, Kaiisteron, later on: you?
What: Making Mistakes
When: sometime after 'night', it's obligatory (several days before Storytime)
Where: Somewhere in the Stacks, it's a big library. Probably time-out later. Maybe worse places.
Content warnings: Violence, daemons, primarchs, gratuitous bodily harm, the problems with uncontrolled powers, making a mess.

Sooner or later, someone in power is going to regret the group of misfits that have been taken here as Editors.

Like Konrad. He's been more or less behaving since arriving, aside from commandeering ALL cardstock of a particular color and texture, collecting singing bowls of a dozen sizes and leaving them in little clusters in the kitchen and bunks, and leaving a trail of fine, tiny glitter for several days on everything he touched. His efforts to find a way out of the Library are ongoing and unfruitful, prowling the Stacks without bothering to sleep more than once in several days.

But this time his path through the endless shelves of books is for a different purpose in simply putting as much distance between himself and the other people dragged here as he could. He has no control over when his 'gifts' chose to strike and drown him in the worst outcomes possible, but he does know when it's coming, and here there's no locked room with reinforced doors to make use of. Distance will have to do. There is a point, in the rending pain of things that haven't even happened yet, where Curze can no longer tell where he is now in favor of where he will be then.

It makes for a pathetic sight, something his size on the floor with his head in his hands in the shadows between towering shelves scaled towards his height and not human average, back pressed against the cold rows of books.

The sharp scent of blood is probably fine too. Ignore it. Everything's fine here.

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This is a bad idea, and Kai knows it. He doesn't trust Konrad at all, not after their first and only conversation, so he's been keeping an eye on him. Not following him, but certainly noticing when the man is around. Trying to keep his senses sharp, to make sure he's not caught off guard.

This catches him off guard.

He doesn't trust it, but the man was heavily involved in a war from what he'd told Kai, and he knows what that can do to people. He approaches carefully, quietly, trying to figure out exactly what is going on here.

Not trusting him is a very wise course of action. Curze may not mean ill for the most part when it comes to law abiding humanity, but his stability is a very questionable thing on a good day whether or not he wished it so.

But maybe it won't be that bad. He's not actually doing much by all appearances, the shivering remnants of disorienting agony keeping him where he is, a low mutter of words in some strange language that still translates as a very soft I won't allow it. Over and over.

This is reading as distress. Which is still dangerous, even if it's genuine; people in distress can lash out. Kai knows this. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite know what Curze's range is- he's never fought someone his size, and he's not sure what weapons the man uses. Which is how he winds up just within the man's range. Not that he knows it.

To him, he feels like he's still hanging back, moving around to the man's front to try and get a look at him. "Hey," he says, trying to get his attention. He's braced for an attack, but he's expecting to have some time to react.

Unfortunately for both of them, it is very real distress. There's nothing of an intentional trap in the sheen of sweat borne not of exertion but horror, none of it is meant to draw Kai in close, and he'd be humiliated to know anyone had seen it at all. The Night Haunter was in his own way a prideful creature and this is the rankest of weakness, unable to tell present from future, unable to tell who's there and who won't be there for years or even centuries.

His sons, murderous wretches all, would turn on the other legions. On each other. On the mortals they were supposed to in their own fashions protect.

Kai gets his attention, having made a sound that doesn't quite line up with everything he hears, sees, feels, and when he lifts his head slightly to stare unseeing through the curtain of his own lank, unwashed hair, what he catches is the solid black eyes again, so like his own. So like every single one of his traitorous, murdering sons.

It doesn't matter which one this is. They're all the same, each an unrepentant butcher, everything he loathed about the populace of Nostramo. He can't allow it. Won't allow it.

When Curze uncoils, furious and shocked, it's with astonishing speed for something his size, not to retreat but to strike with enough strength to punch through the ceremite armor he thinks is there between himself and his target's hearts, fully intending on killing 'his son' where he stands.

It all happens very quickly.

Kai reacts fast, not fast enough to stop the man. Luckily, while a punch to his heart is incredibly painful, it is not enough to kill him. Very little is enough to kill a demon, to properly set it adrift from a mortal body. It hurts worse than most anything else he's been through, pain flooding his thoughts and he reaches out, trying to get a hand on the other man to retaliate and steal the life out of him--

--only to find himself on a firm, oddly padded bed with a curtain separating him from the rest of the room. Said room, when he forcibly pushes the curtain back, is mostly bare, except for a single other bed in the same style across the room, a cabinet with labels for medical supplies, and a few oddly cheerful posters reminding any who witness it to wash their hands to fight disease or naming the many bones of the human body.

In a moment he'll realize that he's actually healed up much more than he should be after just a minute or so, but in the meantime-- "What the fuck?!"

