An hour later, Zso Sahaal stood at the edge of the wreckage and regarded his vessel, the Umbrea Insidior, with a wistful eye.
The last time he'd admired her exterior had been from the cramped cockpit of a shuttle, rising towards her from the surface of Tsagualsa, on the eve of his final mission. Even then, gnawed at by impatience, he'd paused to admire her savage form. Artfully decorated in banks of ebony and blue, picked-through with bronze, her towers and minarets endowed upon her an almost ornate fragility.
It was, of course, an illusion.
Vulture-beaked and weapon-pocked, her generariums hulked from her stern like the head of a mallet, cannons decorating the hammer's grip with all the organic tenacity of barnacles upon a whale. Here and there her changing fortunes were transcribed in scars and healed abrasions, all the arts of the Adeptus Mechanicus focused upon improvement, strength, power. More obvious still were the revisions to her structure made by her latest masters: blades and icons arching from her pitted hull, intricate designs dappling her iron snout, stylised arcs of gauss lightning painted in harsh whorls across the darkness of her intricate surfaces.
She had been a strike cruiser, once. Fast and vicious, a fitting chariot for the mission he'd boarded her to fulfil. A vessel worthy of his captaincy.
And now?
Now she was a broken hag. Crooked ribs slumped from fractured expanses. Crevices gaped like whip-wounds where conflicting pressures had buckled and pierced her hull. Her great spine was broken, crumpled across half a kilometre of steaming waste. Her beak had been thrust with such violence into the earth that her flanks had snapped, reactors sagging then pitching up and outwards, shearing vicious rents before detonating, their colossal energies vaporising what little substance had survived the atmosphere's passage.
Sahaal could barely imagine the calamitous impact. Were it not for the evidence of his own eyes — this pitiful thing smeared like metal paste across the ice — he would have doubted that such a vessel as the Umbrea Insidior could be brought so low.
Oh, how the mighty are fallen... Where had he heard that before?
It hardly mattered, now. There were more important things to consider. Priorities.
Pursuits.
There were no other survivors — of that he was certain. His inspection of the central corridors revealed nothing but dry bones and ancient fabrics: all that remained of the vassals that had crewed this once-proud ship. Now all as dead as she, and for a good deal longer. Sifting through storerooms, kicking aside mournful skulls, Sahaal began to wonder just how long had passed since his imprisonment began. Had his servants withered and grown old as he slept, as ageless as gold? Had they fallen to dust and ash around him, mayflies around a statue, or had they perhaps taken their own lives, forgoing the tedium of confinement for a swift, bloody release?
Again, he diverted his wondering mind. There would be time for speculation later, once his prize was reclaimed.
In the end his salvage was little better than had been the thieves'. Into a crate he upended as many ammunition clips as he could find, laying an ornate bolter reverentially on top. The looters had missed it when they'd raided the shattered remains of the armoury, never thinking to prise away the mangled sides of the strongbox at the armoury's core, where he had placed it.
It was named Mordax Tenebrae — the Dark's Bite. It had been hand crafted on Nostramo Quintus and was, in any material sense, priceless. As Sahaal ran an eye across its familiar stock, its elaborately decorated chambers and skull-mouthed barrel, he found himself wishing that they had found it, that they'd stolen it in exchange for the one item that he could not abide to lose — the very item that had been taken.
It was an impressive weapon, certainly, and he'd maintained it with the respect its magnificence demanded. It had been a gift from his master, and such was his devotion that had it been a knife or a book or a lump of rock, he would have cherished it with an equal fervour. But still, but still...
Like any gun, like any crude projectile-vomiting apparatus, he thought it a clumsy tool: a thing of noise and desperation, of smoke and flame. For all its complexity, for all the care and artistry lavished upon it, it would never rival the purity of a blade.
It would never be as vital to him as the Corona Nox.
Into the crate it went, and along with a scattering of what random munitions and grenades he could find, and a rack of fuelcells for his armour, he took just one last item: a heavy rectangular package, stolen from the wreck's remaining generarium, glowing with a pestilent green tinge. This he loaded carefully between layers of foam, acknowledging that sometimes the precision of a blade would never be enough.
