They arrived like visiting princes, of course, and now... now they snarled like caged beasts at every ungentle prod of a lasgun muzzle in their ribs, every hand-heel push towards the centre of the island.
How the mighty are fallen...
The Night Haunter's words, ringing in Sahaal's mind.
'—demand to know the meaning of this, warp's piss!'
'—be repercussions! The Sztak Chai does not tolerate—'
'—kill! Cut slice-and-dice — kill all!'
And then there was a new voice, neither raised nor strained, which cut through the objections like a razor and left jaws gaping.
'Be silent,' it said, from above their heads. 'Be silent and bow to your new lord.'
He dropped from the stain of darkness that covered the cavern's ceiling without a noise, a long-shanked vision of black and blue, devil-red eyes glaring from a pall of shadow, striking the brown earth and straightening, black cloak of feather and rag settling across him like a funeral shroud. To their minds, alive with such terror that they had never before known, he was not real. He could not be real. This gangle-limbed beast — this filth-slicked spider — that had broached the walls of nightmare and found form in corporeal flesh. Towering over them, a half-seen ghoul, veiled by darkness and design, his respirator steamed unctuous coils of vapour like a daemon's breath, and as he tilted his head through light-dappled chinks of shadow he flexed his claws from their sheaths, slicing the awe-frozen moment in half.
The visitors came to their senses all at once. Some screamed.
Some tried to run. Some fell to their knees.
They had heard the rumours, perhaps. They had heard that the madmen of the Shadowkin — those zealous fools who had shut themselves away from the rest of the underhive, eschewing contact and wealth, concerned only with their morbid deathcult, dedicated to the Emperor's purity — had a new master. They had shrugged and spat, untroubled by the machinations of that which did not concern them.
They had heard tales, even, of something new in the underhive, some dark presence that prowled in the night and killed without compunction. They had heard of mutilations and bloody atrocities, of bodies disjointed and violated, of eyes put out and fingers stolen.
They had heard rumours of terrors and abominations, and dismissed them as idle tales to scare the children.
They were regretting their flippancy now.
'The leaders will approach,' Sahaal said, voice a mere hiss.
None seemed prepared to obey, each ''noble'' hiding behind his or her accompanying warrior, faces drawn, mouths agape, refusing still to believe what their eyes were telling them.
Sahaal hissed and gestured at Chianni, a half-flick of his claws that he knew she would translate accordingly. On cue the condemintor waved forwards the Shadowkin warriors, overseeing their rough advance: pulling apart nobles and protectors like clinging lovers, threatening and clubbing when resistance was offered, pushing forwards the gang leaders to stumble, alone and unprotected, in a gaggle at Sahaal's feet.
Six little pigs, quivering in their fat.
'You came to this place,' Sahaal said, gaze sweeping across them, arm gesturing out across the smog of the swamps, 'in terror. You fled before your enemies like vermin, and you ran here. Into my arms. To me!'
He took a step forwards, light smearing itself a fraction further across his armour.
'You came to me for sanctuary — uninvited, unwanted — but have I turned you away? No. I have tolerated your presence. I have let you slip among the shores of my domain like snakes in tall grass... and how have you repaid my kindness?'
Another step, claws flashing across flickering torchlight, eyes burning. The nobles cringed in their places.
'Have you visited me, to bow? Have you offered fealty, to the Emperor's own warrior? Have you yielded to me? No. No, you have said nothing. You have waited until you were called!'
Another step, and this time the group's cohesion splintered: the frail head of the Pallor House fell onto his knees with a moan, the feathered priestess of the Quetzai fumbled for a weapon at her belt — long since taken by her captors — and the Frog Priest turned his bloated body and tried to flee, eyes spinning, only to-be thrust forwards again by the Shadowkin circle.
Sahaal did not pause at the interruption.
'The hive has fallen from the Emperor's light and turned against the Underworld, and like children running for their mother you have expected from the Shadowkin protection, sanctuary, comfort... And at what price? None! You have offered me nothing!'
