'Y-yes. And just in time, lord.' Her face contorted with anger. 'The... the warpfilth had your helmet off. He had a knife, lord. I didn't know if you were alive or dead, b-but...' Her voice tailed off, Sahaal could see she was in shock, face pale. She stabbed a pointed finger to one side, gesturing for his attention.
A dreadful suspicion arose in his reeling mind.
He followed her gesture and settled his eyes upon the figure sprawled at his side, a smoking laswound singeing the colourful fabric of its robes, the shieldlike designs woven across its surface now stained by blood and grime. The body's podgy hands clutched — even in death — for the discarded dagger it had dropped.
The majordomo. He had awoken whilst Sahaal slept. He had prised off the Night Lord's helmet with clumsy twists of his blade, and then he had drawn back his hand to slice the monster's exposed skin.
And then Chianni had shot him.
'No!' Sahaal roared, adrenaline burning his brain, raising him to his feet, spinning him towards Chianni. He snatched her up in one gauntleted fist with a feral snarl, ready to sink his claws through her face, red fires burning in his guts. 'You killed him!' he cried. 'You killed him, warp take you!'
'L-lord! lord, he was going to kill you!'
'I needed him! I needed the name of his master! You killed him!'
The claws of his free hand ripped forth, light motes scattering across them. He pulled them back from Chianni's shrieking face, preparing to punch through her wide eyes and shred her pitiful brain, exploding bone and gore across the burning swamplands. No matter that she had acted in his interests. No matter that she had spared his life.
The Corona Nox. That was all that mattered. And she had taken it from him once more!
'I know his master!' she screamed, eyes rolling, spittle flecking her lips. 'I know his master!'
Sahaal paused, eyes narrowing. He wondered how he must look without his helm, how his sallow countenance must horrify her, and indeed her bugging stare roved across his face with disgusted fascination.
Look upon your so-called 'angel', little human...
'You lie,' he hissed, unimpressed. 'You lie to save your life.'
'No! No, look at him! Look at the robes!'
'What of them?'
'The crest! The coat of arms!'
'Explain!'
'My lord... it's the heraldry of the hive itself! The Noble House Zagrif! This man was in the employ of the governor!'
Mita Ashyn
The elevator seemed to ascend forever. Mita settled herself into a corner, cross-legged with her back pressed against the bronzed interior. It could hardly be likened to the comfort of her old meditation cell on Safaur-Inquis, nor even to the ascetic simplicity of the chamber the governor had granted her here on Equixus, but she was too exhausted to crave the comfort of fine things. The ability merely to sit, to close her eyes, to not spend her life glancing over her shoulder, that was enough.
As the minutes dragged on and a modicum of her energy returned, she found her mind wandering, rising on wings of thought, and a strange sense of prescient pressure — like a slowly building mass of water filling the spaces of her head — came over her. She recognised it, of course. It was the preamble to the furor arcanum: her senses' crude way of letting her know that a prophesying trance was forthcoming, should she choose to indulge it.
At first she resisted, choosing to take the time to settle her mind, to restore her strength, to prepare herself for whatever tests and feats awaited her at the apex of the elevator shaft. But the uncertainties that clouded her thoughts could not be so easily placated, heir exhaustion had become a curious constant that required no salving nor assuagement, and how could she prepare herself for the unknown? Indeed, only by accepting the visions that the trance offered could she have any hope of anticipating what lay before her.
She surrendered to the pressure with a quiet sigh, closing her eyes and clearing her mind, and the visions of future madness poured into the cavity of her skull like a plague descending upon unwary heads.
First, there is... altitude.
The same old vision, then. Just as before. Always the same.
Coldness assails her, and though she is unsure whether she is truly a part of this vision at all, or simply watching events from some remote 'beyond', she feels nonetheless that she is naked: that ice is forming on her skin, and hot vapour arises from her mouth with every breath.
