Volume 2 - Chapter 102 - Hypothesis

"My grandmother served forty years alongside a Veritas  Precognition Battlefield Psyker.

At her funeral, he stood at the back, in the rain, and did not come inside.

When I asked him why, he said: ' I watched her die for forty years, kiddo. I already said goodbye a thousand times before she ever got sick. The rest of you are simply catching up now. ’"

—

[Excerpt from "Letters Home: Collected Correspondence of the Third Fleet" — Anonymous contribution, UHF Combat Heritage Archive, PFC 899.]

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The realisation that came with the Runepriest’s words hit Thea like a slap.

'…Oh. Oh, I'm such an idiot .'

She'd just been throwing  raw Psychic Energy at the cube. Straight-up brute-forcing it.

Shoving formless intent in its general direction and hoping the Power sorted out the details—the exact opposite  of everything she'd learned about how her own Inheritance functioned.

'Veritas doesn't do vague  whatsoever. Veritas does Truth . So… what's the Truth here? What is [Telekinesis], exactly…?'

She closed her eyes and started breaking it down, reaching back into the half-year of Skill Training she'd ground through in [Physics - Basics].

'Okay… Strip it down… The same way fire got stripped. Fire isn’t just "fire"—fire is combustion. An oxidation reaction releasing heat and light… The flame is just the visible side-effect of the  actual Truth  underneath. So… do the same thing to motion?'

'What is motion? A thing moves when… it has velocity. Mass times velocity—no, that's momentum… How does something move ? What is required…? Work. Force applied over distance. And the thing a moving object has , that a stationary one doesn't—'

Her eyes moved rapidly behind their lids.

'—is a specific amount of actualized, kinetic energy . Half the mass times velocity squared. An object at rest has none. An object in motion has exactly as much as its mass and speed dictate. Motion isn't "being pushed." Motion is simply possessing  kinetic energy. The push is just the initial impetus, one way of delivering it.

'So [Telekinesis] isn't pushing or moving an object at all… Pushing is the side-effect—the flame. The Truth  underneath is—'

The pieces clicked together, one after another, into a single clean line.

'—the impartment  of raw kinetic energy. I'm not  shoving  the cube. I'm giving the cube the exact amount of kinetic energy it needs to be a few centimeters further away. Mass, distance, speed—calculate what the movement requires, and impart precisely that .’

Her eyes opened.

"[Telekinesis]…" she said slowly, testing the words as she spoke them, "as seen through Veritas… is the impartment  of kinetic energy. The specific amount of it that any given object or mass requires, to move from one location to another."

Her eyes met the Runepriest’s seeking for confirmation.

He neither confirmed nor denied any of it. His face gave her absolutely nothing at all.

He simply extended one hand, palm open, toward the array of items arranged on the floor between them—

—inviting her to try her hypothesis.

She started with the same cube from before.

'Alright… Hypothesis test one. Rough mass—it's foam, so basically nothing,  I guess. Couple  dozen grams, maybe? Target: Five metres, that way. Speed…'

She didn't put much thought into the last parameter.

'As fast as possible?'

With the mental framework set, she reached out for it—

The foam cube simply disappeared .

Simultaneously, a torrent of Focus ripped out of her body—a massive, draining surge that emptied out of her all at once and left her physically gasping, doubling forward slightly in the armchair.

An instant later—

Crack!

A sound rang out from where the cube had been a moment prior—one that Thea had heard more times than she could ever bother to count.

A sonic boom, akin to the sound of a fired bullet at close range.

Her eyes snapped toward the Runepriest.

He was looking back at her with a big, wide grin plastered across his face.

"Now… I'd say that  is a lot more useful, no?" He chuckled. "You might want to work on your fine motorics a little bit, though. And definitely  put an intrinsic maximum on your Psychic Energy usage for this Power while testing. You will not always have my Staff with you to act as a Focus battery."

Thea's eyes widened, snapping down toward the Staff in her grip.

She opened her Focus Interface—

[Focus: 225/225]

It was full… But no longer overfilled—her [Focus Capacitor] had been emptied.