His voice echoed across the silent wastes, strong and shrill and terrible.
'I shall tolerate the disrespect no longer. If you are to stay, if you are to plague my territory like wolves, then it shall be at my pleasure.'
He leaned down, helmed countenance shedding shadows like oil, eyes burning with ruby fires. 'You are the guests of Holy Warriors,' he hissed, breath steaming, 'and if you are to remain so it is fair that you should share their burden.'
He straightened abruptly, cloaks rippling, and extended his hands towards the group, each fan of razor-light claws snickering away to its secret sheath, leaving only gloved fists.
'Which of you will accept my rule?' he asked. 'Which of you will taste divinity, and join my crusade? Which of you will surrender his house to the Emperor's mercy?'
One by one the nobles swallowed their terror, licked dry lips and forced down the shivering in their limbs, and stepped forwards to kiss the hands of the beast.
'Good,' he said, when they had finished. He glanced up towards the waiting Shadowkin, and the six champions of the ganghouses restrained amongst them, watching events with earnest eyes. They had witnessed their own masters signing away their autonomy, and their expression told Sahaal everything he needed to know: They would have done exactly the same. As he returned his gaze to his newest slaves he stole a glance towards Chianni, noting without surprise her expression of unconcealed disdain. She had spent all her life despising the underhive's other gangs, punishing their iniquity when the Emperor's will allowed, protecting her tribe from their predations when it did not. It was a mark of her utter obedience to Sahaal that, as he claimed their strength as his own, she did not raise her voice in protest.
He had a pleasing surprise for her, yet.
'Do you know,' he said, glowering at the nobles, 'of lions?'
They stared, bewildered.
'Great predators of ancient Terra,' he explained, 'pack beasts — loyal to their clan, and obedient. Always obedient to their strongest member.' He paused, enjoying the drama of the moment despite himself. 'And when a new leader arose, a blooded-daw ready to assume command, his first action was always the same.
'He could not tolerate disloyalty. He could not risk challenge to his authority. He could not spare any rem-r.ant of the old regime, the old order.
'Do you know what he did, little nobles?'
Their eyes were wide. Their lips trembled. Perhaps some knew what was coming.
'He killed all the cubs.'
Sahaal beheaded the six nobles with two strokes of his claws.
The champions of the gang houses, who had witnessed the transferral of power and could no more deny it to their brothers and sisters than they could rail against it, were returned to their petty empires with a single message, to spread amongst the dispossessed masses of the underhive. You belong to the Shadowkin now. Prepare for war.
'C-CONDEMNITOR?'
'Why do you disturb our lord's sacred slumber?'
Voices flourished on the cusp of Sahaal's hearing, pricking at his sleeping mind like an itch, drawing him up from the depths of his dreams to an intangible, half-awake plateau.
'S-something's happened, condemnitor!' a man quailed, directing his stammerings, Sahaal assumed, to Chianni — seated as ever beside him. 'We... we thought that... that h-he... w-would wish to know.'
They can't even speak my name...
'Explain,' Chianni grunted, sounding unimpressed.
'It'
s the prisoner. From the starport...'
'The warp-seer?'
'Y-yes.'
Sahaal was fully awake in a second. He rose to his feet and jabbed a finger towards the cowering man, prostrated before the throne.
'What is it? What's happened to the prisoner?'
'S-sweet Emperor!'
'Tell me!'
'We... we think he's dying, lord!'
Bound in chains at his wrists and legs, the second astropath — a prisoner in a squalid Shadowkin hut since his capture — drooled a thick paste of spittle and bile from his mouth, tongue snagging against his teeth, running red with his own blood. At irregular intervals his body stiffened as if electrified, each narrow-corded muscle standing out from his emaciated frame, withered face crumpled in wordless agony.
He had soiled himself, and coupled with the strands of drying blood and vomit that pooled around him, streaking his pigeon chest, his cell stank like a madhouse, an impression his shrieks did little to dispel.