Edited 2025-11-09 01:42 (UTC)

While the ~~nurse's office~~ Medical Wing is in use, it can be found in the stacks like any other door. However, it won't be in circulation for all that long- Kai more or less waits until standing up is no longer excruciatingly painful before getting up from the sorry excuse for a bed. He's still clearly in pain should anyone find him in there, rifling through what few medical supplies there are (despite his state upon being dumped in here, it seems there's mostly band-aids and a little bit of wrapping gauze, the sort of first aid you'd use for scraps more than mortal wounds). Once he's got thoroughly frustrated with that, he'll be out in the stacks again, trying to find Konrad and make sure no one else got caught up in his wake.

Regardless of where he's found, there's little avoiding the fact that he is absolutely covered in blood.

This is the second time since he's arrived that Sanguinius smelled the rich coppery tang of blood. Fresh this time, so fresh he could almost feel the heartbeat behind it.

Yes, there's a sign that clearly says no eating in the stacks but...maybe just this once, he figures, following the scent, rounding a corner, a sort of hunger in his eyes as he--

-- "You?" He presses his mouth closed, trying to make sure his fangs stay hidden. Kais are friends, not food.

The fangs might be concealed, but the hunger in his eyes is much harder to. Admittedly, given the cause of Kai's current... situation, he might be a bit more wary of the man than he might otherwise. (He would still be pretty wary under normal circumstances.)

"Me," he says flatly, and it's impossible to ignore the way he holds himself. Like he's expecting, say, to be punched in the heart by a man four feet taller than him.

SecUnit doesn't pay attention to the inputs from all of its drones, all of the time. Instead, they have a list of things they're set to alert on.

Humans covered in blood is absolutely at the top of that list.

So as Kai wonders through the stacks, he's going to find a drone suddenly in his face. It hovers around him, darting around in a pattern that looks like it could be searching for injuries.

(And if Kai opens up his journal, he'll find a two typed messages sent directly to him:

What the fuck happened?

Status report!

Though it doesn't really expect these to be read. Stupid useless archaic communication system. It's heading to Kai's location, right fucking now.)

Sanguinius has spent most of his life around fighting. He sees the way Kai squares up to him, as though he's a threat.

He isn't a threat.

Is he?

The dismay pushes the bloodthirst further down. "You're injured," obviously. "How? Do we have an apothecary?" Terrible time to ask, but that comes first.

If this Library has become malicious and begun attacking them, well, that's the second matter and one he would take care of personally.

Kai startles a bit when the drone comes up to his face like that, trying to follow its movements around him. He knows who they belong to, but even though Rin tried to explain Kai simply didn't have the knowledge base to understand the explanation.

Which is to say he'll just... keep going. (And no, he does not check his journal. SecUnit is just going to have to come find him.)

Kai snorts. He doesn't know why, it's not funny, but it's one of those things where his body decides it has to do something and that's better than screaming.

"Apparently," he says, "though a poorly stocked one from the looks of it. Though by the time I wound up in it the Library seems to have healed me up most of the way." He can't say he's complaining; healing that himself would have been miserable. But there is still the question of who.

Kai eyes Sanguinius, and his posture does not change, still wary and watching. "There's another man in here, from your Imperium," he says, "Do you know his name?"

Kai's not going anywhere without the drone; it's going to follow him. If it were possible for a tiny mechanical drone to have an air of anxiety about it, this one would be managing it.

A short while later, SecUnit catches up; rounding the corner that Kai was about to move past.

"What the fuck happened," it says. Again, because stupid humans don't check their stupid useless archaic communication systems.

Kai does keep shooting it confused looks, only to be confronted by Rin rounding the corner. A glance at the drone and then back at the person in front of him actually clicks some things into place; so they can see through them? That's... extremely useful. And also a little worrying for someone like Kai who doesn't like people knowing what he's doing.

"An eleven foot tall man punched me in the heart," he says flatly, because he doesn't really see a reason to keep that information a secret- he doesn't want anyone who actually could have died from that to run afoul of the man, after all. The blood certainly matches up with that; the fact that he's standing and alive less so.

"The Library healed you?" Excuse his semiprofessional assessment, but that was a pretty lousy job healing, with all the blood and all.

Sanguinius has more or less managed to master himself, the thirst pushed down only to a slight flaring of nostrils. He wants to touch the blood, feel it on his skin, sneak a surreptitious taste, but Kai's question cuts through that. "You mean Curze? My brother?"

It's the Thirst making his thinking slow because it takes a second for the question to hit. "He didn't do that to you. Surely." For one Kai was still alive. For two....no. wait. He could totally believe it. He just doesn't want to.

Hey, he's not bleeding anymore, it just seeped through his shirt. Punching his heart causes a lot of bleeding. "Apparently."

Of course they're fucking brothers. Nothing about this is making him relax at all- if anything, he's getting tenser. Which, to be fair, Sanguinius has both said 'his brother' and 'he didn't do that.'

