# Plaything



## Mossy Toes

I’m going for something slightly more surreal and perverse (in both senses of the latter, I guess) with this that what I’ve done before - showing a stranger, grimdarker side of the 40k universe. Still, I hope that you all enjoy!

As ever, critique is enjoyed/appreciated/preferred. The harsher the better, so long as it remains constructive.

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_*PLAYTHING*_

By Mossy Toes

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*Table of Contents:*

Prelude
Chapter I: The Commissar and His Pet
Chapter II: Blood, Fire, and Darkness
Chapter III: A Known Unknown
Chapter IV: Tides of War
Chapter V: Infirmarium Besieged
Interlude I
Chapter VI: A Whole New World
Chapter VII: Designs of the Herald
Chapter VIII: Hunt of the Queen (Part II)
Interlude II
Chapter IX: The Herald’s Favor (Part II)
Chapter X: Storm Front Looming (Part II)
Interlude III
Chapter XI: Battle for the Font
Chapter XII: Dissolution (Part II) (Part III)
Postlude

+++

*Prelude*

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the voices had gone away, and she was alone.

she preferred it when it was that way. when all the voices were quieted down to a dull mosquito buzz. when all the light of the world that shone in through her third sight—not the eyes of course, the other sight—was dimmed to a nothingness.

it let her be alone.

but when she was out, let out to be free, though, she could see Him. He never spoke to her softly because of what she was but she remembered—

she _remembered_—

it was only when she was hidden away from the light and the voices that He spoke softly to her. even then, enough of the voices crept through the suppressant collar that told her it was just out pity that He did this. she didn’t care, and she couldn’t respond when He did do this, but it made her so happy. she wanted to cry out, to laugh and jump whenever His hand briefly brushed her—but she could not.

the only way she could please Him was to hurt the others, the dim-souls and dirty-change-fleshed that tried to harm Him and His fellow clean-flesh whenever He let her out. even then it wasn’t Him she was pleasing but His sense of duty, but it made Him more content and so it was reason enough.

she hurt Him, she knew. she made Him cry at night when she was kenneled and He was in bed, alone. It hurt her so badly to hurt Him—it cut her so deep—but she couldn’t stop. she couldn’t stop without going away, and she couldn’t have gone away if she had wanted, because of the Bright chains that bound her up. however, she knew that she would never want to leave Him. never ever ever, because she loved him, and He loved—

and He _loved_—

but He never even liked her when the collar and blindfold were off. so she was happy that the voices had gone away, and besides, the voices always hurt her. however, the only time she had control of her body was when the voices were there with her.

but she could never tell Him that she she loved Him, not even when the voices were there and the collar was off. so it was better when she was alone. she liked being alone.

but she knew that it was a lie, that she lied to herself, that the voices lied to her, and that He lied to her and to Himself.

because she _remembered_ when He spoke softly to her and she laughed, and she spoke softly back. because she loved Him, and she knew in her heart and mind and anima and soul and spirit and body, she Knew that He _loved_ her still.

and she was so tired of being alone.




+++

*Chapter I: The Commissar and His Pet*

+++

Another Lightning atmospheric fighter split the sky in a supersonic roar, weeping bombs, and was going—going—gone, almost as soon as Commissar Alexos first heard it. The shuddering sound of its passage was lost amidst the explosions of artillery shells and grenades, the rattle of gunfire and crack of lasbeams.

Until the falling bombs kissed the enemy emplacements across the broad causeway. Orange blossoms of flame blasted outward, devouring the air and corrupted flesh. The gutted wreck of a Manufactorium on the enemies’ side of the boulevard groaned, twisted and collapsed. A dark cloud of dust and soot coughed outward. Rebel soldiers shrieked as they were crushed beneath the collapsing ruin—now nothing more than a snarl of stone, plascrete, and rebar.

A cheer broke from the Dunmirra 341st, and the enemy fire faltered momentarily. Solid crumps echoed from other sections of the city, but here was a brief pause and another minor victory for the Imperium. Alexos bared his white teeth in a feral smile.

Those of the squad to which he was attached that saw his expression turned away, suppressing shudders and focusing back on the enemy. They would not like to attract the attention of the dark-skinned Commissar, Throne no. Neither his nor his unnatural pet’s.

Alexos yanked on Sheka’s chain. The woman, though she hardly deserved the term, moaned and staggered forward. The silver chains linking her psi-suppressant collar and blindfold jingled softly.

“It’s almost time, dearest,” Alexos murmured. “Now we’re just waiting for the order.”

Sheka, the broken thing that once would have been Alexos’ wife, whimpered nonsense words of terror. Alexos’ attention was drawn away by Colonel Enskor’s voice, which crackled into his voxbead:

++Third Platoon, advance++

Most of these men were new - fresh recruits, barely expected to live past their first fifteen hours. They had now been planetside twice that long, but they hesitated. Alexos’ smile grew wider.

“Up, my boys!” he roared, almost joyously. The men in the building lurched into motion at his whip-crack voice. “Up, in the Emperor’s name, and at the scum! Run, shoot, scream praises to the Holy Throne—but don’t you dare hold back, or you’ll feel my pistol’s bite!”

They spilled from the relative safety of the building, out into the street clogged with hastily deployed razor wire and covered by overlapping fields of fire. They had hesitated. Pathetic, Alexos thought, even for fresh meat. In truth, the men of this platoon had been through several such desperate charges as these; enough to fear them, but not enough to get used to them. Now was where the cowards would show themselves—now or soon.

The soldiers from the second storey poured past as well, following the first wave over the sandbags. The enemy’s return fire began.

“Dearest,” said Alexos, unclipping Sheka’s collar, “you shall no longer need this.” He suppressed a wave of nausea, as ever, at the static electricity that washed off her and filled the room. He paused momentarily then slid off her blindfold.

A sussurus of gentle, buffeting voices spun around the room, surrounding Skeda. Static snapped and crackled across their clothing as the growing breeze washed over them.

“Silence!” snapped Alexos, fear and revulsion boiling over. Between unveilings, he always forgot this abomination’s one purpose: using its gifts to destroy its fellow tainted. Whenever she was chained, this knowledge receded into the back of his mind and he coddled the thing, giving in to his past emotions. It was an exercise in futility. He would never have back the woman to whom he had proposed.

The voices, and the wind upon which they were carried, died. Alexos nodded in approval.

Sheka rose into the air, violet light building around her. The wall rippled and shed away, bending from her will. She drifted slowly through the hole. Alexos followed closely, revolted by the witch-taint. The wall warped smoothly back into place behind them, no longer scarred by bullets and burns.

“Kill the enemy, witch,” said Alexos coldly. “Give them the fate you long for, but know that they have discarded any chance to bow before Him. Kill them swiftly.”

He was not smiling any longer.

+

Alexos leaned slowly back against the wall, ignoring the distasteful fact that his cushion was a corpse. Sheka was once more bound and chained to his side. His bolt pistol, and the special magazine with shells of blessed silver, were safely put away.

The enemy had been cleared from these city blocks. Once they had realized that they were under attack by a fellow witch, they had been all too eager to pull back. However, the chained witches of the Imperium were unlike the enemy in one way—all Sanctioned Psykers served the light of the Emperor, and Sheka was no exception. Her touch was anathema to the heretic.

Little had been gained, in truth. Just several more rows of useless, shattered buildings—and they were now separated from the enemy by a twenty lane transit route. Soon, Alexos knew, they would have to cross that too, fording a swamp of bullets and mines in the process. He did not look forward to it.

He was tired. These pushes deeper into the city ever since they had landed were wearing both him and Sheka out. Her performance today had been almost...lackluster. Thin. Despite the indifference of the Imperial war machine for the individual, they both needed rest. Pushing Sheka would only increase the chance that some warp-beast would tear its way into her mind, and he did not mean to lose her again.

Guardsmen, both Dunmirra and others, bustled about. The Salthovar 21st uncoiled spools of razor wire and wheeled barrows or rubble into place between buildings. Burly, dun-fatigued members of the Gundread 58th carried sandbags and spades and other implements with which they could shore up the defenses being constructed. In case of an enemy retaliation, the Colonel said, though none seemed likely. The enemy’s back had been broken in this hive when the Dunmirra 341st and other reinforcements had landed, yesterday, and supplemented the Imperial fighters already on the surface.

Hive Janendor was as good as reclaimed. Several thousand Imperial lives and a week or two might be needed to make that a complete reality, but really, it was a foregone conclusion. Crushing defeat and subjugation—that was ever the fate of those who rose up against the Imperium.

These thoughts filtered through his head, along with a vague desire for a lho stick, until Sheka began thrashing against her bindings.

+

Sheka’s violent flailing was a split-second warning, and then all hell exploded.

A trio of rockets spat from a block of buildings behind the new Imperial line. One crashed into a wall with a spray of masonry. Another corkscrewed into a packaged spool of razorwire, sending jagged stretches of it scything through the knot of Salthovarians clustered around it. The third exploded against the treads of a half-track that carried pallets of stacked sand bags. The vehicle slewed to a jerking halt, coughing out its broken treads into a heap and spilling several plastek-wrapped pallets to the ground.

Shouts and warcries burst from several buildings, and heretical soldiers leaped up from hidden grates and sewer panels. Autoguns chattered and lasguns cracked. The Dunmirrans, fresh to combat and unsure of which way to turn, were being scythed down. The more veteran Salthovarians and Gundread responded with some semblance of order and discipline, but were still caught in the open.

Alexos sprung to his feet, cursing, and dragged Sheka behind the corner of the building against which he had been sitting. He fumbled with her bindings, loosing them with impatient fingers. Once she was freed, she rose into the air again.

“Stay close to me and kill the enemy, witch,” Alexos spat. Sheka only nodded, her head lolling loosely as warp-winds fluttered across her clothing. He led the way around the corner and she drifted after him.

A squad of Gundread guardsmen had managed to move to the shelter of the half-constructed earthworks. However, as the enemy were in the buildings to their side as well as at their front, the protection offered by the cover was merely nominal.

The Dunmirra discipline in the area, however, had broken down in the face of the ambush. Injured were scattered across the ferrocrete road, and small groups of soldiers returned fire from behind garbage receptacles, abandoned vehicles, and stray rubble. Alexos intended to change that.

The stricken soldiers needed to be focused, to be given directions and snapped out of the animalistic paralysis into which they had slipped. If they charged and took one of the enemy’s positions, they would not only have cover, but they would have regained the initiative.

Alexos unclipped and raised his bolt pistol. The heretic forces were fewer than the disorienting first moments had made them seem, but the guardsmen were still pinned down or exposed.

“At them!” he cried, loping with long strides across the open ground. “At them in the Emperor’s name, or by Thor I’ll send you to Him early!”

Alexos sprinted forward, waving his pistol to gather the fragmented groups of soldiers to himself. They rose as he passed, joining his bellowed curses with inarticulate cries of their own. Soldiers of Dunmirra, Gundread, and Salthovaria formed to him and crested in a wave that swelled toward the nearest enemy spire block.

Heretical counter-fire swelled as the enemy saw their danger, and would have claimed a dozen lives before Alexos’ charge hit the building, but their bullets and lasbeams hit and invisible wall several feet before the Imperial troops. Bullets splashed across the obstacle like water and dribbled to the ground. Lasbeams _twisted,_ sputtered, and faded, leaving only the after-burned image of their passing across the retinas of those watching.

Sheka was at work.

She rotated in the air, still near and following Alexos, but now watching the backs of the charging guardsmen as well. She swept out her arm lazily, and crackling bolts of what the observers saw, for their own sanity’s sake, as lightning corkscrewed into the front of another of the enemy-held spire blocks. The spare charges from one of the rocket launchers that had fired earlier cooked off, and the large explosion tore outward, blackening and chipping stonework. Heretics screamed.

The squad at the barricade were grappling with enemy fighters in hand to hand, but the impetus of Alexos’ charge galvanized guardsmen to come to their aid.

Alexos fired a bolt from his pistol through an large, open window as he arrived at it. A shape behind it lurched backwards. He followed his bolt through the window, crashing through the flimsy shutters and freeing his saber from its scabbard. More guardsmen spilled into the building through the door or other windows. In the gloom beyond, the enemy waited.

Several shapes spun around Alexos as he lunged through the window. His saber darted out and caught one across the throat, and his barking pistol claimed another, whose face was pulverized by the bolt. The final enemy, a woman with feathers tattooed across her face and broken teeth, discarded her autogun and lunged forward with a knife. Alexos swept his sword across his front and deflected her blow, but she continued her forward rush and crashed into him as he recovered.

He twisted as they both were knocked off their feet and landed lightly on all fours. In an instant, he was straightening and whipping upward with his pistol’s butt. The woman blocked his swing with her arm, but fell backwards. She writhed and kicked, but she was not fast enough to prevent his bringing the pistol to bear. The impact of his bolt severed her spine.

He picked up his saber, which had been knocked from his grasp by her lunge, and stood. Shouts spilled through a doorway adjacent to the street, and Alexos moved toward them. There was work to do.

+

Captain Miaro was strip-searching civilians when the ambush occurred. Several hundred captured inhabitants of the fallen city had been rounded up from the latest push—those who hadn’t fled their habs and spires at the approach of the fighting or been killed by the indiscriminate artillery shelling. Now, precautions had to be taken to ensure that they didn’t stick like a nail through the sole of the advancing Imperial boot.

In groups of twenty, the citizens stripped down. Once their lack of weapons, cult markings, and mutations was affirmed, they were given new clothes—baggy, two-piece jumpsuits of a one-size-fits-nobody make. They were made to affirm their loyalty to the God-Emperor and Saint Thor. Finally, all twenty, or less if any had failed to impress their purity and loyalty upon the Imperials, were packaged into a single cargo truck and sent off to one of the reeducation centers that had been erected since Imperial planetfall.

The abandoned sets of clothes and the bodies of those who failed any one of the these examinations were slung carelessly into piles. After the vetting was finished, the heaps would be carted away to a bonfire. The most common cause of failure was lack of piety, though quite a few ‘applicants for Imperial citizenship’ had gang tattoos. Both of these were enough to warrant a lasbeam to the head.

This group was particularly restive. Most were usual docile type—weeping into their hands or shuffling along with bent heads. However, there was a higher than usual number of laborers and burly workers. These glowered and resisted the prods of their liberators. Such insolence was only tolerated because they would be the men most needed in the reconstruction of this world.

Therefore, Captain Miaro’s attention ought to have been on the captives when the attackers struck. This was not the case, thanks to a warning from his unique sixth sense. His sixth sense was odd; something that came and went uncontrollably, but, when it actually did stir, useful to the extremes.

His head snapped to the side. He saw several figures in civilian clothing clambering into position atop a rooftop, carrying a portable krak missile launcher.

He began bellowing orders to his soldiers, directing them to the enemy-occupied rooftop. The Gundread guardsmen sent sprays of lasfire toward the heretic positions, and the enemy scattered.

More attackers appeared, but in scattered groups as it became clear that their cover had been blown early. The guardsmen were able to occupy defensive positions and smash each piecemeal enemy strike. Miaro was in his element, roaring orders to Glaen, his vox officer, and countering the gradually more cohesive enemy assaults.

Until his sixth sense returned, and with a vengeance. Something was wrong with it; it possessed a sour, sickening taint that he had never before felt. His head spun and his stomach kicked, and a lasbolt took off half his face.

It came from an entirely unexpected quarter—the civilians yet to be examined by his men. It entered beside his nose, passed through his right cheekbone, vaporized bone, and exited, weakened, through his right ear. The merest fraction of a second later, the superheated air expanding in its wake blasted open the right side of his face. Eight soldiers later swore that they saw the shot hit Miaro, and saw him fall.

First Lieutenant Crestholm was invaluable in coordinating a defense after the loss of Miaro. With his leadership, the Gundread fought off their attackers with only eleven fatalities. They killed, or incapacitated and soon thereafter finished off, sixty-eight of the ambushers. Twenty-eight civilians died, fourteen more were badly injured, and twenty-seven suffered superficial burns, shrapnel injuries, or cuts. Eleven vanished.

Captain Miaro’s body was not found, but he was declared K.I.A. due to the testimony of his subordinates. Commissar Beinthop of the Gundread 58th signed his certificate of death that night, and tore it up a week later in a fit of anger.

+

“How,” queried Colonel Enskor, quivering angrily, “did this happen? I lost more than five platoons worth of men along the line from those blasted attacks. Tell me, Commissar, what mistakes did our soldiers make?”

Alexos was by no means a tall man, but found himself looking down merely to meet the Colonel’s fiery glare. Major Vutch shifted awkwardly beside Alexos, glancing down at her feet for a moment before speaking.

“We were careless, sir,” she replied, “and we underestimated the suicidal drive of our enemies. The Dunmirra were inexperienced, and didn’t know how to respond to the ambush. The Gundread and Salthovarian forces, across the line, lost far fewer than our own soldiers.”

Though, continued Alexos in his own mind, Miaro’s loss would be felt harder than all of the day's other casualties combined. Alexos had been impressed by the command that the captain had so effortlessly exhibited over his men during the transit they had spent together. It was a bitter pill to swallow to lose the Gundread captain so soon.

“They hid inside the buildings that we took,” continued Vutch. “Buildings we took too easily, sir, in hindsight. Inside the air ducts, amongst the civilians, and, mostly, in concealed sub-basement compartments. Obviously, this is a method of striking at us that has a very low survival rate amongst their men. From the numbers that came from underground, I had originally thought that more heretics had hidden in the sewer system, but hivequakes have rendered those nearly inoperable for years. Look, sir. Do you see this transit route?”

Vutch swept her arm out to indicate the twenty-one lane causeway to their left. The lumestrips attached to the plascrete seven-lane dividers had powered up and were visible in the dimness of the dusk.

“Do I see it? Of course I do, you bitch! We’re practically standing on it!”

There was a moment of silence in which both Vutch and Alexos stared icily at the inexperienced commander, who bristled petulantly.

“Sir,” said Alexos eventually, stepping forward with slow menace. He now loomed even further over the diminutive colonel. “I possess the power to remove you from your office, and will not have you address your soldiers so. Should your manner continue to be so crass before your soldiers, I may have to take steps that you would not like me to take.”

Enskor spluttered momentarily and took a step backward, drawing himself up a few ineffective centimeters. Alexos’s hand drifted casually under his greatcoat to where his bolt pistol slept, holstered. The colonel marked the movement and, wisely, snapped his mouth shut.

“Major,” said Alexos calmly, turning away, “please continue.”

“Ah, right, the…transit route,” said Major Vutch, blinking. “It was used by vehicles ferrying themselves away from the industrial sector here in the outskirts and returning to the hive proper, up there. But how did they get to the manufactoria in the first place, sir? Maps mark this as one of the main arteries for the transport of raw materials, and it only leads away from the industrial sector. Or does it?”

Alexos smiled grimly, knowing what came next. The Colonel stared silently at his subordinates, still bristling.

“Beneath us is another transit route,” said Vutch, “built directly underneath this upper one. Twenty-one lanes, too, and perfectly unseen by us. This is how they attacked us—using the maintenance shafts and manholes from below. When we tried to follow, they detonated charges and collapsed those tunnels. We’ve been blocking off all the other rat holes that we find.”

Enskor snorted derisively as Vutch paused again.

“And how does this affect us? Apart from stoppering a nuisance?”

Vutch pursed her lips and stiffened again. Alexos could sympathize—not only was the colonel dismissing a crucial link in the enemy battle line, but he was also, by dismissing the tactical importance of the tunnels, very nearly dismissing the lives of the men that had been lost to the element of surprise. Did Enskor’s fury about the destroyed platoons stem solely from the fact that his regiment had lost the most in these ambushes, and that that was a black eye on his record?

“Sir,” cut in Alexos before Vutch launched whatever vitriolic comment had sprung to her lips. He continued slowly and diplomatically. “The implications here are…massive. This could be why the Chardonii 112th and the PDF are having so much trouble capturing the industrial district. For all we know, the vile heretics could be moving whole battalions of armor and infantry down there without us getting so much as a whiff. And, if we capture this under-route, we’d be cutting off a line of their retreat. The problem is that until then, they can vomit out as many more soldiers as they want on the other side of over-route, and we have no easy entry point down there.”

The Colonel’s face had slowly puckered into a deeper and deeper scowl as Alexos spoke. Alexos was contemptuous—by capturing this, the blasted fool would have an opportunity to prove the newly-founded Dunmirra 341st’s fighting prowess like no other that might spring up in the rest of the time they spent on this world.

“This would be risky, yes?” hazarded the Colonel.

“Undoubtedly, sir, but—”

“And since the string of abushes, these under-tunnels are by no means a secret anymore?”

“Quite possibly, sir, though—”

“Then what’s to stop us from blasting through and sweeping in with several companies? We don’t care if we collapse their transit route on their heads!”

Alexos blinked. That had been several hoops of logic fewer than he had expected to have to lead the colonel. Perhaps Enskor, despite his flab, height, and crude inexperience, might eventually prove to be a capable officer.

The colonel waddled swiftly off, calling for a map and a vox-officer. Alexos and Vutch looked at each other, and Alexos was slightly surprised to see hostility in her eyes.

“What prompted that protective outburst of yours, commissar?” she asked, her voice soft but dangerous. As he opened his mouth to reply, she spoke again, over-riding him. “Sympathy? Not exactly a large part of your job, is it? Or would you plead compassion? With your wife chained behind you, mewling and drooling?”

“Sheka is not my—” began Alexos, his voice brittle, but the major cut him off again.

“I’ve been dealing with sexist grox-scat my entire life,” she spat. “It’s the condescension I get that I hate, the assumption that I need to be protected. Keep your bloody help to yourself.”

She stalked away as well, leaving Alexos alone with Sheka.

+

Footsteps.

Their echoes reverberated across the walls, mingling with the echoing plips and plops of dribbling water. The far-away sounds of dueling artillery and explosions were all but silenced by the meters of ferrocrete and stone separating the tunnels from the surface.

Thick growths of soft, fronded muscosus graced the dampest corners, uncurling and furling itself again, undulating and quivering. Dim or broken lumebulbs hung from exposed wires along the hallway’s arch. There were no vermin, though—the rats that didn’t have the sense to stay away from the powers unleashed in this place were hunted down by the apprentices of the Order.

The man whose feet echoed down the dark pathways had many names. He was born as Maelro Cantis, but very few indeed knew that name anymore. In the Mentian sub-sector, he was known as Cadoaze and the Warpwender. By the hounds of the Inquisition, he was called Chargotte. He held the titles ‘The Paradoxical’ and ‘The Keeper of the Citadel Unformed’. He was the Bodythief and the Herald of Nightmare. He was worshiped and feared as Thrall the Whisperer by the feral tribes of Salcias. However, he held one of his accolades held far higher than any other. That was the title of Mask Bearer, and he wore a golden mask.

His paces were firm and measured, but his mind was—literally—elsewhere. It washed across the battlefield, avoiding Imperial psykers and calculating the losses and deaths that drained down this miserable hive’s gutters. Several objects or situations across the kilometers of battlefield caught whorls of psychic energy or violent emotion that attracted his attention.

A guardsman cradled his dying twin in his arms. A flock of toxic vultures scattered before a flight of Hell Blade fighters. An Earthshaker shell split a command bunker in half but miraculously harmed only a single servitor inside with minor concussive shock. A Leman Russ Demolisher was overrun by heretical soldiers, but a valiant sponson gunner threw a krak grenade into the ammunition magazine. A leaf blown from another continent span in an eddy of wind atop one of the hive’s spires.

The man arrived at his destination. He swept the door open with a tendril of power and stepped inside. An acolyte within bowed away from the captive over which he had been bent and retreated. The masked psyker stepped up to the injured Imperial and probed his mind.

Good. There was potential here that, although deadened by drugs and pain, could be put to use. The sutures stretched across the horrific injury on the man’s face held the facial structure together enough that a mask would not sit unsteadily, either. This man would make a decent convert—if not a willing one…

+

Another rumbling explosion rocked the transit route, sending coughing tongues of flame out of the hole and a light mist of gravel across the Imperials that were stationed to guard the demolition digging. Every several hours, a servitor was lowered down with a load of det-block to place in the cavity that had thus far been scored in the ferrocrete ground.

Every several years, a hivequake shook the massive, looming, conical edifice above. When it did so, loose siding and infrastructure was shaken down, landing in these outskirts with enough force to flatten vast swathes of them. The industrial sector was far enough away from the hive’s looming sides to avoid much of the damage, but only the poor, the foolhardy, and the workers lived this close to the hive proper. When the debris fell, it was smoothed by work teams, and new hab blocks were constructed atop the ruins of it and the habs below.

Over the hundreds of years since the hive had been constructed, more than a hundred feet of this ‘hive-shale’ had built up. Foothills of the shale built up on the erg of the hive’s sloped sides, where the difference between the wall and the detritus became steadily more unclear.

Ten minutes passed. A few last crashes occurred in the twenty-foot deep hole, slide-ins of loose rubble and similar, but the pit remained structurally sound. Workers were lowered to clear out the piles of shattered debris at the bottom.

The workers—’liberated’ civilians who had been given their first task—filled baskets with the shards and chunks of ferrocrete that were able to be lifted. Others took pickaxes and chain-drills to the larger, more tangled heaps of slag to break them up.

This time, one of the workers noticed something different. Tangled rebar and damaged plascrete were visible to one side of the wall—a sign that they could be punching through to another layer of the strata surrounding the hive. When the man reported this to the soldiers in charge of demolition, they smiled, nodded, and ordered the vox man to call the regiments to readiness, as this next detonation could very well break through. This was the second such call, but they needed to be prepared, in case the next was the true call to arms. After all, they were deep enough—the seismic scans from the battleships above, despite some interference, projected the depth of the underground tunnels to be approximately twenty-five feet beneath the one on the surface, of which they had dug more than three-quarters.

Colonel Enskor of the Dunmirrans and Colonel Rastheim of the Gundread were awakened and told to put their soldiers on high alert. As the men assembled, Commissars Alexos and Beinthop briefed them on the situation.

+++


----------



## NurglingStomper

Mossy Toes said:


> +
> 
> Alexos leaned slowly back against the wall, ignoring the distasteful fact that his cushion was a corpse. Sheka was once more bound and chained to his side. His bolt pistol, and the special magazine with shells of blessed silver, were safely put away.
> 
> The enemy had been cleared from these city blocks. Once they had realized that they were under attack by a fellow witch, they had been all too eager to pull back. However, the chained witches of the Imperium were unlike the enemy in one way - all Sanctioned Psykers saw the light of the Emperor, and Sheka was no exception. Her touch was anathema to the heretic.
> 
> Little had been gained, in truth. Just several more rows of useless, shattered buildings - and they were now separated from the enemy by a twenty lane transit route. Soon, Alexos knew, they would have to cross that too, fording a swamp of bullets and mines in the process. He did not look forward to it.
> 
> He was tired. These pushes deeper into the city ever since they had landed were wearing both him and Sheka out. Her performance today had been almost... lackluster. Thin. Despite the indifference of the Imperial war machine for the individual, they both needed rest. Pushing Sheka would only increase the chance that some warp-beast would tear its way into her mind, and he did not mean to lose her again.
> 
> Guardsmen, both Dunmirra and others, bustled about. The Salthovar 21st uncoiled spools of razor wire and wheeled barrows or rubble into place between buildings. Burly, dun-fatigued members of the Gundread 58th carried sandbags and trowels and other implements with which they could shore up the defenses being constructed. In case of an enemy retaliation, the Colonel said, though none seemed likely. The enemy's backs had been broken in this city when the Dunmirra 341st and other reinforcements had landed, yesterday, and supplemented the Imperial fighters already on the surface.
> 
> Hive Janendor was as good as reclaimed. Several thousand Imperial lives and a week or two might be needed to make that a complete reality, but really, it was a foregone conclusion. Crushing defeat and subjugation - that was ever the fate of those who rose up against the Imperium.
> 
> These thoughts filtered through his head, along with a vague desire for a lho stick, until Sheka began thrashing against her bindings.
> 
> +
> 
> Alexos leaned slowly back against the wall, ignoring the distasteful fact that his cushion was a corpse. Sheka was once more bound and chained to his side. His bolt pistol, and the special magazine with shells of blessed silver, were safely put away.
> 
> The enemy had been cleared from these city blocks. Once they had realized that they were under attack by a fellow witch, they had been all too eager to pull back. However, the chained witches of the Imperium were unlike the enemy in one way - all Sanctioned Psykers saw the light of the Emperor, and Sheka was no exception. Her touch was anathema to the heretic.
> 
> Little had been gained, in truth. Just several more rows of useless, shattered buildings - and they were now separated from the enemy by a twenty lane transit route. Soon, Alexos knew, they would have to cross that too, fording a swamp of bullets and mines in the process. He did not look forward to it.
> 
> He was tired. These pushes deeper into the city ever since they had landed were wearing both him and Sheka out. Her performance today had been almost… lackluster. Thin. Despite the indifference of the Imperial war machine for the individual, they both needed rest. Pushing Sheka would only increase the chance that some warp-beast would tear its way into her mind, and he did not mean to lose her again.
> 
> Guardsmen, both Dunmirra and others, bustled about. The Salthovara 21st uncoiled spools of razor wire and wheeled barrows or rubble into place between buildings. Burly, dun-fatigued members of the Gundread 58th carried sandbags and trowels and other implements with which they could shore up the defenses being constructed. In case of an enemy retaliation, the Colonel said, though none seemed likely. The enemy’s backs had been broken in this city when the Dunmirra 341st and other reinforcements had landed, yesterday, and supplemented the Imperial fighters already on the surface.
> 
> Hive Janendor was as good as reclaimed. Several thousand Imperial lives and a week or two might be needed to make that a complete reality, but really, it was a foregone conclusion. Crushing defeat and subjugation - that was ever the fate of those who rose up against the Imperium.
> 
> These thoughts filtered through his head, along with a vague desire for a lho stick, until Sheka began thrashing against her bindings.
> 
> +


You repeat here. Other than that real nice, I like how you capture the grimness of war, with the fighting. Good story, waiting for more, but then you know how much I like your stories haha.


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## Mossy Toes

This is about a third of what's been written, and what's been written is about two-thirds of the first half of the story. The first half, I hear you ask? Yes - halfway through, at a point I haven't _quite_ reached yet, there is *The Shift*.

I'm really excited where this story is going. It has a lot of potential, and it could really leave The Mutant Child in the dust, by its end. If I could tell you what's coming, I would, but I don't want to spoil your story for you. But yeah, I'm really hoping to shock the socks off a few people with how this thing turns out.

*resists temptation to put up next section _already_*


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## NurglingStomper

Well you got a follower here, just subscribed.


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## Israfil

awesome, simply awesome. definitely my favorite of your works thus far. you should totally post the next part already. you know you want to.:wink:


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## Mossy Toes

I know, I want to...and I'm going to leave for about four days tomorrow. In the morning, then.


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## NurglingStomper

Woot!! In the morning. YES!!


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## Israfil

Hooray!!! i will wake bright and early for it!


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## Mossy Toes

I forgot.

Extra-special update on the express route now!


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## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter II: Blood, Fire, and Darkness*

+++


Looking out through these eyes, the masked psyker cast his gaze over his pawns. Their minds had been wiped blank but for a desire to kill, and now they stood in silent rows, filling the darkness. These were the youths, the cripples and the old men; these were the frailest of the women and the sickliest accountants, all having been fed into a psychic siphon to create near-mindless thralls and to fuel his other projects.

They waited quietly, their stillness born of their virtual lobotomy. An observer might have taken them for statues, had not their chests risen and fallen ever so slightly. Their minders, actual trained and fanatical soldiers, patrolled behind them.

All of these heretics had lived in the hive their entire lives, as displayed by their malnourished frames. Many of them were scarred or tattooed, with serpents and feathered creatures being the predominant imagery amongst the latter. Their carbines, autoguns, and bare-handled knifes were crude affairs, the obvious dross of the forges. These soldiers were not expected to stop the enemy—instead, they were to die, and in doing so to bleed the enemy, giving more experienced and faithful heretic soldiers time to get into position.

The earth rumbled again, and the ferrocrete wall shattered apart with a reverberating crack. The concussion blasted many of the waiting figures off their feet, and a great cleft was torn into the wall. Jagged rubble, ranging in size from gravel to slabs the height of a man, scythed through the assembled ranks. With the blast came a choking, acrid cloud.

The greatest response that the thrall-soldiers gave was to blink, or to clamber back to their feet. Those injured by the shrapnel stood as best they could. Several forms did not stir at all, or expired after a few, faint struggles.

Rubble shifted and clattered into the tunnel; debris from above. After several minutes, though, the streams of dirt and pebbles slowed. By now, the choking cloud of dust had begun to clear, and the maw-like hole in the wall was fully visible. A minder snarled a single clipped order, and the silent slaves adjusted themselves to face the hole.

The Imperials came. The first men that descended were clad in matte-black carapace armor and bearing flamers and hellguns. These were the Gundread First Platoon, the elite of their regiment. Their equipment rivaled that of Imperial Stormtroopers, and their training was barely less harsh and demanding. The very first men through the hole were laying down an ordered and punishing hail of lasfire before the thralls realized that they were under attack.

At the psyker's mental command, the thralls replied in kind. A torrent of shots, primarily from autoguns, but with the support of the minders’ laspistols, poured back into the Imperials. Durable carapace armor and the poor accuracy of the thralls ensured that the vast majority of the return fire was harmless, but its sheer volume ensured some successful hits. Several black-armored Gundread staggered or fell. A hellgun exploded, taking its owner's forearms with it.

Most soldiers would have wavered at this crucial juncture, the masked psyker knew, and been pressed back into the rat-hole to above from which they spilled. However, the First Platoon's members were not most soldiers, and they continued to push forward. The soldiers' footsteps were measured and methodical, and the psyker noticed that they kept away from the walls. This was to avoid ricochets he assumed. he admired their bravery, as such a tactic left them with no cover whatsoever.

The temperature of the air in the scant thirty paces between the two sides began to rise as the sheer quantity of lasfire boiled it. Heat distortion made the figures of the Gundread waver in the psyker's vision.

The distance between the two forces shrank, with the heretic thralls taking far greater casualties. Grenades from the soldiers of the First exploded in their midst, and hellguns on full auto scythed through their arrayed ranks. Imperials were constantly spilling from the jagged entrance to reinforce their own forces too, and bringing even more guns to bear: the last members of the First Platoon, and the beginnings of the rest of the soldiers, the dun-fatigued standard Gundread troopers and infantry wearing the darker brown of Dunmirra.

The psyker judged that the time was ripe and sent the thralls surging forward with a flick of his mind. Select soldiers amongst the First Platoon stepped forward, raised their flamers, and let loose a veritable wall of blazing promethium. The thralls struggled forward, falling without so much as a single cry of pain.

One thrall, swathed in flame, managed to reach the enemy and wrapped himself around one of the flamer-carriers. The resultant promethium explosion tore a hole in both the Imperial and the heretic line, though carapace-armored members of the First Platoon were afforded much more protection from the blast than their foes.

Despite the horrendous casualties inflicted by the soldiers carrying flamers, they were pushed back by the mindless charge of the thralls. They fell back into the relative safety of the Imperial ranks mere seconds before the thralls crashed into them. The combat was well and truly joined.

The psyker nodded to himself and faded back into the darkness. The thralls would die, but in doing so, serve their purpose. Already, further musters of his forces were trickling in toward the conflict. The cavalry was coming. He might even kill a few for himself...

+

Darkness, pierced by bitter flashes and the echoing reports of gunfire. Shouts, moans, and despairing cries interwove with this crescendo, creating a roaring symphony of humanity.

A figure appeared in front of Alexos, coming from and swathed in the gloom. He pistol-whipped it, and it cried out in pain, adding to the cacophony. Alexos’s barking pistol gave a counter-note, silencing the heretic.

Alexos was death, avenging and shrouded in black. His bolt pistol and chainsword together sang a hymn, a prayer to his savior, who sacrificed His flesh and ascended to the Throne to save Mankind. Those who turned their faces from His light could do naught but cower in their dank holes, but even then, Alexos hunted them. Even now.

Lances of psychic energy hummed past, a gift to the foe from Sheka. Her perverse mutation was ever a gift when fighting the enemies of the Emperor, as it turned their own foul magicks back against themselves.

The heretics were crumbling. For the last several hours, the fighting had been raging intensely, but now their numbers were dwinding. They had fought tooth and nail, but the Imperials had poured more and more soldiers into the tunnel. The initial entry force had pushed forward to the far wall of the transit route, claiming a complete stripe of the twenty-one lane tunnel. 

Immediately after, the Imperial forces had swept outward in each direction. They had broken open all pockets of resistance that had tried to push out from the maintenance tunnels that threaded into the tunnel’s sides. The enemy that had clustered around the two rows of massive columns that divided the causeway into groups of seven lanes had been surrounded and purged.

Major Vutch had led the Dunmirran push that had followed under-route in the direction opposite of Alexos.

The wrecks of heretic half-tracks smoldered, the remnants of a concerted forward push by the foe. Lacking meltaguns, the Dunmirrans had nearly broken. When Alexos arrived, he had made examples of a several cowards, and “persuaded” a few of the more gallant soldiers to act as krak grenadiers. Most of these had died, but the heretics’ counter-attack had been shattered.

Now the enemy’s morale had all but broken. The firefights in the darkness were far more one-sided now, as the Gundread and the Dunmirrans put their foes to flight and lanced them down with lasguns. The disorganized enemy fought on in scattered pockets, but they had already lost the day.

The scorching, blistering heat generated by firefights, explosions and fires warred gustily with the cooler air of the tunnel. Alexos’ face was caked in soot—not that it made his flesh too much darker—and howling winds tore through the disturbed air of the under-route as the heat tried to rise and disperse. Sheka was pristinely clean, as ever, and surrounded by a pocket of dead air.

Dunmirrans carrying heavy equipment clattered up behind Alexos as the last of this group of traitors were dispatched. He turned to them.