To every side the world is an abyss. She stands on a monolith of metal, a great cactus-spire that threatens to cast her off, to send her tumbling along its steepening flanks with whichever tawdry zephyr seizes her. She cries out, afraid, nauseous, although she has seen all of this before.
This is the fourth time she has witnessed this vision.
And then there seems to be something in the clouds before her, some unseen presence that breaks the squalling ice, that shifts like a shadow upon a pearl, drawing near.
And just like before, she knows what it is.
It is herself. Held aloft by a beast of smoke and shadow. Dressed in rags, hair cut and unkempt — and in some distant part of herself she recognises changes that have already been wrought, and realises that this scene, this awful tableau created before her, must be almost upon her.
But there is more to occur yet.
Her reflection's arm is gone. She bleeds like an endless river. She tries to see the monster that holds her up and it is indistinct... but already she knows what it is.
The Night Lord carries her into the squalling snow on wings of darkness and smoke, and it seems to her that for an instant there are shapes below it — bright-knuckled beasts that reach out with claw and tentacle to snare him — but he is too fast. He is too agile.
He is gone, and her doppelganger with him, and Mita is left to tumble from her impossible vantage down into the dark, where hate and anger boils around her. She has seen all of this too. She has experienced all of this before.
Except...
Except this time the trance-vision is different. This time there is no hag. No fat-bellied witch tumbling down on contrails of blood and fire, and she thinks to herself:
That was the indicator of another event, then, something that has already occurred...
The Night Lord's arrival. The hag was his vessel. Her bloated belly ruptured and spilled-out the prize that he had come to claim. That is the way of the furor arcanum: half truths and twisted versions of reality.
This time is different. This time Mita's fall from on high is interrupted. This time she is caught in mid-air, buoyed up by a steely eagle, lifted in its wake like a leaf in the pull of an engine. This time she is there to witness the endgame.
The eagle returns her to the peak of the metal mountain. It circles and swoops, and fixes beady eyes upon the turrets of the city's crown, where it has business to attend. It can sense something it wants inside. It tilts wings of jetair and fuel towards the monolith, and races down to shatter its beak across the steely surface.
And then the horizon is no longer dark. The endless night is on fire.
And the sky fills, from edge to edge, with the shrieks of hawks and the blood of the ignorant.
Mita awoke in the elevator with a gasp, thick bile pooling in her mouth. She spat and choked, clutching at her belly.
The pater donum descended on her like a pleasant breeze, a cloying luxury that tweaked inside every muscle and every bone. Her tutors had taught her to relish it, to enjoy the one luxury her curse'gift would ever bestow upon her. But not so now: seated and nauseous within the cramped elevator, the pater donum could give her no comfort.
She slipped into a faint with inexpressible relief, and in her mind the screaming hawks that lit the sky plunged deeper and deeper into the surface of her dreams, plucking flesh and sinew clear with each swoop.
They flocked above her. They flocked above the world. Her last conscious thought, before sleep claimed her, was: They are coming. They are coming for us all...
She awoke with no idea how long she had
slept. A brief instant of claustrophobic panic gripped her — what if the elevator was sealed? Paused in some door-less cavern? Never to reopen! — but, no, the gentle rumble of its guidance machinery continued apace. Judging by its pitch — almost totally vertical where previously it had skewed along increasing diagonals — she was approaching the apex of the city.
It was a thought that gave her pause. As an outlaw, it occurred to her that travelling to the peak of the hive — where even the stealthiest of intruders couldn't hope to set foot without discovery — hardly smacked of intelligence.
But what else could she do? Lurk in the shadows of Cuspseal forever, growing more hungry and more cold, more confused by the conflicting thoughts that assailed her? Spend her life running from the Inquisition, slipping down into the dark of the underhive like so many dispossessed nobodies before?
Spend her life wondering...?
Of course not. Passivity was not in her character.
There were two mysteries that gripped her above all others, and as she settled in her corner, feeling the ponderous machinery of the elevator grinding higher and higher, she happened to cast her eyes upwards seeking some indicator of its progress, and found herself agog. The twin riddles slid together, mixing like accreting puddles of icemelt, becoming a single unified issue, and all at the single glimpse of what was embossed above the door...