The crate hissed as he depressed its sealing rune, and as he gripped its iron handle he reflected that in another time such an ignoble thing as carrying luggage would have been unthinkable, the remit of the numberless slaves that tended to his every desire.
How the mighty are fallen... A simple phrase, whispering through his mind for a second time, like the ghost of an echo. He realised with a start that it was his master's voice he'd remembered, and with crystal clarity recalled the time, the circumstance, the sentiment.
It had been on Tsagualsa. On Tsagualsa, before the killer came. Gazing into the night, brows beetling together, ancient eyes clouded, Sahaal's lord had turned to him and smiled, and said those words, and in his voice Sahaal could taste his disposition.
Troubled. Bitter. Betrayed. Haunted.
'We shall be mighty yet,' Sahaal promised, words lost to the driving snow, fist clenched against his heart.
Lifting the crate to his side, he set his sights upon the faint shadows of the transporter's tracks, took one last glance at the Umbrea Insidior, and leapt into the night.
Mita Ashyn
It was less an awakening than a rebirth.
Always it was like this, after the trance. Always she allowed the subtle skeins of perception and concept to break free from her focus, shifting her mind state from some inner vantage to the mundane outer realities, the province of conventional sense and thought.
She returned to her corporeal self like an eagle resuming its eyrie, breathing honeyed incense and enjoying the slow trickle of physical sensation. It felt like blood flowing through starved arteries.
In the Scholastia Psykana she'd learnt to call this the pater donum: the brief flush of warmth and contentment that followed a scrying trance, like a reward from the Emperor's own hand. She allowed it to work its way along each limb, curling her toes and arching her back.
Relish it, the adept-tutors had taught. Enjoy it whilst it lasts. It was, after all, the single facet of telepathy that justified the term ''gift'' where all others equated more accurately to the symptoms of a curse.
The pater donum would not last. It would be gone in an instant, and at that unhappy moment all the fierce memories of the trance would crash inwards to drown her.
She opened her eyes, focused on the single guttering candle at the centre of the scrying-ring, and allowed the sludge of recollection to break through.
Her first thought was this:
Something has fallen from heaven.
The meditation cell was a simple affair.
Four rockcrete walls arched overhead, sloping together to form a crude dome with a needle of bronze at its core: a conduction point for the astral body. Gone were the scriptures picked out in gold and opal across each wall, gone were the stylised star charts and mantras patterning the seer-dome, gone were the great twisting shelves of chittering incense drones. Such comforts she'd left behind on the fortress-world Safaur-Inquis, and this spartan cube was as far removed from the decadence she'd come to expect as it could be. She supposed she should be grateful for anything at all, given the indifference her new master had showed her, but still... there were limits.
A withered servitor — once human, long since lobotomised, dissected, infested with logic engines and clattering components — poked a stunted limb against her shoulder, its one rheumy eye fluttering spastically. It tried to talk, but th
e rune-etched staples through its lips and jaw allowed little more than a moist clucking, a long strand of drool wobbling from its chin.
On Safaur, her trance-awakenings had been tended by gende servants: smooth-skinned subordinates with tongues neady removed and ownership studs across each eye, hurrying to mop her sweat and massage her shoulders, lovingly recording on scented parchment whatever insights the meditation bestowed. On Safaur her trance-suite flocked with locust-like automata: emeralds for eyes and rubies for jaws, coloured streamers of psychoactive pheromones falling like musk from their tails. On Safaur a dozen cogitators existed solely to interpret her visions. On Safaur the majesty of her quarters was matched only by the view from her central garret, and between assignments she spent hours gazing across the acid shores of the sulphur seas. On the Inquisitorial fortress-world of Safaur-Inquis, her masters wielded their influence with artistry and opulence.
Her present circumstance was therefore somewhat galling.