“Quickly,” he said, “set up the flood lamps. And check the dead.” More than once, enemies had faked their own deaths, only to rise behind the Dunmirrans in ambush.

Mobile generators were wheeled into place, and the guardsmen yanked their start-cords, murmuring prayers to the spirits of the engines. The cords that provided the holy communication between the generators and lamps were then stowed as the former coughed into life. The flood lights hissed into brilliant illumination, forcing many of the guardsmen to hide their eyes. Alexos had already turned his back, and so avoided losing his vision.

Hundreds of feet of the tunnel ahead were cast into light. At the illumination’s edges, dim figures were visible, moving, preparing themselves—but certainly not fleeing. And there were a lot of them.

“Vox,” Alexos spat. “Support. Get another two platoons over here, sharp.”

“Two platoons to reinforce ours, sir,” the platoon’s vox officer replied sharply. “Got it.”

Alexos further surveyed the enemies. He knew that he had a platoon and a third in assorted soldiers, but the enemies were too shrouded by the gloom to get an accurate estimate. He guessed that there were at least seventy of them, but their could be a full regiment out there, for all he knew. However, he would be damned if he gave up a foot of ground to them. So long as the Dunmirrans stayed behind the lights, they would have a well-lit killing field, and the enemy would be blinded. Besides, he had Sheka.

A howling wind raced along the tunnel at an unimaginable speed, staggering soldiers and knocking over the lights that they were erecting. Alexos’s coat billowed outward and he was almost blown over. A generator toppled onto its side and was dragged along the ground, spraying sparks. Cords were pulled from its side and whipped dangerously in the hell-gale. Even Sheka was staggered by the gusts, and almost blown head over skirts.

She righted herself after a moment, though, and surged forward. Around her, the wind broke like a bow wave, but she stayed as steady as a ship’s prow. To those behind her, in the umbra of her protection, the wind died with the same unsettling rapidity that it had come. The bewildered platoon stood itself back up again and looked around at the toppled machinery.

_A psyker_, Sheka spoke, directly into Alexos’s mind. _Warp-wind_.

“Is it more powerful than you?” he asked aloud. The soldiers around him avoided his gaze, looking at the floor or into the darkness again.

_Of course not_, she said scornfully.

Alexos hated it when she spoke to him. It reminded him too much of the past. Besides, it wasn’t the Sheka that he had known that spoke—it seemed like some other being had taken her place, devoured her and filled her body. The savants and sages assured him that this wasn’t so, that she had simply been changed by the manifestation of her powers, but-

A dull roar woke him from his reverie. He stood, looking into the field of light cast by the few remaining flood lamps; still brilliant, but dim by comparison to what it had been mere moments ago. The dark figures, now even fainter than before, moved in the murky blackness. Shouting their battle cries, the enemy came.

+

“Incoming!” roared Alexos. “Sergeant Cante, get those lamps back up! Rest of you, pick your targets and open fire! I want those scum running on a carpet of their dead to get to us!”

Cante was one of the four sergeants amongst the men with Alexos. One of the two platoons that made up his composite platoon had lost their lieutenant to enemy fire; the other leitenant had been made an example of by Alexos when the half-tracks assaulted. The cowardly _tekko_ had ordered a retreat.

Guardsmen brought their weapons to bear, and began firing. In this light and at this distance, few hit, but several of the dark shapes did stagger or fall. Not enough, though.

Sheka reared higher into the air, drawing back her hands. Her normally impassive face was twisted into a sneer. She whipped an arm forward, and a faint distortion traced its way from her fingertips and arched toward the enemy lines, soon lost in the darkness. When it impacted, however, there was no doubting what had occurred.

Purple light shot up in the center of the charging enemy line, and the unfortunate heretics caught in it shrieked and crumpled to the ground.

Sheka threw another almost invisible ripple of energy, but this one exploded, a mind-bending firework halfway between the two forces. Corkscrews of purple and gold shot outward. Another gust of air flared up for less than a second before dying, carrying echoing, half-heard whispers.

The illumination revealed the approximate size of the enemy’s force: no more than three times that of the Imperials, but made infinitely more dangerous by the presence of the hidden psyker. Sheka could possibly cancel that advantage out, but that still left more than enough foes for the Dunmirran soldiers.

Lasfire from the Imperial lines felled more figures. The enemy had increased their speed to a jog now, and becoming more distinct. The difference between the color of their flesh and fatigues was now more visible, and they were beginning to return a scattering of inaccurate fire.

A display of pyrotechnics bloomed directly in front of the Imperial line, causing the men to shout and jump back in fear. Sheka whirled from her position in front of it and vomited a wave of water that doused the flames and vanished. The rockcrete floor was neither scorched nor wet.

 But now golden spears of energy lanced forward and picked off Imperials toward the edges of their line. Alexos saw the figure that cast them; a cloaked man, but one whose face shone and reflected the light of the flood lamps as if burnished.

He swiftly ejected the magazine of his bolt pistol and slapped in his special magazine of bolts of blessed silver. He took a careful bead on the figure and fired. The bolt shot away, a miniature rocket that left a contrail in the gloom of the tunnel, and detonated directly in front of the enemy psyker, failing to harm it at all. It whirled and vanished into the mass of enemy bodies. Alexos cursed. He had forgotten to clear the chamber of the standard bolt that had been in it, and given away the advantage of surprise.

A guardsman jerked and fell beside Alexos as a lucky autogun shot impacted into his knee, reducing it to a mess of shattered bone and gristle. Alexos retrieved the man’s lasgun so as not to waste his precious silver bolt shells and turned it upon the ever-nearing enemy. He would have killed for an autocannon, heavy stubber, or heavy bolter with which to mow down the exposed enemy.

Sheka called down a rain of fire, only to have it deflected by the hidden psyker. A delirious haze descended upon a segment of the Imperial line, but just as soon, Sheka unwove it. The ground erupted beneath a clump of the heretics and they found themselves impaled by fore-arm sized splinters of rockcrete. The air crackled with the greasy static of concentrated psychic energy.

Alexos’ nose had begun bleeding, but he paid it no heed. He let off lasbeams until the energy cell ran dry, and was pleased to see that the enemy was taking a painful toll. The second generator—one that had failed with the wind, but not the one that had been knocked over—had been successfully restarted, and more re-erected lights flickered back on. The guardsmen utilized the increased lighting to their advantage.

Lucky shots, such as that which had incapacitated the man beside Alexos, increased in number. More heretics were firing from the hip as they ran, or dropping to some small heap of rubble to fire at the guardsmen. The enemy was now a mere seventy feet away and running full out.

“Cante, leave the lights,” ordered Alexos. “Have your squad support and be ready with grenades!”

A bark of affirmation greeted him, and the few men still toiling over the fallen generator peeled away from it.

Sheka drifted back into the relative safety of the Imperial line, and descended to her typical height of several inches off the ground.

As the enemy came closer, still dying, Alexos caught another glimpse of the enemy psyker. Its face was covered by a golden mask that, even from fifty feet away, the expression that it wore was clearly one of vicious glee. He cast aside the lasgun, which he had twice reloaded since he had picked it up, and leveled his bolt pistol again. Before he could fire, though, the psyker was lost amidst the surging horde of the enemy.

“Grenades!” came the cry, and seconds later, the front ranks of the enemy were engulfed in flame and shrapnel. More enemies cried out and fell.

Alexos knelt and switched the magazines of his pistol again to standard shells, swiftly but without undue haste, despite the proximity of the enemy. This time, he cleared the chamber of the opposite type of shell. He stood again and revved his chainsword. The enemy, now a mere eight meters away and sprinting, roared. Alexos spat.

“For the Emperor!” he roared, lunging forward to meet them.

He swung his chainsword, shattering the autogun of the first enemy and tearing apart their stomach. He kicked the man away and stepped forward again, slashing again. A nimble heretic ducked under the clumsy blade and shouldered Alexos off balance. Alexos’s bolt pistol stitched a row of detonations up the man’s front as Alexos staggered.

He whirled with his chainsword brought back to bear as another screaming fanatic stepped forward. The blade’s jagged teeth tore greedily into the man’s neck, snapping his neck with a ‘crack’ audible over the roar of its engine. The man slumped to the ground. A guardsman with a bayonet jumped past Alexos and tackled a heretic to the ground, but another enemy stood over the two of them. Alexos blew off his shoulder.

With a disorienting suddenness, the light of many of the flood lamps died. One of the generators had apparently been damaged. The heretics let out victorious cries and ripped into the Imperials with heartened vigor.

But the Imperials were far from done, especially with Sheka on their side. She swept her arms forward, immolating a score of enemies. Her visage twisted once again an arrogant sneer, and she drifted forward, surrounded by a bow wave of death.

Alexos slashed at a heretic in carapace armor, but the gnawing teeth of his blade bounced off the man’s armor and the enemy jammed his own blade into the side of the chainsword. It sputtered and died.

But Alexos still had his pistol. He jammed it into his opponent’s face and pulled the trigger. A further splattering of gore was added to that which had already built up on Alexos’s uniform from the chainsword’s arterial spray.

He hefted his dead chainsword as another heretic lunged forward and swung it as a club. It impacted with a sickening squelch and bowled the man over. He didn’t get up.

Alexos caught a glimpse of flickering gold out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, and saw the enemy psyker tearing Sergeant Cante’s ribcage apart with his bare hands. Alexos leveled his bolt pistol and unleashed a hail of shots, but was forced to duck away as a screaming, tattooed woman threw herself at him.

He pistol-whipped her and kicked her knee. She fell, and he tried to finish her with his pistol—but its magazine clicked dry. He cursed, and stepped on the hand of hers that was scrabbling for an abandoned autogun. He kicked her in the face, and rotten teeth were knocked loose. Picking up the autogun while she reeled, he finished her himself.

Alexos looked up and ran towards the psyker again, who now faced him. As Alexos ran, he ejected his empty magazine and grabbed the silver shells from the pocket in which he kept it.

A searing bolt of energy forced Alexos to dive to one side. He slammed the full magazine home into the pistol as he rolled, and came upright firing it at his golden-masked foe. The bolt pistol’s hollow chamber clicked—he hadn’t cocked it.

The psyker’s hand was already raised and crackling with energy. For an instant, Alexos thought that here he would be ended; here he would become one more forgotten casualty in an unforgiving universe.

Until Sheka descended from the heavens like a diving raptor, burning through the man’s wards and shields with ease. With eye-blurring speed, she smashed into the psyker, whose bones snapped with brittle cracks. She tossed his body to the floor.

Incredibly, though no human could have survived that, the psyker staggered back upright. Energy spilled from his mask and crackled across his robes.

“Makocha!” cried the animated corpse despairingly, “je na la vaida!”

A wave of force knocked Alexos to the ground and he retched as his stomach churned. Churning emotions swept through his mind: extreme sorrow, elation, and giddy despair, to name but a few. These were accompanied by slurred, unclear whispers and strange, blurred images. The taste of pluquats filled his mouth through the vomit, and he almost choked in shock.

Then it was over. The energy receded, and with it, the soul of the enemy psyker. Alexos spat to clear his mouth and looked around. For a good fifty feet, all guardsmen and heretics had been knocked over. Several were weeping. Sheka too was on the ground, curled in a ball and convulsing.

Fighters from outside the area that had been stunned in this manner began to spill in, finishing their enemies as they lay supine or struggling to protect them. Those who had been grounded lurched to their feet, disoriented.

Alexos stumbled towards Sheka. He bent over her and gently raised her head. She looked at him, actually focused on him, and his heart almost stopped beating in shock. Her eyes were full of pain, hurt, and—and the heart-breaking gratitude.

“Alexos…” she murmured. This was the first word he had heard her say aloud since that day twelve years ago. He was frozen with a volcanic eruption of emotion, none of it familiar to him except in the manner that a forest might be familiar to one who has seen a single, withered leaf. Through and over it all, though, a single thought was predominant. The woman to whom Alexos had proposed had not been simply consumed, or scattered like chaff upon the winds of the warp. Sheka was alive.

But only briefly, oh so briefly. Her eyes glazed over, and she slid out of Alexos’s grasp. Into the air she rose, with a blank, condescending arrogance settling again across her face like a mask. Perhaps it was more unsteadily set than before, but the Sheka that Alexos had seen was hidden once more.

He stood as she drifted back into the fight. The sweet taste of pluquats still lingered in his mouth, turned a sickly sour by painful memories.




+++


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## Israfil

Mossy i forgive you :biggrin: this is so goddamn awesome!


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## Mossy Toes

I'm glad that you think so.

(not a bump :wink: )


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## Mossy Toes

Update! The last 2k words of this are still hot off the presses, boys, so be forwarned - further updates shall be both shorter and, possibly, delayed for little reason. I shall strive to keep them as epic and awesome as this update gets at its climax, though. :grin:

+++

*Chapter III: A Known Unknown*

+++

The man’s skin was desiccated and shriveled, a dried husk from which all color had been leached. His limbs shook as he approached Alexos, and he leaned heavily on his staff as he walked. He looked so light and frail that a strong wind might break the edges off him and blow them away. His eyes dispelled this illusion, though. They were black coals, burning with a fiery intensity. An Imperial Aquila tattoo was branded into his forehead, marking him as a sanctioned psyker, and he was flanked by a Chardonus soldier in heavy, crimson flak armor, black fatigues, and a visored helmet.

“Yeddreth Vogart, sir,” said the psyker as he arrived, his voice brittle. He extended a veined hand, which was ignored.

“Commissar Alexos. I’m glad that your commander in the Chardonii 112th could spare you.”

“It was nothing, sir. Colonel Viskar wants to know the truth as badly as you. If there’s the chance that this is–”

The man faltered. Alexos let the silence hang for a second, and then nodded.

“Quite,” he replied. “The body of the witch is this way.”

Alexos set a quick pace away. He was still unsettled by Sheka’s recent outburst, but in the hours that had passed since, he had regained most of his composure. This didn’t stop him from being irritable, and seeing another psyker only compounded his spiteful thoughts. Why couldn’t Sheka have ended up something like this man and not hidden beneath a blank and uncaring mask?

She was now shackled and safely behind from the front line, at least. After the reinforcements that he had requested arrived—two platoons of the Gundread—the enemy had been scattered back into the darkness, and she was no longer necessary. Having her out of sight by no means removed her from his mind, but it did allow him to think more evenly. He was a commissar, Thor damn it! He had been trained to stand toe to toe with the greatest threats in the galaxy and feel nothing but hatred! He oughtn’t be wavering between different emotions like a child!

A faint noise behind him made him spin. Vogart was fighting back a smile.

“Get out of my head, or I’ll shoot you,” Alexos spat.

“I went nowhere near your head…sir” replied Vogart slowly. “I can’t help it if you broadcast your emotions to the whole city.”

Alexos spun on his heel and kept walking, heading at an intentionally faster pace. Soon, the psyker was gasping to keep up. Alexos was sure that the witch could “hear” the satisfaction Alexos took in this petty punishment, too.

They arrived at the body of the witch that Sheka had slain. The heretic’s golden mask had been removed, revealing a withered, leathery face. The Aquila of Sanction was tattooed into its forehead—the mark of every registered psyker in the Imperial Guard.

The Chardonii, who had arrived on this planet with the original word of rebellion, had been fighting alongside the PDF for months. During this time, one of their psykers had gone missing. Judging by the expression on Vogart’s face, this was indeed the same man.

“Telk Mancharax,” Vogart said painfully, nodding. The intense focus of his eyes had faded, leaving him to look just as fragile as Alexos had suspected. “That was his name.”

“No,” sneered Alexos. “He is a heretic; he has no name but such.”

Vogart looked into Alexos’s face and saw the hatred written there. He would soon arrive at the conclusion to which Alexos had arrived well. Even sooner, if Alexos’s suspicions were correct.

So Alexos acted first. He leveled his bolt pistol at Vogart’s head. The bolts weren’t the blessed ones, but at point blank, that wouldn’t matter. The psyker turned pale.

“Yeddreth Vogart. You keep the company of heretics. Give me reason to let you live.”

“I assure you, I knew nothing of his treachery. Nor do I know of any other in my regiment who is a traitor. I keep no heretic’s company. Perhaps—Telk may have been one without my knowing, but—ask Colonel Viskar, I beseech you. I’m no traitor! You can have me scanned, tested, cleansed, and these will show that I am–”

Alexos pistol-whipped him.

+

Sheka looked at Alexos from her kennel without emotion as he entered his current quarters, where she was kept. He was followed by the Chardonus minder, who carried the unconscious psyker. A large, puffy bruise was smeared across one of Vogart’s temples.

Alexos opened Sheka’s cage and dragged her out by her leash. She crawled forward with only the slightest of whimpers. He knelt, unclipping her psy-bindings. She would still be exhausted from the battle, he knew, even if to all appearances she was no different than normal, but he needed to check Vogart’s mind. Losing an asset such as a sanctioned psyker would be a blow to any regiment—especially in this war, with the enemy using witches, too. If Vogart was tainted by his acquaintance with Mancharex, he would obviously have to be killed. If Sheka cleared the man of suspicion…Alexos might still have to kill him, but he also might be able to let the man go free.

“Search this man’s mind. He was a fellow of the witch that you slew earlier today. It was a traitor from amongst the Chardonii. Pry the truth from this one, and don’t be gentle—but take care not to break his sanity. Yet.”

+

_Trooper Jan Vodroch Kelstin, K.I.A._ His lower jawbone, right arm, and pelvis had been found in the crater of a bombshell. Alexos signed the paper and pushed it into the stack of those complete.

He had grudgingly sent the psyker back to the Chardonii lines after Sheka had assured him that Vogart was no traitor. Now, hours later, he was fulfilling another duty. And his hand was cramping.

It seemed disrespectful, or even downright disgraceful. This was a solemn, meaningful duty, and it ought to transcend such petty complaints of the _corpus_. Nonetheless, he set down his stylus, leaned back in his chair, and adjusted his Commissar’s cap. He massaged his right hand with his left and flexed his sore fingers. In short, he avoided continuing his duty.

He had already worked his way through too many of these papers. A single line to fill; a single signature, and then another paper almost exactly the same—yet representing a whole other life—would be complete. The contents of a black plastek bag would be dragged to the fires, from whence they would rise up as choking ash to join the clinging, acidic smog of this Throne-cursed planet.

Out of the seventy-two hours since planetfall, he realized, he had slept only three. His limbs were deadened from the long day’s exertions. His eyesight blurred. His muscles had passed beyond aches into a numb, fatigued blur. After this, he would be able to sleep perhaps two hours more before he would have to attend to his duties once again.

As the sole Commissar of the Dunmirra 341st, and without an adjutant, he was the only one who could do this: the last of the day’s duties. The papers from the trenches were stacked with the reports from the makeshift infirmarium, and every day Alexos gave this last salute to those who had perished fighting against the Archenemy.

He sighed and leaned forward in his chair, pulling the next of the papers toward himself. _Sergeant Mileas Ehrriech Cante, K.I.A._ Cause of death: chest cavity having been broken open by the enemy psyker.

He signed the death confirmation notice and put it into the pile of those completed. Another body, another good soldier, heading to the crematorium.

+

Alexos sipped at the battered tin mug of recaff again, his eyes bleary and his brain barely functioning. He had dressed and shaved on autopilot and then managed to stumble into the officers’ mess. Sheka had been murmuring to herself as he left the abandoned hab that served as his current quarters. He’d not slept in the same place the previous night and he would probably be sleeping in a new bed tomorrow, as the area of Imperial control pushed closer to the hive proper.

Alexos took a plate and picked his way along the officer’s buffet, picking out a light breakfast and avoiding the fresh, ripe fruit that Enskor had managed to import—into a warzone, of all places. Alexos shook his head in condemnation.

Almost as if thinking of the man had summoned him, Enskor pushed his way through the tent flap. Alexos blinked himself to a slightly less fogged state of mind. The colonel waddled to the table, and Alexos nodded to him curtly.

“Good morning, commissar,” said Enskor, his tone guarded. Apparently, he hadn’t forgotten the scathing remarks of their conversation two days previously. “I hear tell that you and your psyker were quite impressive toward the end of the fighting in the tunnel, yesterday.”

“We are all mere instruments of the Emperor, sir,” muttered Alexos, “and I am glad to be put to my purpose.”

The colonel reached across Alexos’ plate, fishing a pair of hard-shelled khoki fruit from a basket.

“Very good,” said Enskor, a hint of false joviality creeping into his voice. “A commendable outlook indeed. That is indeed what we are, and I too am glad to do my share.”

“And pulling strings to arrange us to receive fresh, ripe fruit is a part of that? Such an endeavor is a waste of resources and time, colonel. You would do best not to engage in such frivolities and focus all of your willpower upon the task at hand: vanquishing our enemy.”

“No no, that’s not it at all!” Enskor exclaimed, rather weakly. “This was, well, a surprise from the regimental quartermaster. The man said that he’d done it as a boost for morale, Alexos. We need our officers operating in top condition, do we not?”

Alexos considered the colonel’s reply, blearily struggling to order his thoughts.

“Nonetheless,” he replied, sticking to what was clear in his mind, “there remains the fact that it causes our soldiers to be engaged in otherwise worthless activities, and pampers our brightest minds unnecessarily. Discipline the man, colonel.”

“Very well,” replied Enskor, pursing his lips uncomfortably. His bouncy, jubilant mood had evaporated. “However, Alexos, there was something else that requires your attention. Something rather important that—well, perhaps you should come to my tent after we finish eating.”

+

“Another enemy psyker?”

The colonel nodded heavily. Major Vutch, who had been waiting in the tent when they had entered, gestured quietly toward Enskor with a sheaf of papers. He pointed to his desk and made a shooing motion out the door.

“Yesterday,” he said, his attention returning to Alexos, “the Salthovarian 21st lost near four platoons to this witch. Due to these losses, they captured no new territory. Only the assistance of their armored contingent helped them drive the heretics back, as they don’t have any sanctioned psykers of their own.”

The major put down the papers and made her way around the edge of the desk. She glanced back, paused, and slipped out of the tent.

“This one can’t be another one of ours, can it?” asked Alexos, once she was gone. “None of the other sanctioned psykers in our forces have gone missing. Even if the Chardonii are suspect, they have only ever had two psykers—they claim—and the one of those that remains was with myself and Sheka yesterday.”

“No indeed, it can’t be,” replied Enskor. “This other psyker is almost certainly a heretic, and therefore is probably high in the hierarchy of the enemy. He wears a golden mask, like the one that you killed, but our accounts give him being a good deal more powerful. Of course, without a psyker of our own on the scene to judge the witch’s strength…” Enskor shrugged.

“So Sheka and I will have to be ready to suspend our normal duties and respond to this thing’s appearance, next time that it raises it head?”

Enskor tensed and his eyes flickered away from Alexos’s face. “Rather. In fact, your orders are to stand back from the fighting and to attend to whatever duties you can behind the front. This way, you’ll always be able to be called upon. Your window of opportunity to stop him will no doubt be short, and we don’t want you pinned down in a firefight when it occurs.”

Alexos was shocked, and angry. He would be kept from the fight because of the timidity of his commander? Did Enskor not grasp the position that Alexos held on the battlefield? His job was to push the men to greater heights of valor; to bolster their morale whenever it flagged; to punish those whose courage was found wanting. How could he very well do that if he wasn’t beside the men as they fought?

“Sir,” Alexos said through gritted teeth, “I must protest. Why not hold back Yeddreth Vogart? Sheka is more powerful than the Chardonus psyker, and I fulfill a much more—in fact, a vital battlefield role.”

“Because the whole Chardonii regiment has been under the heaviest attack of all of our forces,” rebutted Enskor, as if reciting hastily-memorized lines, “lost the most soldiers of any of the regiments, been, erm, planet side the longest, and are barely holding the ground they’ve taken even with Vogart’s aid. To suspend them the support of their only psyker would be disastrous, and I can’t very well send Sheka over there if I he is taken off the front.

“Alexos, please, see my side of this” continued the colonel, obviously seeing Alexos’s rather transparent opinions on the subject. “I’m not the one who made this decision. I do not want to be set on the back foot and the defensive any more than you do—and, yes, this is probably exactly what the enemy wants us to do—but we must abide to the orders of General Hawl. Would you rather allow the enemy psyker to strike at the other points of our line almost entirely unmolested? The men of the Guard are made of stern stuff, but even they flinch against the terrors of the Immaterium.”

Alexos nodded his assent tightly and stalked out of Enskor’s office, almost bowling over a serving-boy who was bringing a cup of fresh recaff to the colonel.

+

The troopers filed into the mess in a haggard fashion that evening, shuffling slowly down the serving line as regimental cooks splattered nutri-slop onto their platters. Only when they moved to the collapsible dining tables did they notice the brooding commissar sitting in the far corner of the room. They straightened their demeanors to be a good deal less casual, and silently cursed whatever the warp had brought the dark-skinned commissar to their mess, rather than the officers’ one.

Alexos didn’t care what they wondered, or thought. He simply wanted to get away from both Enskor and the other officers of the regiment—the latter of which, apart from Vutch, had been slyly hinting their envy, and how he was such a lucky dog to be able to sit back and relax while the others did the footslogging. The major, on the other hand, didn’t speak to him at all.

That night, the meal was subdued. Small knots of guardsmen often glanced at Alexos and whispered amongst themselves, but as a whole, the level of noise never rose over a low chatter. Alexos suspected that mealtime was normally anything but quiet, and that it was his presence that stifled any boisterous conversation that might normally have occurred.

This suspicion was reinforced when he left. Having been one of the first to the mess, he was one of the first to finish, and the men that he passed on his way to putting his platter in the dirty dishes bin didn’t look him in the face. The cooks nodded deferentially to him out of necessity as he passed the now almost deserted serving line. As he reached the doorway, though, he could have sworn that the entire roomful of people relaxed. As he walked away, true conversation began to break out amongst the guardsmen.

Such alienation was the Commissar’s lot—how many sane men would willingly break bread beside the man who could execute them on a whim, after all?—but it left a sour knot in his stomach, nonetheless.

+

The next two days passed tediously. Alexos did what paperwork he could stand and let Sheka rest. He meted out whippings for two infractions of fighting in the ranks, and also punished the quartermaster that Enskor had allowed to purchase the raw fruit that had graced the officers’ breakfast tables.

He was restless, though, and the sudden shift from brutal warfare to the static calm of camp, which was broken only by motoring messenger bikes and the distant crump of explosives, left him tightly wound. He snapped at soldiers unnecessarily several times.

He arranged that his meals were brought to his quarters from the officer’s mess by Selim, the Colonel’s serving boy.

He also filed an official report on the golden-masked traitor that he had killed. In the act of doing so, he sent a message to a linguist-scriviner in orbit, requesting a translation of the psyker’s last words: “_Makocha! Je na la vaida!_”

The Gundread were still making incremental progress through the shattered city, but too many of the Dunmirrans were tied up holding the upper and lower levels of the transit route to be able to push forward on the topside—and the enemy were taking full advantage of this.

Every day, hundreds more cultists were being poured into the fray by the enemies’ commanders. The Dunmirrans had to scramble to keep all parts of their line enforced and equipped. Several times, a squad or two of soldiers gunned down hordes of the raving fanatics, many of whom were brainwashed women, children, and elders, only to run out of ammunition and be overwhelmed. The Gundread told similar stories.

And Alexos feared that the enemy were only testing the Imperial line; gauging it for a blow that, even now, was raised to strike against them.

+

The third day confirmed his fear.

The first clues Alexos received were the noises. The Imperial artillery was rolling almost constantly from the hour that he awoke, and orders crackled across the network of vox-casters far more frequently than usual. Less off-duty guardsmen than usual wandered around the camp, too, and those that did had a certain tightness about their features.

The officer’s mess contained a lone lieutenant, who filled Alexos in on what he knew. Yes, the enemy had launched a massed counter-attack. No, no enemy psyker had been sighted—why was he asking? Yes, the under-route’s defenders were holding their ground, as were, in most places, the soldiers above ground. No, the man didn’t know how the Chardonii, Gundread, and Salthovarians were faring.

Alexos made his way to the control bunker after eating. Enskor and several of his officers were hunched over the holo-display. Aides ran back and forth, carrying recaff and vox-transcripts of battlefield reports. Alexos leaned over the display, and took in the layout of the battlefield – the blinking red glyphs which represented the Imperial positions were surrounded by altogether far too many yellow heretic runes.

“What’s this?” Alexos asked, pointing to a yellow haze which had been spread across one of the thinner-spread segments of the Imperial line. Major Vutch looked over his shoulder.

“We—we don’t know, commissar,” said Vutch. “Truthfully—we think daemons, sir. The reports claim that there are supernatural creatures in that area of the line, and that’s all we know. We don’t know what to make of them, or exactly where they are, and the things are heavily reinforced by cultists, but look.” The major pointed to a line of blinking red dots which were strung out along the route from the Dunmirran camp to that area of the front. “We have the Eighth and Ninth Platoons in Chimeras, heading to reinforce them. It’s nothing to worry about, sir. The men will hold.”

“Daemons?” Alexos asked, shifting his gaze to Enskor, who sighed and looked away from the maps, his flabby lips pursed.

“Yes, commissar. But that doesn’t mean that the psyker is necessarily in that area. And these things aren’t the terrible things of which we are told on dark nights—maddening and irrational, yes, but definitely killable. It’s nothing for you to be worrying about. Your orders haven’t changed.”

“I understand, sir,” said Alexos tightly.

There was an awkward pause before Enskor spoke again.

“Something arrived for you, though, from orbit,” the colonel said, and then turned to a serving boy who had just put down a sheaf of papers. “Selim, fetch Commissar Alexos his message.” He turned back to his other officers.

Selim led Alexos to the back of the bunker, and searched through several folders until he found the data-page that he was looking for, and gave it to Alexos. A call from another part of the bunker quickly called the boy away, and Alexos looked at the page curiously. It was a reply from the linguist-magos that he had contacted earlier.



Magos Sarati Jhal said:


> Commissar:
> 
> The brief quote that you have sent me—or at least, which you have sent me the phonetic sounds of—was difficult to identify, but I am 93.73% sure that an accurate (enough for your purposes) translation follows:
> 
> “My Queen/Matriarch/Mother! To you I go/return/come/fly!”
> 
> The language matches only, so far as my data indicate and the rules of logic dictate, one found upon feral world of Salcias, with which contact has been lost for approximately three decades.
> 
> You stated that it was a Chardonii Sanctioned Psyker, one “Telk Mancharex”, who spoke these words. In the interest of full disclosure, I researched Mancharex’s service records. He was born on Cittigaze, thirteen sub-sectors distant from Salcias, and was taken into the Black Ships at the age of eleven. At the age of twenty-three Terran, he was released from those holds and put into service with the Chardonii 112th—who never came as close as his homeworld to Salcias, which was still a notable distance away.
> 
> Unless the psyker was taken to Salcias during his time possessed by the Black Ships, which is understandably obscured from my researches but nonetheless unlikely, there has been no point at which he has been taken to the aforementioned feral world, and given that the language is little more than a tribal dialect over less than one continent, there is little reason or likelihood that he could have learned it from a trans-planetary traveler. Nonetheless, one of these unlikely occurrences may very well have, aha, occurred, as you claim that the man clearly spoke these words.
> 
> These uncertainties contribute to the (approximate) 6.27% margin of error in the previous statistic.
> 
> May my endeavors aid your comprehension of the foe, as unsteady of a conclusion as they came to.
> 
> - Magos Sarati Jhal


 Alexos shook his head. Typical tech-blather; obfuscating and and leading to no clear end. He didn’t know why he had bothered contacting the magos in the first place. He would have to ask Yeddreth Vogart about the feral world next time that he met him, but doubtlessly that too would be a dead end.

Alexos folded the paper, put it in a greatcoat pocket, and paced out of the bunker.

+

That night, he awoke to a frantic rapping at his door. He threw his covers to the side, startled to sudden alertness, and grabbed his bolt pistol.

“Yes?” he called, sliding out of bed.

“Sir, the colonel wants you!” replied a piping voice. Selim, then.

He dressed quickly and unlatched the door, where the boy was hopping from foot to foot.

“He said to hurry, sir, and to bring the…lady.”

Alexos nodded and slid his peaked commissar’s cap onto his head. There was only one reason why the Colonel would be calling for him and Sheka at this hour. He smiled.

+

The Chimera shook as it roared over a pile of loose shale and rubble. A squad of guardsmen sat in the riding bay with Alexos, but they had all slid away from the Commissar and his babbling psyker. Alexos and Sheka had a third of the compartment to themselves.

The enemy had launched a darkness raid on the Chardonii encampment, and their psyker had been amongst it, as well as the daemons of the day. Yeddreth Vogart had engaged the enemy, but could do little more than protect his own guardsmen. He had been ordered to hold his position until Sheka could arrive.

The Chimera raced deeper into the night, and Alexos dearly hoped that it would arrive in time. The last several days had been excruciatingly boring—he didn’t want to wait outside the fight any longer.

+

An explosion took off the roof of a building across the street as Alexos and Sheka disembarked from the Chimera. He cursed and took cover in the lee of the buildings on opposite side of the street. The squad of Dunmirrans followed, tight to his back.

Several ragged, twisted heretics spilled from the recently damaged hab, and the Dunmirrans opened fire. With the aid of the Chimera’s multi-laser, the scattered foe were swiftly downed.

Several blocks down the street, more figures broke cover—these ones in red flak vests and helmets, and black fatigues. Alexos hailed the Chardonii, several of whom were, he saw, carrying a missile launcher. Their sergeant saluted and jogged to Alexos’s position.

“That the fresh wyrd, sir?” the sergeant asked, pointing to Sheka. As the man drew close, Alexos saw that he was sweating profusely under his half visor, which was understandable, given the black cloth of his uniform. When Alexos nodded, the man continued, “Right this way, then. Old Vogart’s holding a couple blocks away.”

Alexos signed to the Chimera driver to wait here. Then he, Sheka, and the Dunmirrans followed the Chardonus sergeant and his squad through a narrow alley. The crackle of small arms fire could be heard from several directions, and distant cries reached their ears. The Chardonii kept a wary eye out as they proceeded through the streets.

These buildings were small, single or double storeys only, and obviously prefabricated. The darkness lent them an air of well-deserved neglect: they were for the poorer spectrum of even the outhiver society. This was on the edge of the industrial sector of the urban sprawl around the Hive, and the citizens who had lived here had almost exclusively worked as drudging menials in the smoke-stacked buildings less than a kilometer away. One branch of the transit route, and its underground companion, terminated in those massive complexes, and had allowed the heretics to harass the Chardonii forces there until the Gundread and Dunmirrans had broken that line of supply.

They rounded a corner and Alexos saw a firefight lighting up the night ahead. Lasbeams seared out from a previously abandoned Arbites precinct at a wide junction of streets. In and near the buildings on the other corners of the intersection were packs of heretics with barking autoguns. Corpses, both Chardonii and of the foe, were scattered across the area as if by a liberal hand.

As Alexos watched, a ball of condensed energy leapt from one of the far buildings, twisting the air around itself. It broke across the facade of the precinct, warping plasteel and crumpling ironwork window grilles.

“Go,” hissed Alexos to Sheka. “Hit them where that psyker is.” She rose further into the air, and an ethereal gust gathered around her. She swept forward, the wind shrieking and howling around her.

“Into them!” he roared to the two squads with him, sweeping his bolt pistol toward the enemy-held structures and thumbing the activation rune on his recently-repaired chainsword. The guardsmen roared their assent and charged.

The nearest heretics were clustered at the base of a battered apartment hab on one corner of the intersection, utilizing heaps of twisted slag as cover. More were hidden inside the building itself, firing from windows and holes in the wall. The foe began turning, having only just heard the cries of the guardsmen.

Alexos fired several bolts as he ran. One heretic’s shoulder was explosively vaporized, and the traitor collapsed backward. Two more were felled by the guardsmen firing from the hip, but a point blank autogun round felled a Chardonus beside Alexos. The commissar vaulted the haphazard barricade of plasboard, rubble, and scrap, and was amongst the enemy.

He struck out with his chainsword and swung it up beneath the first enemy’s guard. It tore open the man’s gut, and the spinning teeth sprayed gore across several other heretics.

A Dunmirran beside Alexos cried out as a heretic unloaded a clip of ammunition into his chest on automatic. The guardsman’s flak jacket turned aside several slugs, but the rest broke through and turned his chest into a bloody mess. Alexos dispatched the heretic with a bolt shell, and saw him collapse on top of his kill.

The cultists had been dispatched, with only one managing to fall back into the house. Looking back, Alexos saw that more of his men had fallen than he suspected—even surprised and turning, the guns of the foes had claimed the lives of several guardsmen as they charged. Several Chardonii and Gundread were down, either crippled or dead, and two other men were walking wounded. A Chardonus field medic began dragging those badly injured into cover.

Enemy fire had begun to come the way of the guardsmen, too—the corner of the intersection to his right was in the hands of the Chardonii, and Alexos’s soldiers had broken the enemy here, but the two buildings opposite the main thoroughfare were still in enemy hands.

Sheka, surrounded by blackened heretic corpses, was battering at the iron portal of the building to Alexos’s left with warp-crackling fists. Reinvigorated lasfire from the Chardonii in the precinct was pinning down the enemies in the fourth building—the one diagonally across the intersection from Alexos. However, he could see a strong platoon of heretic soldiers down the road between the precinct and that last heretic strongpoint, working their way toward the conflict. The enemy here would have to be dealt with swiftly, so that the Imperial forces could redeploy to face this new threat—and there was still the enemy psyker to be thinking of.

“Sergeant,” said Alexos, getting the attention of the Chardonus who had led them here. “Clear this building with your squad; make sure none of the enemy escape.” The man nodded, and Alexos turned away. “Dunmirrans,” he cried, “with me!”

He sprinted across the street to Sheka’s location, where she was bludgeoning the iron door out of shape as if it were a sheet of roofing tin. As he arrived, one of the hinges gave way, and Sheka jerked forward, bashing the warped obstacle out of its sill with a last, powerful blow. It crushed a heretic that had been crouching behind it.