The first uncertainty concerned the package, the stolen prize, the Corona Nox. What was it? Why did it matter so much to the Night Lord? Was it truly at the zenith of this grinding shaft that it could be found?
The second confusion was older, an enigma that seemed to have settled upon her bones like a layer of dust, too thick to ever remove. She felt as though she'd been gnawing at it her whole life, drenched in the suspicion and paranoia that was integral to it:
What are you up to, Kaustus?
Two queries. Two struggles, separate but equally as chaotic within her thoughts.
And suddenly they were one. Her eyes fell upon the bronze plaque above the elevator's sealed doors, and everything fell into place.
It showed a shield. A carefully scrawled coat of arms that sucked at her gaze like some awful abyss. She'd seen it before.
A sword crossing a sceptre, set upon a field of snow, surmounted by a sickle-moon and a halo of stars. The heraldry of the Noble House Zagrif.
This was the governor's personal elevator.
So...
Think, Mita! Work it through!
So the Glacier Rats stole something from the Umbrea Insidior... They did so at the request of the Slake collective...
Who had... had...
'Oh, sweet Emperor...'
Who had been commissioned by the agents of the governor himself.
The audacity of the plot astonished her, sent her reeling. Snippets of sound and sight rushed across her mind, making her wince. She'd been so foolish! Why had she not realised before?
'And to what do we owe this pleasure?' the governor had asked, when Kaustus brought her before him. 'Is she here to help us with the lock?'
She remembered thinking at the time: what lock?
She should have remembered! She should have seen!
And then, glimpsed through Pahvulti's eyes, the Night Lord rasping his venom at the cringing Slake collective:
'Where is the package now? Was it opened? Was the seal broken?'
'It was not opened by us. It has been delivered to the customer.'
Oh, she'd been so stupid!
Two enigmas, one solution!
This was what Kaustus had been doing! This was why he had sent his retinue to quell the xenophile cells, rather than attending himself. This was what had kept him, day after day, sealed in the governor's company, dismissing every other thing.
Kaustus had the Corona Nox.
The doors opened some two and a half hours after they had first closed, and they did so upon an occupant ready for anything. She had had plenty of time to dwell upon the epiphany that had snared her. Plenty of time to allow disbelief and denial to seep across her senses, replaced ultimately by a deep, abiding fury.
She'd been right. Her master had been lying to her — to everyone — all along. He'd known the Night Lord was real. He'd known, somehow, that the Umbrea Insidior would come to Equixus. He'd been waiting with eager hands to take delivery of the Traitor Marine's greatest prize.
Why then had he resisted killing the beast? Why had he risked its wrath, its gradual attempts to reclaim what was rightfully its? Why had he done everything in his power to protect the monster?
She'd realised with gathering gloom that her epiphany had simply birthed a new generation of questions, and at the core of her simmering anger the fundamental issue remained ironclad and unaltered:
What are you up to, Kaustus? What are you doing, you bastard?
And so she stepped from the elevator with a laspistol in one hand and her senses on full alert, anticipating attack or flight. What greeted her eyes — and her psychic senses — was therefore far from expected.
There was no one waiting for her.
The elevator had delivered her into the heart of the governor's gallery. Treasures without count extended into the gloom on every side, plinths bathed in hard light bearing jewelled gewgaws and priceless archeotech. And just as her alertness settled and she began to relax, once more the terror consumed her, the overwhelming certainty rushed across her:
The Night Lord was here. He was nearby. He was close!
She stumbled forwards with the pitiful gun primed, feeling ridiculous and naked. The certainty of the creature's presence — a stormcloud at the forefront of her astral senses, lapping froth-slick pollution against her psionic self — was undeniable: the beast's mindscape a unique image that she could have recognised anywhere, at any time. He is here! Emperor preserve me, he's here! And yet... Between each gallery plinth there lurked only an open space. The shadows of the room's perimeter concealed nothing but walls and windows, and for the first time she could remember Mita found herself questioning her senses. She spun and ducked, straining her eyes and ears, all to no avail.