Here, a one-armed man/machine with a techstylus and a snot-clogged nose was the best the governor's chamberlain could provide. It poked her again, marking her naked skin with a moronic stripe of ink before leaning away, eye rolling. Above it a faulty servodrone corkscrewed erratically across the ceiling, oozing incense. It bashed against the wall with depressing regularity, and she found herself unconsciously counting along — tap-tap-tap — like the beating of a plastic heart.
Anything to distract her from the memories.
But no, the warm pleasure of the pater donum had passed, the details of this dull little chamber had ceased to offer any but the most rudimentary of diversions, and the growing pressure behind her eyes couldn't be contained indefinitely. Sighing, she pulled a simple robe across her shoulders, clenched her jaw, snuffed out the candle and focused on the details of the trance, still burning bright in her mind.
'Record,' she commanded, waving a hand. The servitor straightened, stylus poised on the fluttering surface of an augur-slate, clucking its readiness.
'There follows the account,' she began formally, ignoring the whispering of the servitor's joints, 'of the furor arcanum undertaken in the Emperor's name on this day — date it — by I, interrogator primus of the retinue of Inquisitor Kaustus, on Imperial hive-world Equixus. In service of the most blessed Inquisition and in fealty to his Holiness the Emperor of Man, I attest upon my immortal soul to the provenance of this account, and swear upon its veracity — may my lord else strike me down.' She drew a breath, shivering at the cold. 'Blessings be upon His Throne and dominion. Ave imperator!'
She watched as the servitor scrawled the dedication with a mechanical twitch, scrolling the data-slate onto a clean line. She took a moment to compose herself, pursed her lips, then continued.
'For the third time — refer to prior reports — the trance began with the sensation of... altitude.' She closed her eyes and remembered the cold, the dizzying sensation of an abyssal nothingness gaping on every side, ice forming on her skin. She immersed herself in the memory and continued to speak, applying the recall techniques she'd been taught since an early age. 'I... I felt as though I was standing at a great height,' she said, 'and all around me the ground rushed away like the sides of a mountain. Except... a mountain made of metal. I couldn't see anything — there was too much snow — but I knew that if I stepped too far in any direction I'd fall. I'd fall and never stop falling, all the way down to a... a deep darkness, where no light ever shines. I couldn't see it, but... I knew it was there. I could feel it.
'There was a moment of nausea — though...' She half smiled, childishly proud, '... though today, for the first time, I did not vomit. It seemed to me, then, that something was drawing near, pushing through the snow, and though I was scared I stood my ground...' She chewed a lip, brows dipping. 'Perhaps I feared the drop more than I feared the approaching presence, I... I don't know. During previous trances I've awoken at this point and my efforts to divine further details have been frustrated. Today I... persisted. I'm certain I caught a glimpse of the... the presence in the snow, which has eluded me until now.
'It seemed to be myself.'
She glanced up, aware of how ridiculous the sentiment sounded. If the servitor was even capable of such judgement it gave no indication of it, awaiting her next words with the same dumb focus as before. She tried to relax, reminding herself that the interpretations of the furor arcanum were never straightforward, and that the libraries of the Scholastia Psykana were filled with validated predictions that had arisen from the most preposterous of trance-visions.
Still she hesitated, disturbed by the vividness of the dream.
'It was me, but... but I looked different. My hair was cut short and I wore rags, and... there was blood on my face. One of... oh, Throne... one of my arms was gone. Bleeding like a fountain... I was trying to say something but the wind was too strong and I... I couldn't hear, and that's when I saw... I...
'I was being carried. In the air, like... flying. I tried to see what was holding me but it was covered by the snow and there was... there was a shadow over its face.'
She was vaguely aware of a tear slipping down her cheek, and distantly — surreally — wondered why it was there. What did it mean?
The words came in a jumble now, refusing to stop, and she felt herself caught up in the same fearful horror as during the trance itself, tumbling and screaming and freezing, all at once.