The world suddenly jolted sharply, disorienting Alexos. He caught the briefest glimpse of blinding white flame bursting from the doorway and Sheka throwing up her arms in defense—and he was thrown to one side. Light filled his vision, a blasting roar deafened him, and he was flattened by a wave of pressure.

Alexos sat up, blinking spots from his vision and spitting to clear blood from his mouth. The white fire faded from the doorway to the enemy building, leaving the street blackened outward in a scorched teardrop. Sheka had been thrown back across the street and slammed into the wall of the building from which Alexos had just come. He himself had been fortunate enough to be to one side of the expanding explosion, but most of the squadron accompanying him had been caught in the middle of the blast. Six more burnt bodies graced the street—only one of which was still moving. The only two surviving Gundread had been blown from their feet like Alexos as well, and one had been burnt badly.

Alexos’s jarred mind was split, for an instant, between two separate thoughts. One, how badly was Sheka injured? Two, what in the warp could create an explosion like that?

The answer to the second was swift in revealing itself. With a triumphant roar, a shining figure strode from the scorched, battered doorway. It was golden-masked, and as with the earlier enemy psyker Alexos had faced, the mask was drawn into a grotesque smile. There, however, the similarities between the two of them ended. This one was not hunched and withered with age as the other. Instead, it stood in a strong, arrogant posture, displaying the white robes he wore for all to see. Shining gemstones had been mounted along the brow of its mask, and these crackled with spillover energy from the massive discharge that the psyker had just unleashed.

The confusion of Alexos’s mind coalesced into one solid emotion: hatred. How dare this _chagnat_ knock him aside—_kill his men—HURT SHEKA!_ With a roar, he staggered upright. His bolt pistol had been knocked from his grasp, so he charged the psyker gripping his chainsword in both hands.

 Three meters from the white-robed enemy, he was swatted to the floor as if by a massive hand. He looked up, striving to fight back to his feet, but the pressure was unrelenting.

Above him, the heretic cocked its head and gazed down at him. Its eyes, which should have been visible through the sockets of the mask, were lost in darkness. Electricity built around his hand, which he raised above his head, before snapping it down at Alexos.

The bolt seared toward Alexos—but didn’t hit him. Inches in front of his face, a golden barrier deflected the energy, grounding it harmlessly. He was still pinned to the ground and unable to move, but somehow, he had survived.

“No,” came a hoarse voice. The word was spoken quietly and from far away, but somehow it reached Alexos and the psyker as clearly as if it were spoken directly beside them. “No,” the unfamiliar voice spoke again, “you shall not do that.”

Sheka staggered toward them from across the street—not suspended in the air, and yet still unbound by her shackles. It was she who had spoken. She was pale and battered, but her face was a taut mask of fury. She flung golden spikes of roiling force at the psyker, who spat a curse and conjured wards, knocking the attacks aside.

Green hammer blows rained down on the psyker from another direction, and he staggered visibly. Yeddreth Vogart strode across the yard from the precinct, each swing of his staff marking another psychic blow against the heretic psyker.

The masked man roared in anger, and lashed out with his own tendrils of force, brilliant and blinding to the eyes. Most of these launched themselves at either of the two Imperial psykers, but three calved off closer to the masked psyker. Two plunged into the chests of the surviving Gundread, snuffing out their lives instantly. The third came at Alexos, but, again, dissolved before it reached him.

Despite the efforts of Yeddreth and Sheka, the two of them began to be beaten back. The jewels upon the heretic’s mask shone brilliantly, basking him in a halo-like corona of light. Fractal, swiftly-knitted warp-constructs devoured psychic attacks directed at the him, and the gleaming tendril’s of the psyker’s will plunged toward the Imperials.

Yeddreth was soon forced to abandon the offensive to beat the eldritch tentacles away. That pressure off of the masked psyker, it turned the brunt of its attention and power toward Sheka, and her destruction.

Alexos could taste the greasy tang of loose, scattered warp-energies, and could feel them crackling like static through the air. Blood flowed thickly from his nose to splatter across the rockrete beneath him. He growled and tried to force himself up from the ground again. There was a momentary sucking sensation—as if he were trying to push himself out of quicksand—before he broke free and could move again. He scrambled to his feet and swung his chainsword at the heretic psyker’s back.

The attack caught the enemy by complete surprise and the blade bit deep. The man’s white robes were splattered with blood, and the chainsword jerked in Alexos’s grasp. He tore his heavy, unwieldy blade free and brought it around for another swing. The psyker began turning slowly, his mask, as ever, twisted into a gleeful grin. However, the crackling, raging psychic battle faded to nothingness.

“Makocha,” whispered the psyker, almost inaudibly. Only Alexos’s proximity allowed him to hear the words being spoken.

A blast from Sheka knocked the man to the ground, tearing off one of his arms. Alexos raised his chainsword.

“Je na la vaida,” managed the heretic.

Alexos’s whirring blade chopped down, severing the psyker’s head from his body.

A roiling wave of psychic energy washed outward—very much similar to the previous psyker that had died. Even expecting it, Alexos was knocked off balance, and his emotions soared in his chest. As he staggered, his gaze fell upon Sheka, and pain stabbed through his chest, accompanied by a wave of sorrow so great he was brought almost to tears. She stood unfettered upon the ground, and her bruised face was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen. And he would never be able to love her again, in the way that he once had.

Deep within him, though, almost subconsciously, stirred a hope that he dared not to realize—that with the words she had spoken, and the way she had been acting recently…but that was foolish, impossible idiocy.

Artillery fire rolled in the distance, and the unmistakable sound of Earthshaker shells detonating nearby shook him from his thoughts. Two hundred meters away, the platoon of reinforcing heretics was being obliterated by heavy-concussion shells.

He shook his morose thoughts from his mind and looked bitterly down at the severed head of the psyker. The jewels upon its brow were now dim, and the golden mask seemed dimmer than while the psyker had lived. He bent over and picked the head up, unfastening the clips holding the the mask to it. The mask fell away, revealing a face that, while rotting and barely held together by sutures along one side, was definitely familiar.

Miaro.

+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter IV: The Tides of War*

+++

An hour and a half later, Alexos stood with the decapitated head in his hand for the second time, and removed the mask again. He had put the mask back on to hide the traitor’s identity, but now, a decision had to be made.

The remaining heretics had fought ferociously, even when surrounded on all sides and greatly outnumbered, but after the loss of the psyker, they had lost all chance of victory. Sheka and Vogart, even as exhausted as they were, had exacted a heavy toll from the foe as well. Now, Sheka was leashed and the last elements of the heretic push were being flushed from the Chardonii territory by the Emperor’s hammer.

Standing there again, Alexos nodded to himself. He dropped the head to the ground, and drew his bolt pistol as it rolled to a halt. The face ended up staring at Alexos with clouded eyes.

He put a bolt into it, sending the head rolling, it’s front a detonated mess. Brain matter sprayed in a parabola across the ground. It would be disastrous for morale if the rank and file got word of this. He would tell the commanding officers the truth of the situation, though, of course.

Miaro, whom Alexos had gotten to know well during warp transit, had been popular with the men. The knowledge that he was a witch—and worse, a traitor—could very well upset the minds of lesser men, and lead to diminished battlefield effectiveness, which was Alexos’s job to prevent.

Vogart limped over, leaning heavily upon his staff. The psyker was haggard and worn, and a blood vessel had ruptured in one of his eyes.

“Our foe is not dead,” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Alexos. “A corpse is a corpse, and this one is headless.”

“But a body is not a soul, commissar. The true enemy here, I suspect, uses these kidnapped psykers as dolls, so as not to risk his own flesh. That surge of energy upon his death—that was the soul fleeing from this body, and it was not the soul of Captain Miaro. And, earlier, Telk.”

“Stay quiet about this witch’s identity, Vogart. If we can keep this from the guardsmen, so much the better. Miaro was well-liked.”

Vogart nodded slowly.

“I cannot believe that Telk Mancharex would willingly betray the Emperor,” the sanctioned psyker said after a pause. “He spoke longingly of becoming an astropath, and being soulbound to the Emperor himself, despite the physical and mental cost that would entail. When he showed an aptitude for combative wyrdery, however, he was transferred to my regiment. Never has a more devout soul walked the galaxy.”

Alexos snorted, dubious of this last.

“A far stretch, I know,” continued Vogart, “but one which conveys the depth of my conviction, I think. I say it as the truth, so far as my own experiences have stretched. Telk may have been broken, and forcibly possessed.”

“Which does not change the fact that he served the Archenemy,” Alexos replied. Vogart nodded, closing his eyes.

“What of Miaro?” Alexos asked. “He wasn’t a psyker, was he?”

“Not that I know of,” replied Vogart, “but I am by no means infallible. He may have been a weak one, and thus managed to remain undetected—he may not even have known of his gift, until he was taken by the enemy. Were this so, though, he would not have had the skill and power which he displayed today.

“It may have been that the Archenemy unlocked a powerful latent gift within him. This still doesn’t account for the ease and effectiveness with which he utilized his power during this confrontation, unless you too believe that another, more experienced psyker invaded his mind. Whichever it was, the gemstones on the mask acted as both a channel and an amplifier for his abilities.”

A latent gift. Hah, _gift_? To be broken and twisted as a thrall of the Enemy of Man, to slay the very soldiers alongside of which he had once fought? Or—or to live as an aloof, deranged being, with no resemblance to her former self? No matter what the adepts and Vogart said, serving the Emperor is such a manner was no gift. Such psychic potential, when not discovered or revealed at a young age, could only be considered a curse. His mouth twisted bitterly.

Vogart was looking at Alexos as if he knew his thoughts.

“You could have done nothing to save her as she was, Alexos. All people change; her more so than others.”

What did this frail old warlock know about love? He could never have experienced what Alexos had. Alexos’s anger, still unsettled from the surge of emotions earlier in the day, boiled back up.

“Sir.”

“What?” asked Vogart, his eyebrows knitting themselves together.

“You will call me ‘_sir_‘, or ‘_commissar_‘, as befits my rank, psyker,” replied Alexos through gritted teeth.

“Ah. Yes, sir. I am sorry, sir. I spoke out of turn.”

“Yes, you did. I don’t need your pity, witch.”

A change came over the sanctioned psyker. The texture of his eyes shifted, and he stiffened slightly. He began to choke, and he clutched his chest with one withered hand. With his other, he leaned heavily upon his staff. Alexos watched, curious but uncaring. It wasn’t his problem if the warp-cursed psyker suffered from a heart attack.

Soon, however, Vogart soon returned to his normal state. He lowered himself down his staff, gasping, until he managed to kneel. There, he picked up the golden mask of the enemy psyker, and ran his fingers over the gemstones.

There was a faint flash of green light, and his hand came away, holding the central and largest of the seven jewels.

“Take it, commissar, sir,” Vogart said, his voice flat.

Slowly, Alexos reached out. He hesitated, and took the cool stone into the palm of his hand.

“Keep it, commissar. My gift—or, _some_ might say, my curse—does not often include foresight, but such has stirred before. Both times in the past that I felt it, I acted, and saved, potentially, the lives of hundreds of guardsmen. Those urges were nothing compared to what I have just felt.

“Right now, if the only thing that I did before dying was to convince you to keep this diamond upon your person at all times, I would be content.” The psyker’s voice was heavy, but as he spoke, raw emotion began to crack through. “In the name of the Emperor, never have I felt so strong a conviction.”

Alexos pursed his lips. Could he trust Vogart? Logic dictated that he could not, and his gut instinct immediately flinched back from the idea of keeping the stone. But, there was something in Vogart’s insistence, and manner, which brought Alexos to understanding the sheer scale of what Vogart was saying. What’s more, he didn’t truly believe that Vogart was a traitor, it was simply prudence and training that made him treat the psyker as such.

Could he dare do this, though? Toss aside reason for a hunch? This could very well be the instrumental hinge of some massive scheme of the Archenemy.

He blinked heavily, and slid the stone into his left breast pocket. He could make a more final decision later, and if worst came to worse, he could throw the damned thing away.

The relief that graced Vogart’s face almost made Alexos feel ashamed for not having made a definitive decision.

+

Colonel Enskor and Major Vutch of the Dunmirran 341st were present, sitting in their chairs. Standing were Colonel Rastheim, Brevet-Captain Crestholm, and Commissar Beinthop of the Gundread 58th.

Alexos bit the bullet and dropped the bombshell.

“The reason that I have requested your presence, sirs, is that most recent enemy psyker, killed by myself earlier today, was revealed to be none other than Captain Miaro of the Gundread. For obvious reasons, this is being withheld from the rank and file.”

An immediate outcry followed his statement. Crestholm stood silent, stunned, but every other member of the group seemed to feel duty-bound to make their fair share of noise.

“Preposterous!” cried Rastheim. “Miaro was a model officer, who–”

“–thought he died–”

“–the bloody hell? I signed that _yencher’s_ certificate of–”

“–do you mean? You can’t be–”

“Gentlemen, and woman,” said Alexos firmly, cutting through the babble. “What you think of this is secondary. The fact remains that a traitor, and one from amongst our numbers that we didn’t even know was a psyker, almost managed to overcome both of our remaining sanctioned psykers on his own. What’s more, one of those psykers–” Alexos broke off as Major Vutch murmured something to Colonel Enskor. “Yes, Vutch?”

“Never mind. It was nothing.”

“Then kindly refrain from such vapid, empty blatherings in the future—as, by your own admission, whatever you were saying must have been.

“I _was saying_ that Vogart, our other psyker, hypothesized that there was some other, greater psychic force at work here—one that seems to be subverting our psykers and using them against us. Vogart’s mind has been searched once recently; in all likelihood, we can believe his contribution to be genuine. However, we must not trust ourselves entirely to him; it has not yet been fully ascertained as to whether or not the psykers that join the enemy’s forces are willing traitors.

If they are not, there is a malign force behind our foe, and likely one that is vastly experienced in fighting Imperial forces. If they are, then we cannot trust Vogart or…or even Sheka, my own psyker.”

“Your own pet,” murmured Major Vutch, her gaze darting to Enskor again, who returned her glance.

“What?” snarled Alexos, slamming his palm onto the table.

“Calm down, calm down,” said Enskor, waving his hands placatingly. “Why are we talking about Miaro like a psyker? We don’t know that he is one, do we? Wasn’t he killed?”

Brevet-Captain Crestholm, Miaro’s as-of-yet unofficial replacement, spoke up.

“It appeared so. He was shot in the face, apparently, but his body was never recovered. And of all the men that in the regiment, Miaro had the damndest best luck, period. He claimed it was just a sixth sense, mostly, but…whatever it was, it was uncanny at times. Not much use on the card table, but out in combat—Miaro saved all of our arses more than once, knowing something that he shouldn’t have been able to. He was the one that raised the alarm before he was shot, I believe.”

Alexos nodded. “This fits with what Vogart surmised—he was probably a low-level, almost undetectable psyker. He may not even have known. His power was boosted by this enemy puppet master, and he was unleashed upon us.”

The room was quiet for several seconds as the other officers considered the implications of this possibility. Finally, Commissar Beinthop slammed his fist against the wall.

“You damned traitor!” he cried despairingly, making several others present jerk. “Why were you weak enough to be controlled? Why didn’t you go down fighting the Archenemy, Miaro, so that we could at least respect your memory?”

Alexos sighed. There were no easy answers.

+

There was no easy answer here, either. Alexos sat upon his bed, turning over the gem in his hands. It caught the light of the single lume-strip along the ceiling, but for all its clarity and faint, prismatic iridescence, it revealed nothing of its secrets.

Inspiration of a sort struck him. He knelt beside Sheka’s kennel and held the jewel up beside her face.

“Sheka,” he said softly. “Sheka.”

Her indistinct murmurs died. Even with her blindfold and psi-suppressant collar on, her head turned unerringly to the gemstone—and not the location of his voice.

“What do you think about this, Sheka? Should I keep this diamond, or whatever it is? It’s very important that I make the right decision.”

She was silent. He lowered the stone. The tilt of her head didn’t waver from the angle it had been on, to continue ‘looking’ at the rock.

He shook his head regretfully.

“Damned worthless piece of glass,” he muttered, and tossed it onto the bedside. Surely Vogart had been exaggerating its importance.

He took his peaked cap from its hanger, and decided to head down to the officer’s mess for a bite to eat.

Then Sheka spoke, in a soft, quiet voice.

“Yours.”

Alexos froze. He hadn’t actually expected a response from her; not while she was tied and warded, as she currently was. This could be more of her inane babble, as she always did when bound, but–

“Yours, Alexos.”

He strode to the bedside and scooped up the stone. He’d keep the bloody thing.

+

Despite the fact that the enemy had lost Miaro, one of their most powerful weapons, the tide of the war front had turned against the Imperials. The advance of the Guard, which had ground to a halt over the previous days, now gritted its teeth and struggled simply to hold the ground which it had already taken.

Waves of enemy broke across the positions of the Gundread and Salthovarians, and the Chardonii fought brutal house-to-house combat. The Dunmirrans loaned out platoons as they could, but were already stretched between their own segment on the line as well as holding the breach into the under-route. Even the barely trained PDF regiments, which served only to fill gaps and advance behind the guardsmen, saw their fair share of action.

The heretics came, barely armored and malnourished, screaming blasphemous curses through frothing lips even as they died. They launched attacks at night, through cover, from civilian convoys, across broad killing grounds, and out of abandoned habs. Heedless of their own safety, they smashed themselves upon the Imperial positions. Enemy snipers kept the Guard’s sentries ducking for cover, and suicide squads assaulted heavy weapons teams with crude explosives.

Imperial bombardments from their batteries of Basilisk siege tanks were constant. Retaliating against these were hidden enemy cannons, mounted within the dilapidated walls of the miles-high, conical hive. An orbital bombardment slagged a good portion of the enemy emplacements, but was hastily called off as debris rained down like comets upon the guardsmen below.

Black, dart-like Hell Blade fighters crisscrossed the sky, dogfighting with the aerial contingent of the Imperial Navy; Lightning fighters and Thunderbolt gunships.

The Imperials were being pushed, and the enemy appeared to be without end. Discipline began to show fractures in the Dunmirran camp, and Alexos’s whip was busy.

Slack-faced soldiers wandered mechanically through the messes. Fatigue was total.

+

“Gentlemen,” said Brigadier General Bartholomew Hawl, “I am glad that those of you who were able, came.”

The only illumination in the darkened interior of the Salamander command vehicle was the holo-display at its front, besides which stood the general.

“Lord General Machkintas grows restless. Across the planet, one traitor hive has already been retaken, and enemy resistance is in its death throes in two more. The Korlian 28th and 29th Mounted have broken the back of the enemy’s armor on the equatorial coast, and saturation orbital bombardment has sunken their fleets. The last of their satellite super-platforms has been cracked open and knocked out of orbit. The Imperial war machine grinds forward on all fronts, except at Hive Janendor. Except here.

“We, the Third Liberation Task Force, are four regiments of the illustrious Imperial Guard! These rabble should present us no obstacle! But we are unable to move them, and the First and Second Task Forces, on the other flanks of the hive, have met with similar opposition. Murmurs have begun to be heard from High Command, and trust me, gentlemen, they are not murmurs that we like to hear.

“We have two choices. The first is to launch an all out forward push, gambling everything that the enemy will break before us. However, I do not wish to sacrifice the lives of the soldiers that are my responsibility so carelessly. Therefore, we must take the second course of action—dig in, and wait for reinforcements with which to strike with overwhelming force.

“A column of PDF armor, ten thousand tanks, is en route to support our cause. They carry another fifty thousand of loyal Planetary Defense Troopers. With them, ill-trained and ill-equipped as they may be, breaking the enemy shall be no issue.”

Hawl paused. As he had been speaking, maps and schema had been flickering over the display, highlighting the various conflicts of which he spoke.

An aide scurried between the fold-out benches in which the waiting officers were seated. He whispered briefly with General Hawl, who waved him off irritably. The general turned back to his audience, manipulating the holo-console control again. A red icon with several segments appeared, worming its way toward the hive—the Planetary Defense Force reinforcements.

“As you can see, however, they are still a good two weeks or more out. Our new objective is to preserve as much of our force as is possible over the time it takes them to arrive. Unless there is a significant shift in the disposition of the enemy, which the tactical savants assure me is a single-digit percentage, we shall present them with an unbreakable shell. Let them continue to run themselves onto our killing fields. We shall not be wanting in terms of supplies; landers shall continue to ferry down ammunition and rations.

“In our pushes forward thus far, however, we have become overstretched. The Chardonii especially, despite the specific aid of what elements of the local PDF are available.” Hawl glanced at Colonel Viskar, the only Chardonus present. Upon arriving, Viskar had claimed that a current situation required the presence of his lower officers, and that he would pass on this debriefing’s information as necessary.

“So we consolidate. I have specific orders for each of you, of course,” Hawl tapped a stack of data-slates beside his terminal, “and there is this as well.” The holo-display zoomed forward greatly. A series of colored lines, each labeled as one of the four regiments of the Guard, manifested themselves.

“These are your current positions. And these,” the lines writhed into a tight arc, pressured upon several sides by icons marking points of high enemy concentration, “are where you shall be within twenty-four hours. The Gundread, as the most elite soldiers available, shall be taking point, receiving the responsibility for holding the captured transit route. The Dunmirrans shall move the soldiers which had been guarding the transit route south, as here, to link up with the Salthovarians more solidly. Their northernmost point shall be this infirmarium, here. The Chardonii…”

+

Map of new positions.

+

Officers mingled, discussing their new deployment orders. A stony-faced Commissar Beinthop carried on a subdued discussion with General Hawl. Major Vutch conferred with Brevet-Captain Crestholm, both of them laughing quietly. Alexos stood to one side, content simply to study the holo-map which, while dimmer in the face of the new illumination, was still running.

Until Enskor called him over to his own knot of conversation, where a frowning Colonel Viskar waited.

“Alexos,” repeated Enskor as the commissar arrived. “You requested that Vogart visit our camp?”

“No, sir,” replied Alexos, confused.

“Viskar here says that a message arrived to his camp at a very inopportune time, urgently requesting Vogart’s presence in our own. Demanding, even. I sent no such message, but you’d been huddling in corners with the man…”

“I did no such thing, sir. He had raised some points for thought last time we spoke, but nothing that requires a direct conference, yet.”

“This doesn’t add up,” said Viskar, shaking his head. “Just before I left the heretics were massing for attacks on several points of my line. That’s why I couldn’t bring my support staff—they have their own duties towards which they must attend, though I can’t very well ignore a summons from the general. But Vogart is a keystone in our line, especially since we lost the support of Mancharex. We had to send him to you by Chimera, though. Your—well, the communique we received was very urgent, saying that he was needed in the Dunmirran camp. It couldn’t wait, because of important developments with the enemy psyker—”

Alexos swore violently, attracting glances from all corners of the command vehicle’s interior.

“We need to find him,” Alexos said. “It’s a trap. The enemy have been stealing our psykers, and are making their move on Vogart.”

+

The Chimera had been cracked open by some enormous force, Alexos was told through the crackling vox. The half-squad of Chardonii that had been an escort were dead, as was the driver. No, there was no sign of Vogart—the sanctioned psyker had simply vanished.

Alexos sighed and slid the vox-receiver back into its cradle. Slowly, he slumped forward, until his head was pressed against the cool rockcrete of the bunker’s side.

So, Vogart was gone. Perhaps he had even orchestrated his own disappearance, if he truly were a traitor, despite the evidence against that. Alexos doubted it, though. After all, the vox-order for him to report to the Dunmirran encampment had originated from outside the Chardonii camp.

He hadn’t liked Vogart, but he had to respect the man. And now, unless he had somehow managed to commit honorable suicide…

Suddenly, Alexos felt incredibly tired.

+

The Infirmarium Majoris was an impressive, three-storey building scarred by remarkably little collateral damage. It loomed over the two-level habitation complexes around it, and was now the northernmost point of the Dunmirran line. To the northeast stretched the new Gundread line. Resting upon a broad thoroughfare, the Infirmarium defended an obvious route of attack deeper into the Imperial lines. As such, it was to be heavily defended. Stationed within were Major Vutch, several platoons of Dunmirrans, Alexos, and Sheka.

The hospital still had a skeleton crew of workers, despite the fact that it had been occupied by the heretics and then forcefully reclaimed by the Imperial forces. These workers had remained loyal to the God Emperor of Mankind, they claimed, and passed the vetting to be re-accepted into Imperial society. The location, due to its valuable medical tech and defensibility, had functioned under the threat of force under the heretic yoke.

“Don’t you worry, though, sir,” said Alexos’s guide, an aged medic with a nameplate stating, ‘Markius Ennenban’. “We did our best to make sure those scum what we had to fix up didn’t walk away. We had to help some few, to keep them from getting suspicious, but if we could get away with a lethal injection, well then, we’d try to.”

Alexos decided not to trust the staff overmuch, in any case. They might be able to mouth catechisms and pass a strip-test, but they had been living amongst the Enemy for months. Even if the staff were as loyal as they professed to be, there was no guarantee that there were not some rotten fruit in the crate. That was all that it would take to stick a knife into their backs and twist.

“Here’s the main stairway, sir. There’s four wards here on the bottom floor. Two of them are in the outlying wings you’d have seen coming in. There’s also a stairwell ending on each side of the atrium, there.”

Ennenban led him slowly, clumping up the stairs. The main stairway was a broad, banistered thing, and went all the way up to the third storey. It looked like a perfect killing field to Alexos—if they were forced to fall back to the second floor, they could post a squad or two on each platform. Any heretics trying to climb the marble stairs would be caught in a deadly crossfire.

“Here on the second floor, there’s one more ward, for bionics and augmentations and the like. Our tech-staff have fled, though, so don’t go expecting us to jam a spare leg onto you if you lose one of ours. We’ll staunch the bleeding and sedate you, that’s all. There’s also individual practitioners’ offices here, above the atrium, and storage off to our left.

“Whoo, sir, you needn’t climb these stairs so fast, do you? Fair takes my breath away, it does.”

Alexos said nothing, gazing levelly at Ennenban and fingering his pistol grip until the man caught up to the platform with him. He got the message, and diverted his gaze. Looking away didn’t help the man, though, as his gaze was simply shifted to Sheka, who was trailing Alexos on her leash.

“Right then, sir,” continued the medic. “Up there is the catatonia ward; just workers who’ve been knocked over the head and are in comas, and the like. Even a few rich up-hivers being held in stasis fields in there, their families wanting to keep them out of politics or something. Do you want to see, sir?”

“Not just yet,” said Alexos. “I’m sure I’ll have time for that, though, soon enough. I’ll have the Major send teams to look through the basements and the storage areas too. We’ll have plenty of chance to make ourselves at home, I’m sure.”

The medic grimaced and bowed servilely.

+

Alexos stood by an office’s second story window, Sheka rocking back and forth on her heels behind him. Discarded surgical tools were lined up beside the sink mounted in the counter. Echoing explosions to the northeast barely intruded upon his thoughts of Vogart. It irked him that the Guard had been so easily manipulated by the Archenemy.

“Why did you have to get yourself captured?” he asked quietly.

Sheka softly echoed the noises that he had made, if not the words. He snorted humorlessly and rested a hand on her head, gazing sadly down at her. His emotional attachment to Sheka was harmful to his conduct as a Commissar, he knew. He wasn’t even entirely certain as to whether or not he could pull the trigger were she possessed by some despicable thing from the warp. he knew that it was dangerous for him to even entertain the notion that he might not, but he had to remain honest with himself. And if she were captured in the same manner as the other psykers of the task force—but he would not allow that to happen.

A cough interrupted his musing. Major Vutch was standing in the doorway.

“Major,” said Alexos, straightening and adopting a slightly more professional expression. “Do you want something?”

“Not particularly, commissar, sir,” replied the woman. “Simply checking in and making sure that everything’s in order. The sweeps of the building turned up nothing amiss, and half-tracks are bringing in food and sleeping pallets now. Do you need anything special?”

“No, Major. Just a private room for myself and Sheka, and to be kept informed of major developments.” Vutch pursed her lips, nodded, and glanced at Sheka. She made to leave, but hesitated.

“Yes?” asked Alexos. Vutch drew a breath uncomfortably.

“I am sorry for my demeanor during the previous several days, sir. What I said after talking to Enskor together, and my general behavior recently.”

Alexos raised his eyebrows. “Why the sudden confession? I certainly don’t mind, but I can’t help but wonder. I’m no priest.”

“We’ll be fighting alongside each other here for some time, quite possibly,” she said. “I thought that it would be better to be on civil terms.”

“You needn’t quite crawl on your stomach in the mud so deeply,” Alexos said.

“I know—but I shouldn’t have been alienating you for supporting me. I face enough trouble for my gender as it is, and oughtn’t go stirring up more. It is a flimsy excuse, I know, but I’ve had…poor experiences in the past.

“Then there were also my comments during the Miaro briefing about your fiancee. They were…uncalled for.”

Alexos snorted.

“Does that make them any less true?” he asked.

+

Sheka had been settled in the room that Alexos had picked. He now picked his way up the main staircase to the third storey. The spiral staircases at two of the corners of the second storey were only linked the ends of the atrium below, and he had to make his way to the more central stairs to reach the top.

The catatonia ward was divided into four partitions. In the first two, several guardsmen snipers were setting up longlas rifles. Empty cots, beside several of which were the packs of Dunmirrans, filled the rooms. In the corner of the first quadrant, a vox officer was setting up his station. From the roof came the sound of hammering, suggesting that the vox-officer had enlisted another guardsman to run up a receiver pole to aid his reception.

The third partition contained actual coma patients of the Infirmarium, though half of the beds were empty. There were lho-butts and other signs of guardsmen, but none were passing through of present. The patients varied from healthy citizens that looked as if they were merely sleeping to emaciated wraiths on intravenous drips.

The fourth room had more sparsely scattered patients, but its own marvel, as well. Three stasis cells graced the inside wall, two of which were occupied and active. They were covered by a layer of double-thick glass and holy wards for protection, but the air around the two cells still crackled with energy.

The first held a handsome, aquiline-featured man, who wore rich, embroidered clothes even in what served as a functional grave. The second contained a woman dressed in a simple hospital smock, but by the Throne she looked elegant. Her skin was deeply tanned, almost approaching Alexos’s in hue, and her raven hair cascaded past her waist. Fine, delicate features were visible through the glass.

“Isn’t she beautiful, sir?”

Alexos turned rapidly. An emaciated female janitor stood watching him, having shuffled in through the door with a cart and broom unheard.

“Yes, actually. Do you know the story of why she—well, both of these two are down here?”

The woman, whose nameplate showed her to be ‘Agathae Wetlem’, shrugged. “I don’t rightly know, sir. I’ve heard rumors about her being sick, and having fled from the over-hive to avoid an incriminating situation. He followed for some reason or another, and supposedly asked to be immured beside her until she could be waked. I don’t know how accurate that is, or how long that last will be until, but it’s what I heard all the same. So long as their families keep—or kept, really—paying, the Infirmarium doesn’t—didn’t—care. The bill-keeping’s been shot to the warp, though, since the uprising.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got sweeping to be doing.”

+

Underground, upon the slab which Captain Miaro had lain days previously, a captive moans. His body has been tortured mercilessly by robed acolytes, who in turn were watched over by the malevolent presence of the masked psyker. Now, psychic augurs drill into the prisoner’s mind, seeking to tear his consciousness into the realm of the nether.

They shall be successful. Not immediately, but soon enough for their dark purposes.

+

There are tragedies in warfare which every commander hopes not to have to suffer. There is terrible luck, and painful blows which every general must take, but hopes not to have to. They are the catastrophes toward which the response can make or break the entire war. Often, they appear to be random flukes of fate. However, sometimes the enemy gives fate a helping hand.

And so as the Dunmirrans moved clunkily into place, and the Gundread began occupying the under-route, a tragedy began to unfold in the wings. As heretics died upon the barbed wire of the Salthovarians, unholy pacts were forged. As the Chardonii officers gathered in their command tent for a debriefing from Colonel Viskar, spiteful eyes watched from afar, and their owner laughed mirthlessly.

The host of the Archenemy mustered its hidden strength outside the sweeping Imperial line. Skeins of fate were threaded and intertwined. Lives and souls were bartered, and faiths were shattered.

Colonel Viskar spoke to his men of their duty. He recounted the trust that the Emperor himself had bequeathed upon Mankind in the hour of his ascension to the Golden Throne: that they were to stand firm against all the horrors of the darkness. Viskar waxed eloquently to his officers of their virtues, speaking to them of their strengths and wholesomeness of purpose. He demanded of them to but hold to that ancient charge, and to redraw the line so firmly that not one inch of ground was given to the foe.

Would he have spoken the same, had he known that he and all present would die in mere seconds?

The artillery shell, guided by the telekinetic magicks of the enemy, tore through the tent with ease, and detonated square in its middle. Colonel Viskar, his Major, both Captains, the Commissar, the vox officer, six lieutenants, four aides, and a servitor were killed instantly.

Half kilometer away, a psychic signal was triggered. Four thousand cultists and heretics, standing ready for this express purpose, broke cover and advanced on the Chardonii line, swarming onto the weakest points of defense, and breaking down the cohesion of the Imperial forces.

Coded vox messages swept out on secure lines, and across the heretic lines, ten thousand more cultists armed their weapons and prepared their assaults. The Imperial Guardsmen, not yet firmly entrenched in their new positions, panicked as the coordinated, overwhelming attack was unleashed upon their every position. Vox channels were rendered insensible by the sudden outburst of reports, and commanders disbelievingly tried to sort out the incoming data from all quarters.

Sixty seconds after Viskar’s command tent was destroyed, the entirety of the Chardonii front line was under attack. Within five minutes, the signal had been given to the rest of the heretics. Before twenty minutes had passed, every bewildered regiment of the Guard in the task force was under full assault.

Headless and bewildered, the Chardonii and their PDF accompaniment floundered against the foe. Demands for reinforcements were met with silence, and the vox channels overflowed pandemoniously. Slowly, as they realized how desperate the situation was, lone squads and platoons trickled from the sleeping quarters to the front. Individual lieutenants strove for order, but their disjointed efforts were for naught; the chain of command had been irrevocably shattered.

The Chardonii fell back to their secondary lines in piecemeal. Sections of their line were trapped, surrounded, and overwhelmed. They struggled to organize at their second line of defense, rousing more confused soldiers from barracks and hab blocks, whose protests against not having received orders swiftly faded as they realized the gravity of the situation. These were not enough to stem the rolling, inexorable tide of screaming heretics.

A thousand heroic last stands were enacted in that fragmented, chaotic battle, but the Chardonii and their accompanying PDF were put to rout. Utterly broken, they fled, and were hounded viciously by the heretic forces. The Imperial flank had been utterly annihilated in less than a single hour, and its heart had been lain open for the foe.

+

The Gundread tactical control room, which had resembled the battle outside in terms of frantic action mere moments before, froze. Slowly, the smoking bolt pistol was lowered. Commissar Beinthop spat on Colonel Rastheim’s corpse.

“No retreat,” he growled. “We were ordered to hold the line, and so we shall! Major Carlsine, you are in command of this regiment.”

Carlsine gazed at the body of his commanding officer, his mouth open and his hands shaking. Rastheim had been a damn fine commander, and had pushed the Gundread to fame across a score of triumphant warfronts over his dozen-year long tenure as colonel of the 58th. And now, he was dead.

“Sir,” said Brevet-Captain Crestholm, breaking the silence and addressing the Commissar, “are you insane? The Chardonii are gone. _Gone_. Not reeling, but _obliterated_. The enemy is behind us! We must realign ourselves to keep them from smashing each and every one of our regiments from the rear—”

Beinthop’s pistol came up again.

“Do not address me in that manner, lieutenant,” he spat. “We shall not disobey the General’s orders. The instant we receive permission to change our position, I shall willingly drag our privates there by the scruffs of their necks. But until then, we hold the line!”

“We cannot,” Major Carlsine said, slowly. “We cannot hold when surrounded upon all sides. We shall wheel back and take up positions along the Sanguinary Way, as Rastheim ordered.”

The commissar wheeled, his bolt pistol roaring. Carlsine’s forehead was explosively detonated by the bolt round. His brains and the top half of his skull were splattered across the map displays set out upon the worktable.

“Treachery!” raged the Commissar. “Treachery and cowardice! Are you not men? We shall stand and fight! Captain Ridge, you have the reins. Do you not see that their disobedience was madness? Order the men to hold!”

Ridge stood slowly from his chair. His eyes were glassy. He surveyed the bodies of his commanding officers, still looking as if he didn’t believe what was happening. Ridge was a career captain; he had been content to allow Miaro the flashy heroics, and had been solidly dependable in completing the tasks that Rastheim had delegated him. To suddenly be in command of the entire regiment—and the manner in which he had lost his two superiors—

“Order it,” growled Beinthop, his gun’s silent barrel completing the threat.

“The men,” Ridge began, and faltered. After a moment of silence, he began again, and more steadily. “Vox. Our orders have not changed, have they?

“Nothing, sir,” said Glaen, the vox officer. “We’ve not been able to get anything to or from command, the channels are so packed.”

“I see,” breathed Ridge slowly. His gaze turned slowly back to the barrel of Beinthop’s gun, and closed his eyes painfully. “Commissar, will you not listen to reason?”

“The chain of command is reason, captain. Imperial law is reason. The history of organized warfare, and all the precedents that have been set in the name of obeying orders, that is reason. And I am hearing it very well, believe you me. Do not stall, captain. Make the order. My patience has long since worn thin.”

“My life is at stake, yes,” replied Ridge shakily. His face grew firm, and he swallowed. “But so are the lives of every member of this task force. I cannot willfully doom them. I will not have the deaths of thousands of my fellows in arms upon my conscience.”

“Then you will not have one,” snarled Beinthop, pistol-whipping Ridge and knocking him to the floor. The commissar unloaded a trio of bolt shells into the captain’s chest, who cried out weakly and died. Beinthop turned slowly to Crestholm.