She was so sure! So utterly convinced that her foe was present... and yet, nothing. She followed the pulse of his psychic presence like a bloodhound tracking a scent, and she moved between each exhibit with exaggerated care, all too aware of the servitor eyes tracking her movements from the ceiling, long-barrelled weapons inert as long as she kept her distance. And then there it was.
It occupied the tallest plinth at the torus-room's natural epicentre, surrounded by a wall of blazing illuminators. Even had her senses not directed her to it she guessed it would have drawn her eye like the brightest star in the sky, by reason of its setup and positioning alone. Most peculiar of all, only it, amongst all the wonders of the governor's collection, had no judicious servitor to watch over it.
It was a box. A dull, uninteresting crate, shining with the oily lustre of adamantium. Across its surface ugly runes and obscene scriptures were daubed in red and white, and at its front — spread across the inverse of its hinge in the shape of a snarling skull, borne aloft on great red wings — was a cryptoseal. It was unopened, the beads of its interlocking plates remained meshed together, unprimed by the one word, the one cryptic phrase'code, that would send pins snapping into place in the tiny logic engine within, grinding upon ancient gears and unlocking the whole.
It radiated thought. It oozed malice. It exuded a palpable sense of presence that... yes, she was sure... that mimicked life itself.
She realised with a start that this was the prize. This was the item that had been stolen from the Traitor Marine, and the ocean of sentience that burned from within was so akin to the Night Lord's own mind that it had fooled her. This close up she could detect the tiniest of differences, the ugly inconsistencies that should have told her, long before: she had not sensed the presence of her foe. She had sensed his greatest possession, his dearest treasure, a mystical something that burned with an astral presence all of its own.
The Corona Nox.
'You begin to understand why I drugged you, perhaps?'
Kaustus's voice.
He was directly behind her.
He'd been watching. Of course.
Damn him! Damn him to the jaws of the warp! 'What do y—'
'I had to be sure I had the correct item. The thieves who stole it were hardly trustworthy, and whilst I could rely upon the governor's... interest in all things rare and valuable, even he lacked the resource to determine the item's true ownership. I knew that you would sense the beast's presence if I had the right package.'
Confusion gripped her. Had the duplicity truly gone so deep? Had he used her so mercilessly? 'This is... oh, God-Emperor, I don't under—'
'Naturally I couldn't let you get too close to the item. I'd already decided you were better off out the way. A microdart in your arm, child. It was the easiest thing.'
Stall for time, Mita. Draw him off guard. Keep him busy. Then shoot the warpshit bastard right in the face.
'I almost died! In my dreams... I... I couldn't get back to my body an—'
'Yes, yes. Very interesting.' Scorn dripped from his voice. 'Now put the gun down, interrogator. Kick it away.'
So much for stalling for time. She struggled to find a tone of rebellion in her voice but it was stifled, crushed down by the sense of defeat that gripped her.
'I'm not your interrogator any more'
'Ha. Very true. The gun. Now!'
She bent to do as he said, and as she placed the pistol against the floor she reached out with her mind, probing for weaknesses. But no, Kaustus's brain was as impregnable as ever, protected by whatever mental techniques the Ordo had bequeathed upon him. If he was accompanied by anyone else they failed to register in her psychic senses. There was nothing else she could do but comply.
She skittered the gun away into the shadows with one foot, and turned slowly to face her treacherous master.
He had stepped from the frescoed doorway linking the governor's throne room to the gallery, and stood flanked by six gun servitors: praetorian monstrosities with bodies moulded in polished bronze, bulging with stylised representations of human musculature, faceless heads swarming with sensory ganglia. In each iron-fused hand a weapon was hefted, and Mita found herself staring into the barrels of bolters, meltaguns and flamers alike. It was an impressive show of strength, but — psychically speaking — utterly blank.
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