THE APEX TWINS

hese innocuous looking creatures are the very epitome of deception, appearing as sweet, innocent young girls with ribbons in their hair and angelic features that inspire overwhelming feelings of love and protectiveness. The odds against one psyker being born are astronomical, but that two should be born as twins almost defies belief. Little is known of their origins, though if scattered fragments of descriptions culled from Inquisitorial archives are to be believed, these nameless twins have been murdering their way across the galaxy for many thousands of years. Their age is, therefore, unknown, though they appear to be no older than six or seven standard years of age. Their true names, if they were ever recorded, have since been lost, though their Inquisitorial designation is as the Apex twins due to their powers being beyond measuring, beyond even that of an Alpha grade.

The earliest known record of the twins dates from 845.M36, in the turbulent days following the Age of Apostasy, when a routine psyker sweep of the planet Ebrimund revealed their nascent abilities. Hidden by their parents, the twins were nevertheless apprehended by the forces of the newly-formed Ordo Hereticus and taken under heavy guard to the Black Ship orbiting the planet. The Black Ships are terrible, nightmarish transports filled with screaming psykers held in cavernous, psi-shielded holds to be taken back to Terra to feed the voracious psychic appetite of the Emperor of Mankind. Only those with the strength of mind to withstand the constant soul-numbing despair that permeates the very soul of the Black Ship may crew it, so mentally traumatic is such duty. The twins were separated and placed in bleak holds at either end of the ship and the vessel began its long journey to Terra.

What happened on the journey has never been fully documented, but when the ship was discovered floating lifeless in the Medrenax Nebula, the Ordo Hereticus quarantine team found the ship to be an icy tomb. The holds were bloodstained abattoirs filled from end to end with mangled and mutilated corpses, many of whom appeared to have been killed by self-inflicted wounds. Inquisitor Castinus, who led the team, recorded in his log that upon opening the final hold, he discovered two girls "of comely appearance, whose presence in such a madhouse was as inappropriate as a grox in a cathedral. Though they were of young and virtuous appearance, I could sense the psychic evil of their minds as clearly as I could see the Malleus brand upon their ankles. Though psychically powerful, their bodies were weak and when I asked them if they had done this, they simply said, 'Yes, they wouldn't play with us. It took forever and ever and ever...'"

For reasons best known to himself, Castinus did not immediately execute the twins, perhaps unknowingly swayed by their power to inspire protectiveness, instead taking them to the Inquisition fortress of Nemesis Tessera for analysis and study. Surviving vid logs and vox capture files provide a grim and gory testimony to the returned strength of the twins' powers as they made their escape from the oubliettes of the Inquisition in a murderous rampage that saw almost a thousand Inquisitorial troopers slaughtered as well as scores of full Inquisitors. How the twins managed to survive and escape the frozen surface of Nemesis Tessera has never been explained, but no trace of their bodies was ever found, and at the time, it was naively assumed that they had perished and lay buried deep within the unending snows of the planet.

But such was not to prove the case and as their powers grew, so too did their child-like malice. A young child's capriciousness combined with dreadful psychic powers yielded rise to beings with unimaginable power and cruelty, whose millennial existence has given rise to the most dangerous psyker-assassins in living memory. Though their bodies remain changeless, their minds have become ancient, twisted and bitter, filled with poison and hatred for those who would destroy them. Leaving a trail of death behind them, the twins were eventually cornered and captured on the world of Respa III by Inquisitor Commodus Voke in the Helican sub-sector and returned in triumph to Thracian Primaris for display during the Holy Novena. The destruction unleashed on Thracian Primaris during the Novena has long passed into infamy as the Thracian Atrocity and its architect since brought to justice. But of the thirty-three psykers paraded, several – including the twins – broke free and were to escape recapture and resume their evil ways.

The current whereabouts of the twins is a mystery, though there have been scattered rumours of a murderous pair of children stalking the worlds of the Agripinaa sector, but these are largely hearsay and speculation. With only raving lunatics as survivors of these massacres, reliable information is hard to come by, but given the twins' propensity for destruction and spiteful vengeance on a grand scale, it will not be long before they again come to prominence.

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