“You have made your opinion clear, brevet-captain. But I am a forgiving man. Recant, and order the soldiers to maintain their positions, and I shall grant you command of this regiment. Spare me the witless wittering of these corpses; our orders are _immutable_. The discipline of the Gundread is admirable but, I see, misplaced. Do not kill yourself with pointless heroics. What is your answer, Crestholm?”

“You know it,” spat Crestholm, his chest rising and falling with suppressed emotion. He stood firmly, his shoulders straight and his throat bared.

“Very well,” said Beinthop. He aimed, and his grip tightened.

With a loud ‘clang’, he was knocked unconscious. Vox Officer Glaen stood over Beinthop’s body, the heavy vox-set in his hands. Crestholm blinked, and let out his breath.

“What are your orders, sir?” Glaen asked.

+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

*edited into the previous post, for the sake of one post chapters*


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter V: The Infirmarium Besieged*

+++

The explosion echoed across the rooftops. A kilometer away, a massive cloud of smoke and dust boiled into the air, vomited forth by the collapsing transit route. As the Gundread abandoned their position, they were ensuring that the movement of the enemy was hampered.

Alexos sighed. With that, there went all hard work that the Dunmirrans had invested in capturing that tunnel. He didn’t begrudge the Gundread their decision, of course. As the vox channels had cleared, they had broadcasted their intent to wheel back and take up the position of a new flank. Of course, doing so meant that the valuable under-route had to be abandoned. Better to deny the enemy its use as well, Crestholm had decided.

When General Hawl finally managed to get his communications through, he had commended Crestholm on his rapid response to the situation, and offered his sympathies for the loss of his commanding officers and commissar. The Archenemy would be made to pay for the arrogance of attempting to destroy two regiments’ commands.

Alexos gazed down from his viewpoint on the third floor, looking to the north. Columns of tan-clad Gundread infantry were trickling past, flowing around the eastern side of the hospital and out of sight. Two hours earlier, the Gundread’s fleet of Chimera troop transports had swept past, and reports marked them rallying the scattered remnants of the Chardonii. These two had hastily formed their line along the Sanguinary Way, a broad boulevard that had served as a main artery of civilian traffic during peacetime. They were now struggling to hold back the foremost tendrils of the heretic pursuit until the rest of the Gundread foot troopers could reinforce their positions.

Closer to Alexos’ location, the remnants of heretic pushes on the infirmarium lay scattered across the parking lots immediately outside. The hospital staff had seen fit to hide themselves in the basement, but Alexos had ordered several dragged out to treat the few casualties that the Dunmirrans had suffered during the firefights. None of the heretics had made it into the building, such was the effective killing ground surrounding them.

They were fortunate to have such a defensible position in which to take shelter, as they would very soon be the northernmost point of the Imperial line, and under the focus of the enemy. The threat that Alexos feared most at this point was that enemy artillery would be brought to bear on their position. The hospital was hardly a small target.

Despite the relative safeness of the three platoons in the Infirmarium, other nearby Imperials were suffering. The main line of Dunmirrans was being attacked constantly, and even now, the sounds of fighting were clearly audible.

But this wasn’t the only noise. A low humming—deep, faint, and yet clearly growing louder—also drifted on the air. Alexos frowned pensively. He strode from his northerly-facing window to one looking out over the west, over the main heretic lines. The sound was coming from that direction, certainly. The only sound that he could associate it with, though, would be massed…Chimeras.

“Trooper,” he barked, and the sniper who had taken up a position in this room looked up from his rifle. “Come here, and bring your gun. More precisely, your scope.”

The man scrambled to his feet and made his way to the window.

“Hear that?” asked Alexos. The sniper tilted his head, and nodded warily. “See if you can pinpoint it.”

“Yessir,” assented the man quietly, and leaned the barrel of his longlas against the windowsill. He set his shoulder firmly against the stock and hunched forward, peering through the scope. The barrel rotated, panning across the habs and manufactoria in the distance. Long seconds of near-silence passed, broken only by the exterior noises. The sniper spoke again.

“I see a half-track, sir. And two more—wait, a whole column. Coming down the boulevard toward us. About…twenty, I’d guess, sir, but they’re kicking up a cloud that’s obscuring the back ones. They look like they’ve been modified to act as troop transports.” The barrel of the gun jerked to one side. “Wait—there’s another. Another column. Two kilometers to the south. It was hidden behind a set of habs, and—oh, Holy Throne.”

“What?” demanded Alexos as the sniper fell silent. Seconds dragged past. “What is it, trooper?”

“That’s…” breathed the sniper, “a lot more tanks.”

In the room behind them, the voxcaster squawked into life, blaring an attack warning.

+

Broken, smoldering hulls were littered across the walk now, too. Splayed around each of these were more bodies, flowering out and away from the wreckages as the heretics had burst from their doomed transports and sprinted for the Infirmarium. Most had been cut down by lasfire.

However, the trio of rocket platforms and pair of meltaguns available to the Dunmirrans had been nowhere near enough to prevent most of the half-track and Chimera transports from disgorging their cargo. The pressure had only been increased after a traitor Leman Russ battle tank had obliterated one of the missile teams with a well-placed shell.

Alexos slumped back, leaning against one of the atrium’s pillars. The hours since the alarm had been raised had taken their toll. he hoisted his chainsword up to his chest with tired arms. It was clogged with gore: nothing that would impede its function, but the teeth and most of the blade had been painted a bright crimson. And much of his uniform, too.

This track-full of enemies had been dispatched, and he had precious seconds in which to breath. At the doors and the large, broken-and-barricaded glass windows, Guardsmen snapped off lasbolts at the enemy. Major Vutch’s voice crackled over Alexos’s voxbead, snapping off orders to her soldiers.

++Get a rocket team in the Recovery Ward wing now! I want a shot at its flank. Lieutenant Jansa, send a squad into the Psychotic wing and relieve one of Galdhen’s. All eyes watch your rears—they’re pushing hard to get into the emergency exits.++

Alexos was impressed with Vutch’s efficiency in maintaining the defenses. Despite the heavy fighting, the major was proving adept at rotating soldiers between positions and holding discipline intact. She kept one of the three platoons—or at least, the constituent parts of one platoon—on the upper storeys at all times, resting those soldiers who had seen the worst combat. Casualties, which had become painfully frequent, were taken into the basement for treatment.

A pair of enemy vehicles slewed to a halt outside the front of the hospital, disgorging another wave of screaming fanatics. Alexos wearily drew his bolt pistol and launched himself forward, ignoring the deadening fatigue that gripped his limbs. He regretted having left Sheka in the Psychotic Ward, keeping out the heretics there—she would have made this so very much easier.

“Hold them back, soldiers!” he shouted. “The Emperor is watching!”

+

“What do you mean,” Alexos said threateningly into the voxpiece, “pull back?”

Beside him sat Major Vutch, listening intently. The last rays of the sun speared through the third floor window, and staccato bursts of gunfire were still being rattled off at the edges of his hearing.

++…can’t hold our positions, sir,++ replied the crackling vox. ++We have to realign with…_kshh_…sitions of the Gundread. Even ask…_kshhhishchch_…gave us the go-ahead, sir.++

“Who gave you the go-ahead? Repeat.”

++Colonel Ens_shkk_, sir, I repeat, Colonel Enskor. He ordered us to line up more closely with the Gundread and take some of the weight off…_Shshkitshh_…

++We have our orders to change positions. Unless you…_shhkik_…too, you’ll be left high and d_shhh_. The Major needs to link her forces back up with the rest of the _shk_iment++

“I will do so,” snarled Alexos, “even if I have to fight my way through half the heretic army. And when I get back into the camp, Lieutenant Barca, I am going to very painfully remind both you and the Colonel of a core tenet of the Imperial Guard—_’Not One Step Backward’_”. He slammed the voxpiece back into its cradle.

“It may already be too late to get out,” murmured Vutch. “They’ve got us bottled in here right tight.”

+

The Major proved to be right. The killing ground surrounding the hospital proved to work very effectively both ways. The one abortive attempt that made to fall back cost the Dunmirrans three squads. After some time spent fuming, Alexos respected Vutch’s decision not to try to break out again. Around them, more and more heretics spilled into position—and the Imperial forces fell further and further away.

They were stranded, surrounded, and outnumbered on all sides.

+

A long night later, Alexos knocked cautiously on the door to the Major’s room. He had changed into a new uniform, and smoothed out several more folds from it as he stood there.

“Enter,” came the reply.

Major Vutch was lying, fully dressed with the exception of her boots, on her bed. Her hands were knitted behind her head. She looked up at Alexos as he entered, her expression professing mild interest, but mostly just reflecting the same deadening exhaustion which Alexos felt.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked. “Take a seat.”

He spun her chair away from her desk on one of its legs and lowered himself slowly onto it, exhaling as his sore muscles protested.

“Not much,” he replied. “Just a morale check, if you understand. Being trapped in a building, surrounded by raving heretics, and then snubbed by command as ‘not being a high enough priority’ to rescue has to hurt. As a commissar,” Alexos told her, “I have to know the condition of those alongside whom I fight.”

Vutch slid her legs off the bed and propped herself into a sitting position. “In that case,” she replied, “I’m fine. Tired, obviously. But probably not as tired as you are. Throne alone knows how you’ve managed to remain upright. Have you even slept since we were surrounded?”

“Is that respect,” he asked back, “or just motherly concern?”

Vutch snorted humorlessly.

“Really,” he said, “there is one thing I thought that I ought to report. Probably not much, but I had caught a couple of the staff whispering in a corner about the basement. Something about having ‘toured them right past’ and ‘them not suspecting a thing’. When I confronted to them on it, they said it was just contraband; a stash of medical-grade hallucinogens and the like. They were intimidated, to say the least.”

“What did you do? Make an example of them to the other infirmarium staff?

Alexos shook his head. “What would the point be?” he asked. “It can be dealt with after all of this is over, if we even survived this. Why waste the energy? It’s not like the scum are going anywhere, right now.”

She looked amused. “A commissar getting lax about his duties? Isn’t that some sort of direct contradiction?”

He shrugged. “I’m sure you can sympathize with such a hairline of apathy in the current situation.”

“Certainly,” Vutch replied, agreeing readily. “I promise you that it’ll be forgotten once all this is over, one way or another.”

A brief silence followed.

“How utterly pointless,” she commented. “Discussing the precepts of duty while almost certain death surrounds us on all sides.”

“If you listen to the judges and sages long enough,” he said, “you’ll realize that that’s precisely what they’d want you to do in such a situation as this. ‘Preventing the degradation of our faith’, and the like. Trust me, I spent the first third of my life in the Schola, memorizing that sort of _shoka_.”

“Shoka?” she asked dubiously. “The drink?”

“No, no, the fungus. What the drink’s made out of. Tastes even worse. Also used as a swear. Not an agriworlder?”

She sighed and slid into a slightly more slumped position.

“No. Just another hiver, pulled from the darkness into the Emperor’s Light. Though I probably haven’t had shoka juice since I left it. To tell the truth, I had been looking forward to be back in a hive. It’s not something you can forget, you know?”

“Even if we got in there, we’d probably spend most of the time in the underhive,” he said. “Not somewhere that you’d have come from, I think.”

“Wrong again, actually. Underhive born and bred was me, until I was shipped off to the Schola.”

“An underhiver becoming an officer?” He raised his eyebrows. “How did that happen?”

“Well–” she began, and then closed her mouth again, exhaling heavily. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, continuing haltingly. “Let’s just say it was—payment for services rendered.”

Silence. Alexos pursed his lips awkwardly.

“Not those kinds of services,” she said abruptly, then smirked. He breathed out.

“No,” she continued, “it was more the, ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’, type of thing.”

“On the legal end of the spectrum?”

“Oh yes,” she said emphatically. “Most assuredly. It might be best if you don’t get inquisitive, though. If you catch my drift.”

“Aha,” he said, nodding slowly. “I see.”

“Any other news?” she asked. “How are the men holding up?”

“Well enough. They’re fighting for spots on the third floor, which they claim has been receiving less enemy fire than the others. The damn chagnats outside have picked up a new tactic, though—using the broken carcasses of their own tanks as cover and sneaking forward, then sniping. We’ll be rigging up some spotlights once it gets dark to keep them back.”

“It that everything?”

“I think so, major. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be putting back on my ‘mean’ face. It was a nice chat, but we have discipline to uphold.”

“Completely understandable, Commissar Alexos, sir. Though…if we have another one of these talks, please, call me Kay.”

He was once again struck by how beautiful she was. Not beautiful in a ‘pretty’ way—a word which contained connotations of ‘fragile’—but in a manner which was certainly…youthful.

“That might not be best,” he said, not unkindly. “Though—warp. Why the hells not, if we’re all going to die. Call me Montra.”

+

Alexos scanned the forces swarming around the Infirmarium with a pair of binocs. They looked like so many insects of a hive. Small clusters of heretic ‘workers’ moved from building to building, and larger, ‘beetle’ tanks trundled along the streets. Even if the Dunmirrans couldn’t—or wouldn’t—extract him and these trapped platoons, he was still going to record the traitors’ troop movements and pass them on by vox. That much was clearly his duty.

Two more days had passed. First water, then more recently electricity, had been cut from the hospital. The hospital’s internal lighting and the spotlights that the Dunmirrans had erected ceased to function. Several of the injured died because the devices keeping them alive failed. The vox had to be used more sparingly, as the fuel for the hospital’s few back-up generators was extremely limited. Cisterns on the roof held extra water, but it had to be tightly rationed.

More precious than those commodities, though, was ammunition. The crates of las cells, canisters of promethium, rockets, and such that had been brought to the Infirmarium when they first moved their force in were swiftly dwindling. The supply of bolts for Alexos’s own pistol had shrank to a mere five standard magazines, as his was the only bolt weapon present.

Vutch had suggested that they scavenge autoguns off the fallen enemies, and Alexos had emphatically denied the notion. They would not utilize the tools of the enemy, which would not have been fashioned with the proper supplications to the Machine God. Not only would the weapons be of inferior quality, but their machine spirits would just as warped and twisted as their creators’ souls.

The most unsettling, and therefore infuriating, fact of this siege was that there was still no enemy shelling—not even three and a half days in.

It was insane, irrational, and the only salvation of those sheltering inside. For whatever reason, the Archenemy hadn’t turned the Infirmarium into so much more slag and rubble. No, instead, hundreds of heretic soldiers had been diverted from the main force to surround the hospital. It was an exorbitant waste of manpower, and there was only one reason why Alexos could think of to explain their actions. There was something here which they wanted, very badly. And he thought that he had a very clear idea of what—or rather, who—that might be.

He turned to Sheka, whose leash was wound around his wrist. He was making sure never to let her out of his sight. She writhed, and the silver chains of her bindings jingled.

“Pain…” she whispered. Alexos frowned.

“Sheka?” he asked, kneeling beside her. “Are you all right?”

“Pain here. So much. Pain.”

“There are lots of people that have been hurt. And many more that have died. Of course there is pain.”

“Not…not that pain. Deep. Not…normal. Suffering. Mind suffering. Deeper. Deep. Despair.”

She wriggled again, and the brief moment of semi-lucidity was gone. Alexos’s chest felt constricted. Was this the Sheka that appeared when he took off her psi-suppressants, pushing a difficult message into the physical world? Or was it the true Sheka—the one that had begun scraping the exterior ever so hesitantly during the tumultuous events of the past days?

Alexos couldn’t make sense of the message, but all he cared was for the messenger. And it hurt that he couldn’t understand her, either. At times she babbled. At times she was akin to a mute beast. Sometimes, she seemed as fragile as a wounded bird, but at others, she was more alien than any…a surge of disgust swept through him as he realized what he was thinking. Sheka was in no way similar to a foul xenos.

Despite this recognition and disgust, the thoughts didn’t feel unfamiliar to his mind. In fact, they were precisely how he had been perceiving Sheka for years; he was only growing aware of these thoughts now. Had his perceptions of her changed so much since planet fall? Had he really grown so uncaring toward her during the nine years since she had become a psyker that he had treated her like some animalistic xenos?

No, he decided, he had not. He had obsessively objectified her, mounting his memories of the older her on a pedestal fashioned from sour regret. Over time, he had cared less and less for the blank, unfamiliar creature that he had thought was what remained of her, while he grew all the more bitter that she had been taken from him. But…Sheka was still alive, and extant. That he knew; what he had seen over the course of this war left no doubt there. Only now, though, did he understand and appreciate the full power of that fact.

But she was locked away beneath an exterior of ice and scorn whenever she was unbound, and he had no idea of how to free her of it. He was no damn psyker. He had nothing that could…he had nothing…he had…a…psychic…gemstone.

For a long, frozen second, he lost the ability to move. The shock of realization boiled through his mind. His throat felt as if it had been locked tight, and suddenly felt extremely parched. Numbly, his fingers drifted to his chest, feeling the lump that lay hidden beneath his trench coat and directly above his heart. In more ways than one.

This had to be the way to free Sheka. Hadn’t Vogart said that the gem was meant as a psychic channel, and had been used to boost the strength of the enemy psyker? Alexos hadn’t a clue how to use it, and knew that he would probably need to enlist the aid of an astropath or sanctioned psyker to use the gem as needed. However, first he needed to survive this siege and protect Sheka from the outstretched fingers of the Enemy.

But now he knew that he would live, for long enough at least. Vogart had spoken of the gem as if its power would save the lives of thousands—but how would unlocking Sheka’s memory do that? Or had he leapt to entirely the wrong purpose for the gem? Was it to somehow thwart the plots of the master psyker to which Vogart had referred? Could…Sheka’s true personality somehow hold the key to finding and defeating this hidden enemy?

Some other game was being played here, and Alexos was damned if he knew what was going on. He was a serf in a game of regicide, and know nothing of the board beside his next move. He would protect Sheka and the gemstone, but beyond that he was lost. He needed answers. He cursed at the enemy psyker, who had stolen Vogart. More, though, he swore at himself for ignoring most of Vogart’s warnings and spurning the psyker’s assistance when it had been available.

+

That night, Alexos could not sleep. Only Vogart would have understood Alexos’s new and dangerous thoughts, and so instead of being spoken, they bounced, caged, inside his skull. Additionally, the pain that Sheka had mentioned did not leave her, though she did not express it in such a clear, verbal state again.

Instead, she moaned, convulsed, and threw herself against the bars of her kennel. The eerie, wordless cries drove away any remaining chance that Alexos could get to sleep. After tossing and turning restlessly for what felt like half the night, he came to the conclusion that he would not be able to fall asleep, period.

He dressed in his last clean uniform, and donned a bloodstained trench coat. The luxury washing clothes was forgotten with the water rationing, but the stiff stains of deep brown barely stood out against the black fabric. Nonetheless, it stank. He slid the gemstone into the breast pocket of his uniform underneath the coat.

If he couldn’t sleep, he would patrol. Perhaps the fresher air would do Sheka some good. He unclasped the door to her kennel, and gently fished her out. She whimpered and weakly tried to wrap her arms around his chest. He realized that he was now holding her in his arms for the first time in all nine years that had passed since she had…changed. She quieted, momentarily.

“I promised to love you forever,” he whispered. “That’s what I swore that day, and I’d forgotten after less than a single decade. But I haven’t any more. I’m going to get you back, Sheka.”

He helped her to her feet, where she stood unsteadily, and he retrieved and holstered his bolt pistol. Then he took her by the lease and led her out into the hallway. He would check the top floor first, he decided, where one of the three snipers were on watch at all times, and then check on the squad that had this shift of the night to guard downstairs.

As he stepped onto the staircase, a figure began to descend from the third storey, its identity masked in in the heavy darkness of the Infirmarium’s interior. It froze when it saw Alexos and Sheka.

“Who’s there?” said Alexos, his hand casually drifting to his bolt pistol. “Identify yourself.”

“Commissar?” asked a quavery voice. Alexos struggled to place it for a moment, until the figure limped several steps down, coming close enough that his face was visible in the blackness.

“What are you doing, Ennenban?” Alexos asked the old medic guardedly.

“No—nothing! I was just, ah, checking up on the condition stasis cells. What with all the fighting recently—well, I had to check.” The man’s breathing was heavy, and he clutched one side as he slowly descended the steps.

“How are they even running?” Alexos asked. “Wasn’t electricity cut? And batteries wouldn’t last long on something needing so much power.”

“True, true. There’s…ah, there’s a battery circuit that runs to the basement. It’s a last resort failsafe, and it’s almost expired. I was just…checking up on it.”

“Why do it at night, though?” Alexos asked suspiciously.

Ennenban shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. And…I didn’t want to, um, disturb anybody. Really.” He limped past Alexos. He met Alexos’s gaze hesitantly, and the commissar saw that his brow was covered in sweat. “Just a cramp, sir, before you ask. A bad one.”

Something was wrong here. Alexos opened his mouth to say something else as the medic slumped past, but found himself without anything to say. He shook his head and continued climbing the stairs, Sheka behind him.

The faintest of scrapes rang out behind him. He only turned because his senses were already on edge, but that saved his life. Ennenban lunged forward, metal in his palm glinting in the dark. Despite his shock, Alexos managed to stumble back, up, and out of the range of the man’s swing. However, he tripped on the step behind him, and ended up falling back onto the marble stairs. Sheka uttered a quiet scream.

He fumbled for his bolt pistol with one hand and held out the other to ward away Ennenban’s knife, but knew that it would make a flimsy guard. Ennenban stepped forward, slashing again. Once again, he barely escaped death—this time only because Sheka stepped in front of the blow. Ennenban faltered, his knife hand jerking to a halt. He would have been ordered not to kill Sheka if he truly were a traitor, Alexos surmised—even if Sheka, in her current state, had no way of knowing that.

Alexos was up in the instant it took Ennenban to shove Sheka to one side, and his pistol was freed. A single bolt shell detonated in the treacherous medic’s forehead, blasting open his skull and killing him instantly. Ennenban collapsed, crumpling into a heap on the steps beneath Alexos.

The ‘cramp’ to which Ennenban had been holding with his hand was a bloody stab wound in his side, and Alexos had a suspicion as to how it had got there. The bolt pistol shot would serve an alarm to the sentries, but Alexos couldn’t go down and make sure that they were roused. He had to check the top floor.

All three snipers were dead. One’s body showed the signs of a fight, but the other two had been killed on unawares, one of which while he slept. The vox caster had been smashed.

“That treacherous…” hissed Alexos. He sprinted to the window. Sure enough, dark, indistinct figures were swarming up the walk toward the Infirmarium. Worse still, the alarm was only just now being raised downstairs—quite probably a testament to Alexos’s shot. Shouting drifted up to his ears and lume-sticks flickered into life.

Alexos turned to Sheka, who had followed him to the window.

“It’s time, dearest,” he said, reaching around her neck to unclip her collar. Her blindfold followed. In the seconds that followed, Alexos briefly hoped that she would give him some sign of recognition—but no, her face became as blank and impassive as usual. Static energy washed off her dress and into the rest of the room, and she rose into the air.

_They are beneath us,_ she hissed into his mind, almost immediately. _No more pain. He is beneath us, and coming._

+

The bottom floor was lost, and the second floor was barely being held. The enemy had swept into the building, brushing aside the flimsy line of defense that the guardsmen had managed to erect. More had spilled from below, pouring out from the basement alongside the treacherous staff of the hospital. A fighting retreat had been made up the main stairway and through the two spiral staircases, one of which was situated on each end of the Infirmarium.

It was a scene of fevered desperation, and Alexos had already been forced to enact two summary executions to prevent a disastrous collapse of morale. Major Vutch had seconded Sheka to holding one of the spiral staircases, despite Alexos’s protestations. The heat of combat was no place to argue with the commanding officer, however, so Alexos had conceded the point and taken Sheka to the western spiral staircase. Rather than returning to the main stairwell, he remained there beside her. He couldn’t risk having Sheka out of his sight, not even a mere twenty meters away.

Half of a squad supported the psyker and the commissar, but they were largely unnecessary. Sheka’s pyrotechnics immolated most of the enemy trying to push their way up on this flank of the building before they even came into view around the tight twists of the staircase.

The situation was dire, but Vutch had ensured that the Dunmirran ammunition stores had been stored on the top storey, and as long as they had las power packs, they could hold they enemy off. The loss of most of the food supplies below was painful, but wouldn’t become an issue for several days—and it looked like other issues might be more pressing, beforehand. Water was stored in the cisterns on the roof. The most debilitating blow, in fact, was the loss of the injured Dunmirrans, who had received no chance to escape from the Infirmarium’s basement.

Of course, that was all thrown out of balance when the enemies used high explosives to blast a fourth route to the second storey. The detonation came from a sealed elevator shaft at the back of the bionic ward that the staff had neglected to mention. Maliciously, in hindsight.

Alexos was hunched at the top of the spiral staircase and barely heard the explosion, listening more intently to the screams of roasting heretics below. One of the half squad of support soldiers called his name, and he turned, the unconscious smile that had nestled on his face slipping away.

Through the wire-threaded glass panels that demarcated the edges of the bionic ward, Alexos saw the choking cloud of smoke and mortar dust that had billowed out. He saw the hazy, black shapes that moved within it, and the lasbeams that lanced out. He saw many of his soldiers cut down before they managed to take cover behind the workbenches and machinery of the ward. And…he saw the golden-masked psyker.

Unlike the others of its kind, who had worn robes, this one wore no clothes at all. Its nakedness revealed the sheer extent of the torment which had been visited upon it. Ornate patterns had been carved into his flesh, hairline cuts that spiraled into obscene glyphs and runes, marred only by the blood which had seeped out—blood which was, in many places, still not entirely dry. He had been burned, emasculated, and whipped.

The mask grinned grotesquely, as if denying the torments that had been inflicted upon its host. Despite it hiding the psyker’s identity, Alexos was certain that he knew who the man underneath was.

A spike of emerald psykery lashed out, demolishing a cabinet and the trio of guardsmen who crouched behind it.

“Sheka!” roared Alexos, “Stop him!”

Reinforced glass sloughed away beside him as Sheka effortlessly melted herself a passageway. She swept through the newly melted hole, immediately pressing the attack against the enemy witch.

He ran along the bank of windows, hesitated at a doorway that would lead him into the bionic ward, and kept sprinting. Soon, the windows came to an end; he had reached the point where the central stairway cut through the middle of the hospital. Through the last panes of glass, he saw a line of guardsmen on the stairway’s platform, their back protected from the psyker by the solid edifice of the staircase, leveling their lasguns down toward the building’s scum-filled atrium.

A final glance back showed Sheka unleashing a spear of energy, which diffracted harmlessly against the psyker’s shields.

He tore his attention away, hurtling down a passage which branched off to the left, directly away from the stairway. One second passed, two seconds. His quarters were the second door on the right—there. He crashed through, wasting no time on keys and knobs. The flimsy latch gave easily, and the door crashed open.

Three seconds, four seconds since Sheka had left his sight. He leapt across the room, scrambling to yank open the drawers of the cabinet beside his bed. The one he wanted stuck. Five seconds, six seconds. He wrenched it open, not caring for the crack of wood that accompanied his vicious tug. There it was—the magazine of silver bolt shells, full less two. Neither that he had spent since landing on the Emperor-forsaken planet had accomplished anything, but he certainly intended to make the rest count.

Six seconds, seven seconds. He was up, staggering backward out the door again, and whirling back the way he came. Eight, nine. He tore around the corner. Ten seconds, surely not to long a period of time—and there Sheka was, both palms raised, pressing forward against a massive force conjured by the enemy psyker in an immense battle of wills. Crackling arcs of energy radiated off of them, indiscriminately consuming guardsmen and heretics alike, who were engaged in a firefight of their own.

Alexos pressed through the door, loading and cocking his bolt pistol as he did so. Twenty meters to the enemy psyker, with no obstructions rising above waist height. He leveled his pistol, sighted, and fired.

The bolt smashed through the invisible walls surrounding the psyker and struck him in the meat of his right forearm. The limb was explosively detached from the shoulder, and the psyker reeled backward in shock. Sheka pressed forward, projecting scything, purple claws across the distance separating them to ravage the enemy’s already weakened defenses.

Rather than retreating into a shell of protection and attempting to weather the blows that tore down his crumbling wards, which would invite certain death by Alexos’s pistol, the enemy lashed out again. Not at Sheka, no, who was prepared for such a thing, but instead at the latest and greatest threat—Alexos, who had no such protection.

Sheka shrieked in abject terror, lashing out with an arm and siphoning the vengeful blow much of its power—but it still crashed into him with all the force of an avalanche. The protective, ironclad mental walls he had been trained to erect during his years in the Schola were swept away, and the gem at his chest burned sharply. He was thrown backwards, crashing into the door behind him, and slid to the tiled floor.

Dazed, his eyes flickered to the floor. The grout was very fine here. Smooth, and set in very thin channels. From his supine posture, he distantly heard crashes and explosions. He staggered back to his feet, unsteady and dizzy.

Sheka was reeling against some new assault of the enemy psyker, having exposed herself to a counter-attack in shielding Alexos. She writhed against a net of green threads, which closed tighter and tighter around her, dissolving wherever she slashed at them, but reforming just as fast as she could cut them. Her face was cinched into a tight mask of disbelieving anger. The enemy continued to throw psychic attacks against her as well. Merely doing the latter had pressed her abilities thus far, and so the added complication of the deadly web was proving to be too much. Despite the fact that she was more powerful than this abomination, she had not the skill or debased practice possessed by the enemy.

Alexos cast his eyes desperately around for his pistol, which had been wrenched from his grasp by the force of the blow. There it was—thrown underneath a wheeled rack of silver trays. He limped forward, cursing his feeble body, and swept aside the rack with a clumsy swing of his arm.

He bent, his blasted muscles protesting, and grabbed the pistol. Jerkily, he righted himself and staggered closer to the fray. He swung up the pistol again and fired as well as he could. The shot missed the psyker, but jerked its attention away from exclusively focusing on Sheka. It raised a hand.

Alexos fired again, and this time, his shot hit home, slamming into the stomach of his foe.

With an explosive detonation, the bolt tore a jagged hole the size of a fist in the psyker’s gut. The man fell to his knees, his pulverized insides swiftly slithering through the hole to become his outsides. The green net dissipated. Alexos staggered the last few meters.

“Vogart!” he roared at the enemy psyker. “Fight the beast! Fight this unclean cancer!”

The abomination, the broken, bleeding wreck of a man, laughed, staggering back to its feet. It payed no heed to the injury splitting apart its gut.

“_Little man Vogart is gone,_” it hissed, in a voice that rang as much in his head as it did in the air, “_gone to where the others have been taken. Gone to where this lovely lady will find herself, soon enough._”

Alexos spat and unloaded a trio of bolts into the beast’s chest. One destroyed its throat, and the others left gaping craters in its ribcage. It just laughed again, its laughter no longer a thing bound in any way to the corporeal.

“_Makocha!_” it cried, and Alexos’s fury reached new heights as he recognized the incantation. “_Je na la vaida!_”

“Follow him!” Alexos shouted to Sheka. As the body dropped to the floor and the surge of energy once again boiled outward, the gateway of the enemy’s passage, Sheka grasped Alexos’s hand in a tight, claw-like grasp, and chased the fleeing soul.

A wrenching sensation tore at Alexos, and the edges of his vision blurred. The gem at his chest was on fire, blazing, burning, consuming him in a pillar of flame. He was picked up in mighty hands, his body left for the tiny, worthless piece of flesh that it was, and he went—

_out_.

+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Interlude I*

+++

Silence.

Emptiness.

Alexos floated, disembodied, in the void. There was no up, down, forward or back. The only thing he could associate himself with was the miasma of pain that invaded his consciousness. The agony flooded through him in ravaging waves, devouring him.

He was blind. His eyes no longer were. This was a place of senses other than those corporeal, and everything upon which he had based his life had been stripped away from him. All that he felt was the inferno at his core. All that he saw was the immutable, cloying darkness.

Strangely, though he had no ears, he could _hear_. Supra-whispers twisted into his mind: echoes of the denizens and environs of this place. The true names of all colors slithered through his pseudo-ears, no sooner heard than gone, piquant and indescribable. He could hear the shifting of great, continental bodies and the faintest of groans—were they the distant winds, or tortured souls?

An alien consciousness crossed his, making the most fleeting of contacts before darting away like a shoal of fish. In that instant, several scattered thoughts flashed across his mind, _-fear-thought-foreign-intrusion-_, jolting him and leaving him even more wary.

The rustling of paper echoed across the darkness, accompanied by a distant spark of light. Though the sense of motionless suspension did not leave him, the speck came closer, rushing toward him faster and faster in the shape of a sphere, which loomed to envelop him. A dingy room hove into view, containing a desk covered in papers.

With a sharp coldness, he was plunged into the scene; into the memory. The pain vanished.

+

Alexos blinked and straightened in his chair, reading the single sheet of paper more closely. Behind him, Sheka’s chains jingled faintly.

Apparently, Dunmirran 341st was a newly founded regiment, made up of fresh recruits and bolstered by the shattered remnants of several other regiments of Dunmirrans. None of the commissars within the latter had decency enough to have survived longer than their regiment’s names, and so he, Alexos, was to join the Dunmirrans as their Commissar.

Another point that the paper stressed was that the Andokarran 1091st no longer had need of his services. One commissar would be more than necessary for the period of reconstruction they would have to undergo in the aftermath of the bloody debacle on Contuar XIV. Sheka had also been cited as a disturbance to the regiment’s morale.

In other words, Old Blood ‘n Guts didn’t want another commissar around, and had found a convenient way to discard Alexos. The elder commissar had thirty-nine years of active service, which amounted to three whole decades more than Alexos, and knew all the tricks of the trade. When an upstart “junior” commissar made him look bad, for example, he knew just how to get rid of him.

Sheka began crashing against the walls of her cage and caterwauling like a hive-blight jackal. Alexos sighed. Not another fit.

“Shut up!” he hissed, and the vehemence of his mood seeping into his voice and cutting through Sheka’s wails. She stopped instantly.

“It worked,” snorted Alexos quietly. “That’s a first.”

He turned back to the paper and continued to examine the minutiae. There was no need, really; the intent was was obscenely clear, and about as straightforward as a boot in the arse.

Another noise, a faint hiccuping cough, interrupted his thoughts. It was followed by a wheezing breath, then another cough.

“Oh, for -” snarled Alexos, whirling around in his chair again. Was the stupid thing really _crying_? He sighed again, deeper this time, and considered, again, why he even kept Sheka in his quarters. Because Old Blood and Guts had ordered him to, really. And because she went berserk when kept away from him, and despite her psi-suppressants, the mess cooks had complained of odd happenings in the kitchens when he’d tried it.

Well then, Alexos could only say good riddance to Old Blood ‘n Guts, and the Andokarrans as well. Over two years spent with the regiment, he’d had more than enough of their servile puling. Perhaps–

+

The three month old memory dissolved, overpowered by the unreal nether-scape in which he was trapped. The blackness once again pressed in upon him, suffocating every sensation but the all-consuming pain.

Had he really been so oblivious to Sheka, and her pain, so recently in the past? And what had triggered the memory? Had it been something to do with that tentative contact that had been made earlier, the panicked voice? If so, how?

Where had he been last? His memories of events immediately before this out-of-body…sojourn…were already growing hazy. A hospital of some sorts. Was that where Sheka was being kept after she had—no, it was where he had fought the possessed Vogart-thing. He had ordered Sheka to follow Vogart, and she had taken him with her.

Once again, the faint entity brushed, whispered, against his mind.

_-unknown-fear-escape-run-

Sheka?_ he asked, noiselessly.

_-frozenshock.-recognition?-_

Slowly, eerily, a sound and vision trickled back toward the void-bound Alexos. He fought it, trying to get away, to tell this being who might be Sheka that it was him, Alexos, but the current was too strong. A chandelier whirled into sight, being passed by to reveal the elegant, arching walls of a building’s interior.

+

Alexos finished the spin. The steps of the dance were complicated, but both he and his partner glided through them with the ease instilled by long hours of instruction. This girl wore a black, form-hugging, simple dress with golden trim. It matched her mid-length black hair well, which glinted with subtle hints of gold powdering, tastefully reinforcing the style of the dress. She wore little jewelry, all of it gold and not more expensive materials, but the scarcity of decoration served as its own accentuation.

It was her face that let her down. By the mid and lower tiers, of course, it would be considered quite beautiful. However, to the practiced eye of a noble, there were numerous small inconsistencies and flaws about it that the simplest of reconstructive surgery could have fixed.

The relative lack of opulence in her appearance marked her as, perhaps, a member of one of the lower-ranked families at the dance. The affair was strictly invite-only, so all present were certainly ennobled, but as far as Alexos was concerned, that left a broad spectrum of possible attendees. It was practically a favor on his part to have given her this entire song with him.

“You dance well, Montra Alexos,” she said as the song warbled to a finish.

“As do you,” he said, favoring her with a polite smile, but intentionally avoiding giving her an honorific. “I’m afraid, however, that you have me at a disadvantage.”

She smiled at that, lowering her head and deigning to reply. He could not decide whether her expression was demure or coy. The former was excusable, but the latter, in so low-ranked a noble—she would be well off if he merely slapped her. There was a pause, in which he refused to ask her what her name was, and she seemed to be tempting him to. He caved first, letting out a small, exasperated sigh.

“What might I call you, then, milady?” he asked, making sure to stress the last word, in case his earlier neglect had offended. There was no reason why he couldn’t be polite. She laughed, her voice clear and ringing.

“I’m afraid that that’s something that you need to earn, Montra,” she replied.

He gave the statement consideration. She, some unknown noble, was daring to keep him, Montra Alexos, in the dark? House Alexos was the twenty-first most powerful house on Karisas. Only the most foolhardy members of the Outer Houses would slight him, and he was certain that he knew all the members of the Inner Houses present.

But in truth, he did not feel insulted, simply…challenged, on an entirely casual level. Besides, little else seemed likely to crop up in the way of entertainment this night. He could join the other flocks of young men, chasing after the most eligible and desirable of the women present like an ill-mannered grox—or he could spend it cracking this enigma. Already, it seemed that time with her would not be time wasted on boring flights of fancy. He came to his decision.