She'd just felt herself dump what had to be roughly her entire Focus into a single activation—based on nothing else than how utterly hollowed-out she'd felt for that one brief second after using the Power.

'Alright… Noted. Setting a parameter to "practically infinite"— really  bad  idea. Apparently Psychic Powers are far too damn literal: They'll just use as much as you can give them to make the thing work…'

She looked around the room, scanning for the cube.

There was no sign of it anywhere.

"Sovereign," the Runepriest prompted, clearly on Thea's behalf, "what happened to the cube?"

"The object achieved vaporisation upon impact with the eastern-side wall," the Sovereign replied evenly. "No structural damage to the Training Hall was sustained. A replacement can be materialised, if required."

Thea slowly shook her head.

"I… think it's fine. I'll use the others."

And use them, she did.

She was considerably more careful with the next ones, working her way up toward the heaviest ball in rapid, incremental steps—and along the way, she made a few discoveries.

First: Her [Telekinesis] could do some of the math for  her—thankfully.

She did not need to specify the exact  mass of an object down to the gram; simply having a rough understanding of it was enough, and the Power seemed to fill in the rest on its own. Whatever calculation happened between her Intent and the result, it was far more forgiving than she'd initially feared.

Second: The Power imparted its kinetic energy without any sort of lead-up whatsoever .

One moment, an item sat at perfect standstill—the next, it simply had  that much kinetic energy, fully and instantly. It reminded her, strangely enough, of the T2 Material inherent to her Icicle, which she'd read about in its technical documentation— Moturium .

The Material worked in much the same way: It simply imparted a set speed to anything touching it. In the Icicle's case, the shards it fired. They didn’t speed-up during their travel through the barrel, they just became  the speed they were supposed to be, the moment they were fired.

Third, and lastly: She, herself, was a perfect reference point.

She could get any item in the array to move flawlessly into her open hand, from any distance, without too much conscious thought at all. It was as though the Power carried an inherent, incredibly precise internal library of exactly where  every part of her was at any given moment—which, in a way, made a lot of sense.

It was her  Power, anchored to her  Soul, after all.

She had, however, paid for that particular piece of knowledge with quite a few rather embarrassing bruises—cubes and balls smacking into her palm, her forearm, and on one memorable occasion her collarbone, over and over throughout the few minutes trial period, until she'd finally gotten the speed "setting" dialed in for close-range catches.

It was, all in all, an extremely useful—if thoroughly finnicky—Power, in Thea's estimation.

'And that's honestly heavily underselling the finnicky  part,'  she groused internally, rubbing at the fresh bruise on her collarbone. 'Everything needs fucking parameters. Mass, distance, speed—get one of them wrong and the thing either doesn't move at all, vaporises itself against a wall, or breaks the damn sound barrier indoors… There's like no in-between "oops" zone. The margin between "useless" and "I dumped my entire Focus pool" is, like, one sloppy thought wide.'

And yet…

She eyed the array of items scattered around her armchair—the balls she'd caught, the cubes she'd overshot, the dents her testing had left in the floor padding—and she couldn't deny a single bit of what she was looking at, either.

'Instant kinetic energy with no wind-up, no travel time on activation, that scales with whatever Focus I feed it… That’s reloading without moving my hands—if I get really good at it. That's, at the very least, grabbing a weapon from across a room. Potentially yanking a grenade out of the air mid-throw... That's—fuck, if I really  get the fine control down, I might even be able to do aim-correction on projectiles that have already  left the barrel…'

The list kept writing itself, longer and longer, as her brain worked through the implications of having access to her version of [Telekinesis].

She had to actively stop herself from writing it, and refocus.

'Definitely finnicky as fuck... Needs like a hundred hours of testing minimum  before I'd really trust it in a live DM… Probably a thousand before I can even consider it meta.'

She flexed her bruised fingers slowly, watching the lightest remaining cube tremble faintly in response.

'… But it’s gonna be worth every single one of them, isn’t it?’