Kai doesn't bother arguing. He just stares Sanguinius down. He's pretty sure they both know the answer, after all.

An eleven foot tall man?

"Sanguinius?" it says. And after he had gone on about how he would hate to have to hurt humans, the fucker. But then it pauses - there was a second freakishly large human. It hadn't interacted with them, but it had seen them. "Or the other one?"

And then it's staring at Kai. Not at his eyes, thank fuck. But at his chest, where his heart is. And then its furious expression turns rather more confused.

"How are you not dead?"

Nara'a is wandering around but it's not hard to smell blood, especially when you're used to either hunting or being injured - or in his case, both. He carefully peeks around the side of a shelf before he spots -

"Shite. Kai?" He moves towards the others, hands visibly up and not touching his weapons. He doesn't want to freak the other out even more than he might already be.

Listen. To be honest, Curze is not even the worst of his brothers. He's not Lorgar, at least.

The color draining from his face till he's nearly as pale as his wings says that Kai needs to say nothing. He knows.

He drops to one knee, a gesture Curze would likely mock as humility, but someone needs to atone for it.

"Where is he?" He wants to ask what happened, to demand as he would one of his own Blood Angels. "He will answer for this." Sanguinius may look golden and harmless but just like his armor, there's hard ceramite under the golden shine.

Honestly? That is not the response Kai expected. He'd found it much more likely than Sanguinius would attack, assuming his brother had a reason (had realized Kai wasn't as human as assumed).

It doesn't entirely relax or throw him off- he's still prepped for this to be a trap, somehow, but it's a stance laced with much more confusion than before. Not so much that he doesn't answer the question, at least.

"I don't know," he admits, "Pretty much as soon as he attacked me, I was pulled off to some other room- the poorly stocked apothecary. I've not seen him sense." And he has been looking.

Kai shakes his head- he does, thankfully, know the one name at least. "The other one," he confirms, "I didn't trust him, but he appeared to be in distress so I tried to see if it was genuine or what caused it. ...Apparently his reach is longer than I thought it was."

He sounds genuinely annoyed about that part. He should have known better, it's just one thing to know that someone's range is longer and another thing to fight against it. Stupid. Maybe he's getting soft.

Kai pauses slightly before answering. "The Library seems to have healed me. Guess it doesn't want us killing each other." SecUnit might be able to tell that while he's not lying, he's leaving something out.

"I'm fine." He knows that kind of posture, has definitely done it himself when approaching an injured party. Fortunately, Kai looks much worse than he feels. (Now, anyway.) "Or, I am now at least. If you see the darker of the two stupidly tall men- Curze, his name is- I would recommend staying out of reach. And it's longer than you might think."

Guess how he knows!

Sanguinius knows enough about Nostramo, Curze's home planet, and Curze's upbringing (or lack thereof) to not jump to conclusions. Curze might have had good reason to attack, but Sanguinius could sense no real threat from Kai, beyond the defensive posturing.

His own Blood Angels, also, he's had to bring to heel sometimes. Nassir Amit was not known as the 'Flesh Tearer' without reason. In short, he's accustomed--too accustomed--to knowing others who would attack where he would stay his hand.

"Stay clear of him if you do see him." At least until Sanguinius finds him. But he knows how warriors think. "You are not healed enough to take him on a second time. Remove all thoughts of vengeance from your mind." The last is almost a plea. To give Curze another chance. To give him a chance to try to make it right.

Kai's veil is, thankfully, still intact, still concealing his black eyes; it also serves to make it harder to see the unimpressed expression on his face. Vengeance... he's not going to say he's never sought it. At the very start of Bashasa's grand, foolish plan, that was all he had, all he could live for. But he found out quickly enough that vengeance can burn itself out all too quickly.

(Not that he's never fallen into it since. Do you promise vengeance? Tenes had asked him. He had, and he delivered.)

But this time, vengeance isn't the thing that moves him. "I'm not going to let him have the chance to hurt anyone else," he says instead. He lived, simply because for him there was not other choice. A mortal would not have. He's been the shield between mortals and their death before and he's not afraid to do it again.

"Please." And now he's openly pleading. Curze is his brother, after all. He bears some responsibility. He could have kept a closer watch on his brother, but the last time he'd seen him, he'd been happily(?) occupying himself in the Maker Space collecting paper.

His own Blood Angels engaged in a variety of the creative arts. He had thought, hoped, wished, that Curze was perhaps doing the same. He'd in fact felt a kind of relief to see Curze so occupied.

He should not have let himself feel that relief. "Please let me talk with him first." 'Talk' being used in a very, very loose sense here. "I swear I will not let him hurt another person here." A vow of the Great Angel is no small thing, and his voice carries the seriousness of it. "Besides, I can withstand his wrath better than any here." Nothing personal, but Primarchs can really only stand against other Primarchs.

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late night reading

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