“Very well, then,” he said, with his most gracious smile, “I suppose that you shall be setting the rules of this game. How might I go about acquiring your name?” She smiled again.

“Well, to begin with, the next song is beginning. Impress me, as you did with the previous one.”

+

They stayed partners for several more dances, and after each, Alexos found himself more intrigued as to the woman’s identity, but no more enlightened. The band eventually retired, at which point the two of them sank into idle conversation. Surprisingly, Alexos found that she was neither as petty nor wearisome as the vast majority of the rest of the women his age in the court. She carried herself with a poise that certainly did not match her rank, and displayed her formidable intelligence as if daring it to be challenged.

He obliged her and did so. Swiftly, he found her conversation to be well-informed, stimulating, enjoyable, and, while she was derisive toward those she thought worthy of derision, not given to making sweeping generalizations. More than once, she made him confront flaws within his own reasoning, and teased him for it only gently. The night passed too quickly.

At last, though, as they prepared to part for the night, she conceded that he deserved to know her name. She opened her mouth to speak–

The world shuddered. The tremor went entirely unnoticed, except for in the faintest shadow of not-memory within Alexos’ mind. 

“Sheka,” she told him, and paused, leaving her lips parted as if about to say the name of her house too. But then she smiled impishly, and closed her mouth. “And I shall save the rest for the ball to be hosted by the Chamanitas. I trust that you will attend?”

“I had not intended to,” he replied, “but you may very well have given me reason to. However, I must protest! It would be highly improper for you to leave me with only your byname! How would I be able to find you again, otherwise?”

“I have challenged propriety the entire night,” she said. “Why should I begin to respect it now? And I found you before, knowing your name. I could just as easily do so again.”

Alexos sighed in disbelieving, good-natured frustration, and threw his palms up. He was at a loss for how to proceed. Begging would both be humiliating and lower her opinion of him, but—he shook his head and smiled.

“Milady Scouras!” called a servant from the edges of the crowd, and many of its the members turned to look at him. A flicker of irritation crossed Sheka’s features at a game spoiled, and she smiled winningly at Alexos. She tapped her forehead and lips with her left hand, a traditional sign of goodbye, and vanished into the crowd, soon reappearing at the servant’s side. She bent into brief, quiet conversation with the man, before making a stately exit, watched by many eyes.

Scouras. Montra Alexos blinked. Scouras, Karisas’s sixth house. Notarized fifteen above House Alexos. It was little wonder that he hadn’t known her—as the sole heir and child of Archlady Scouras, she had been kept close to her mother’s hand. It was a wonder that she was present here at all.

But, then, why had she spent the entire evening–

+

And the dream-vision was gone, torn away from him. The first time he had met Sheka, with himself as an arrogant youth. He had almost forgotten that night, after all these years.

-Him?-no.-Alexos?-nono-Montra?-can’tbe!-CAN’TBE!-

Sheka! Alexos cried, his psy-voice cracking. It’s you! Where are you? I can’t see–

-no!-YES!-shame-sorrow-

-don’twantHimtoseemelikethis-

-fear-rushinghope-

-it’simpossible-it’sliesagain-

-isitpossible?-

Alexos tried to cry out, but roiling, unstoppable cascades of sound and vision washed over him, tearing him away once again. He cried out, trying to shout “Yes!”—but the word was whipped away from him by the winds, as good as unsaid.

+

Instructor-Commissar Zoltan Braehm led the cadets from the landing bay deeper into Black Ship's hull. Cadet-Commissar Alexos and the rest of the class followed cautiously, keeping a wary eye upon the hellguns and shotguns of the mirror-visored Repressors that escorted them. The class had been given strict instructions to do nothing, to say nothing, and to take not one step out of line.

Alexos's movements were, perhaps, more rigid than those of the rest of the class. His face could have been stiffer. His teeth were, quite possibly, clenched, and his eyes flickering around slightly faster than usual. Would he not be forgiven, if his judge but knew the circumstances in which his life had been overturned a mere pair of years previously?

The group was herded along the passageway. The gothic architecture around them rose away into the dimness, where arching buttresses became indistinguishable from the roof. The stern visages of saints, surrounded by shrieking, burning sinners, stared disapprovingly down from heavy tapestries.

They came to a portal at which the Instructor-Commissar's guide mumbled incantations, communing with the ship's Machine Spirit to be granted access to the chamber beyond. With a series of dry hisses and muffled clunks, the door slid away.

The changes they noticed were immediate. Whereas before, lumen globes had provided at least some illumination in the dim, baroque corridors, the chamber into which they now filed was vastly darker and grander. It was lit only intermediately, and by crackling witch-lights. Heat and a greasy tang filled the air, and a number of bedraggled silhouettes stood manacled in rows across the room. Between them stalked black-clad Repressors, nearly rendered into negative images by the gloom. Their electro-whips snapped menacingly as they walked, questing for tattered flesh under the tattered rags of their subjects.

Instructor Braehm cleared his throat and broke into a bout of dry, chalky coughs which, in any other human, would have been taken for a death rattle.

“Cretins,” said Braehm, snapping out his favorite form of address for the cadets, “before you are a group of thirty prime examples of **** sapiens insolitus minoris, or the common psyker. Obviously, they are not all of the same level of witch-power; your own intellects and manhoods vary in size, so why should not this sub-species of mankind possess similar disparities?"

Braehm shifted slightly, not departing from his lofty, lecturing tone of voice, but directing his attention upon one of his students especially.

“Cadet Chartet, I care not if that sniggering imbecile behind you admires how long you claim your member's length to be—though I am certain that he is intimately knowledgeable of the truth of that matter—though I do care if you disrupt my lesson. Kindly silence yourself, if you wish to retain said pride and joy.

“Now, the Adeptus Mechanicus identifies the psyker by a portion of the code within our internal makeup; our “genes”, to use their term. What this means in proper parlance is simple: is is an intrinsic part of their being, irreplaceable and unavoidable. The only methods of changing one's nature, therefore, are external solutions such as neutering. For example, one would be surprised to find...”

Alexos let the instructor's words wash over him, absorbing them deeply enough for a quick regurgitation if called upon, but apportioning the greater part of his attention to his own ruminations.

Unavoidable, he thought bitterly. Yes, that was an apt word for it. Unavoidable that the greatest thing ever to grace his life was to be wrenched away so swiftly and irrevocably. Unavoidable that he had lost Sheka.

A sudden movement caught his eye amongst the captive psykers. One was thrashing in place, its manacles causing it to jerk hard at the equilibrium of its neighbors. A Repressor descended upon the hapless psyker, whip cracking.

“It swiftly becomes clear that...” said Braehm before trailing off and looking to see what had so captured the interest of his students. “Ah. Excellent. A first-hand example. Look, cretins, and learn well. You will be quizzed.”

The Repressor lashed once, twice, thrice, but the berserk psyker—a woman, Alexos realized with a pang—paid no heed whatsoever to the descending electro-lash, the bursts of which would have lain most living creatures out across the ground.

“Is that–” said Alexos haltingly, and as he spoke, the woman's flailing reached new heights. As the lash descended a fourth time, a clap like thunder split the air, and her manacles fell away, mangled and broken. The Repressor staggered backward, falling to the ground. A siren began to blare in one corner of the room, and the portal behind the class slammed shut. Several of the cadets exchanged worried glances. Repressors sprinted toward the disturbance from every direction, chanting oaths of piety.

The woman rose into the air, illuminated by a terrible internal brilliance, and turned. A wave of force swept outward from her, bowling over hapless, shrieking lesser-psykers all around, as well as the Repressors closest to her. She turned in Alexos's direction, her features lit by the powers that crackled around her.

Sheka. It was Sheka. And they were going to kill her.

He broke from the formation of his class, heedless of the consequences. Braehm shouted an useless instruction for him to hold.

A shotgun roared, and Sheka reeled as she was sprayed with blessed scattershot. She retaliated with a lightning bolt, which dissipated upon the Repressor's wardings, mere feet from his head.

“No!” cried Alexos as more leveled weapons, “Stop!”

His voice was lost in the snarling cacophony, but Sheka heard him. Her gaze snapped to him, meeting his eyes, and she froze. The expression that graced her gentle, well-remembered features was foreign to Alexos—a cold, scornful glare—but it faded the seconds that followed, as did her aura of electricity. She sunk to the ground, now impassive and, though no less alien, calmer. But for the rise and fall of her chest, she was motionless.

Montra Alexos, she said, projecting her psy-voice with such volume that every person in the room heard. Montra.

He sunk to his knees, even as she was clubbed to the ground by the butt of a shotgun.

But this scene had been seen by other, powerful eyes as well, and would not be forgotten.

+

Alexos was caught in a crushing embrace, swept up and whirled through the blackness.

-joy!- Sheka exalted. -joyjoyjoy!-joy-joy-joy!-

He laughed with her, promising never to leave, never to forget again, never to be parted from her side. She soared, lifting him up and racing through the void, clutching him tightly to her self as she swept across unseen, transdimensional aetherscapes.

Fragmented memories tried to steal Alexos away, but under Sheka's aegis, he could thrust them away from himself. Nonetheless, snatches of them whispered into his mind, re-summoning old, almost forgotten emotions.

The first time that he kissed Sheka, that was one of the memories. Then the time she was almost slain by an ork weirdboy. The first time that the two of them had fought, and their desperate, tearful lovemaking afterward—him weeping just as much as her. Learning that Sheka, powerful as a psyker but uncontrollable unless directly under his command, would be his assignment on the front. His proposal, and her acceptance. Each and every memory was one spent with Sheka.

Truly, thought Alexos, I did not live until I loved.

A roar washed away the whispers that attempted to leach into Alexos’s inattentive ears, and a new presence descended on his mind, massive and stinking of manure.

-AWAAAAY!- the intruder roared, -KEEEEP...AWAY!...FORBIDDEN!...AWAAAY!-

-Heismine!- spat Sheka vehemently. Heismine-and-weshallgo-unhindered!-

A clumsy swipe tore at the air above Sheka and she dodged with ease, laughing spitefully and protectively shielding her man, him so blind in this marvelous place, but still her love. Alexos’s head began to swim, and he felt a distant memory crashing inexorably toward him, one last time.

Sheka swooped forward, cradling Alexos to her chest like a marsupial, and plunged-

beyond.

+

“Does the heat not bother you as well, Montra?” she asked, fanning herself as her hansporod mount rolled beneath her. Alexos, beside her, shook his head.

“The day is really quite mild, my dear,” he said, amused. His own hansporod stepped gently over an errant bush. Despite their appearance, the fat, leathery, bulbous things were incredibly light on their feet, and as such, a favorite for use by trysting lovers. Not that his courting of the Lady-Heir Scouras was exactly a secret, or even frowned upon by many, but some things were best enjoyed in privacy, and leaving no tracks in the loamy soil went a far way toward achieving that.

Their mounts threaded a path through the pluquat groves, which had been planted in orderly rows, but allowed to grow into some semblance of wildness. Golden globes of ripe fruit hung so heavily that they bent the golden-leafed boughs upon which they hung. Most of the orchards had been harvested early, that the fruit might be shipped unbruised as it continued to ripen, but these, bound only for the nearest cities, had been left to grow further. The agri-harvesters would soon be churning the ground between rows of trees, and countless indentured servants, bondsmen and women of Scouras would be swarming over these trees with pails and nets. Today, however, there was idyllic quiet. It was only enhanced, rather than broken, by the buzzing of insects and the gentle creak of the pluquat trees in the breeze.

Soon enough, they dismounted and tied up their mounts. They set down their blanket, smiled whilst gazing into each others’ eyes, and feasted on the sweet, sticky fruits. A few, overripe, had already fallen from the tree under which, at Sheka’s insistence, they sheltered from the sun. 

They laughed together as they fed each other pluquats, and the juice made fools of them both, dribbling down their chins and into their clothes. When Alexos tried to lap what he had spilled from her chest, she laughed all the harder and pushed him away.

They made idle talk after eating, content for a time in simply sitting, knitting their hands together, and whiling away the day. They watched as small, puffy clouds swam through vast expanses of the blue-green sky above them.

Eventually, Alexos judged that the time was right. Telling Sheka to wait for a few seconds, he stood and walked back to the grazing hansporod mounts. He fished through the day pack that was slung over the saddle of his own, taking out a small package and carrying the surprise gift back to his fiancée. Beads of sweat beaded on her brow and lip, and he frowned.

“You really are overheated, aren’t you,” he said. “Are you sure that you are not feverish?”

“It is nothing,” she said, attempting to wave away his concern. “Let us see what you have there; it will undoubtedly prove more interesting than concerning yourself over my petty discomfort.”

He gave her the mesh-wrapped package, the outer layer of which she peeled off and shucked to the side. With careful, tentative fingertips, she lifted the lid of the small, ornately-carved container beneath and gasped gratifyingly.

She lifted out the torc within, a piece of delicately twisted and filigreed gold, inset with one large ruby. She slipped it on her bare arm, sliding it past her wrist and elbow until it came to a halt against the smooth, tanned flesh of her upper arm.

“Montra,” she breathed, the fingers of her right hand tracing the torc’s curve, “it’s beautiful.”

“It is crude and dim beside your face, my lady,” he replied, a gentle smile on his face.

“I really do not know what to say. It is absolutely marvelous, Montra.”

“It is naught but a poor substitute for your beauty, and a poor representation of my love,” insisted Alexos, nevertheless secretly pleased that she had received the gift so well. “It is next to nothing, and no great matter.”

“Perhaps so,” Sheka said, “but…”

She exhaled gently. “But…”

She swallowed heavily, her voice stopped by the emotion it contained.

“Sheka,” said Alexos, now slightly unsettled by the strength of her response, “it is not by mere material objects that I measure my love for you. You need not take so lightly meant a thing so deeply.”

“No,” replied Sheka, shaking her head in a sudden, vehement motion. “I know that. This blasted heat unsteadies my thoughts, and fills them with impossibilities.”

“You need not fear,” said Alexos. “No matter how much my father insists that I join the Commissariat, I will not leave you. A high-ranked post in the PDF would be just as viable after I finish the Schola, and would not require leaving Karisas. I shall love you forever, my wife-to-be. This I swear to you.”

“I should hope so,” began Sheka, faint hints of her usual humor returning. “Were you beginning to doubt your commitment before we even exchange our vows in proper, I would be unsettled all the more!

“I know that you love me, Alexos. That is not in doubted, nor shall it be. It is simply that, I, well, I…”

Her voice died.

“I…” she began again, and faded, losing the train of thought a second time. Her gaze was flat and listless, and as Alexos brought his own eyes back to hers, he saw them unfocus and drift away from his face.

“Sheka?” he asked, fear truly beginning to sink its claws into his heart.

She did not reply.

“Sheka? Are you alright?”

Silence.

And then—she screamed.

The air shattered as if it were a pane of glass hit by a stone, and fleeting, twisting fractures wormed their way through reality for a split-second. Alexos was knocked bodily backwards, and his head cracked against the roots of the tree behind him.

Even dazed as he was, he saw Sheka begin to rise into the air. Her scream was ear-splitting and unending, far louder and longer than possible from human lungs. Blasts of crushing wind pushed him back, pressing him down away from his fiancée. Every tree around their blanket, even those across the road, bowed away from the gusts. Their ancient, knotted trunks protest loudly. Pluquats rained to the ground by the hundreds, torn from their branches at the very peak of their ripening. The hansporods pulled up their stake and fled.

Alexos, still dizzy, shocked and disoriented, reached desperately toward Sheka with one arm, but was otherwise flattened against the tree. Despair tore through his mind: a terrible, uncomprehending, incomprehensible pain. He did not know what was happening—but whatever it was, he already knew that Sheka was lost to him. He did not feel the tears that ran down his cheeks.

Hanging suspended upon the air, her back arched and her muscles rigid, Sheka's scream continued. Eventually, though, it dwindled and expired, leaving Alexos with his ears ringing. The winds blasted him flat, but she remained floating in an oasis of calm air. A second scream filled the place of the first, and a third after the second died, each more unbearable than the last. Her hair splayed eerily out behind her, drifting without gravity and unstirred by the roiling gusts which poured out from her.

After this unnatural display stretched on for what felt, to Alexos, like an eternity, she collapsed. The wind died immediately. Alexos dragged his battered self over to her limp body, and found her breath to be faint but present. Her heart beat rapidly but irregularly in her chest; fluttering in a pattern as unpredictable as that of a butterfly’s wingbeats, and just as weakly.

Fallen pluquats lay in a thick carpet across the ground, many broken open, and the fruit’s rich, tangy scent filled the air. Golden leaves had been shaken loose from the trees in even greater of quantities, and drifted downward in the sudden silence, twisting, flipping, and landing all around the two fallen bodies.

Alexos did not have to wait long before the black-clad men arrived to take her away.

+++


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## dark angel

Blood excellent Mossy! Have some Rep:victory:


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## Mossy Toes

I'm glad to see that somebody is reading this!

From this point forward, updates will probably be smaller, but about as often. Two or three updates would about make up one of those chunks I've been posting, but...I've caught up with how far I've written.


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## Deneris

I eagerly await the continuation of this epic story... k:


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## Mossy Toes

I am glad that you do, most certainly.

Almost two thousand words into the next update. My being sick and not able to go to school today, I'll be expanding upon it further and, hopefully, posting it.


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## Deneris

Then I shall simply set up camp here and await it's arrival... :wink:


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## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter VI: A Whole New World*

+++

Golden light filtered gently into Alexos’s half cracked-open eyes, and small, unfocused, glinting shapes shifted gently above him. He lay, as he had come to consciousness, on his back, and felt…calm. For the first time in years, nothing drove him into action: not the threat of the enemies of mankind, nor his duties as a Commissar. At last, he could rest. The only thing that interfered with his contentment was a prickling irritation in his chest, where before there had been a raging flame.

The shapes that moved above him were familiar. Almost like falling, golden leaves, or branches pushed by a gentle breeze.

“Montra?” asked a voice. “Are you all right? What is going on?” A blurred face came into the haze of his vision. It was Sheka’s voice, he realized. Sheka’s face.

His vision sharpened, revealing it to be her, indeed, wearing a frown of confusion. He sat bolt upright and she pulled back slightly, surprised. Alexos’s hand reached for his pistol on reflex, brushing aside his commissar’s coat, but he found the holster empty.

“What…” he breathed, not fully believing the sight of the woman, alive, active, and staring at him. “No. This isn’t how it happened.”

“How what happened?” she asked, her confusion deepening.

“The memory,” he said. “This never happened in the memory.”

“What memory?” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment.

“This isn’t possible,” Alexos said, denying the evidence in front of his eyes. There was no way that he could be having this conversation with Sheka. This was another warp-dream, and it would be gone in moments.

“What are you talking about!” Sheka cried despairingly, her words almost a wail. “What makes this impossible? What has been going on? Why are you so surprised to see me?”

“What do you –” he said, breaking off to swallow uncomfortably. “What do you remember?”

“I’m…not sure,” she said. “We came to dine here, didn’t we? But not here.”

Alexos looked around for the first time. They were in a grove of pluquat trees, laden with fruit and golden leaves, almost exactly the same as the day that Sheka’s latent psychic powers had erupted. There were differences, though. The grove was much smaller and more disorganized than the broad, arcing rows that made up the Scouras orchards, and a shimmering fountain rested at the center of this one.

But the parallels were discomforting. They sat upon what appeared to be the same blanket as they had brought to that fateful tryst, and an open, empty package rested on the ground, spilled to its side.

“But that feels like a long time ago, somehow,” She continued. “I do not know what has occurred since. What has happened to me? To you? How many years?”

“I –” breathed Alexos, “twelve years. Twelve long years since you were taken from me. Taken but not. But you’re here now. You’re really here, in every way.” His voice became shaky as he reached out, gently taking Sheka’s hand in his, and assured himself as to her existence.

“You’ve come back,” he said, paused, and slowly began to laugh. “You’ve come back!”

She stood, a pensive look on her face, and paced to the fountain in the center of the clearing. He followed her. The soft gray of the fountain’s aged stone base contrasted gently with the clear, glittering water that spilled from its fount. Several golden-brown leaves were caught in the trough at the bottom, but fewer than might be expected of a fountain in a wild orchard. Simply watching the water filled Alexos with calm and contentment, over even the elation that swept through his veins. Sheka sat slowly, and Alexos remained standing in front of her.

“What has happened to me?” she asked softly, confused and distressed. “What has happened to my life? My family? To you?”

Alexos breathed deeply and said, “You became…a psyker.”

“What?” replied Sheka, and snorted.

“Your latent powers came to the fore, Sheka. You…changed. I don’t know how to express it, but it wasn’t you behind your eyes. I only ever caught glimpses of you. I was—I hate to say it, but I was—forgetting who you were, over those twelve years. What you meant to me.”

Sheka was silent and very, very still.

Eventually, she spoke. “Well,” she said, “you’ve certainly lost a great deal of your boyishness over all this time.”

But then she smiled, and spoke again. “And you’ve kept a great deal more than one would expect.”

Alexos smiled gladly, his heart truly soaring for the first time in a dozen years, and also breaking with emotion. He sank to a seat beside Sheka, and wrapped his arms gently around her. She met his eyes and then slowly closed hers, leaning into him more heavily. Her soft scent slid into his nose, and he had never smelled anything so sweet.

+

“So,” Sheka said. They had found a meandering path away from the fountain, which wandered carelessly away through the trees. They were now following it, hoping to find local inhabitants or nearby buildings. Alexos, despite the sensation of safety, had avoided eating any pluquats from the boughs of the trees around. There was no telling what dangers could be hiding in this idyllic memory-world.

The thick, obscuring haze continued to limit the horizon to a mere kilometer or so distant. It was not unpleasant, possessing of an ambient, warming glow, but it was certainly unsettling to have visibility so constrained. Even the sun was reduced to a nebulous, smeared blot in the sky above. An effect of this was that all shadows were faint and ill-defined, as if the surroundings, in all other ways so well-lit, were caught under an overcast sky.

Sheka was walking along the top of an ancient, knee-high wall of stones, which was thus far the only sign of human life. She held her skirts bunched in two hands, and was daintily attempting not to scuff the moss-encrusted stones with her soft shoes.

“So?” asked Alexos, raising his eyebrows.

“So,” said Sheka again, and laughed. “You did become a commissar after all?” She glanced pointedly at his attire. Alexos took off his cap and twirled it idly in his hand, his expression pensive.

“Yes,” he said eventually. “After you…changed, there wasn’t much reason for me not to. Once it was decided that you could join me, too…”

He looked up into her eyes and shrugged helplessly.

“Why so glum?” she said. “What’s done is done, and now we’re back together!” She hop-skipped for several steps, swishing her skirts back and forth with childlike exuberance.

Alexos, however, winced. Were they, really? Or was this simply another warp-dream? Sheka seemed genuine enough, and barely changed from his fondest memories—but was she simply a construct fashioned from his hopes and dreams?

Sheka glanced back.

“Are you coming, Alexos?” she asked. He nodded and smiled, attempting to banish his doubts. Only time would tell and—in the meantime, he could speak with and caress the face which he had lost for so many years. He followed her.

Eventually, she spoke again. “Montra?”

“Hmm?”

“Where do you suppose that we are?”

“I don’t know. Not the real universe as we know it, I believe. The last thing that we did there was to chase after a heretic psyker into the Immaterium. That haze, and the fact that we’re back among pluquat trees, suggests to me that we’re still somewhere in the Warp. A calm spot, perhaps.”

“A heretic psyker?” asked Sheka, taken aback.

“The Imperial Guard is a dangerous place,” said Alexos, shrugging. He smiled. “Don’t worry, though. You kept me safe.”

She laughed uneasily. Alexos cursed internally. He had forgotten that Sheka had reverted to so innocent a state of mind, without any recollection of the previous years. To her, heretics were still mere hushed murmurs regarding far-off planets and tales by the preacher to frighten the parish.

“Sheka,” he said levelly, and she met his gaze. “Don’t be afraid. The Emperor saw fit to bring us back together. He shall protect us.”

She nodded. After several seconds, she spoke.

“I think that I may remember something. Your talking about another psyker made me think of it, for some reason. A…golden mask?” Her tone turned questioning at the end, and Alexos nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “That was the sign of this enemy.”

They lapsed into silence.

Fortunately, Sheka’s exuberance could not be damped down for too long. Her radiant face filled with delight at the beauty of their surroundings again, and if it was tempered by a note of pensiveness now, well, it only made her all the more beautiful.

Her gaze continually stole back to Alexos. Several times that she did this, it was in a thoughtful manner, but more often, it was with a look of simple joy. Her long, straight, almost-black hair—wait a moment. Her hair had been wavy, and it had bothered Sheka to no end that it wouldn’t straighten without the most stringent measures.

“Sheka?” Alexos asked, an unreasoning, creeping fear stealing over him. “What happened to your hair? How did you straighten it?”

Sheka blinked, a hand rising automatically to her locks, which, as Alexos spoke, began to twist and curl.

“I had just…” she said, lowering her hand, “gone like this.” Her hair wound around itself and flowed into a loose bun with stray, artistic strands hanging loose. “Is there something wrong with that? Do you think looks better as it did before?”

“No, the change just,” Alexos paused awkwardly, “caught me on unawares. How did you change it?”

“How?” she asked, frowning. “It was easy. Can you not? You only have to focus, and it does what you want.”

“But,” said Alexos, fumbling for words, “that doesn’t make sense. Things aren’t supposed to work that way.”

“It seems so simple, though, doesn’t it? I think that I could do something similar to, well, anything I want to, I suppose. I might even be able to… I wonder…” Sheka closed her eyes, and the cream-like fabric of her dress blushed deeply, new color swilling in to shade it a deep maroon. The cut of the dress shifted too, hugging her figure more closely. As Alexos watched, her stuffy under-skirts shrank up and disappeared. Small slits formed along the bottom of the sides of the dress to ease walking.

Alexos couldn’t quite stifle a small grunt of amazement. Sheka opened her eyes and looked down, laughed appreciatively, and turned back and forth to get a better view of the dress.

“How do I look?” Sheka asked coyly.

“Marvelous,” Alexos replied, careful not to let his gaze linger below her face for too long. “That’s a party trick well worth being able to do.” Sheka smiled.

“Why don’t you try?” she asked.

Alexos shut his eyes and focused on trying to imagine his bolt pistol sitting in its holster by his waist. He tried to remember what he knew of its inner workings, it’s reliable and vengeful machine spirit, and to feel its familiar weight by his side, but ended up with only a faint sense of ridiculousness.

If Sheka could do this so easily, he ought to be able to as well. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, sharpening the image in his mind. Something stirred in his chest, a faint, peculiar whorl of energy, and—it suddenly sharpened into a spike of agony, which stabbed inward.

He cried abruptly out, clapping a hand to his chest and opening his eyes. Sheka started, surprised and concerned, and Alexos became aware of a strange lump through the front of his shirt.

“Are you alright?” she asked immediately.

“Yes,” Alexos hurriedly replied as she slid off the stone wall to stand beside him, “yes, I’m fine. It felt like I was bit by something, though.”

He shed his greatcoat and untucked his undershirt, unclipping its fastenings in the process. On his chest rested a new surprise—the jewel that he had been given by Vogart, now burnt through his inner pocket and fused into his flesh. It was alight and glittering with a strange, brilliant inner fire.

Alexos blinked and ran his fingers over its warm surface. It was seamlessly meshed with his skin and muscle.

“Well,” said Sheka, “that _is_ a curiosity.”

+

As Alexos and Sheka neared the edge of the orchard, where the trees grew thinner and less laden with fruit, the winding curves of the path led them to the first inhabitant of this dream-realm that they were to meet. Though the terrain was virtually without variation, the trees—coupled with the general haze that choked the air—managed to hide the man, nonetheless, until they were virtually on top of him.

He was hunched over the stone wall upon which Sheka had earlier been balancing, and was occupied with its stones. He appeared to be counting them, as pointless as such a venture might be. Despite this activity being relatively tame, Alexos was immediately on guard. They had no idea what the denizens of this place were capable of.

“Excuse me,” asked Sheka, undaunted by Alexos’s sudden halt, “what are you doing?”

The man started, looking up and noticing the two of them for the first time. He stood and turned, giving Alexos the first true glimpse at his face. Alexos jerked in surprise.

“Counting the stones in the wall,” said Captain Miaro mildly. “Nobody else was.” There was a moment of shocked silence on Alexos’s part. Miaro’s eyes lost their focus and began to wander back toward the wall with which he had been occupied.

“I see,” said Sheka, nodding in comprehension. Even through a haze of utter shock, Alexos felt that there had been something about the exchange that he had missed. 

“Captain Miaro?” asked Alexos, finally finding his voice. “What in the name of the Throne are you doing here? You were killed!”

“Oh,” replied Miaro, frowning slightly. “Am I? How disappointing.”

“But –” choked Alexos, “what –”

Miaro waited, his mouth hanging slightly open, until Alexos sputtered to a stop. Sheka looked on with interest.

“You’re in the realm of the Queen, now. In the Golden Grove, actually,” said Miaro, as if that simple explanation was enough to explain his presence.

“Pay attention, captain!” barked Alexos in his own attempt to snap Miaro from his witless fugue. “Who is this queen, and how did you get into this place?”

“The Queen?” replied Miaro in the same slow and placid manner as before. “She is the heart of this place. She is…radiant. Alas, alack, I am passed from Her Majesty’s gaze. Her Herald has deemed me unworthy of a place upon the Court. I shall not bask in her beauty.”

“And how you were brought into this place?” gritted Alexos. Had the man lost all sense of military discipline?

“I don’t remember.” Miaro shrugged helplessly. Alexos considered delivering a blistering tirade on duty, and how Miaro was faulting in his, but Sheka spoke before he managed to organize his thoughts.

“How do you know this man, Montra? He is a captain?”

“Yes,” said Alexos tightly, and he forced himself to relax before continuing to speak to Sheka. “Miaro was a member of a regiment of Imperial Guard besides which I fought. A short time ago, he…died.”

“Does this mean that we are dead, then?” asked Sheka in a voice that aimed for amused irony but held more than an edge of apprehension. “That is quite something to wake up to.”

“We are not before the Throne of Him on Terra, are we?” asked Alexos. “No, I don’t think that we’re dead.”

“I do not feel dead, myself,” she said mildly, but again, with a tense—and understandable—undercurrent.

“You’re not, milady,” Miaro said deferentially, bowing to her slightly. After further prompting by Alexos, he explained: “This place isn’t for the dead, specifically. It’s for…souls, I suppose you could say. Souls and minds enmeshed, because souls are rather fragile things. The soul is the core, but the mind is what orders it, protects it, and paints on everything it sees. Your body doesn’t matter, right now.”

“Could we return to them?” asked Alexos. “To our bodies, and real life?” Miaro turned his gaze back to the commissar before he spoke, and Alexos had the strange feeling that Miaro’s eyes tried to glide over him, again, unless the captain focused upon him specifically.

“I…don’t know,” confessed Miaro. “I am dead, remember? That means that I, certainly, could not. But you might not be severed from your flesh. It could be waiting for you outside. You won’t want to return to it, though. Not after you meet the Queen.”

+

Sheka convinced Alexos to allow Miaro to guide them onward into this strange world. Alexos agreed reluctantly, still mistrustful of the captain’s apparent resurrection, and his enamoration with the mysterious Queen. Nonetheless, they had no other aim or destination, and Alexos might even be able to do a service to humanity and eliminate whatever heresy had taken root in this realm.

When questioned further, Miaro was infuriatingly vague—how large was this place, the Queen’s realm? Small, but large enough. How powerful was the Queen? Omnipotent. How many subjects did the Queen rule? Enough. No amount of specificity in his questions could draw out satisfactory answers. Even more frustrating, Sheka seemed to both elicit more complete responses from Miaro with her own questions, and to comprehend a great deal more of what he said than Alexos. Miaro even appeared to understand that he was acting unsatisfactorily, and apologized to Alexos ceaselessly.

At last, Alexos was given a clue. As Miaro attempted to explain why the air was so choked with haziness—another question by Sheka—he said, “It is so because we are far away from the Queen. The closer you go…the more lucid the world becomes. The more that everything makes sense.”

Alexos supposed that this applied to the workings of Miaro’s mind as well, and probably every other one of her subjects. Had the Queen fashioned this worldlet in such a manner that her mere presence was an opiate, a shackle from which her subjects could not escape, nor wished to? The concept revolted him, and his mistrust grew even more.

The three of them cleared the last of pluquat trees and came, after several minutes of walking though untamed grassland, to more a more obvious work of the Queen: a set of broad and opulent gardens that ranged over almost a square kilometer. They stretched almost beyond Alexos’s sight, due to the ever present haze. Miaro called them the Delightful Gardens. As Alexos and Sheka approached, they saw how apt the name was.

At the garden’s near edge, from which the wilderness was neatly and unnaturally delineated, a quartet of fountains sat in a long, thin pool of water. An elegant lattice bridge stretched between the fountains’ middle—the path by which the three newcomers would enter the garden proper—but the ornate bridge and craftsmanship of the fountains were far from the most marvelous aspect of this edifice. Instead of behaving naturally, the fountains flowed in reverse: clear sheets of water burst from the pool below without any visible compulsion and arced smoothly into the mouths of the cherubim that graced the fountain-tops.

Sheka marveled, and even Alexos, after peering into the water and seeing it to be clear and deep—without no spouts or any manner of nozzles to spray the water up—grudgingly admitted his admiration.

This was the first of of a multitude of strange and wondrous things that they saw in the Delightful Gardens. All the ingenuity and cunning craftsmanship of a hundred worlds could have been crammed into as small of an area and not compared. Through it all, though, Alexos could not shake a vague feeling of familiarity.

Out of the corner of his eye, he would see a flower that resembled a plant of Karisas, his homeworld. When he turned to examine it more closely, however, it would burst into eloquent and wordless song, or it would be crafted from living, swaying metal that bruised to his touch, or it would open and contain another flower, which would in turn open to reveal a third, for a dozen or more layers. Each flower was stranger and more exotic than the previous.

Several beds were arranged in an order that Alexos could scarcely believe—that of the private garden of his parents, in which he had spent hours on end, in his youth. Every minute aspect of the display was perfectly duplicated, from the scars that Alexos had left in the benches as a toddler with his first blade, to the polished obsidian stepping stones that were inscribed with the virtues espoused by the Ecclesiarchy. Upon drawing close in disbelief, Alexos disturbed the various flowers contained therein into taking wing and flitting around his head. There they piped shrill whistles until he continued his wanderings through the Gardens proper.

Sheka flitted from marvel to marvel, delighted, examining everything from the intricate clockwork gardeners to the nuggets of gold that lay scattered amongst the gravel beneath their feet. Watching her, Alexos could not help but feel unsettled. She ignored several of the most impressive monuments, going so far as to absentmindedly squeeze between a pair of imposing, vine-wrapped pillars that sought to wrap their tendrils around her arms, to look at objects which had, in turn, entirely escaped Alexos’s notice up to that point. How could he have missed the serried set of ebony steps which she now ascended, reading the inscription which was there emblazoned? And that looming mirror, which was held in place by a sculpted dryad-tree?

Eventually, she called his name, laughing. He picked his way, through a patch of flowers whose open blossoms carried gem-encrusted keys, to her side. He looked where she pointed—a sundial that had been set with a mosaic of likenesses of both of them. In the image, he was in the act of proposing to her atop Mount Shataina, on Karisas, as had occurred nearly thirteen years previously. The pieces of the mosaic clicked and shifted amongst themselves, rearranging the picture formed to display her reaction and their discussions as clearly as any vidcast.

Miaro led them onward, paying little heed to the marvels that surrounded him. Only once did he pause, laying his hand on an overgrown trellis, upon which vines had grown into a woman’s face. It whispered something to him, and, with a pained expression, the captain stepped back and led Alexos and Sheka further along the path.

Again, Alexos had the feeling that he would never have noticed this particular construction had not Miaro drawn his attention to it. It opened his mind to curious consideration. How many hidden artifacts were there in this wonderland? Did every visitor see a vastly different landscape, layered to reflect their past and only revealed in intimate companionship?

For that matter, why were the trees within the Golden Grove pluquats, and why did they so resemble—apart from the shimmering fountain—the very scene where he had lost Sheka? Would a different visitor, one who had never visited Karisas or seen a pluquat tree, see the same type of tree? Somehow, Alexos doubted it. Did he even see things the same way that Sheka saw them, here? Or was each person who passed through subjected to only their own imaginings?

They passed under the entangled boughs of a row of trees, which were shedding thousands of small petals, and the three of them were, just as suddenly as they had entered the Gardens, on their other side. The path continued its meandering journey a mere hundred meters more before disgorging itself onto a smooth, straight, brick-paved road that ran perpendicular to the path’s course.

Alexos noticed that the air was already slightly clearer, and that several distant landmarks were visible. Behind them, the borders of the Delightful Gardens rustled invitingly. Ahead, to the north, lay a band of dark green on the not-to-distant horizon—still blurry, but suggesting a tall, imposing hedge, or a similar barrier. To the northwest rose a spire of intimidating black, a man-made edifice of daunting power and height, and improbable narrowness. Due east along the course of the road lay a cluster of crude dwellings and habitations; constructs of mere wood and rockcrete, and of no special ornamentation. They resembled the barracks in which Alexos had received his reassignment orders to the Dunmirran regiment, and so recently relived in dreams.

“This road will lead us to the Palace of Colors,” volunteered Miaro.

“That tower, there?” asked Alexos, pointing to the distant spire.

“No, no!” replied Miaro with startling and sudden firmness. “That is the Herald’s Needle, containing his experiments. Do you see the Maze, spanning the northern border of the Queen’s realm? The Needle marks the only gate north, into the Madness. The Herald is…” Miaro’s face twisted wretchedly, “he is our guardian, and our only protection from the Nightmares, apart from Her Majesty.”

“You don’t seem to like him very much,” said Alexos guardedly.

“Without him, the entire Queendom would be destabilized. He is Her Right Hand. I cannot fault him that.”