'I looked into it... the shadow, I mean... and it was like I was falling, straight through the snow towards the ground, and... and something was chasing me, burning me from behind my eyes... Emperor preserve me, it was a pregnant hag — the size of a city — rushing down from the stars... a-and... and she hit the snow and... ohhh... her bones broke and her belly split and...
'...and darkness crawled out from her womb.'
She forced open her eyes long enough to check that the servitor had recorded every word. It watched her without comment or movement, fully prepared to wait forever for her next command.
Sighing, Interrogator Mita Ashyn of the Ordo Xenos allowed herself the indulgence of slipping into a deep, exhausted faint.
'Ah, interrogator.'
'My lord.' Mita bowed formally, keeping her eyes lowered. She hadn't yet grown accustomed to her new master's idiosyncrasies, but had learned quickly that his legendary temper was deployed far more readily amongst those who failed to show the proper obeisance. Given that he insisted upon wearing a mirror-helm with only the narrowest of eyeslits, it was perhaps unfortunate that any interested glance towards his surreal headgear was mistaken for disrespect, which of course invited the full force of his wrath.
Inquisitor Kaustus was not a man to cross lightly.
Mita considered herself relatively safe, just as long as she occupied her view with the tails of his chequered robes and the heavy soles of his armoured feet, rather than his feather-mantled shoulders and reflective mask.
'Stop that,' he snapped, proving her wrong, his voice curiously soft for such an imposing figure. 'I won't have my acolytes bowing and scraping like common peasants. I'm your master, girl, not your Emperor.'
'Apologies, my lord.' She straightened and adjusted her gaze vertically, oozing penitence. Perhaps chest height would be more appropriate.
Behind her, a couple of the innumerable cowled figures that comprised Kaustus's retinue sniggered lightly, amused at her mistake. She forced down the overwhelming desire to break their heads and forced herself to calm. As the newest member of the entourage she'd quickly learned that rank counted for exactly nothing: technically her command was second only to the inquisitor's, but it seemed respect was earned — not demanded — amongst this colourful crowd. As long as Kaustus continued to humiliate her in front of them their respect would continue to be in short supply.
'I've read the account of your vision,' the inquisitor said, voice dripping scorn, waving a spindly datapad across her view. 'You fainted.'
'It was... unusually vivid, my lord.'
'I don't care how vivid it w
as, girl. I'll not tolerate my servants passing out at the drop of hat.'
'It won't happen again, my lord.'
'No. It will not.' The datapad dipped upwards — the inquisitor's gaze roving across its spidery text. 'Your account makes for... interesting reading,' he said. 'What does it all mean?'
'I don't know, my lord. There are no cogitators here to deciph—'
'I didn't ask what some Emperor-damned machine would make of it, girl! I asked what you think.'
She swallowed, resisting the urge to meet his gaze. Here, in the splendour of his guest suite at the heart of the governor's palace, he was as terrible and magnificent a figure as the legends made claim.
'Well?'
'I... I think something is coming, my lord. Coming here, I mean.'
'"Something". Is that the best you can do?'
She bristled, fists clenching at her sides, struggling to keep the bitterness from her voice. 'Something from the stars, then. Something massive. S-something dark.'
For a moment there was silence. Dust motes circulated through the hard beam of a hovering illuminator, and at the periphery of her vision Mita could see the retinue shuffling its collective feet. Had her words struck a chord?
Kaustus shattered both the silence and her hopes with one deft exclamation.
'Emperor's blood!' he boomed, voice heavy with sarcasm, 'such detail! How did I ever cope without a witch at my side?'
Predictably the room exploded, acolytes and cowled disciples venting their sycophantic amusement in gales of laughter. Willing herself not to blush — unsuccessfully — Mita supposed she couldn't blame them. In shared cruelty lay acceptance, a bitter lesson she'd been slow to grasp.
For an instant she found herself hating them. Hating him, even, reviling her own master like some undisciplined child... But such thoughts were the gatestones at the head of a dangerous path, and her entire life had been spent studying to ward off such heretical temptations. She willed herself to relax, bore the humiliation with good grace—
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