Like his dead comrade before him he wore across his brow a twisted strip of lead, and it was to this that Sahaal's attention immediately flew. It glowed red hot, faint clouds of steam boiling above it, scorching the man's flesh like a cattle brand.
'My lord!' Chianni cried out from his side, horrified by what, to her, must seem some cruel form of witchcraft.
If only she knew...
'Get out,' Sahaal ordered, waving her and the cowering messenger away, ignoring the flash-flicker of disappointment that crossed her features. 'Now.'
He closed the door — such as it was — behind them, listening carefully at its corrugated frame, enhanced senses outstretched, to ensure neither were eavesdropping.
And then he turned back to the writhing astropath, rolling and moaning, shattering his own teeth at the strength of his gnashing, and bent down close to watch.
And yes, there it was... at the edge of his perception, a grating presence... whispering... promising, teasing, cursing...
The warp swarms, gathering around, scratching with immaterial claws, fighting to break through the lead shield.
'Someone,' Sahaal said, wiping a tender finger across the man's sweaty brow, 'is trying to say hello.'
Working with an abruptness that drew a strangled gasp from the psyker, he hooked a talon beneath the metal coronet and snipped it away, exposing the man's singed forehead. Opening the way.
He did not need psychic senses to know what happened next. It was like an indescribable sound — some ultrasonic pitch that went unheard, but felt nonetheless — dwindling away to nothing. It was like a pressure being released, like a faucet opening in the sky to pour away all the psychic waste, all the vile shit that clamoured beyond perception. And the waste pipe, the reservoir into which it all flushed clear, was the psyker's head.
He jerked upright, like a meat puppet, body moving in strange unbalanced steps that were not its own. Blood poured from his mouth. The warp beasts tore at his soul, a frenzied feast beyond the veil of reality.
Sahaal backed away, heart racing. Had it worked? Had someone heard his call? Had the predators of the empyrean stretched out their shapeless tongues at the arisal of a beacon? A message, trying to get through?
The psyker's head twisted around, muscles manipulated by a mind that was not his own, until he faced Sahaal, empty eye sockets glaring into him.
And then he spoke — falteringly at first, like a marionette guided by an inexpert hand — but with growing confidence, and clear intention.
'W-we..., we... we are c-coming... fun... for you...'
Sahaal dropped to his knees, overcome.
'B-brothers?'
'We are coming for you, Talonmaster. Prepare the way. Ave dominus nox.'
'A-ave!'
The psyker's head exploded like a bursting bubble, scattering fragments of skull and shredded brain across his cell, and in some distant dimension his soul sobbed as the swarms fought for their feast.
Sahaal removed his helm and, unashamed, wept with joy.
The next day Shadowkin scouts moved amongst the refugee camps with a message, gathering crowds at every junction, filling the air with shouts and protests.
In every part of the shanty town the message was the same.
Go now into the hive, they read, parchment sheets held in trembling hands. Rise now in the corrupted world above us, and gather for your new masters your tithe.
The Emperor's Angel is among us, friends, and he taxes not our wealth, nor our food, nor our blood. He demands payment in justice.
Every able man, every able woman. Each shall present to the Emperor's Angel the head of a sinner, or else themselves he branded so — and culled accordingly.
Those below the age of fifteen years are exempted. They shall be overseen by the Shadowkin in their parents' absence.
You have two days.
There was outrage, at first. Outrage and horror and disbelief. But the story of the nobles' executions had circulated, the uncertain presence of some terrible Holy Thing lurking upon the island had gathered weight with each retelling, and beyond the outrage and the horror, above all else, there was terror.
The Shadowkin were strong where all other tribes had been crippled. The reprisals for failure were no idle threat. The refugees could not flee. They could not hide. They could not desert their children.
It did not take long for small groups — faces set, teeth clenched, fists curled around blunt-edged machetes and crude blades — to set off on the long, tortuous trek into the hive itself. Equixus faced a bloody night.