“Which way leads to the Palace, though?” asked Sheka. “The road leads both east and west.”

Miaro laughed, pleased to speak of other things. “Which?” he asked. “Both. This is the equatorial road of Her realm, stretching across it as a belt. The East Road leaves the East Gate, and following it along its course, one finds oneself on the West Road before the West Gate!”

“The roads…change?” said Alexos dubiously.

“No, of course not.” Miaro made a sphere with his hands. “Imagine the Queen’s realm like so, as a minute planet, a world in itself. You entered at the Southern Font,” and one hand was taken away to mark the bottommost point of the sphere, “in the Golden Grove. Walking north to the Delightful Gardens, you met me. We’ve continued to the road, which bisects it as an equator, and holds the Palace. North is the Everchanging Maze, and may it remain forever.”

“But further north than that?” pressed Alexos. “In the ‘Madness’? What is there?”

Miaro shuddered. “I do not rightly know—the Fens of Misery, I have heard, and the Darken Cliffs. Also, the Northern Font, a mirror of the Southern Font, but the wellspring of all things evil, instead. Such things are better left locked away behind the Maze.

“Turning to more pleasant things, Commissar and my fair lady, which path do you desire to tread?”

“I would rather walk east, I think,” said Sheka. “The look of the Needle discomforts me. What is the settlement to the west?” Alexos added his assent to the heading that route.

“Ah,” replied Miaro to Sheka, slightly sadly. “The Village of Lost Souls. It is not a dangerous or an evil place. It is for the…common people, such as myself. Those deemed unworthy of joining Her Court. It is as far as I shall lead you, being at the base of the Palace.”

The three of them began to walk again, into the east. Sheka closed her eyes, and her clothes and hair rippled, tidying themselves.

+

Blank-faced villagers wandered aimless through the Village. Many were pale and drawn, their hair white and their vacant faces lined with wrinkles, as if time had bleached them of color and subsidence. Their manner was similar to Miaro’s when they had first met him, Alexos noticed—they seemed lost, and without purpose. Some flicked in and out of reality, not so much vanishing and reappearing as sliding out of notice—and, by extension, out of existence—before returning. A few seemed to have been reduced to nothing more than fleeting impressions that one caught in the corner of the eye.

“The Queen has allowed us to sip from the Chalice of Immortality, in bringing us here,” murmured Miaro. “So long as she remembers a person, in her realm, they cannot die. Alas, she holds the Chalice of Vigor more tightly to her bosom. As we pass from her waking mind, we fade from reality, growing weaker in will and body. Only her Court, saturated in her presence, remain strong and joyous. As we, the remainder, slip deeper into the forgotten crevices of her memory, we become half-heard whispers drifting upon the wind, knowing not our name, our purpose, nor our former life. All that we know is that we have forgotten all.”

“How terribly sad,” breathed Sheka. Several of the more coherent villagers had given her small, tidy bows as they passed her.

Alexos, too felt a wave of melancholy wash over him at the sight of these poor, miserable souls. Was this the fate that awaited him and Sheka? Even the poorest, most miserable of wretches in the hives of the Imperium had the Emperor in which to take solace—the judgment of righteousness after death, and the faith that holy faith would be repaid. These lost souls here, in attempting to cheat their fate, had only doomed themselves to an eternity of despair. One more crime for which to hold this Queen accountable.

Ahead lay a building which was unmistakably an inn, despite all the buildings strongly resembling the barracks of the Andokarran 1091st, as Alexos had first suspected. Outside the inn hung a sign that read ‘New Arrivals’.

“Is that our destination?” Alexos asked Miaro, pointing. The captain winced.

“No. You are to go straight to the Palace. The sooner that you meet the Queen, the better. New Arrivals…you shall not need to go there, I think. It’s current occupant might also…dispirit you.”

“Current –” asked Alexos, but stopped to listen. Faint, groaning cries issued from the inn’s open front door. “Who is it?”

“The only resident of the Queen’s realm newer than myself, you two excepted. He has…not adapted well.”

Alexos strode up the steps, Sheka behind him. Miaro followed, slightly more hesitantly. At the sound of their feet on the deck, the moans ceased.

“Hello?” called Alexos, easing the door open. “Is anybody there?”

The interior was dark, and silent. As Alexos fumbled for a lightpad that he wasn’t sure would be on the wall, though, the voice trickled out again.

“Kill me…”

Alexos shuddered. He had a suspicion as to whose voice it was. It sounded familiar, albeit far more tortured. His questing fingers found the knob for which they were searching, and the lume-strips in the inn’s main room flickered on. Several meters inside, a horrific sight met Alexos’s eyes.

It was Yeddreth Vogart.

The Sanctioned Psyker’s flesh had been fused to that of another man—Alexos vaguely recognized him as Telk Mancharex, the first of the psyker-thralls that he had slain—so that they resembled Siamese twins with one body and two heads. Their body was warped and distended, bloated out of human proportion to something utterly alien by their terrible fate.

Vogart’s eyes met Alexos’s. Telk’s were shut in a grimace of agony.

“Commissar,” said Vogart, his voice broken. “Oh Throne, Commissar Alexos. Please, end this torment. Free me.”

Sheka, after her initial motion of recoiling disgust, stepped forward again. Her brow was creased in pensive pity.

“I know you,” she said, fighting through a haze of memory. After several seconds, she said, “Your name—it is Vogart, is it not?”

“Yes!” hissed Vogart in a sharp, quick gasp. “Yes, that is me, Lady Sheka! Please, spare me from even a single moment more of this!”

Miaro appeared in the doorway. “It won’t work,” he said. “Nothing would work. Every time he dies or commits suicide, the entwining gets worse. It is…the judgment of the Herald. Terrible business.

“Come, though. We cannot help him.”

Miaro led Alexos and Sheka away. The commissar fought back the urge to vomit, disgusted. What terrible hell had they come to? Vogart had been an exemplary psyker, loyal and shrewd. He had done nothing to deserve such a fate. There was no justice in this. He swore that the Herald and the Queen would answer for their sins.

“The Palace is just up the hill,” Miaro said. “The servant-drones should open the gate for you and lead you to the Queen. I cannot come with you any further; the common rabble are not allowed into the Palace of Colors. May she grant you a place in her Court, Milady, that you could be spared the fate of the rest of us. You are luminescent with vitality and beauty, and you should very well be given what I was denied.

“If—if I may ask a boon for my service as a guide, might I please be remembered to the Queen?”

With Sheka’s gracious, elegant assent, Miaro turned and trudged back into the Village. Alexos and Sheka squared their shoulders and began to climb the hill toward the glimmering walls of the Palace.

+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter VII: The Designs of the Herald*

+++

Alexos hadn't known what to expect, but this was not it. When Sheka saw it, she laughed delightedly.

“Why, Montra!” she exclaimed. “It's the antechamber of House Scouras!”

Alexos nodded jerkily. “With one rather prominent addition,” he replied, pointing to the massive, arching stained-glass window that let light into the room. It depicted a woman with long, black hair—the Queen, Alexos presumed—on the back of a reptilian mount. She held a ball of light held between her upraised hands, and was surrounded by dark figures that cowered away in terror.

The other source of light in the room was the traditional, and that which was utilized in the upperhive of Hive Karisas, the only hive on the agri-planet of the same name; lumen-globes scattered around the edges of the room and hanging from the chandelier.

The same benches as were pressed to the base of the walls here were present in the antechamber of House Scouras as well, and the same intricate marble pattern was swirled across the floor here as there, too. The same plinths depicted the same long-dead ancestors, past which Alexos had strolled, his mind occupied with Sheka, dozens of times.

The servant-drone, as Miaro had so aptly called named its kind, that had led Alexos and Sheka this far turned and bowed. Its stature was diminutive, reaching only the level of Alexos's chest, and it was dressed in ancient, slightly tattered robes of butlery. The most striking thing about it, however, was its face, which was as smooth and pale as a sheet of blank paper, apart from the formless, fleshy slit that served as its mouth.

“You will wait here,” it said in a dull monotone. “The Queen's Court will see you presently.” It bowed a second time and departed through the door by which it had brought them.

They walked slowly to the nearest bench. They had made their way this deep into the palace without seeing anybody more than several of these drones. The ornate and beautiful—but, in practicality, nigh-indefensible—outer walls had been unmanned. The inner yards, full of massive, twisting, multi-colored glass structures, had been empty. The keep complex, which resembled a pile of broken glass mixed with aspects of Imperial architecture, and in which they now waited, had been just as deserted, so far.

“Alexos,” said Sheka, her gaze raised to examine a display of some sort set into the wall two and a half meters up behind their bench. “What is that trophy? It is nothing that was taken by a member of my family.”

He turned and looked up at it too. A scorched, misshapen skull grinned down at him, over a pair of crossed white blades. The skull was distinctly larger than and more bestial than a human one, and distinctly predatory, with long, curved canines and sharp, distinct features.

“Ah,” said a voice behind them, “the _Vulpes ignis_. A relatively harmless Nightmare, but one of the few which has the cunning enough to slip through the Maze, on occasion. Beneath are the glit-blades which struck the killing blow against it.”

Alexos and Sheka whirled to see the man behind them. He was tall, but not excessively so, and he wore rich, embroidered clothes. His thick brown hair was combed back, and his aquiline features were almost obscured by a silver half-mask.

Alexos only barely bit back a reflexive shout. The mask was silver, not gold, and rested over only the man's eyes. This was not the psyker whom they had chased here, necessarily. Besides, the man had been standing directly behind the two of them and made no violent assault, when he could have and caught them by complete unawares. In any case, something seemed vaguely familiar about him, and not in an unsettling manner.

“Greetings, Lady Scouras and Commissar Alexos. I welcome you to the Palace of Colors, the Citadel of Stained Glass, the Castle of the Queen. I am Her Herald, and I shall bring you before the Court.” He bowed graciously to Sheka. Alexos stiffened. This was the man who was responsible for what had happened to Vogart.

“How do you know our names?” asked Sheka, curiously. “The only people that we have met and who have known us were the good Captain Miaro, and poor Vogart.”

“It is my business to know what occurs in Her realm,” the Herald replied smoothly. “I know all who enter it—though seldom are they uninvited, such as you two.

“Come, though, time is wasting. The Queen awaits.”

He led them onward into the Palace, and as they followed him, the change in their surroundings was immediate and unsettling.

The corridor immediately beyond was dim and narrow, but tall enough that its top was lost to view in the gloom. Gothic architecture and statues of weeping, sorrowful angels predominated, the features of both barely distinguishable even at immediately in front of Alexos and Sheka. Tapestries showing sinners undergoing various, excruciating torments, had been placed behind each of the widely-spaced lumen-globes, making them the only things well-illuminated in this corridor.

Alexos recognized the scene altogether too clearly. It was a mirror image of the interior of the Black Ship that he had visited ten years previously. Judging by Sheka's expression, however, she was privy to a much more beautiful and less intimidating of a scene. Another indication, then, of the unnatural perversity of this world.

With a mounting sense of disquiet, he allowed himself to be led to the iron portal that he knew awaited. As the Herald approached, the door slid away with several dry hisses and muffled clunks.

As before, the darkness awaited beyond, filled with figures chained into rows. Neither expectation of what had been to come nor the years of embittering service since he had first seen this scene made it any less revolting. Sporadic bursts of witch-light provided the scene visibility, and heat and a coppery tang filled the air. Rearing above the rest of the dark figures, in a grotesque mockery of Sheka's original breakaway, was – the Queen.

Her skin was deeply tanned, almost approaching Alexos’s in hue, and her raven hair cascaded past her waist. Her fine, delicate features were stretched into a gracious smile as she awaited the newcomers. She was clothed with tasteful simplicity and surrounded by an aura of elegance, even motionless in her throne—no, hovering, as Sheka had been. She was clearly the woman depicted in the stained-glass window outside, and again, as with the Herald, seemed vaguely familiar to Alexos.

Before her elevated, seated position stood the members of the Court, peacocks in various fineries—bedraggled and chained, and she drifting eerily in their midst. They had clearly been chatting amiably amongst themselves, but that had ceased with the opening of the door—their shrieks continued to ring out, in the hellish darkness. The Herald stepped forward, menacingly, marching in step with the Repressor guardians—there was no sign of soldiers in attendance, not even a bodyguard beside the Queen.

The jarring contradiction of images and sensory details incapacitated Alexos, until the Queen spoke.

“And these are the uninvited guests?” she said. Her voice was smooth and melodious, nuanced by the multitude of powers at her command. With her words, the scene solidified in Alexos's eyes. The gloom of memory was banished, and the finery of the Court lay displayed in the generous light. The Queen sat upon her dais, and the courtiers below had divided to provide the newcomers a route to her feet. The Herald strode forward, leading Alexos and Sheka.

“Indeed, My Queen,” he said. “May I introduce to you the Lady Sheka Scouras, of Karisas, and Commissar Montra Alexos, of the same?”

The familiarity of the Queen suddenly struck Alexos. She was the woman who had floated in one of the two stasis cells in the Infirmarium Majoris. The Herald was the man from the second. These two had been under Alexos's nose for days without his realizing that there was anything more to them. Well, he could correct his mistakes, now.

“Certainly,” replied the Queen. “I so look forward to getting to know more about you two.”

“I have located the heart of this evil,” murmured Alexos to himself, as they drew nearer to the Queen, “and so it is my duty to excise the canker that grows here.”

He forcibly shoved the Herald to one side, sending the man sprawling awkwardly, and sprinted the last several meters to the stairs and up them to the Queen. She recoiled slightly in surprise as he came at her, her eyes opening wide. Then he was upon her, and his fist slammed into her cheek.

Her head snapped back and cracked against the throne's backboard. Alexos, filled with righteous rage, seized her skull and _twisted_. Flesh stretched and distorted under his grasp, and the Queen's neck broke with a sharp crack. She flopped ineffectually in her throne, responding too late to fight back. Alexos fastened his hands around her broken neck, cinching his hands tight and feeling tissue crackle under them.

After long, tense seconds, in which Alexos expected to be wrenched of the Queen by a multitude of hands at any second, she died.

Alexos stepped back, panting, his knuckles bruised. He looked back to see the Herald and the Court standing in disbelieving, betrayed silence. Sheka's face was shocked and blank.

The corpse of the Queen slid to the ground, blurred, and was gone.

“How terribly impolite,” said the Queen from behind him. “Shall we try that again?”

Alexos whirled, and there, against all reason and perfectly unharmed, stood the Queen. Her face was set severely. She waved a hand, and the world dissolved into pastel brilliance.

+

“Come, though,” said the Herald, “time is wasting. The Queen awaits.”

He turned and stalked from the antechamber. Alexos and Sheka followed. Alexos blinked, his mind muddled, and shook off the odd sense of deja vú that had settled on him. The Herald led them onward into a new corridor.

It was tall and vaulted, displaying gothic architecture, but well-lit, too, and orderly. Statues of solemn, pious angels were placed between tapestries that displayed the righteous castigating the unclean. Lumen globes had been placed before every tapestry, ensuring that each was lit better than the rest of the hallway, and that the punishment of evil was ever displayed in the light of righteousness.

Alexos nodded approvingly, and pushed away the last of the puzzling familiarity that bothered him. Sheka, too, gazed around the tastefully ornate hallway with an expression of contentment.

The Herald led them to a large, iron-bound portal, which slid away into the floor and the roof as he approached.

Inside waited the Court, in all of its varied, overdecorated splendor. They had clearly been chatting amiably amongst themselves before the door had opened, but that had now ceased. Surprisingly, there was no sign of soldiers in attendance, not even upon the raised dais that contained a throne and—the beautiful Queen. The assorted courtiers present divided, providing a wide route to the dais.

“And these are the uninvited guests?” she said.

“Indeed, My Queen,” the Herald said, striding forward and leading Alexos and Sheka toward the throne. “May I introduce to you the Lady Sheka Scouras, of Karisas, and Commissar Montra Alexos, of the same?”

The familiarity of the Queen struck Alexos, and he nearly laughed to himself. Both she and the Herald had both been under his nose for days without him realizing.

“Marvelous,” replied the Queen. “I so look forward to getting to know more about you two.”

Alexos's feet jerked, trying to carry him forward—feelthefleshbreakingunderhishands—but he stopped himself, shocked by the sudden surge of blood-lust that had swept through his system. Beside him, the Herald smirked, amused at something that escaped Alexos entirely.

“Now, Commissar Alexos,” the Queen said amusedly, “let's not have a repeat of last time, shall we?”

Memories rushed back, and Alexos flushed with shame.

“I would not dare, Your Majesty,” he said. “But...how did you –”

“Survive?” interrupted the Queen, smiling intoxicatingly. “I am not the ruler of this place, Alexos. I _am_ this place, and it is me in turn. I am the one who fashioned it from the raw clay of the Immaterial, gave it structure and subsidence, and poured myself into its making. I can no more be slain than this entire world. By extension, neither can any upon whom I look with favor.”

“I see,” said Alexos, and he bowed, humbled.

“Now, however,” continued the Queen, “we face the dilemma of how to apportion rank upon the two of you. You, Scouras, are clearly powerful enough to rank within the nobility of the Court, and shall be appointed to a fitting position. The Lady of the Village, perhaps? None of my Court holds that position currently. There is no lasting obligation attached; titles are swift to change in my realm, should one find oneself dissatisfied with them.”

“I would be more than pleased with so generous a blessing,” said Sheka with a demure curtsy.

“You though, Commissar,” said the Queen, “you are something of a peculiarity. You are... less brilliant than the others in this place. You appear as to be blunt, almost entirely severed from the Aetherius around us, and yet you do not dissolve, as all others of your kind brought to this place have. I think that I shall very much enjoy learning what, to be crude, makes you tick.”

She favored him with a smile that warmed him to the core, but immediately afterward, her expression became serious. “I cannot assure you, however, that the same rules that apply to my subjects shall hold sway over you, as well. By recompense, I pardon your guilt in assaulting my person. All is forgiven, and all punishment absolved.

“Now, though, I expect that the both of you are worn out from your day's excursions. The Herald shall guide you to your new quarters.”

+

“Is she not radiant?” asked the Herald. They now walked the back-halls of the Palace, following the Herald's lead. “She is wise, benevolent and beautiful beyond compare. You would have wept to see her lead a host to battle against the beings of the Madness, or her creation of the Everchanging Maze.”

“The Maze was not present since the making of this place?” asked Sheka.

“No,” said the Herald, shaking his head slowly. “There was a time, near the birthing of this world, when the Nightmares terrorized all, led by the Sins. Those days, the Purity Crusades, are gone. The Sins are bound beneath the Darken Cliffs, and trouble us no more. Order and Beauty are for the days of the present. So long as the Queen remembers us, we cannot die. So unless she leaves us, which she never shall, we are a nation of immortals!”

“Now, Milady of the Village, here are your quarters. It will have been decorated to your satisfaction, by your inner mind. The good commissar shall be located a further five doors down this hallway, should you need him.”

Sheka thanked the Herald, kissed Alexos, and stepped through into her rooms. The door shut behind her.

“Just this way, now,” the Herald said graciously, motioning onwards. They continued to walk. Eventually, Alexos decided to ask a question that had come to his mind.

“What exactly do you do in the Queen's service?”

The Herald merely shushed him and murmured, “Not yet.”

Alexos idly counted the doors that they passed. Two...three...four...this one would be his.

The Herald span, his hands wrapping around Alexos's neck, and Alexos was shoved back against the hallway's side.

“You utter fool!” hissed the Herald vehemently. “You have no idea of the crime that you tried to commit!”

Alexos fought the Herald's grip, but the man was unspeakably strong. He kicked out, his foot connecting solidly with the Herald's shin, but that garnered no noticeable response.

“You asked what I am, here?” the Herald asked. “I am the final arbitrator of justice, the defender of virtue. It is by my efforts that this land remains safe and not overrun by the denizens of Nightmare. It is by my vigilance that the very seams of Her Realm do not come undone.

“And it is my duty to remove threats to that stability.” This last statement was accompanied by a terrible, crushing pressure to Alexos's throat.

“Am...nesty,” Alexos choked desperately, fighting all the harder. The world began to swim.

“Yes,” said the Herald bitterly, “you have been spared punishment. But the Queen is not infallible, and Her judgments are punctuated by whimsy. I am certain that, were you to disappear tonight, it would not aversely affect Her in the slightest. What's more, all memory of you would fade from your young woman's mind, in time, as she became further enchanted with the beauty of this land and the Queen.”

The Herald threw Alexos to the floor, where he lay gasping for breath.

“But let us make a bargain,” continued the Herald relentlessly. “I shall wager that, say, the Queen shall not care about my actions, against your stake that She is incorrect in Her assumption that your passing from this world would be final.

“I shall send you into the Fens of Misery,” spat the Herald. He grabbed Alexos and lifted him, twisted, and _shoved_—and their surroundings changed.

“Take care not to speak,” snarled the Herald, as Alexos gazed around, disoriented, at the misty marshes that now surrounded them. “The Nightmares are unaccustomed to you, and your voice would act as a siren to them. There are things in these fens that even I would not disturb, had I the choice.”

The Herald pivoted and was gone.

+

For the first time since arriving in the realm of the Queen, Alexos found himself in surroundings that were utterly foreign to him. Mist choked out the sun in a manner similar to, but much more limitingly and utterly more oppressively than, the haze of the southern lands. Closer, the mist wandered in fragile wisps across the flat, swampy terrain.

There were the faint suggestions of things just barely beyond the edges of vision stirring the fog, too. In any other situation, Alexos would have dismissed them as figments of the imagination, but here, he decided that he could not take that risk.

As loath as he was to listen to the advice of the man who had just assaulted him, he had to admit that the Herald's advice about remaining quiet was sound—for all that the man had blown the dangers out of proportion.

He began to walk, looking about himself for a suitable branch or stone that, in a tight corner, he could use to defend himself. The only wood that he ran across was dead, and rotten, and the pebbles he found were too small. Without sight of the sun, he could not orient himself, so the direction he chose to wander was entirely random.

The mud squelched under boot, slipping away and threatening to send Alexos sprawling every several steps. Scum and sickly reeds grew from the multitudinous ponds that pockmarked the terrain, and wherever the terrain rose more than a foot or two above the water level, a cluster of tight, sharp, bristly grasses rose, threatening to tear any clothes that snagged upon them.

Eventually, Alexos saw something which caught his eye—a patch of cloth half-submerged in the muck.

He splattered his way carefully to it, and lifted it in the air. Somehow, he was not surprised to recognize it. It was one of his sisters' dolls, with a dress of soft red velvet that had been so stained and engrimed by this place that it appeared a coarse and dull brown, instead. Its shape, however, he still recognized. He had stolen it in as a child in a fit of pique and misplaced it. That sister's nails had left furrows in his neck when she had learned.

He snorted to himself and discarded the memento of the past. There was no answering how it had come to be here, not in this illogical world.

He continued his march, making unsteady and haphazard progress, more than once sidetracked by a large pool around which he had to skirt—but sidetracked from where? He had no real destination or focus. All that he wished to avoid was ending up marching in circles. If this world was truly so small, he would come to something other than this bog, soon enough.

The mists were growing darker. The sun must be near setting, thought Alexos. In the fading light, however, a gleaming object caught his eye. He made his way to it, and saw another long-lost object of his past—his first dueling sword, with which he had scratched the benches of his parents' private garden. A mere pair of months later, he had snapped the blade in half upon a metal statue. He had kept the near-useless hilt for years, until it slipped into the past with the rest of his childhood rubbish.

The hilt felt miniature in his hand, and the bare few inches of blade that remained on it were laughable, but it was the best weapon that he had yet encountered. He had yet to come across the supposedly terrible denizens for which this place was so dreaded, though, too. Perhaps they would be as intimidating as his newly rediscovered blade.

A pale yellow light bobbed into existence in the fog ahead. Alexos froze. It winked, beckoning to him, but he scrambled backward, instead, and crouched behind one of the low hillocks of sharp and prickly grass. More lights began to glow in different hues, ranging from shades of red to blue and green.

The first inhabitants of this foul bog swam into view through the mist as he adjusted himself carefully in his hiding spot, not minding the mud which had already begun to seep through his pant legs.

The one which carried the original lantern came into view first. It was a pale, wasted, eyeless wraith. Alexos was shocked to see the aquila mark of a Sanctioned Psyker tattooed across its brow. Behind it came a procession of as emaciated of slaves, long-lost to servitude in these fens, each carrying a globe-like sphere which radiated a ghostly luminescence. Oddly enough, despite bringing light, Alexos saw that the lanterns also sharpened all shadows in evidence into further contrast, rather than banishing them.

The shadows were crawling with motion. Alexos recoiled slightly in righteous disgust. Maws and claws flickered in the shadows, if only for moments at a time, but they seemed to threaten to coil up and out into reality, lunging for Alexos. He shuddered.

Behind the lantern bearers came a shambling mob of horrors. These were rolling, shifting, fleshy things of an almost undefined form, all limbs and mouths and claws, that seemed to shift and rearrange at random, without purpose or intent.

Off-pitch, keening whistles cut the air, and Alexos ducked as if from a barrage of artillery on reflex. Predatory things swooped past above in the gloom. Alexos prayed that they would not find him. He dragged himself further into the cover of the sharp grasses.

After the packs of daemonic horrors on the ground drifted past his hiding spot, then came the praetorians of the unnatural parade. Eight foot tall, hook-headed bird-creatures with bell-hands that vomited gouts of multi-colored flames stalked past with jerky, unnerving movements. They did not appear to have eyes, but all the same, Alexos was not quick to risk moving and garnering their attention.

Then came the long-limbed fox-beasts, which stood half again the height of a man. With their cunning movements, angular features, and vicious fangs, Alexos was certain that the skull of the creature that he and Sheka had seen in the antechamber of the Palace had been one of these. He counted it a blessing that they did not smell him and raise the alarm.

And with the passing of the foxes, the Nightmares were gone. Alexos waited for a heart-rending ten minutes to see if there were any more before easing from the grass. Its razor-like edges caught his clothes, tearing ribbons from the cloth with ease. He shuddered again, considering what they would have done to his flesh had he thrown himself into without due caution.

He continued his labored journey, but with more attentive eyes to his surroundings, now. More lost objects, many of which seemed vaguely familiar, but to which he could no longer attach any definite meaning, were strewn across his path as he walked. Only one thing truly caught his eye—a glint of metal buried deep in one of the patches of razor-grass.

Originally, he thought it only a lost lucky coin, or something similar. Certainly, it was of a similar size, and a dull gold. Some unknown instinct prompted him to look closer, however, and he caught the glint of a ruby.

He stepped gingerly into the grass, pressing down the leaves around the object with the sole of his boot before reaching in with his more vulnerable fingers. Gently teasing free from the constrains of the grass revealed that it was a narrow band of filth-smeared gold. As he pulled it out, a strand of the razor-grass still entangled shifted, sliding under Alexos's fingers and cutting deep.

He hissed, bit back a curse, shifted his grip, and pulled the band free. It was the torc that he had given to Sheka the day—no, the very minute—that her psychic powers had manifested. He had thrown it from the top of the hive half a year later in a fit of bitter, raging despair.

He clenched his fingers tightly into a fist to staunch the bleeding and tore a strip from his lighter-weight undershirt to bind them. After treating the injury as best he could, he picked the torc back up and polished it with his sleeve as well as he could.

The ruby gleamed, and the gold began to shine brighter, but the inlaid silver filigree had tarnished, and without a wire brush to work in its crevices, he would be unable to restore it to its full, former beauty. With a sigh, he tucked it into a pants pocket. He would return to it in less dire of circumstances and surroundings. He picked back up his makeshift knife and continued his slog.

The earth rumbled, distantly. It felt like a faint, weak earthquake, but Alexos was highly dubious that so small and specifically designed of a “world” as this had any seismic activity to speak of. More likely it was some other unnatural devilry.

He found himself more prone to seeing things in the murk, now. He took to walking alongside a muddy stream bed in which he could hide himself, if he heard or saw anything suggesting that another procession of the Nightmares had happened across him. Twice, he slid down the sludgy bank at the behest of his fears, seeing and hearing things in the mist. Both times, he waited, his heart pounding—but nothing appeared.

The second time, as he stood and clambered from the stream bed, now entirely slicked with mud, a wave of realization struck him. He was acting paranoid and cowardly, jumping at shadows and cowering away from any potential confrontation. Had his years of indoctrination and training slid so far away, so swiftly?

“To warp with that,” he growled. “I am an Imperial Commissar, and I am not made of such weak stuff.” And to warp with the Herald's warning against speaking, too.

The words rang emptily in the lonesome marsh, but the the self-affirmation was enough to calm his jumping nerves, to some degree. He straightened and prepared to continue following the course of the stream. It was sloping ever so slightly upward, now, and the fog seemed to be clearing some.

Mocking, high-pitched laughter rolled out of the mists. Alexos's blood chilled, but his newfound courage did not desert him.

“Who's there!” he cried sharply. “Show yourself!”

There was no reply, but mist stirred perceptibly in front of him. Tightening his grip on the hilt-shard knife, he stalked toward the motion.

With startling abruptness, the mist died out, and the ground firmed under his feet. It soon turned to solid rock. The stream bed faded into the contours of the looming landmark ahead.

The cliffs were pale stone at their base, but as they rose, jutting jaggedly from a disordered and chaotic jumble of loose shale at the bottom, they grew steadily darker and more severe. At their top, they were nearly as black as obsidian. The sun, now visible again and deep in the sky at Alexos's left, struck these looming hills upon one side, bathing them in a red glare and making them appear to have caught aflame. Miaro had called these the Darken Cliffs, Alexos recalled. It was a fitting name.

Stones clattered to the thick base of shale at the base of the hills. Alexos tracked their path upward and saw a figure, wreathed in a cloud of darkness, scampering up the slope. It paused, looked back, and bowed condescendingly to Alexos. He was certain that it was the owner of the voice that had laughed at him in the mist.

A surge of fury ripped through him. He would show this darkling shade not to make a mockery of him. He scrambled up the slope after it, dislodging scree. He tripped once, skinning his knee.

He cleared the shale and made it to firmer ground, but could not match the rate at which the indistinct figure clambered up the ever-steepening cliff side. It vanished from sight above.

Footholds and handholds were not hard to come by as Alexos rose higher, and grew more reliant upon them for his progress, but they were sharp, and he nicked and scraped himself several more times. The makeshift bandage on his left hand slid off and blood began to trickle from the messy, cracking scabs, but he couldn't spare the time to rebind it.

As he hauled himself up, he noticed the bones. Lodged in crannies and crevices, the refuse of discarded meals from ledges above, they began to become more and more frequent. He glanced upward, seeing for the first time the figures that swooped to the west, hidden from view unless he gazed almost directly into the glaring brilliance of the setting sun.

From what he could see of them, there seemed to be two main varieties: bat-winged furies with gangly limbs and humanoid forms, and larger, soaring manta-creatures, which trailed barbed tails like a kite, and from whose front protruded distended, fanged maws.

He hauled himself up onto of the most difficult-to-reach ledges yet, where the stones were nearly pitch black, and stopped dead. Basking in the evening warmth were a family of massive rock lizards, with wicked claws and hides to match the shade of the stone here exactly. Their glossy scales and large, amber, orb-like eyes reflected the light of the twilight sun.

One of them hissed and shuffled a meter closer to Alexos. Others followed suit. He hastily continued climbing.

Once, as he dangled precariously by a mere hand and a foot, reaching out to get another tenuous handhold, the earth shook again, much more powerfully than he had felt in the swamps. He managed to keep his awkward grip—barely—but small, shaken-loose pebbles pelted him painfully afterward, and he had to hide his eyes to avoid getting grit in them.

Soon, he reached what appeared to be the top of the cliff sides proper. One last, relatively easy slope of black rock awaited him to the summit of the Darken Cliffs. He scaled it wearily, moving slowly and warily, making sure to take the time to recover his breath.

Reaching the top, he looked down into something which surprised him, even then. In what appeared to be the caldera of a dead volcano below, a demented garden grew. At its center was a fountain from which the ichor sprung that so twisted the plants into their misshapen forms.

Chained to the stone fountain was a massive, hunched beast, that possessed only a passing resemblance to a human in form, let alone features. It was entirely hairless, and possessed of two arms, two legs, and a head, but there any similarities ended. It was grotesquely large, looming to almost three and a half meters in height, and it had one large, milky, cyclopean eye. It was unclothed and sexless, and even from the distance at which that Alexos sat, he could smell the fetid, fecal stench of the rubbish in which it trod.

It straightened as Alexos observed it, sniffing the air. Its face turned in his direction, and it jerked forward against its chains. They held.

“AWAAAAY!” boomed the intruder with an ear-splitting roar, “KEEEEP AWAY! FORBIDDEN! AWAAAY!”

The words brought a jolt of recollection to Alexos. He had faced—and smelled—this beast before, as he and Sheka had drifted upon the currents of the warp. It had acted as a gatekeeper that had tried to keep them out of this world, however clumsily and ineffectually. Suddenly, however, much of the rotting debris around its feet was identifiable. Alexos could identify a putrescent limb and a horned skull.

A faint scraping behind the rock that Alexos had crouched beside made him whirl. The darkling creature crashed into him from above, knocking him to the ground and sending his knife skittering a short distance away.

Alexos lashed out desperately, and knocked the thing off him. He scrambled up, his hand closing around the knife hilt, and he turned. The darkling creature was, up close, no more than the negative of a human being, leaching the light from reality to surround itself with a shroud of darkness. As Alexos looked, however, color and depth rippled over it, taking on the look of a man with whom he was intimately familiar—a man that he saw in the shaving mirror every morning. This thing's skin was the same dark pigmentation, his teeth the same brilliant white, his hair the same tousled black.

There were only two ways that the beast differed from the true Alexos: first, he was surrounded by an aura of utter, vile wrongness, and secondly, his hands remained as void-black negatives of reality. As Alexos watched, the hands liquidated, stretched, and elongated, forming a pair of long, wicked blades. The not-Alexos smiled at Alexos and licked its lips.

“Hello, little worm of the Carrion Throne,” the mirror image hissed, and attacked.

Alexos fended of a series of blows with desperate blows of his knife, but he knew exactly how much trouble he was in almost immediately. This beast that wore his form was toying with him, and would tire in moments.

Alexos back-stepped, making the not-him over-correct by the slightest margin, and flowed into the gap that was created.

He was not a knife fighter, and he had never claimed to be. Thus, he was not entirely surprised when, as he lunged, one of the enemy's blades sprouted from his midriff. His opponent had corrected with impossible speed and allowed Alexos to run himself onto the sword-arm.

It was cold, sticking into his gut. It was an alien presence there, and the mere shock of it feeling it in his intestines offset the pain for a long second. The longest second of Alexos's life, and one of the last.

The not-Alexos smiled again, and tore the blade viciously to one side, effectively disemboweling him. Alexos slumped slowly to the ground, clutching the gaping wound in an odd combination of disbelief and calm, unfeeling acceptance. Only now, as his bodily fluids gushed from the wound in a torrent, did the first tingling claws of pain begin to set in.

The earth trembled a third time, shuddering and spinning in Alexos's fading gaze.

"Do you feel that, my squirming little worm?" asked the not-Alexos. “The mere dreams of the sleeping Sins rock this land, and their slumber grows ever more restless. Soon, my brethren shall break free of their bonds, and when we march _en echelon_, nothing shall be able to stop us: not the Maze, nor the Queen, nor the puling, mewling Court. Tell that to the bastard, and tell him that Envy sent you."

Choking on vomit, the cords of his intestines slipping through his blood-slicked fingers, Alexos died.

+

His chest burned with agony, radiating outward, incapacitating and rendering him into a crushed, fetal ball. His name, his mind, his being—all were consumed by the pain which gnawed away the entirety of his self to nothingness.

The Herald was saying something above him, but the words were lost in the haze. A hand reached down, lifted him, and the Herald's masked face filled his field of vision.

"So," said the Herald, "you managed to survive? I thought that you had the look of a persistent nuisance to you. It would appear that, like the rest of us, you cannot die—unless the rules change."

Alexos's pain was beginning to recede to a single, unbearable locus upon his breast. They were back in the hallway of the Palace of Colors, immediately outside his new quarters.

"It was Envy, then," stated the Herald. "This is news indeed. Sloth, of course, remains chained. But I am curious as to how you managed to avoid dissipating. I thought that I felt something stirring around –"

The Herald's free hand reached out, probing unerringly toward the focus of the pain in Alexos's chest. He touched Alexos's shirt, running his fingers over the lump beneath. The pain spiked upward again and Alexos drew back.

It was the gemstone. The jewel that Vogart had so desperately pressed onto his person, and which had more recently been fused into his flesh. It was what provided him corporeality in this realm, and saved him from dissolution with his death.

He backed toward the doorway to his room. The Herald barked a humorless laugh.

"So that's your secret, is it? How crude. I shall bother you no more this night; I must to the Queen and tell her that Envy has slipped his bonds. You have come to this realm in interesting times, Commissar."

The Herald turned and stalked away. Once he was out of eyesight, Alexos opened the door to his rooms and slipped inside. They were spartan in appearance, containing only what was necessary for his survival, the only concession to comfort being the relatively large and soft bed.

Alexos was shaking uncontrollably. His mind replayed the visceral sensory detail of his death on repeat. His intestines slithered through the cold, stinging hole in his guts—his lungs gurgled, filling with liquids—familiar muscles spasmed uncontrollably, or, having been sliced to ribbons, went completely limp and unresponsive. Blood and bile rose in his throat.

He shook his head and staggered to the sink in the bathroom. He swilled water in his mouth and spat, swilled and spat, swilled and spat, in an ineffectual attempt to wash out the memory of the taste. He scrubbed his hands until they were raw, attempting to remove the afterimage of his own rich, deeply red arterial blood; his lifeblood.

He stripped down to his undershirt and breeches, and unfastened the former enough to look at the jewel. It’s brilliant, shimmering light had dulled to a mere sparkling glimmer, and, craning his head, he saw that a minute fracture now marred its previous clarity.

