40k Astropath Ritual Behavior

	“I have a message I need you to send,” said Lysander.  He could see now that the shadowy walls of the belfry were lined with intricate cages, each with several tiny, silent birds, their bright plumage hidden in the gloom, hopping between their perches.  Vaynce had the company of several hundred birds in total.
	Vaynce smiled and turned.  His eyes were bound with a strip of embroidered cloth which could not quite hide the enlarged, scorched pits beneath.  He smiled.  His teeth were black, carved from ebony and inscribed with prayers of humility and perseverance.
	He took a book from beneath the pile of parchment in front of him and opened it.  Its pages were crammed with symbols, some pictures of animals or objects, others completely abstract.  Each had a meaning that changed with proximity to other symbols, forming an infinitely complicated language of symbols that those strange, blessed individuals known as astropaths had to master before they could serve the imperium.  Vaynce ran his fingers along the page, reading the symbols through the feel of the ink on the paper. “Commence, if you will.”
	Vaynce did not flinch as he heard it.  One hand flicked through the book with a speed born of decades of practice, the other scratching down symbols on a strip of parchment that unrolled from a tiny motorized reel.  He used a quill and reddish ink.
	When Lysander was done, Vaynce lit a stick of incense and took a fingertip of ash, smearing it in a circular symbol onto the floor in front of him.  He spat into the circle, mumbled a prayer, and wiped off the ash and spittle with his sleeve.  The ritual done with, he rolled up the parchment into a tight tube and sealed it with a blob of wax and the ring that hung on a chain around his neck.  He tottered over to one of the bird cages, opened the door, and took out a bird with blue and red plumage that glittered under the light of the belfry's glow-globes.  The bird sat calmly on Vaynce's finger, tiny black eyes flittering from Lysander to the astropath, making no effort to fly away.
	“We all have our ways,” said Vaynce. “Every one of us is different.  Some make scultures, some paint pictures.  Some even make music.  But in the end we are the same.  Whatever we create, we must destroy.”
	The astropath tied the rolled-up message to the bird's leg with a piece of scarlet ribbon.  “Go, go,” he whispered, and the bird flitted off his finger and skipped up towards the bells hanging from the rafters.
	“It is the trauma of destruction,” said Vaynce, “that gives it form in the warp.  To see our creations die gives us the focus to do what we must.”
	A grid of needle-thin lasers glittered into existence, strung between the bells like a driftnet.  The tiny bird flew through the grid and disappeared in a flash of flame.
	Vaynce closed his eyes.  The embroidery around his eyes glowed and the empty sockets smouldered beneath them.  Flickers of blue-white power played around Vaynce's skull, earthing through his fingers to the belfry floor.
	Lysander, though he possessed no psychic ability, could feel the gabric of reality shifting, as if a wrinkle was being pulled out or the galazy had moved along some infinitely distant fault line.
	Vaynce coughed and his shoulders slumped.  Smoke coiled off him.
	“It is done,” he said.