Mita Ashyn
When she was finished with the cognis mercator — the information broker she'd risked so much to find — Mita returned to Cuspseal feeling uncomfortably pleased with herself. She hadn't broken the rules her master had imposed, hadn't prosecuted her own attack against the nightmare lurking in the underhive, hadn't sanctioned such an attack from any other source, and certainly hadn't interfered with the inquisitor's own plans. Whatever they were.
All she had secured was an element of... insurance. Kaustus need never know.
At the secondary tiercluster, alongside the Arbites precinct, she paused to lead Cog into a hospice of the Order Panacear. The giant had fared well despite his wounds, stalwart physiology seemingly impervious to the pain his injuries looked likely to cause.
Or perhaps, Mita reflected cruelly, he was simply too stupid to know when he should have been dead.
Either way, she found herself quietly affected by his plight. His defence of her safety had been selfless, his loyalty utterly beyond reproach, and in some emotive corner of her mind she found herself sharing his pain, empathic senses indulging her shame with masochistic relish.
It could not be ignored, of course, that Cog's loyalty to her was a far purer, more successful thing than her loyalty to her master. Had Cog ever questioned her orders? Had he ever doubted her, or mistrusted her, or sought to disobey? Of course not.
And look where it got him...
He was a mess. Great ragged holes bled freely all across him, the vast musculature beneath revealed in all its grisly glory. One of his cheeks was ripped — a vacant chasm that exposed gums and molars to the very back of his mouth, leaving a tortured flap of flesh trailing from his jawline. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, his knuckles grazed of almost all their skin, and his long arms punctured with more holes than a cratered asteroid. Even the sisters of the Order, fluttering from bed to bed in cassocks and starched wimples, with a quiet prayer and a dispensoria of arcane drugs for every occasion, did not seem overly optimistic at his chances of recovery.
After, that is, Mita had bullied them into accepting ''the abomination'' as a patient. The authority of the Inquisition remained unsullied in some quarters at least.
She left her loyal giant in their care for a scant hour, returning to the precinct to change her clothes and steal a short moment's soothing meditation, before returning to oversee his care. She walked between the Preafect fortress and the hospice with an irrepressible
spring in her stride, satisfied that whatever the movements of the thing prowling the shadows below her feet, whatever clandestine actions it undertook, she would be fully aware of it.
And then she stepped into Cog's cramped healing cell and recalled, with a jolt, Kaustus's words.
'I am sending a mutual friend to collect you'.
There was someone waiting for her.
He was the sort of man, Mita had decided during the tedious minutes that followed, whose petty affection for authority had come to dominate every part of his persona, to the extent that any story, any piece of unshared information, was delivered with trembling relish. I know something you don't, his gimlet eyes said, and I'll take my damned time in telling you.
'It was on the seventh tier that we found them,' he expounded, waving an arm for emphasis. A small fleck of froth had gathered in the corner of his mouth as he talked — an unpleasant detail that Mita found herself unable to ignore. 'Wretched creatures. Totally disorganised, of course — their kind always are. So pitifully earnest.'
He locked his lips around the tip of the hookah he wore in a strap against his chest, dislodging the bead of spittle, and drew bubbles through the bulb at its base.
...buglbuglbuglbugl...
'Mmm.'
He breathed out cherry-scented smoke, lips curled in a feline smile, a set of onyx-black false teeth twinkling like a starry void within. Mita repressed the temptation to apply a fist to their gloomy surface.
'We killed them all, of course,' he droned, 'bar the leader. We thought you might appreciate an interrogation. Heh. When you're ready.'
He was a priest — or at least that's what he called himself. His obvious self-adoration was hardly in keeping with the selflessness that came with devotion, and were it not for the winged aquila burned above his right eye he would look no different to any other member of Kaustus's retinue. She wondered why the inquisitor had chosen him as his errand boy.
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