He had been thrown off balance, he felt, at all times since coming to this strange, blasphemous world. But—try as he might—he could not despise it. He hated himself for admitting such a thing, for betraying all of his principles and indoctrination, but there was beauty here, too. There were the wonders of the Delightful Gardens, the natural beauty of the Golden Grove and the open grasslands, and the ornate glass sculptures of the Palace. And most of all, there was Sheka.

He was no longer even slightly doubtful that this was the true Sheka, the woman to whom he had proposed, loved, and lost, a dozen years previously. He took the torc from his pocket, idly bemused that it had come with him when he had died, even though his tattered clothes had cleaned and mended themselves, and the broken fragment of the sword had been left behind.

Pacing burned off some of the restless energy that now burned in him. By all accounts, the exertions of the day ought to have worn him out. However, the ever-returning recollection of his death filled his stomach with sickening bursts of adrenaline and nausea.

When he realized that he was uttering a low, constant scream through an iron-clenched jaw, he stopped. He stripped off his remaining clothes and slid into his bed, resigning himself to a sleepless night.

And, for an interminable, endless stretch of time, he turned and tossed. His eyes saw his own mocking, distorted face leering down at him from behind his eyelids and the shadows of the room.

Finally, providing an end to the nightmare fugue, the door creaked open.

“Montra?” asked Sheka. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Neither could I,” he said, his voice cracking with relief.

They took comfort in each other's arms, and she helped him forget.

+++


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## dark angel

Badass once again, I really love your works fair play mate, I wants more:biggrin:


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## Mossy Toes

And you'll get more - probably this weekend, too.

First, though, I've edited chapter titles onto the actual Word document itself, so I'll need to go through and stick those onto these posts here, and add a table of contents. Tomorrow morning, I think - I'd rather spend tonight writing. :wink:


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## Deneris

Excellent, as always. Would it offend you if I compared the last chapter to the work of Clive Barker? :good:


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## Mossy Toes

Offended? Why would I be offended?

It's been referred to as fusion of Lewis Carroll and Stephen King elsewhere, too.

:victory:

(Other comparisons to famous authors include R.A. Salvatore, for _Son of Nagarythe_ [WHF], and - get this - Robert Jordan, for _The Mutant Child_ [WHF]. You had better watch yourself, or I won't be able to fit my head through the door, soon. I might even have to get a story professionally published! :shok: )


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## Mossy Toes

I've made some rather majorly drastic edits all the way through the story.

- Every chapter has been titled and, where necessary, collated into one post. A cookie goes to the forumite that names the reference for the title of Chapter VI.
- A Table of Contents has been added at the beginning, with the projection of the remaining chapters ahead and handy links to each chapter.
- Major Vutch has been made a predominant character throughout, rather than a latecomer who monopolized the spotlight in the more recent chapters. (another virtual cookie goes to whomever states the name of whichever other story of mine in which Vutch is a character. Chapter Five gives a rather hefty set of hints about halfway through)
- The scene in which the Gundread First Platoon first descends into the under-route has been changed from the omniscient POV to that of the masked enemy psyker - through the eyes of his thrall, of course. This would be in Chapter II, I believe.
- Minor edits, grammatical corrections, and straightening of awkward clauses throughout.
- More that I undoubtedly forget, presently.

Enjoy!


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## shaantitus

Enthralling work.

Rep


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## dark angel

I know the refrance *Waves hand* It would be Pochontas (Sorry about the spelling) thank god I have disney loving neices :laugh:


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## Mossy Toes

I'm afraid not - it's Aladdin.

"...A whole new world, a new fantastic point of view..."


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## Mossy Toes

+++ 

*Chapter VIII: The Hunt of the Queen*

+++

Sheka ran her hand along the fluted spine of a distorted glass mammal and stepped onward to the next structure—a crazily warped and leaning tower of sorts, fashioned, again, from glass.

The constructions lay arranged across the Palace’s grounds in aesthetic, but incomprehensible, patterns. Their make varied greatly from piece to piece. Some were massive, flowing constructions, while others were precariously soldered together by thin bands of metal, and still more were delicate, elegant things that looked, at first glance, to be glittering jumbles of light, but were revealed by a closer examination to be crafted from slender hoops and arches of glass intertwined. They ranged in size from weighty things that a pair of half-tracks would have been unable to move, to miniature, pearl-sized spheres mounted upon their own plinths.

“Really,” she said absentmindedly, “I know that it must have been unpleasant, but I do not see why you are making so large a fuss over it. It was hardly unwarranted, was it not?”

“The Queen granted me forgiveness and pardoned me for what I did,” said Alexos defensively. “I should think that Her decision is the most important in this case, especially as she was the injured party. Her Herald acted without Her consent and veritably sentenced me to torture and death! Besides, the gem’s power is certainly finite.”

“So we can recharge it,” said Sheka, shrugging. She was now preoccupied with a delicate glass tortoise that waddled back and forth, its glass, clockwork intestines gleaming through a clear shell. “Your great battery of life. Just try not to die again in the mean time. One can hardly blame the man for being zealous in protecting his queen. Oh! How marvelous—look at this, Montra!”

She held up a globe of multi-tinted glass, colored with ridges and landmarks to display the corresponding locations within the Queen’s realm. Underneath this accurate map hovered the face of the Queen in another sheet of tinted, rosy glass, captured in the unmarred sphere by some artifice which was, in all probability, unknown to the outside world.

“However would they get that in there?” she wondered aloud.

Alexos bit his lip in frustration, bottling in an aggrieved retort. His death was no shrugging matter!

A trio of figures hurried from the main doors of the Palace and cut across the yards toward the outer gate. Alexos glanced toward them—nobles of the Court, with some errand clearly in their in minds.

“Hail, newcomers!” greeted one of the courtiers as the three of them drew near. “Have you not heard? A Vulpes has sneaked through the Maze, and our glorious Queen has declared a hunt!”

“And this entails?” asked Alexos, glad to have another subject upon which to focus.

“A chance for glory, and to impress the Queen! The one to dispatch the beast will rise greatly in Her favor! Come along swiftly. The muster is at the foot of the West Gate.”

The nobles hurried along on their path, gabbling amongst each other excitedly. Alexos turned and raised his eyes at Sheka, who shrugged.

“Oh, why not?” she said. “I can hardly imagine that it will be boring; not after everything else we’ve seen here, so far.”

Alexos swept Sheka into his arms and followed the swiftly-receding nobles. She giggled and squirmed delightedly, delightfully in his grasp.

+

Of the profuse array of dazzling colors and magnificent costumes immediately outside the gate, one thing caught the two of their attentions the most: the beasts upon which they would be riding. Three lines of these massive, hunched, green-scaled lizardkin had been arrayed. They were barely larger than a Terran horse, but more heavily muscled. They were called sauri-mounts, and were apparently, in spite of their gaping maws and vicious fangs, reputed to be entirely docile when not confronted with Nightmares.

“Oh yes,” babbled the Master of the Hunt, the courtier appointed to be responsible for those few logistics that the Queen had not manifested already complete. “They purr like kittens when you scratch their chins. Most amusing! But on the field, of course, they’re the only true way that a member of the Court can match most of the Nightmares, apart from the lowest dross of the foe. Even against this Vulpes, they won’t be of too much aid – they dislike biting what can burn them back so badly. Oh, hadn’t you heard—it’s a _Vulpes ignis_, this one. Nasty fires, it has. Very fast, too, like all the rest of the damn foxes.

“But even though the sauri won’t like it very much, they'll still bite. And we’ll still have our glit-blades. Go fetch your own blades, and I’ll hold you back a choice pair of mounts. Seeing as you’re new to all this, and everything, milady, sir.”

The diminutive man bobbed a bow to Sheka, and nodded, almost as an afterthought, to Alexos. He returned the gesture with a half smile. It was…tiresome, being treated by every denizen of this realm as if he were merely Sheka’s shadow. Over the past decade, he had grown quite used to the opposite.

A feather-bedecked woman brought them to the swords, which had been leaned, point-first in the soil, into tidy pyramids. The glit-blades, oddly enough, did not look as if they were fashioned from metal but bone, or wood, or some other non-reflective, pale white substance. Closer examination by Alexos, however, including feeling the cold, metallic flat of one of the blades with his hand and examining its balance, served to convince him that it was indeed made of metal, merely one with which he was not familiar.

The blades were half a dozen centimeters or so longer than Alexos would have preferred, and of one make only: a one-edged and slightly curved-at-the-end shape which, while impressive, was not an eminently practical form for a sword. It rendered them almost useless for stabbing, for one thing. They were light, balanced, and, upon testing, revealed to be incredibly sharp, however, and would most certainly fulfill their purpose.

Alexos and Sheka, now fitted with their own glit-blades, headed back toward the rows of sauri-mounts. En route, Sheka reshaped her garments into a riding gown and boots, and then turned her attentions onto Alexos’s clothing.

She shortened the hem of his commissarial greatcoat for ease of riding, which he was fine with, even if it was disconcerting to feel the cloth wriggling and reforming itself around his body. Then, however, she smoothed the coat out—eliminating pockets, stream-lining its cut, removing buttons, decorations and the like—and turned it from its traditional black to a deep crimson. He protested, but she refused to turn it back.

“This suits you better,” she said adamantly.

“It’s practically my badge of office, how it was!” he said, shaking his head in exasperation. “Emperor Above, I’ve been unmanned by my lady love.”

“You’re plenty man enough for me, in any case,” she said sweetly, “without even needing your clothes.” Battered and outmatched, he conceded defeat with a weary—and not slightly amused—shrug.

“Still, though,” she said, “I can’t help but think that it’s missing something. Ah, yes-” She reached out and he mock-flinched away, holding his hands up as if to ward away her witchery. She sighed and reached between his upraised hands, stroking his chest. Gold thread blossomed beneath her fingertips, spreading in an intricate vine pattern—and the cloth shrank away from the gem that was embedded in his chest, revealing it for the world to see. The stitched, golden leaves wrapped themselves tightly around the hole, closing the seams of the fabric and making it appear as if the gem was the core from which the whole array of vines had sprouted.

Sheka leaned away, smiling with satisfaction. Alexos felt the new decoration pensively, before looking up to see why Sheka had stopped walking in front of him. They had almost arrived at the mounts, true, but a hush had also stolen over the assembled nobles and lost souls. The Queen had arrived.

She descended from the Palace of Colors, with the Herald to her right, both of them already mounted. The Queen’s sauri-mount was a head taller than the rest, though the Herald’s was no larger than the the norm. The colors of the beasts were what truly stood out, however. The Queen’s was red and streaked with rust-like markings, and the Herald’s was a solid jet black, its underbelly dull, and matte, and its scales glittering in the noon-light.

Formalities and courtly speeches followed, of course, but they were fewer and shorter than Alexos had expected. Soon enough, the nobles were mounted and arrayed into a single line, behind which the lost souls of the nearby village had assembled to rapturously see them off. Alexos and Sheka were close to the end of the line, perhaps twenty riders from the Queen and the Herald—who sat in the middle—and clearly amongst the members of the court held in lower regard.

Alexos was hardly surprised, though he could not deny to himself that it irked him. He and Sheka were newcomers, veritable unknowns yet, and had hardly been able to claw themselves closer to the top of the social order. Then too was the fact that he undoubtedly dragged Sheka down, with his lack of witchery.

The Queen was making her final remarks to the crowd, perfectly pitching her voice to carry her melodious words to every ear.

“This beast has transgressed,” she said, “and we shall take it to account before it harms the fabric of my realm any further. No matter how fast its claw and heated its breath, we will bring it low. Its head shall be mounted upon the wall of my auditorium, and its corpse shall be heaved back into the mire of the Fens!

“It has been driven this far by the Herald’s Hounds. We shall flush it from these hunting grounds, now, and end its menace! I swear this in the Emperor’s name”—and here, the Queen glanced down the line toward Alexos—“and my own.

“Now go, my loyal subjects! Go, and earn my admiration!”

She brandished the spear that she carried—made from the same material as the glit-blades, but the only deviation in form from the standard blade that Alexos had yet seen—and waved it forward.

“For the Queen!” cried a noble, and the rest took up the shout, surging forward upon their sauri-mounts as a wave.

Alexos’s and Sheka’s followed in the rush, which was just as well, because Alexos was momentarily shaken by the effrontery. Not a single courtier had hailed the Emperor. Rather, all voices had been raised in adoration for the Queen. He shook off the unease that settled over him with the thought, though, and concentrated to the matter at hand: the hunt.

He soon despaired at the methods of his fellow hunters. They treated it as a wild game, a search to be the first to find the coveted prize. They split and scattered across the open grasslands, poking their noses into the few copses of trees and searching for hidden burrows, in anticipation of finding the Vulpes.

Where was their order and organization? Alexos doubted, after all that he had heard, and the fox-beasts that he had seen in the Fens, that any lone courtier could take on this _Vulpes ignis_ and best it. Why, then, did they rush willy-nilly and not break into sensible, military divisions?

It was, he realized, the lack of fear of death. Without the consequences of dangerous actions, there was no threat to bind them in line—nothing but the Queen’s approval, or lack thereof. There was only honor to be gained for finding the beast, and no threat of being even permanently maimed.

At first, Sheka stayed by Alexos’s side. She showed such eagerness for riding forward, however, and joining the general scrum of searchers, that Alexos let her ride off ahead. He couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to join her yet.

The search swept over the low, gentle hills of the area and past several copses of trees—which were vigorously searched before being left as empty. One grouping of searchers found a pile of the beast’s scat, and another came upon a tree whose base had been viciously debarked by slashing claws.

The Hunting Grounds, as this place had been called, were not incredibly large, so almost half of it was covered in a mere half hour or so—though time was, as ever, a tricky thing to quantify in this strange land.

Why, though, was it called the Hunting Ground? Was it mere coincidence that the Vulpes had run here, out of all of the Queen’s realm? Alexos remembered that the Queen had stated that the beast had “been driven this far by the Herald’s Hounds”. What then, were the Hounds? And if they were able to herd threats from the Fens of Misery to this area of the realm with such precision, why didn’t they simply snuff them out as they came over? To provide entertainment for the Court?

A glint of red out of the corner of his eye made him turn reflexively. The Queen’s massive, rust-colored sauri-mount flicked its head indolently to his right side, matching his own smaller mount’s pace with ease.

“So, commissar,” said the Queen, smiling slightly, “I hear that you had quite the adventure last night.”

Alexos took a deep breath before replying. “Not of my own volition,” he said eventually.

“Please,” replied the Queen, “forgive my Herald for his overzealous actions. He thinks himself so dear to me, and holds my protection as his highest priority.”

“I am afraid that I cannot,” said Alexos stiffly. “His actions were an assault upon an Imperial Commissar; do you presume to set your rule above that of the Divine Emperor of Mankind?”

“Of course not,” murmured the Queen, an elusive smile dancing at the edges of her face. Alexos found it hard to remain entirely frigid against her apparent amusement. “The Seven Sins, however, are vastly powerful, and cannot be allowed to walk freely. Envy shall require our most strenuous efforts to put back into chains beneath the Darken Cliffs.”

Alexos nodded grudgingly.

“The Herald came and spoke to me last night, praising your efforts in your impromptu scouting mission, however involuntary the departure was.”

Alexos laughed outright. He would have bet his life-granting gemstone that the Herald had said no such thing, but coming from the Queen’s easy charm, it sounded the most natural thing in the world. He marveled at how swiftly she had turned his sour mood upon its head.

“I must confess that, had he spoken as much, I would have doubts as to his sincerity,” Alexos replied. “He and I are not well-off on the path to friendship. He defied your amnesty to harm me, and I appear to have insulted his pride with my mere existence.”

“Ah, yes, his pride. Not a thing to underestimate, certainly. But it was not beneath him to make mention of the apparent solution behind your mysterious presence, my charming, blunt commissar. A certain gemstone?” The Queen lay forward against the neck of her enormous mount, stretching out until her head had almost descended to the level of Alexos’s—her actions and position still possessed of great grace and fluidity. “Do you have this…curiosity on your person?”

“Indeed,” Alexos said. “It is affixed to my flesh.” he turned in his saddle that she could see his left breast more easily, and she murmured her approval for its decoration.

“It is certainly a most intriguing item. Was it more brightly glowing when you first received it?”

“No, not in the real world—but yes, once I arrived here, it was as bright as if it were aflame.”

“And you imply that my own small world here is not real,” she pouted demurely. “How I would have liked to see it before it dimmed to its current brightness. It would not be beyond my abilities, certainly, to refill it, as if it were a pitcher of wine half-drained. Such might require some…privacy, though.” Her tone hinted at things which Alexos chose purely to ignore.

“My Queen!” came a cry, interrupting the pause in their conversation. Half a dozen sauri and their riders pulled close, the Herald among them—but it was a courtier who had spoken, not the black sauri-mount’s owner. “My Queen!” the man repeated excitedly. “The foul beast’s lair has been spotted, and it is being flushed even now-”

“Take me to it,” she commanded at once. Alexos hadn’t seen her straighten, but now the more casual air that she had adopted had entirely left her, and she sat as regally as if she were in her throne in the Palace of Colors. The Herald’s gaze was fixed piercingly on Alexos. Was he jealous that he had been speaking with the Queen?

Alexos shook his head as the Queen and her babbling entourage pulled ahead, loping off to the excitement. The hunt was what mattered. He pushed his sauri-mount after them. His attention was swiftly focused upon staying on the thing’s back—their long, loping stride was nowhere near as smooth to the rider as to the watcher, it seemed.

More wandering hunters across the field pulled together as they saw the fast-moving group. Sheka soon surfaced by Alexos’s side, just as engrossed in her riding as he was with his, if still possessing enough finesse to nudge her own mount to ride beside his. He did catch her glancing at him with a curious expression of her own on her face.

A bestial shriek from over the next hill brought shouts of exhilaration from the riders. Their mounts sprinted off at an even faster rate—one which Alexos and Sheka could not yet hope to match and remain in their saddles.

As the two of them crested the hill, a wash of flame spilled out below, and when it cleared, a trio of blazing sauri-mounts and riders added their shrieks to the sudden din of clashing, roars, and shouts.

Severed heads, limbs, and mangled body parts—sauri and man alike—were being sprayed into the air and flung carelessly every which way. A burning, four-legged pillar of flame with lashing claws and snapping jaws darted about in them midst of the hunting party, cutting down a dozen men before five seconds of Alexos watching had past. The lizard mounts snapped with their powerful jaws and the men swung with their glit-blades, but few blows struck home against the writhing, twisting, unnaturally fast creature.

Its torso was not aflame, Alexos realized—merely a deep russet color that shifted and danced like fire. Where a hound might have longer fur, however, such as the ruff and beneath its haunches, this fox-beast was coated in coruscating, dancing flames. It vomited gouts of pale yellow flames, too—such as Alexos had seen when first topping the hill.

But already, men with glit-blades were appearing out of thin air at the base of the hill or near the scorched copse of trees beyond the hill’s base, and turning back into the fray. It gave Alexos no small amount of satisfaction to see that the Herald was one of these dismounted, reincarnated warriors. Though the corpses of the reborn vanished when their owner reappeared, a fair amount of the blood sprayed from their bodies as they died remained behind, and the sauri-mounts did not reappear, either.

The flat at the bottom of the hill swiftly became slick with blood.

The Queen sat proudly upon her mount ten meters or so down the hill’s slope from Alexos, watching the scene unfold from a—relatively—safe distance, her head tossed back in amusement.

The carnage was horrendous. Sheka stiffened and recoiled visibly, and Alexos was forcibly reminded once again that this was not the Sheka who had tailed behind him through three regiments for nine years and seen all manner of atrocities. He knew that he ought to take her into his arms, comfort and console her—but a reckless madness of sorts had descended upon him.

The Queen had said that she might recharge the jewel, and inherent in that was the assumption that he would have acquit himself well on this hunt, or in some other matter of the Court—and surely the gem would last to power him for several more lifetimes, or rather, deaths, by which time she would most certainly have filled back to its brim.

But first he needed to impress her, the beautiful, playfully mocking Queen of the Realm. And he wouldn’t do that sitting on the hilltop.

He spurred his mount forward, drawing his glit-blade. The sword’s weight felt wonderfully right in his hand. Sheka jerked as he began to move, gasping as his course became clear. He couldn’t spare time to explain his reasoning to her, though—there would be plenty of time for that later. As he passed the Queen, she clapped her hands in delight.

Before him, a courtier tried to block the beast’s slashing, half-meter claws, only to have its paw curl around the edge of the blade and neatly decapitate the man. It flowed around the corpse, already lashing out at Alexos’s mount before the head had hit the ground.

Alexos threw himself backwards as his sauri-mount’s jaws closed on thin air and its forelegs were violently severed. Alexos rolled to his feet, charging forward while a second lightning-swift blow took out the mount’s throat and it collapsed.

The beast spat a wall of flame to envelope Alexos, but he swayed to the side, dodging the worst of the blast and being merely lightly singed. Nonetheless, the heat was immense.

He was already diving to the ground when the beast lashed out with its left foreclaws at waist height, a blow that would have bisected him were it not for his anticipation and roll. Up he swung, a wordless roar breaking from his lips and plunging his glit-blade deep into the thing’s exposed left flank—glit-blades being poor for stabbing or no. It roared in pain.

Black, boiling ichor sprayed across Alexos’s chest and face. He shoved the blade foward, slicing deeper and wider along its haunch and tearing the wound wider. A mere split-second too late, he and saw the beast’s right paw hooking up beneath its body, between its left fore- and hind-leg.

The claws sunk upward through his gut with a massive, ripping, tearing _pain_-

+

He coughed and choked, rolling to his back, but her cool tender hands caught him and laid his head in her lap. A lance of rolling agony thundered through his chest, impaling the gemstone that had been implanted there and burning the air that coursed through his aching lungs.

“Alexos!” Sheka cried. In reply, he vomited—but was able to turn his head to the side, that it wouldn’t spray onto her dress. Of course, immediately after it occurred to him that she could have cleaned the dress, now, with the flick of a finger—but there was such a thing as courtesy, wasn’t there?

Her cool hands held and massaged his temples as he emptied his stomach and then spat the bile taste from his mouth. Sheka helped him to his feet, though he was dizzy and nauseous. He saw that he hadn’t fully managed to avoid the side and hem of her dress, but she was rather more concerned with him that with cleaning.

“Throne, that’s nasty,” he murmured, then looked Sheka in the eyes and raised his voice. “I’m fine, Sheka, I’m fine.” He shook his head to clear it and looked back down the hill. The hunters were closing on the beast as a group now, harrying it and driving it back. He was grimly pleased to see that it limped heavily, now, and was no longer slashing with its left foreleg. Black ichor flowed from the wound and burned merrily as it boiled down into the flaming fur of the Vulpes’s paw. It fought with fear in its black eyes now, backing away warily to avoid being stung so badly again.

It was still incredibly dangerous, of course. Alexos and Sheka watched it scatter another trio of mounted riders, dive between them, and vomit flames across two more unmounted. Alexos, being barely able to stand, had to admit that he was in no condition to fetch up against that thing again. His decision, however, was of little import—the beast had been badly blooded, and the endgame was in sight. The Queen herself had decided to join the fray.

She rode forward, radiantly illuminated by the Vulpes’s blazes, her black hair streaming out behind her and her spear held poised in her hand. The spear, too, shone brightly, with all the fury of the sun.

The beast crouched, snarling, as she drew nigh upon it, snarling impotently before her majestic beauty.

With the force of a lightning bolt, she thrust the spear down and _through_—impaling the beast, piercing it through the heart, and ramming the spear deep into the ground beneath it. It hissed weakly, one last time, and died.

Within seconds, its body with blackening and melting, rotting away to a blackened corpse and leaving a boiling, hissing puddle of black, pitch-like blood beneath itself. Alexos watched the metamorphosis with horrified fascination.

The beast was, without a doubt, dead.

+


----------



## Mossy Toes

+

The miniature fracture across the gem's surface had deepened and spread, cracking the gem in half. It was now virtually lifeless, only the faintest glimmer of its previous brilliant glow visible.

He ran his finger gently over it, wondering if—and doubting that—it had enough power bound within itself to fuel him through another death and reincarnation. Would this crack allow the energy that the gem had accumulated in the transition into this world allow it to leech away even faster?

He looked back up at the servant-drones as they affixed the charred skull of the Vulpes onto the plaque above a pair of crossed glit-blades—his sword and the Queen's spear. The plaque had already been mounted on the wall, and near beside the mounting that Sheka and Alexos had admired when first meeting the Herald.

“My congratulations,” said the Queen, beside him. “Few blood the Vulpes on their first hunt, let alone so deeply”.

“Your own blow was the more masterful,” demurred Alexos. “After all, mine merely cut the beast. Yours utterly annihilated it.”

“But,” she replied, laughing, “do you see how well all others who rode against the beast fared? Even my good Herald didn't manage to so much as scratch it without being ungraciously decapitated.”

The Herald nodded icily, forcing a smile and baring his teeth. He opened his mouth to speak, paused, and was spared from having to offer praise to Alexos by the warbling of a servant-drone.

“Your Majesty!” it declared, cutting through the assembled nobles with ease despite its diminutive stature. “A host of Nightmares has emerged from the Fens, led by a Mortal Sin! It lays siege to the Herald's Needle, gnawing at the bindings and seeking to topple it! The Needle begs succor!”

A wave of murmurings swept through the crowd, and the Queen's face went still.

“Envy,” hissed the Herald. He stepped forward, bowing to the Queen. “It is as we had anticipated, milady. I am ready—would you grant me leave to go and hunt him like the beast that he is?”

“You have my blessing,” said the Queen. “Go, then, and defend your Needle. Take your Hounds and two hundred drones. Return to me bearing Envy wrapped, once again, in chains—or, failing that, his head.”

The Herald bowed a second time. “Your will be done,” he murmured, and wheeled on the spot. His body blurred and vanished.

“There is no cause for alarm,” declared the Queen to her subjects. “If you desire to test your mettles, my good Court, I am sure that there will be glory aplenty to win breaking the siege. Other diversions are planned for the day too, though, and it would be a shame to miss those. I, for one, know that with the hunt, I have had enough bloodshed for one day. Sauri-mounts and glit-blades await those who wish to defend the fabric of the realm. Those, however, whose whimsy is delight, for the nonce, come with me to the place so most suited in my realm—the Delightful Gardens.”

There was a smattering of applause and conversation following the Queen's pronouncement, and the Court split into two distinct groups. One, the rather smaller, consisted largely of the young men of the Court, and it contained those who were to aid the Herald. The other consisted of the more elderly nobles, most of the women—though not all—and, well, those specimens of masculinity so physically unfit that Alexos would have preferred not to have to fight beside them in any case.

He made to join the group going to the battle, but the Queen called him back.

“Commissar Alexos,” she said. “I had intended to spend at least part of the day addressing the issue of your jewel. Should you join the war party, I fear that I shall not be able to go about repairing the very jewel which sustains you here. It had been,” she paused momentarily, “high upon my agenda for the day.”

“I am sorry,” said Alexos, “But my duty is to fight the daemonic wherever it rears its foul head. Your realm's Nightmares are no exception.”

“So dutiful,” murmured the Queen softly. “You needn't concern yourself with the Nightmares, Alexos. They are legion, true, but pose no great threat as of yet. Not with only Envy leading them. What good does dutiful prosecution of an innumerable foe do you, when your own lives are finite? Better that your grasp upon immortality in this land is renewed, is it not? There shall be a plenitude of opportunity for glory, good Commissar. I would certainly advise against squandering your chance to grasp the greatest amount of it, and to make the largest difference.”

Alexos pursed his lips, frowning. 

“Montra,” said Sheka, stepping forward. “I don't want to have to lose you. Not needlessly, not ever.”

He made his decision.

+

The Festival of Flight was in full swing as the heavy, reddening sun sunk closer to the horizon by degrees. Courtiers laughed, swooped and cried out as they enjoyed the skies above the Delightful Gardens. Some had manifested broad, sweeping sets of pinions, while others fluttered upon impossibly small wings of cherub feathers.

“Come now, Montra,” laughed Sheka from atop an intricate, upside-down monolith. Above and behind her extended a pair of elegant, spotlessly pure angel wings. “Why don't you come up and join me?”

“Very amusing, dearest,” he called up dryly. He had tried to summon up a pair of his own to match hers—identical in form but ebon in shade, in his imagination—but his chest had twinged dangerously at the attempt and he had desisted. He had resigned himself to being grounded.

He sighed, shrugged, and twitched his arms in a half-hearted flapping motion. Sheka snorted in amusement and Alexos was gladdened, having received the only reward he could have expected: her amusement. He wasn't about to put on the motley for her or anything similar, but seeing her face alive, alert, and expressive again...such a sight filled him with the urge to please.

His self identity as a Commissar felt rather discomfited by his own new, frivolous thoughts and actions. A faint, niggling doubt that he was putting aside his duties lingered in his mind, despite his self-assurances to the contrary. However, he had to admit to himself, that entire aspect of his personality was sloughing away, and his psycho-conditioning was fading.

He would atone for these impure thoughts and deeds later, he knew. Once he returned to true reality, certainly. But now, in this strange, convalescent, twilit world, he could not bring himself to care.

Sheka smiled down at him from her position a good two meters above his head. She had changed her hair again, this time into short, dark, ragged locks. After several seconds of silence, however, she broke eye contact and looked upwards, frowning.

A shadow fell on Alexos and he glanced up—a second too late to react. The Queen swooped down and hooked her arms underneath his from behind. She beat her massive, v-shaped raptor-wings with impossible strength and lifted him off the ground, up, away. Her arms locked around his chest and he could feel the pressure of her breasts uncomfortably pressed against on his back.

The ground dwindled below. Alexos twisted his head and saw Sheka scrambling bsck to her feet on her pedestal. Though it might have merely been the wind, he could have sworn that he heard her cry faintly out.

“Sheka!” he called back.

“Oh, leave her be,” the Queen whispered in his ear. Despite the speed at which they were ascending, he could clearly smell her sweet breath.

The Gardens fell away with startling rapidity. The open expanses of the Queen's realm stretched out on their every side as they rose, clear of any haze whatsoever. There was the Golden Grove, and there the Palace of Glass. The Hunting Grounds, the Village of Lost Souls, the Herald's Needle, all became visible in the distance. Beyond the thin green band of the Everchanging Maze spread the murky Fens of Misery, with the looming, gloomy Darken Cliffs on the far side of even that. The entirety of the realm could not be more than forty kilometers square...but, in due time, Alexos could see it in its entirety.

And then more. The view beneath expanded at the edges, overlapping to sights visible again should one simply turn one's head in the opposite direction. The Herald's Needle multiplied, standing in a serried, receding rank with itself. Only the Darken Cliffs did not multiply in this bizarre way, as well as, upon further exploration, the Golden Grove. Only the Northern and Southern Fonts. All other edifices and landmarks arched away from their sight, bowing out so as to distort perspective and the horizon. The sun appeared to blur and curve every time that Alexos glanced at it, attempting to snap into a position where it would cast shadows and light upon the landscape below accurately—but above so impossible a landscape, it was ill-suited to the task.

The dimension-transcending vista beneath Alexos took his breath away, and still the Queen's wings beat around him, taking him higher.

“Do you like my realm?” asked the Queen softly.

+

They settled down in the Golden Grove as the last vestiges of light fled from the sky. The Queen gently deposited Alexos onto the turf and alighted quietly behind him. The Southern Font gurgled faintly, and the leaves of the pluquat trees rustled in the calm breeze.

“So this is how you envision it,” she said, looking around at the pale fountain and the gnarled, amber-hued, heavily laden pluquat trees. Her voice was unreadable. “Every person sees the Grove—in fact, every element of my realm—in a different light, and it is only with utmost practice that one can slip between the varied perceptions.”

“And how do you see it, milady?” Alexos asked. She turned to look at him, something unplaceable gleaming in her eyes.

“Differently.”

He let the subject drop, and they lapsed into silence. The night sighed softly around them.

Alexos, restless, paced to the Font and sat at its edge. More fallen leaves swirled in the water than the last time that he had been here, with Sheka.

The Queen followed him and sat beside him. She folded her wings wrap partially around her body and to cover her bare arms, protecting them from the slight chill of the night air.

“I don't,” she said eventually, simply. “I never saw any true trees during my life in the Outside. I can only create poor facsimiles based off of whatever vid-casts I've seen, or lay upon it the skin of some courtier's imaginings. This is supposed to be a place of beauty and serenity-” her voice cracked momentarily, “and yet I have no memory with which to fill it.” Her wings fluttered slightly, trembling.

“I...” began Alexos, but he could not find the words to continue for several seconds. He reached out and laid his hand lightly on her shoulder, in an attempt to comfort her. “At least you are able to bring so much peace and calm to all those who come here to this realm.”

“To whom?” she said bitterly. “Withered husks? Faded wraiths, all of whom have regressed to childlike devotion? They are mere, dead echoes; all of them but yourself.”

“All of them?” asked Alexos, the air which he breathed suddenly chilling his lungs deeply. “Even—the Herald? Or Sheka?” The Queen's eyes flickered with the slightest moment of irritation at the mention of Sheka.

“They are exceptions, as yet, but even they have or will come to fit too well into the fabric of this place. You," she said, averting her eyes, "are something new. Something intriguing. Something...unattainable.” A pang shot through Alexos at her vulnerability. She glanced tenderly back up, and he found himself drowning in her eyes.

“What say you,” she breathed, “that we do what we can about seeing to it that you can stay.” Her hand alighted on his gem, which glowed with sudden warmth against his chest to her touch. Her intent was clear—in more than one way. Recharge the gemstone, yes, but also...

Alexos sat, still and stiff, as her hand drifted to the buttons of his now-red overcoat, unfastening them. His heart raced. The Queen was beautiful in the moonlight. Her long, enchanting tresses were liquid darkness, and her dusky complexion was flushed with excitement.

But...

Slowly, hesitantly, he wet his lips to speak. Her hands had undone the overcoat's buttons, opened it, and were now at work on those of his undershirt. Cold, smooth fingers brushed the flesh of his chest. Her face, her lips, were drawing near his own.

“No,” he breathed.

Silence.

“I cannot.” He swallowed convulsively. “I am sorry, My Queen, but...I am not worthy of your attentions in—such a manner.”

“ I see.”

She drew back.

“It's that little harlot, isn't it,” she said. Alexos's hands spasmed convulsively.

“I would respectfully request that you did not speak of Sheka in that way,” he said huskily.

She stood up abruptly, her wings snapping out. “I am afraid that I will not be able to repair your diamond gewgaw,” she said coldly. “I find myself unable to infuse the gem with more power without furthering the damage already done to it; the flaw. To repair it would take an exorbitant display of energies, a thing that I am loath to do during our...current crisis. With the Nightmares.”

The message was clear. Alexos expected that, was he ever to get the gem repaired, now, he would have to make considerable amends to her for offending her in this manner. Her bitter, forced smile said as much to him: it would now take far more than what she had been asking of him now to repair the jewel in the future.

“And now, good Commissar, I shall be returning to the Festival of Flight.”

The Queen's wings beat fiercely, swiftly, and she lifted and soared away. It turned out, Alexos reflected, that the Hunt of the Queen had been only successful in netting one of its two prizes.

He stood, sighed, and began the long walk back to the Gardens—or, should they be deserted when he arrived, the Palace.




+++


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## Chaosrider

good work toes, im sure i speak for every one but i want more


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## Mossy Toes

Heh, I'm glad. My life is currently a bit...busy, though, so it might be a week or three longer until the next chapter is up. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it, all the same!


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## Mossy Toes

Updated! Scroll back up to get the second half of Chapter VIII!

Sorry for the two month delay. I blame wrestling season, and that just finished last weekend.


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## stefenlara

Even though it was delayed the waiting has it worth 'Mossy Toes'..!! Thanks for the entire thing provided here.. Love to see you back with a blast..!! Lovely..!!

Lara..!!

.


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Interlude II*

+++

The Infirmarium Majoris wouldn't hold much longer, that much was certain. Two days of being besieged by the enemy, trapped like a rats in a cage with numbers swiftly dwindling, had taken their toll on the defenders. It was only a matter of how many of the heretics they took with them, now.

Major Kay Vutch rubbed her eyes tiredly on the stairwell of the third floor. The stairs below were carpeted with corpses, many of which had tumbled backwards to the landings to form heaps six deep. Most of the bodies were heretics but some—too many—were Imperials.

The marble stairs were chipped, seared, scarred, and battered. Innumerable grenade-blasts had carved irregular chunks from them down every foot of their height, speckled amongst scattered body parts of the foe. The defenders' supply of grenades had saved their lives a dozen times over, but even those were down to a bare few at the bottom of the two crates.

Of the three platoons that had held all three floors, less than two's worth had made it to the top floor in time. More than half of those that had made it up owed their lives to the time bought by the commissar—not counting the innumerable more that would have died against the enemy pskyer without Alexos's intervention. The guardsmen had dragged his body and that of his woman to the top floor and deposited them in a pair of unoccupied beds in the stasis room. They weren't dead, no. However, nor weren't very useful to the rest of the organized defense in a coma.

“Get some rest, Alex—Montra,” Vutch muttered. “You've earned it, after all. Just wake up before everything comes crashing down."

The enemy had continued to whittle them down with constant assaults and snipers outside. The near two platoons that had made it up had nearly been cut in half again, down to a mere fifty-eight men and women. That included those injured but who could still be so much as propped up holding weapons—and those, too, were a great many.

She had organized the survivors into shifts of roughly twenty, and they took turns rotating between the stairwell, watching the windows, and resting. These groupings shifted fluidly whenever the foe tried to rush the stairs, but as a whole, they functioned. And they left everyone exhausted.

She commanded one of the groups, and Lieutenant Jansa the second. Lieutenant Galdhen had gone down to a stomach wound yesterday, and so Sergeant Parduke—the highest-ranked officer remaining beside Vutch and Jansa—had been put in charge of the third.

