A Psyker's reincarnation

As soon as the priest had finished speaking, the Custodes stepped forward and formed a line at the front of the crowd. The ordinary people who had accompanied them from the palace following closely behind.

Then, the Custodes signalled for those at the front to step forward. Each family had an infant aged no more than four years old with them.

They marched forward passing beyond the Custodes and showed their child to the people behind them.

Those people then took out several devices and began scanning and testing the children.

Suddenly, the priest's voice sounded again, even more zealous than before: "The call! The Call has been answered!" he shouted, running towards a child among the hundreds present.

Once again, everyone got on their knees and offered prayers to their God Emperor.

A Custodian then took the child with him and brought him the palace. 

Testing resumed soon afterwards, with thousands of children being brought by their parents in the hope that their children would receive the ultimate honour.

What was happening really was what he had thought about and he could not be more excited about it. 

He was participating in the Custodes selection. 

All around him were nobles families of Terra, all hopefull for their child to be amoung the chosen ones, and maybe just maybe he will be one of them. 

As time passed, it seemed that the test itself took no more than a couple of seconds for each child and he soon found himself close to the front of the line.

That was when he began to feel nervous as reality settled in and the excitement died out.

From what he could remember about the Custodes, it seemed that it would be better if he were not chosen, given his status as a psycher.

He had never heard of a Psycher Custodian before.

Perhaps this test would expose him. He could not know, as nothing was really known about the process itself.

What were they testing? How were they testing it? What technology was used?

Nothing was known. 

If his psychic abilities were discovered, he would either be sacrificed to sustain the Emperor, executed immediately or shipped off to the Inquisition. There were other possibilities too.

Even if he was not discovered and, by chance, he was among the chosen ones, was it really a desirable outcome?

He knew about the sky high mortality rate of Custodian aspirant.

Thousands of children had already been chosen, and there would be thousands more by the end of the selection process, given the number of children present who were waiting to be tested.

He could not possibly know exactly how many people were present, but it felt like hundreds of thousands.

The density of the crowd gave him this impression, and, knowing a bit of the lore of this universe, he was pretty sure that it was not far from the truth.

He knew that despite the large number of children selected, almost none of them would survive until the end and join the greatest faction of the Empire, the Adeptus Custodes. 

Maybe one, at best two or three but no more. 

The chance of survival was less than one percent.

Once you knew that, all the excitement you felt about becoming a Custodian would disappear, no matter how cool they looked. You wouldn't want to become the golden giant, immortal demigod of war that they are.

Even if you managed to survive all the trials by some miracle, would life as a Custodian really be enjoyable?

The idea of standing immobile for decades while guarding a corpse with unwavering passion and loyalty sounds epic when you read about it in fiction.

However, when you were the one who had to live through it, it wouldn't be so great anymore.

However, it didn't really matter, since you would undergo such thorough mind-wiping and brainwashing that you would lose all sense of who you were before.

You would then be reformed as a tool meant to guard the Emperor with undying loyalty.

Taking all these thoughts into account, the initial excitement surrounding his teenage dream of becoming a Custodes quickly faded.

He felt that his current circumstances offered him a much better future.

He was not only a noble of Terra, the centre of human power in this universe, but he also possessed psychic powers which he seemed to control well enough to avoid detection.

The prospect of him growing up to become powerful, with hard and soft power at his disposal, seemed to offer a much better future than that which a life as a custodian could provide.

Given his natural talent for telepathy and other psychic disciplines, the prospect of reaching the highest levels of power did not seem so unrealistic to him.

If he could read and manipulate the thoughts of his adversaries, he would find the plots, intrigues, and political battles he faced much easier to navigate.

He had a genuine opportunity to become a noble of the highest rank.

A High Lord — now that was real power!

A position of real influence and power over the entire Imperium.

Now that he was living in this world, he wanted to wield power. 

His survival depended on it.

He already had martial power and a means of self-protection in the form of his psychic abilities.

Perhaps if he gained political power and influence, he could have an impact on this doomed universe.

It was unrealistic to think that you could have had a great enough impact to change the fate of the Imperium.

 Even the Emperor of Mankind, with all his godlike powers, failed in his endeavour, so how could you possibly succeed where he failed?

He had no illusions that his psychic powers would ever match those of the Emperor.

Only a being of such power would be needed to effect real change in the dying Imperium.

However, it was all just speculation.

He had no control over the direction in which his life was heading at that moment.

After all, he was only two years old, standing on the brink of a major turning point in his future.

Soon the moment of truth came. 

They had arrived at the front of the line and it was his turn to be tested.

His parents brought him forward and handed him for inspection. 

It all felt surreal. Everything happened so quickly that it was just a blur.

Suddenly, a noise came from the machine attached to the person inspecting him and he heard it. 

A loud shout resonating in his ear.

" He has answered THE CALL!"

His fate had been sealed.