The Runepriest took her brief pause as the perfect opportunity to draw the session to a close.

"Alright, my dear pupil—I believe that is a fitting note to end on."

He rose from his armchair, the frame creaking and his armoured robe chiming softly, and gestured for her to join him. "Walk with me to the Gate."

Thea pushed herself up—still leaning a little on the Staff—and fell into step beside him as the two armchairs and the scattered array of test items dissolved out of existence behind them.

"I must say," he began as they walked, "I am very impressed at the speed with which you are picking up on the nuances. Most Psykers require days or even weeks of guided instruction merely to establish first contact with a copied Power. You reasoned your way to the underlying Truth  of [Telekinesis] and had it breaking the sound barrier inside of an hour. That is… very impressive, Thea. Keep up the good work."

Thea felt the heat threaten to creep back into her cheeks, and forced it down.

"That said—" he continued, and his tone sharpened into something more instructive, "—tell me where the downsides are."

Thea glanced at him.

"Every Psychic Power has them," he explained. "Every last one—at least, when applied through any Inheritance that is not Creatio . That is the true danger of Inheritances, my dear pupil. Not that they are weak, but that they are restricted , always, in some fashion. And the Psyker who does not know precisely where their own restrictions lie is the Psyker who dies discovering them at the worst possible moment. So… Your Veritas [Telekinesis]. Where is its cage?"

Thea thought about it, but it really didn't take her long.

'Imparted kinetic energy. It gives things the energy of motion. But that means…'

"I can't hold anything still," she said slowly. "It's purely  about kinetic energy—imparting motion. If I wanted to hold something in place, I'd have to constantly impart a value of zero to it, over and over, permanently . And I'm not even sure I can  apply it permanently like that... Even if I could, it'd drain my Focus reserves stupidly fast, I’d imagine? So the Veritas version of [Telekinesis]… it's only really good at actually moving  something. Not holding it or restraining it."

The Runepriest nodded, satisfaction practically radiating off of him.

"Correct. Precisely correct. That is the central limitation of your [Telekinesis] as it currently stands." He raised a finger. "Now—do not simply accept  that and move on. Sit with it. Turn it over. See if you can find a workaround; some clever application of the Truth  that lets you approximate a restraint without violating the underlying mechanic. And if you truly cannot—keep it firmly in mind as a known weakness, and never once forget that it exists when you are building a plan around this Power. A weakness you know is a tool; one you have forgotten is a grave ."

They reached the Gate.

And there, the Runepriest turned to face her fully.

His entire demeanour shifted—the warmth and the theatre draining away, replaced by the same cold, absolute seriousness she'd seen during the interrogation.

His eyes met hers and held them.

"Now. Listen to me very carefully, because this is the single most important thing I will say to you today."

Thea straightened instinctively at the shift in tone.

"Of the Origin Rune, and of your Origin Path—you will tell not a single Soul. Nobody . Not your squad. Not Karania. Not even your father. Not until I very  specifically  give you the go-ahead, and not one moment before. Am I understood?"

Thea swallowed.

"The information is Gold-Locked . For a very good reason involving your very life. And I want to be entirely clear with you, Thea, so that you do not misunderstand the stakes: I cannot promise that I will be able to protect anyone  who is caught breaking that Lock . No matter who it is. The Lock exists even above me , in the ways that matter. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

She nodded, throat tight. "…Yeah. I understand."

"Good." He eased back a fraction. "Now—if anybody does  ask about your Ice-based Powers, should they show up again… Anybody  who actually matters, that is. You will tell them this: That I, personally, devised a method by which a Wielder could Delve ahead of schedule, and that this is how you obtained your second Path. That is the full and entire story. It is close enough to true to survive scrutiny, and it puts the responsibility squarely on my  shoulders, where it belongs. Nobody  should ask, mind you. But if anybody does—blame me. Freely and with gusto. I am your mentor, and it’s my responsibility to shield you from the politics of things in this regard. And remember, Thea: You are under absolutely no obligation whatsoever  to answer anyone  who does not vastly outrank you. ' I am not at liberty to discuss it ' and ‘ That’s classified ’ are complete sentences."

In the brief silence after his statement, Thea seized the opening.

"…What actually is  a Gold Lock?"

The Runepriest considered his answer for a long moment.

"That," he said at last, "is unfortunately not something I am able to share. I cannot tell you what it is . I can tell you only this much: It is a Classification Lock that sits far, far , far above anyone aboard this ship—barring myself, and Proprietor Quinn, specifically."

Thea's attention snagged on the phrasing immediately.

'…Proprietor Quinn…? He always calls her Zephyr… Or Major Quinn at the very least.'

She filed it away, without letting it show on her face.

" However ," the Runepriest continued, tilting his head upward, "Sovereign—compile a precise rundown of the exact parameters  of the Gold Lock as it applies to Recruit Thea McKay. Which specific aspects she is forbidden from discussing. Send it to her personal datapad."

"Affirmative, Venerable Runepriest," the Sovereign answered.

"That way," he said, returning his gaze to Thea, "you will know exactly which pieces you must  keep sealed at all costs, rather than having to guess at the boundaries. I would rather you have precise walls than vague ones."

Then, one final time, his eyes locked onto hers.

"But hear me on the very essence of it, Thea. The Origin Rune. The Origin Path. The Name. You share none of it. With anyone . Until I say otherwise."

"I promise," Thea said, nodding hard once.

"Good." The Runepriest held her gaze a beat longer—then, all at once, the warmth flooded back into his face, and the weight lifted off her shoulders like a door swinging shut on a storm. "Then I believe that concludes our session."

The Gate of the Training Hall whooshed open before them, revealing the clean, humming corridors of the Sovereign beyond.

They stepped through together.

"You did well today, my dear pupil," he said as they walked out into the hallway, his tone light once more, the Staff still clutched in Thea's grip. "Better than well, all things considered. You died a truly regrettable number of times, and I will not pretend otherwise—but you walked out of it with a second Generic Power, confirmation of a great many things I had never even dared to suspect, and a number of mysteries that is going to keep me delightfully sleepless for months! That is a very good day, by my accounting."

Thea let out a tired, scratchy laugh despite herself.

"I'll have more answers for you by our next session," he continued. "On the Rune. On the Beast. On why, precisely, you are the way you are, hopefully—which grows more interesting to me by the hour. Rest, in the meantime. And do not, under any circumstances, go poking at any of it while I am gone. Are we clear?"

"Crystal clear," Thea confirmed.

"Excellent." He inclined his head, the chimes of his robe ringing softly. "I will stay in touch, Thea. You will hear from me sooner than you expect."

He extended a hand, then.

"My Staff, if you would."

Thea blinked down at the artefact still clutched in her grip—she'd half-forgotten she was even holding it—and, after a brief moment of reluctance, held it out and let him take it back.

The instant her fingers left the carved surface, the Soul Burn crept back in.

The dread. The formless, sourceless ache. It settled over her once more like a cold weight pressing in from every direction—but it was vastly  reduced from what it had been before. Where it had once threatened to drown her entirely, now it was more of a persistent, low-grade discomfort, akin to how it had felt the first time she’d touched the Staff.

A bruise on her very Soul  that throbbed dully, rather than screamed.

She grimaced faintly, but held herself steady.

"You will find it far more manageable now," the Runepriest noted, watching her reaction. "It will continue to fade over the coming days. Rest, eat, and do not exert your Soul, and you should be functional throughout. Uncomfortable, certainly—but functional."

"I can work with this," Thea managed.

"Good." He said, as the Staff simply disappeared with a final soft chime. "Then I shall leave you to it."

And with that, he turned and strode off down the corridor—the void-black of his robes swallowing the ambient light around him—leaving Thea standing alone in the hallway, her Soul  quietly smouldering, her head spinning with more questions than she'd walked in with.

'…What the fuck kind of day that was, huh,'  she thought faintly.

She had absolutely no idea where to even begin unpacking any  of what had happened…