The vox man tapped her on the shoulder and beckoned, breaking her unfocused thoughts. She bent over—so as to not to expose herself through the windows—and hurried over to the vox station. It was crackling, showing the first signs of life since they had originally been forced up here and cut off, apart from the vox man's periodic cycling of the channels. The enemy had jammed the signal with a blanket of white noise, but now it appeared that Imperial HQ had managed to get back into contact.

“They're probably using a stronger, shipboard vox instead of the planet-side arrays,” the vox man whispered to her as she hunkered down beside the machine. She nodded in understanding and picked up the receiver.

“Major Vutch speaking,” she said.

++Vutch.++ came the harsh, clipped reply, couched on either end in static. ++Ironic. Tell me, major, is_sshkk_ Commissar Montra Alexos in your current predic_sssh_ as well?++

Vutch paused. “Who is this?” she demanded.

++Someone higher ranked _kch_an Colonel Enskor, and that is all that you need to know. Answer the question.++

“Sir,” the vox man said to Vutch respectfully, “they verified themselves with all the proper passwords and codes.”

“Very well,” said Vutch into the receiver. “Yes, Alexos is indeed alive. However, he has been injured killing a psyker and is unconscious. Though I fail to see-”

++Good,++ came the flat voice again, cutting her off. ++Protect his life at all costs_sss_. He has become more valuable than all the rest of your soldiers, yourself inc_klshh_ded. He may hold key information regarding a notorious heretic. Hold your posi_shhhk_ and protect his life to the last soldier.++

“Does this mean that our position is going to be reinforced?” asked Vutch intently. “Or that we are going to be aided in pulling out?”

Silence, static, and nothing more replied. The call had been terminated. 

She gently put the receiver down, letting it click back into its cradle. Was the commissar going to save all of their arses again, this time by his mere presence? Dead embers of hope finally began to glow—flickering, fragile—once more.




+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

(part I of the chapter)

+++

*Chapter IX: The Herald’s Favor*

+++

Late the following morning, Alexos was awoken by the sound of trumpets, bugles and shouts filling the Palace’s courtyards. He stumbled out of his bed and dressed quickly, but by the time that he had made it out of his room, the cries and bustle of the crowd outside had faded.

The hallway was empty, and there was no reply when he knocked on Sheka’s door, so he made his way through the tapestried corridors to the entrance hall. When he had arrived back to the Palace the previous night, she hadn’t spoken to him—in fact, he had received the distinct impression that she had been avoiding him. He had only glimpsed her once. This was understandable, he supposed, as he had returned late in the night, but it still itched at him irritably. He sighed and hurried down the stairs, wanting to see what the commotion below was all about.

The crowd, which had spilled in from the outside, had still largely not dispersed. A great many of them were the younger men and women who had departed the previous day, and now returned. They had obvious had a great deal of success—the crowd's energy was boisterous and exuberant.

He slipped into it, looking for Sheka or some other familiar face. A voice that he recognized caught his ear—but not one that he found pleasant in the least. The Herald was extolling his own virtues and deeds to the masses.

“…slipped through the maze like rachnids,” the masked man was saying, “coming out in one of the farther, sparser-defended gates _en masse_. The pathetic guard set there was crushed in short order, none making it away to warn the rest of the host. After all, they are mere dumb brutes.

“We circled deeper into the marshes then, on sauri-back, using the mists as cover. The host of the foe never suspected anything until far too late. Outnumbered a dozen times, we crashed into them like lightning, and hewed them back into oblivion! The Needle was our anvil, and we the hammer crushed them utterly!”

The Queen’s laughter pealed up from the center of the crowd around the Herald—no, the crowd around the both of them, really. She was positioned in the room in such a way that she seemed simply another avid listener, but the deference of her immediate neighboring courtiers told a different tale. Alexos had no illusions that the Herald was giving his animated performance for the crowd as a whole.

“But what of Envy?" asked the Queen lightly. "As I recall, you swore to bring him to me either bound or decapitated.”

“He slipped away, this time, Your Majesty,” demurred the Herald. “His strength, however, was shattered! His host was utterly cast into disarray, and he shall, no doubt, be long in rebuilding it.”

“And the Needle?” simpered another woman, an elderly, plump matron. “I had heard that the siege nearly almost toppled it.”

“Oh,” said the Herald dismissively, waving a hand, “there was some damage, but the servant-drones so graciously provided by our Queen held the ramparts for long enough for us to set up the attack.” The Queen laughed again, and caught sight of Alexos.

“Montra!” she cried, waving him over. All animosity in her manner from the previous night was gone, or at least extraordinarily well-hidden.

He came over stiffly.

“As it happens, your aid was not needed in this fight,” she said, her voice soft and her eyes flashing—dangerously? Playfully? “Are you not glad that you did not need to go waste your time with so inconsequential a scrap?”

“I think that I would, nonetheless, prefer to have gone and-” he began, but the Herald smiled broadly, waved his arms, and launched back into his descriptions, cutting Alexos off. To the commissar, the act smacked of an unsubtle attempt to monopolize the Queen’s attention and favor.

“You should have seen the charge, and the carnage!” he cried. “We stacked their bodies into heaps twenty feet tall for burning!”

The Queen giggled as one of her female courtiers whispered something into her ear. The Herald’s face twisted momentarily, but the smile fashioned itself back into place almost before Alexos saw the change in expression.

Alexos dared not to leave without a polite excuse, but he would have preferred not to be there, all the same. The Herald revolted him and the Queen…the Queen left him troubled. He cast his gaze around for some route of escape, and his eyes alighted on a sight that made his heart sink even further. Sheka stood watching, frozen and blank-faced, from a stairwell at the edge of the entrance hall.

The Queen turned back to Alexos and said some fawning comment to him that he did not hear. Sheka turned away, oh so slowly, and was gone.

+

By the time that he managed to slip away from the uncomfortable conversation in the hall, Sheka was long gone. He finally caught her several hours later, alone and out wandering amongst the glass sculptures of the courtyard.

“Sheka,” he said as he drew near. She frowned, but otherwise her attention seemed caught by the sparkling, bowl-shaped, transparent diorama of trees, hills, and rivers before her.

“Listen,” he continued when it became clear that she wouldn’t answer, “I didn’t do anything with her. I couldn’t very well demand that she drop me a kilometer above the ground. Yes, she tried to seduce me-” Sheka’s hand jerked slightly, breaking the slender glass trunk of one of the miniature trees, “but nothing came of it! I refused and she flew away in a huff.”

“Oh yes,” replied Sheka in a leaden voice, “I could see how very angry she was, still, this morning.” Alexos winced. “And how hard was it, really, to turn her offer down? Even though you’d only met her the day before?”

Her words struck uncomfortably close to home in Alexos’s chest. “Sheka!” he insisted. “I wouldn’t-”

“The day before,” she hissed. Finally, with a rapid jerk, she turned her head to meet his gaze. Her eyes were narrowed. “When she asks again tomorrow, how will you respond then? Or a whole week from now? I didn’t think that you were made of such wavering, will-o-the-wisp stuff, Alexos.” His name coming from her lips, his last name, sounded like a condemnation. It stung.

“Sheka,” he said. “Don’t push me away. I only just got you back after a dozen years of separation. I don’t want the Queen. I only want you.”

“Maybe you should think that with a bit more strength the next time that she leans over to pour santak honey in your ear,” Sheka snapped, stalking away.

Santak honey, recalled Alexos. The product, predictably enough, of the santak, the insects which pollinated the pluquat orchards. It was powerful and sickly-sweet, and when taken more than a few spoonfuls at a time, caused massive hives.

He sighed, shook his head, and murmured, “Why is it that you are the only person who can make me feel worthless so easily, Sheka?”

+

Alexos passed the day restlessly, pacing in his room, and turning his thoughts back toward the outside world. What was the situation in the infirmarium, he wondered? Did time even pass at the same rate, here? And would he and Sheka be able to return? This realm had dangerous undercurrents, for all of its beauty. It felt as if the idyllic, static cover of stability and beauty was thin and oh-so-slightly unstable—as well as being the only thing that kept back the raging floodgates of the Warp and all its foul denizens.

And where was the golden-masked psyker whom he and Sheka had pursued here? They had encountered the souls of those who had been torn from their bodies to make the psyker’s thralls—Mancharex, Miaro, and Vogart—but had seen no sign of the psyker himself.

Unless, of course, the psyker was not simply striding out, casting bolts of lightning. It could very well already be amongst them. What was it that Magos Jhal had said regarding the incantation that the psyker cried out every time it was defeated? “Mistress, to you I return”, or something similar? Was the Queen behind the entire conspiracy, then, and had she misled the both of them? Had his initial perceptions of the Palace, the terror-filled hold of the Black Ship, been altogether too correct?

But his suspicions were not truly focused there, no. It seemed all too likely that she was nothing more than a pawn, a plaything whose world was a safe haven in which the thrall-like domination could occur. And who had tried to kill him already? Who opposed his every action in this world? Who, of course, but-

The world seemed to quiver underneath Alexos and he rocked, jolted. He cursed and returned to his pacing. Major Vutch had better have been caring for his body well; he didn’t want to end up like Miaro or some other pathetic member of the Village of Lost Souls. He could imagine it altogether too clearly: himself in one of the barracks-hovels beneath the Palace, gradually fading into a wisp of nothingness, his gem losing more and more power, until he was simply _gone_.

Sheka would live on eternally, living frivolously in the meaningless, petty power struggles of the Court. Sometimes she might be oddly unsatisfied, but not know why; all memory of him, Alexos would fade swiftly. She would be reduced to nothing more than another trapped wisp, the distorted, reverberating echo of a woman long since lost. When this worldlet crumbled back into the warp, into the raw not-stuff from which it had been molded, her soul would be devoured by beasts fel and daemonic, lost forever from the Emperor’s Light.

Alexos could not accept such a future. It was time that he reconciled with her and left this place. Whether or not the Queen would let them…that was the next main obstacle to face, he supposed.

A servant-drone knocked on the door, disrupting his thoughts.

The Court, it explained to him in a dull monotone, had been called together to turn out for a formal ball. Ostentatiously, it was to celebrate the superficial, impermanent victory over Envy. In truth, Alexos knew, no reason was needed but festivity’s sake.

It was only with reluctance that Alexos allowed himself to be coaxed from his room. He would have preferred to let Sheka cool her temper for a while yet before speaking with her, but he supposed that a conversation sooner was, nonetheless, preferable to later. After all, the longer he put off a true heart-to-heart with Sheka, the more damage could be done to separate the two of them.

After quickly tidying himself up, he came to the doorway to follow the servant-drone away. On some instinct, however, he glanced back into the room, and a subtle gleam caught his eye. He froze, something clicking in his mind. For several long seconds, he stood utterly still. His reverie was broken by the servant-drone tugging lightly on his sleeve. His eyes distant, he nodded—more to himself than in acknowledgment of the drone.

_Here_, he was certain, was a way to win his way back into Sheka’s heart. There was one last thing to do before he left.

+

Sheka was avoiding him. He couldn’t force himself into place as her dance partner, not in front of the entire Court. However, every time that he tried to angle himself into an oblique position by which he could become her partner, she had already glided away through the crowd long before he had arrived along whatever circuitous route he had chosen.

It had been a shock, coming into the room to find Sheka dressed as she was. Her now mid-length black hair was powdered with gold, and her relatively simple dress was black trimmed, again, with gold. She wore very little jewelry, but what little that she did tastefully accented the theme of gold on black. In short, she was dressed exactly as she had been the day that he first met her.

What was she trying to say to him? That he was once again a stranger to her? That he didn’t know her; he had changed too much? Or was it simply that she was inviting him to begin with her anew, saying, “let us open this door into the future and forget the past”? He was left confused and oh-so-slightly hurt, especially with her avoidance of him.

It might, too, have just been his suspicions, but it seemed like she and the Herald were dancing partners a great deal more often than was proper over the course of the night. She would be snubbing Alexos by with this, of course, because he had expressed his own displeasure with the Herald to her several times. What, however, did the Herald gain from reciprocating the attention that she gave him? Was it simple spite on his part, for the sake of making Alexos jealous?

If so, he was certainly successful—but that seemed low-handed and petty even for the Herald. However, try as he might, Alexos couldn’t place an ulterior motive on it—and besides, Alexos wasn’t even certain that what he was seeing _was_ more than his imagination.

The answer as to what the Herald was after was given to Alexos in the later portions of the night. The ball was passing painfully slow, and he had still not been able to speak with Sheka. He was certainly not enjoying himself. The effort of having to avoid the Queen was yet another discomfort, but fortunately, she spent most of the night raised upon the dais at the head of the room.

Still, he thought that the situation might be salvageable—after all, he had seen nothing definite occur, and nobody's temper had snapped yet. All too soon, he was proven wrong.

The Herald leaned over whispered something to Sheka as the two of them danced. Her brows furrowed and her gaze snapped over to where Alexos stood, watching. She said something back to the Herald, and he shook his head in reply.

The crowd swept between them and Alexos, leaving him perturbed. He debated walking directly over internally—terribly poor manners on the dance floor—to confront them ob discussing him, but hesitated, uncertain. Was it really necessary? Their interaction was, in all probability, innocent. He tried to shake off the gloomy cloud of suspicion that had settled over him for the night.

But his heart sunk once he got another view of Sheka and the Herald a few minutes later. She was obviously shocked about something, and was standing pensively, hurt, her face tilted downward. The Herald was speaking calmly and earnestly to her, and a spike of hatred toward him surged in Alexos’ gut. What lies was he feeding her?

The time for hesitancy was more than over. The rift between the two of them, which he had feared the night might broaden, could very well have just been torn irrevocably asunder—unless he could control and mitigate the damage done, right now.

He cut a path directly across the floor, a ripple of disruption following him through the dancing courtiers. As he approached, Sheka looked up, and her face darkened slightly.

“Sheka,” Alexos said as he arrived, “don’t believe his lies.”

She looked at him warily for a second. “What makes you leap to the conclusion that he was lying to me?” she said.

Alexos frowned. “Your expression” he replied, “and the fact that you were obviously talking about me, coupled with the animosity between him and myself.”

“Ah, my good commissar,” said the Herald jovially, stepping forward again. He laid his hand on Alexos’s shoulder in a gesture of false comradeship. “I try never to tell lies; not when the truth is so much marvelously more effective. Now, I think that I shall take my leave of the company of you two and allow you to enjoy it yourselves.” He strode off into the sedately whirling courtiers, soon hidden from view.

“So, Montra,” said Sheka, once the Herald was gone. “He tells me that a great many things have happened to us, during that dozen years of which I have no recollection.”

“That much is true,” granted Alexos grudgingly. “We have fought together on dozens of planets across the segmentum, against everything from heretics to Orkoid raiders. I see no need to dwell upon that now, though. True, you were a psyker of rare power, but you were uncontrollable without myself beside your side. Hence we were permitted to remain together.”

“And how did you control me, then?” asked Sheka, the muscles of her face taut but her manner deceptively light. “Was it with the shackles? Or the cages?”

The words hit Alexos like a blow to the gut. He coughed slightly, in shock, and tried to regain control of his face. _That_ was what the Herald had been telling her.

“Sheka,” he said again, placatingly. “You have to understand, you had changed drastically. Twelve years are a long-”

“A collar and a kennel!” she said, her voice rising. The dancers immediately adjacent jerked, stopping their intricate spins to look over. “And you don’t so much as deny it. Let me out when there are revolting agri-farmers to face, oh yes, but it doesn’t matter that you’ll just lock me back up immediately afterward. After all, I’ve _changed_, haven’t I. That just makes me some dumb, drooling beast, doesn’t it!”

“It doesn’t!” Alexos cried back, feeling as if his heart had crumbled into ash and been coughed up into his mouth. He no longer cared that the dancers were stopping, that the musicians were stopping, that the Queen and the Herald and the entire Court were watching. “It was the only way! You don’t understand, you weren’t there to-”

“_Wasn’t I?_” she snapped. Alexos shuddered convulsively, uncontrollably, and averted his eyes. Sheka’s ire was well and truly raised now, and the icy behavior of the last whole day was melting away, replaced with a boiling, livid anger.

“You don’t understand,” he repeated desperately. “You were gone. Your mind was wiped clean by the trauma of the latent manifestation of your powers. There was just—emptiness, and that alone. It’s only in the past few days that I’ve even dared hope differently, that you were still truly alive. But I loved you! I never stopped loving you, Sheka!”

“Oh,” she hissed, “I’m sure that you didn’t. Not when you had my limp, quiescent body to toy with whenever you were lonely.”

Alexos recoiled. “No!” he blurted out, horrified. “It was nothing like that! How could you—how dare you!”

“Oh, then,” she replied, “It might not have been, and that makes it all just fine! You loved me, so you _only_ bound me and chained me and locked me away when it wasn’t convenient ho have me around, that’s all!”

“You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for you!” Alexos shouted back. “Do you really still think that just last week we were sharing pluquats on Karisas? I was broken, shattered when you were taken from me, and, once I saved you from…being fed to the Astronomicon, I devoted my life to you! Now you dare-”

“I dare to what? Not fit into the perfect, docile little imagining that you had built me up as in your memories?”

“Do you really think I would ever have fallen in love with you if you were docile, Sheka?” Alexos asked. She slapped him.

He slowly raised his hand to his cheek, and felt where her nails had broken skin. She blanched and stepped back slightly, seeing something unexpected and volatile in his expression. Before he could speak, however, he noticed that, outside the shell of concentration that surrounded himself and Sheka, somebody was laughing.

His gaze whipped out across the watching, silent crowd of nobles, searching for the one who found something amusing in the scenario. It was the Queen. The was Herald standing silently behind her. She quieted and beckoned toward Alexos and Sheka.

“So,” the Queen said as they drew near, “a disagreement of sorts? Come, let us speak together and resolve our differences civilly. We can hardly have that sort of thing disrupting our Court, can we?”

Alexos and Sheka stood as silent as statues for several seconds, then turned and stiffly ascended the dais. The crowd parted before them.

“Now,” she continued, once they had arrived, “whatever shall we do with you two? This argument clearly must be settled.”

“My Queen,” murmured the Herald, a smile on his lips, “might I make a suggestion?” With a sudden stab of suspicion, Alexos suspected that the events here were proceeding exactly as the Herald had wished.

“What are your thoughts, my faithful Herald?” she replied. “Do you have a fitting solution to this lovers’ spat?”

“I object,” said Alexos quickly, warily. “We don’t need to hear whatever idea that the Herald has had. Sheka and I can settle this together.”

“Are you so sure?” said the Queen, raising her elegant eyebrows. “It is clear, to me at least, that there is a fundamental difference in opinion between the two of you, and that neither of you are willing to cede that the other has done their best. We shall listen to the Herald, Alexos, whether you enjoy his company or not.” Alexos fumed. He felt a drop of collected blood from his scratches run slowly down his cheek.

“It seems,” said the Herald, “that the grievance of Lady Scouras lies in not knowing how she has spent her years, and what indignities she has suffered.” Sheka nodded slowly.

“And too, that the commissar feels the lady does not know what has occurred over the years previous, and is in not fit state to judge the actions of either.” The Herald turned to Alexos.

“Not that she is not in a fit state-” began Alexos, but was cut off as the Herald continued.

“Therefore it would seem, My Queen, that one clear and obvious solution remains.” The Herald paused, stretching out the tension in the room.

“Your Majesty, I would request repayment for a boon long since given. In the interest of laying this matter to rest, might you please intercede on my behalf and restore to the Lady Scouras her memories?” The Herald smiled, revealing a set of perfect, brilliant teeth. “Such a deed is easily within the scope of Your Majesty’s powers.”

Alexos’s breath caught in his throat again. Sheka’s eyes lit up.

“Such elegance!” exclaimed the Queen ecstatically. “It perfectly addresses every facet of the issue readily apparent. I will honor your invocation of services past, My Herald, and do as you request.”

Alexos opened his mouth to protest, but caught himself. Sheka was clearly in favor of this proposal, and only his resentment of the Herald made him averse to it. He could not allow the Herald to goad him into driving Sheka even further away than necessary, and if he spoke out here, she would mark it and remember it well. Besides, did not the solution, after all, address the situation well?

“Sheka Scouras and Montra Alexos—do you consent to this arbitration?”

They gave their assent, him with only a flicker of reluctance.

“Very well. Lady Scouras, come to me, and be forewarned: though the recall of the memories may very well be easy, it is likely that these years will contain a great deal of pain for you.”

Sheka nodded and stepped forward. The Queen laid a palm on her forehead, and they both closed their own eyes.

A second passed. Two. Alexos caught a brief sensation of great abysses wavering tremulously in the silence. Voids greater than comprehension bloomed and shrunk instantaneously, and a creeping, subtle shiver crawled up Alexos’s spine.

And, as soon as it began, it was done. The Queen opened her eyes, stepped away, and lowered her arm. Sheka stood silent and unmoving for several seconds more, the faint flickering of her closed eyelids her only movement.

“Sheka,” breathed Alexos cautiously. Her eyes slid open, and she turned to look at him.

Her gaze was hurt and alien, filled with unfamiliar things. She took a deep, shuddering gasp of air and staggered backwards, unbalanced. He involuntarily stepped forward to help her, to steady her, to hold her, to kiss her and console her. She cried out wordlessly and warded his arms away.

Tears welling in her eyes, she turned and fled—down the dais, pushing through the crowd, and out the door into the outer corridors.

Silence. Cold, empty, desolate silence. Alexos stared numbly at the doorway through which she had vanished, leaving it still ajar.

The Queen clapped her hands, causing a noise like a sudden gunshot. “Music!” she called, and the servant-drone musicians struck up their instruments again. “Let us dance!”

Alexos’s hurt paralyzation broke and he plunged after Sheka.

Upon the dais, the Herald smiled.

+


----------



## Chaosrider

ARGH!!!! you write cliff hangers to well.


----------



## Mossy Toes

Thank you kindly for the compliment...if it was meant as such. 

+++

*Chapter IX Part II*

+++ 

Tapestries of unknown saints stared reprovingly down at Alexos as he hurried along the corridor that Sheka had taken from the dance hall. It turned out into the Palace's entrance auditorium, which was empty. However, the main doors were ajar.

Alexos hurried toward them, hoping to look out and be able to at least see Sheka before she vanished from the outer courtyard. Without at least glimpsing her, he would lose her trail entirely. Would she leave the Palace, or circle around in the courtyard? Or had the doors already been slightly open, and she simply crossed the hall to return to her room?

He was already regretting the strongest of his words to her. Was harsh indignation justifiable if it only drove her further away? However, his thoughts were interrupted before he reached the door.

A faint, dark shape appeared just in front of him, obstructing his route. It was blurred and hazy, but the suggestion of a person within swiftly resolved itself into the Herald.

“So,” breathed the masked man, cracking his knuckles, “the little bird has flown the coop, and you now want to follow.”

“Get out of my way,” growled Alexos.

“Or what?” asked the Herald. He snapped his fingers and a massive wave of force crashed over Alexos, knocking him bodily backward. The commissar windmilled his arms, staggering, but managed—barely—to keep his balance.

“I'm afraid that I can't let you speak to the Lady Scouras currently, commissar. Her mind is in all too fragile of a state.” The Herald tapped his temple knowingly, smiling. “We can't have you pushing her down the wrong mag-lev of thought, can we? Not when she is so malleable, just now.”

“You bastard,” hissed Alexos. “Nobody will be able to keep me from Sheka, least of all a masked fop like yourself.”

“Fop?” laughed the Herald. He snapped his fingers again. Alexos tensed against another shockwave—but when this one came, it shoved him from behind, knocking him forward to sprawl on the ground.

“I am no mere fop,” said the Herald, looking down at him in distaste, “and I intend to impress that upon you most clearly. After all, we're going to spend _lots_ of time together.” Snap.

Alexos, who had been picking himself off the ground, jerked convulsively as the latest thrust of power smashed upward into his gut. He choked back bile and shoved himself into a standing position.

“I know who you are,” he spat. It was all so obvious, come to think of it. With the blows and the Herald's manner, something had crystallized in his mind. It was a wonder that he hadn't long since linked the man to his identity: when the two of them had first met, when the Herald had thrust him into the Fens of Misery, or even earlier this night in Alexos's room.

“Really, then?” asked the Herald, amused. “Why don't you tell me? Who am I?”

“You are-” began Alexos, and choked. “You're the-” he tried again, only to find his throat clench against his will and swallow the stillborn words.

“Even having broken most of the threads of my web to keep your suspicions asleep with your clumsy mental blundering, you still cannot identify me. How...feeble-minded.” Snap.

Another blow of power slammed across Alexos's face. Cartilage gave with a terrific 'crack', and pain jarred through his mind. Hot, choking blood filled and flowed heavily from his broken nose. He staggered forward, through the disorientation, lunging toward the Herald. Another snap of the fingers bowled him, once again, away.

“I suppose that there is no need to even keep the web, anymore,” said the Herald lazily. “Besides, I feel much more comfortable wearing..._this_.” He raised his hand back to his half-mask and touched it, causing the silver to run liquid and stretch outward. It spread to cover his entire face and turned to pure, gleaming gold. Finally, it twisted into all too familiar a grotesque smile. The Herald laughed.

“I am your golden-masked puppet-master, commissar, yes. I congratulate you for having proven a surprisingly insistent thorn in my side.” Snap, and Alexos's shoulders were hooked by claws of force. He was dragged bodily backwards several meters. “I hate to spoil things for you, but you've been jerking along to my strings this whole while just the same. You never had a hiver's chance on Catachan.” Snap.

The last psychic blow knocked Alexos back into the side of the auditorium. He had nowhere left to retreat from the onslaught of kinetic blows. The Herald flicked a hand dismissively and Alexos was slammed up against the wall, suspended off of the ground. He felt like an insect pinned, still wriggling, to a board for close examination. The charred skull of a Vulpes loomed just beside him in his peripheral vision. He cast his arms out widely, hoping to find a way to his own salvation.

“So pathetic,” sneered the Herald, stalking closer. “It's a wonder that I ever considered you a threat in the first place. Still, I had to let you play your part for the woman's sake. Now, however, that is over.”

Alexos's fingers closed on what he had been searching for.

“I'm nobody's plaything,” he spat, and wrenched the glit-blade from its clasp on the mounting beneath the Vulpes's skull. The skull snapped off its bolted mounting and clattered to the floor, and Alexos threw the blade overhand at his opponent.

The sword sunk into Herald's chest, slamming almost all of the way to the hilt. Alexos fell back to the floor and lunged forward, ripping the blade free with a spray of vital gore.

The Herald staggered backward, his mask fixed in that hideous grin. His body's edges flickered as he sunk to the floor and they began to blur dangerously.

Alexos snarled. He wouldn't let this torturing, unholy _chagnat_ escape his retribution now; not when he would simply respawn elsewhere in the Queen's realm. As the Herald vanished, Alexos shoved himself forward, and-

_into_.

+

Rushing wind, and bitter, malevolent _coldness_. His sight was once again useless against the black of the void which he now traversed. This time, however, he was glad of the sanctuary that his blindness granted him.

His body was once again formless, nascent, without definition—but all the same, his mind touched on and was fastened to a writhing, serpentine thing. Its merest touch froze him, leaching away all sensation from the outer edges of his consciousness until the only thing with which he could identify himself was the burning agony of the gemstone.

The thing—the Herald—beneath him realized his presence. A shrill, cutting screech shattered its way through his mind, and the thing began to writhe violently, seeking to throw Alexos off and into the endless Immaterium. He grimly cinched his mind into tighter contact with it, despite the impossible cold that pervaded him.

Then the Herald dropped back-

_through_.

+

Alexos staggered, dizzy, disoriented, as hit feet sunk into soft loam. After the absolute negativity of light in the void, the darkness of the night around him seemed a brilliant and glaring thing.

The Herald roared something, and Alexos shook his head, trying to dispel the confused fog filling his senses. A flare of light shot past him with a wash of heat, and he lunged to one side.

He recognized the location, now—the Delightful Gardens—and cast his gaze about for the Herald. Another bolt of flame roared toward Alexos and he dodged desperately. His movement carried him out of the flower bed which he had arrived in. Only just now did he realize that the flowers had keened piteously as he had been stepping on them. They subsided to a whimper.

The second firebolt smashed into one of the ornate, clockwork gardeners, exploding it into mere, fused chunks of metal and blackened cogs. The Herald cursed from the far side of the fountain-studded ornamental lake at the edge of the Gardens, and began running forward, striding across the water with ease.

Alexos ran to meet him, dodging behind the same upside-down monolith upon which Sheka had been perched the previous evening to avoid another blast. The monolith shuddered as it took the force of the flames and began to tilt precariously toward Alexos. He dove away as a second bolt impacted upon its far side, toppling it toward him.

The Herald now carried a glit-blade fashioned like a glaive, and spun it in a deadly figure-eight as Alexos came within striking distance. They exchanged blows, clashing furiously through the Gardens. Alexos drove the Herald back until the heretic had to take cover behind the bench which seemed to have been transported from Alexos's youth. A wave of force in reply smashed Alexos through an overgrown trellis, whose vines cried out softly in a woman's pained voice at the damage.

+

And so they danced onwards. Alexos finally beheaded the Herald, and followed him again, warping through reality to appear in the Village of Lost Souls. Here, the Herald hunted him through the streets with ravening, twisting, sentient constructs of warp-energy, and Alexos was beaten back at every turn, never coming near enough to the Herald to pose a threat to his life. He was forced to retreat into the New Arrivals Inn, where the Herald overpowered and overcame him—until the pitiable hybrid of Vogart and Mancharex struck out against the Herald.

The Herald threw Vogart away in disgust, smashing him through a wall with a psychic bust, but his sacrifice had allowed Alexos to recover and, once again, slay the Herald.

Again, they dueled—this time upon the vast, open expanses of the Hunting Grounds. The Herald animated the rotting, melted, headless corpse of the Vulpes, and it charged Alexos relentlessly, despite his best efforts to dodge. The Herald latched his claws of power into the commissar, immobilizing Alexos until the Vulpes had cleaved him in half.

And so Alexos died. Rather than an immediate rebirth, however, the Herald deepened the hooks of binding that he had set around Alexos, sinking them into the commissar's nascent, unformed animus as it hung suspended in the void. He began dragging Alexos toward a looming, malevolent shape in the void—the Needle, Alexos realized, where the Herald was to bind him and cut him and kill him—and Alexos began to fight his bonds desperately. Miraculously, he broke free, but when he reappeared in the Queen's realm, he spawned into the dark, murky gloom of the nighttime Fens of Misery.

His jewel had now shattered entirely, a network of fissures and cracks running over its surface, and it was entirely dead of the light which had once shone through it. His broken nose and other assorted injuries, however, had been healed.

The Herald was swift to follow, and the heretic revealed his true allegiances in force, now, summoning the foul denizens of the swamp to aid him in Alexos's capture. Horrific, shambling, multicolored _things_ fell to Alexos's blade until he met the Herald in combat once again.

Onwards they fought, flickering through reality and the warp, Alexos's bindings to this place beginning to fray all the more. He finally caught the Herald and slew him once again, but his glit-blade was lost, plunged into the stagnant ponds of the Fens as the Herald vanished.

Alexos followed his foe, and they reappeared at the Northern Font, atop the Darken Cliffs. The Herald unchained the foul, lumbering cyclops chained there—Sloth—and Alexos, weaponless, was torn limb from limb. Once again, the Herald trussed him in psy-snares and mental bonds, but this time far more securely, and hauled him through the void to the Needle.

+

The Needle shot into the sky like vast talon rising from the realm's core. At its base, it was no more than fifteen meters across, but it rose many times that height, narrowing to a distant point. Its bottom was lost in the Everchanging Maze—deep, dark green hedges which rustled and shifted upon whims of their own, and which stretched away to the east and west before vanishing into the haze. A steep, spiral balcony wound its way up the Needle's side.

And it was also very, very severely damaged. Vast gouges had been torn from its walls, and the building's raw infrastructure was exposed in many places. From the location where Alexos and the Herald manifested, more than halfway up the Needle, a gaping hole had been melted into the wall. Alexos caught a glimpse of all of this damage before he was hauled deeper into the room, still trussed and bound.

This level of the Needle itself was dominated by a central spiral staircase, but filled with all sorts of grim machinery of torture. Racks and blades and cages were in evidence. More curious were the rows of sealed, glowing glass cylinders which ran around the edges of the room and were set in floor, plunging deeper into the Needle.

Alexos checked his gem carefully. It had already been shattered; now it had fallen entirely apart. As he looked on, it crumbled into dust and small, dull fragments. Only a few small, sharp shards remained embedded in his flesh, and he felt a strange absence, an inexplicable chill, where the gem was virtually no more.

Alexos struggled and spat as he was forced onto a table by several mute servant-drones and bound there with canvas straps. The Herald chided him mockingly for his behavior, but stopped as the entire Needle shook dangerously in a sudden earthquake. He snapped orders to the drones, several of which hurried over to fumble with the glowing cylinders of glass.

“Very little damage suffered against the Nightmares my arse,” grunted Alexos. “It seems like you have a few problems with structural integrity.”

“That was no crumbling quiver, you ignorant fool,” hissed the Herald. “That was the stirring of the most dangerous of the sleeping Sins, Arrogance. He has been bound beneath this tower to be kept from tearing the entire realm asunder. I may have subverted the truth with my claims to the Queen with how little Envy's horde accomplished, but the damage done to the Needle is entirely superficial.”

“But you just now released Sloth,” said Alexos, “and probably Envy, earlier, too.”

“Oh aye, I did for them both,” sneered the Herald, “but only to provide Her Court with some amusement and entertainment. After all, life without challenges—even here—becomes rather drab and wretched. Keeping the Queen amused is the way to keep this realm solid and utile. And such is my favor with her that she allows the continued existence of this necessary place, the Needle, and all that goes on within.

“But enough chatter. Let us get around to more...engaging of activities.” The Herald twirled a scalpel in his fingers, looming over Alexos.

A second shudder rocked the Needle.

“Blasted drones!” spat the Herald, “can't you do anything right? I want that bastard sedated, and immediately! It will be disastrous if Arrogance wakes too early.”

The drones rushed to adjust the glass tubes, discharging the luminescent liquid within them down and away, presumably to wherever the Sin was kept, chained and slumbering. Alexos flexed against his bonds while the Herald's back was turned, and could have sworn that the one holding down his left arm was slightly loose.

“Now,” said the Herald, returning to Alexos and smiling, “where were we? Ah yes, torture.”

Alexos gritted his teeth as the Herald opened his shirts, determined not to make any noise. The tip of the scalpel slid into his skin, cutting delicately.

Silence. _Shlick. Shlick._ Sweat began to bead on Alexos's brow.

“It would be a shame,” breathed the Herald intimately into Alexos's ear, “were Arrogance to stir again just now. I might not be able to control just where my blade would slip.”

The commissar grunted involuntarily. His muscles were tensed, his fists clasped. He knew that arching against the blade or writhing to get away would only deepen whatever injuries he was receiving.

The Herald scribbled carelessly into Alexos's flesh, cutting loops and squiggles atop the muscles of his gut. Blood welled from the cuts and dribbled, warm, to gather beneath his back and in his opened shirt. The red of his overcoat would be absorbing it well, he knew.

The tense silence continued, now interrupted, too, by Alexos's heavy breathing.

A shrill shriek split the air, full of rage and echoing from beneath the auditory range to far above it. The Herald jerked convulsively, pulling away from Alexos several centimeters—and the next quake began.

The room rolled and shook, bladed devices clattering from shelves and the stones rumbling. Several larger objects toppled to their side as well, including the table upon which Alexos was tied.

He jerked his left arm furiously and was rewarded with the sound of canvas tearing. Two more yanks, and the strap burst from its metal cinch. The quake still rolled, rocking the floor and throwing the drones off balance. Alexos fumbled with his other hand's strap, then, once that was off, the one around his neck.

The Herald, roaring his orders, glanced back to Alexos to see the commissar free from the waist up. He cursed, snatching up his glit-halberd from its clasp on the wall.

Having freed the strap holding his waist and kicking free from the one looped over both of his legs, Alexos stood. He grabbed a heavy iron mask—the only thing within reach serviceable as a weapon—and turned to meet the approaching Herald. He felt lightheaded and dizzy, both from blood-loss and the tenuous grip on substantiality granted by the remnants of his gem. His shirts flapped open loosely, exposing the horrendous mess of cut flesh and blood underneath.

He glanced around. The quake had finally subsided, but the room was bedlam. Drones feverishly drained the glass pipes of their sedative liquid, and torture implements of all sorts were scattered around the room in disarray.

The Herald wanted Arrogance not to be awoken, he had said...prematurely. Therefore, Arrogance was going to be roused sooner or later. Why not, Alexos thought spitefully, make that sooner and throw a wrench into the gears of the Herald's plans?

He smiled at the Herald, who was stalking slowly nearer, and threw the heavy torturer's mask that he held into the glass pipes, shattering three. Viscous, rancid-smelling goo began to ooze out.

“No, you fool!” screamed the Herald, and charged. Alexos side-stepped and shoved him to the ground, then dove on top of him.

They struggled together, a mass of writhing limbs and glancing blows, with the haft of the halberd serving as more of a hindrance than a help. Alexos landed several blows on the Herald's head. A brutal jab to his injured side in reply left him breathless.

The Herald shoved him off, but Alexos kept him from standing with solid kicks. He wrested the halberd from the masked man's grip and ran him through twice. First, he impaled the Herald in the gut, then jammed the halberd messily into the man's neck. The Herald flickered, faded, and was gone. Alexos turned wearily, painfully, and began to demolish pipes. The drones worked on around him, paying him no heed regardless that his actions left their stations broken and shattered.

The Needle shook again, and the apparently-awakened Arrogance roared a second time.

Most of the pipes broken, Alexos staggered to the gaping, melted hole in the side of the building. Down he gazed, to where the base of the Needle had become choked in a thick black, cloying cloud. Further jets of inky darkness spurted from the base of the Needle with increasing frequency. Far beyond, Alexos saw the retreating Herald flee into the mists of the Fens.

A rumbling explosion shook the tower again, but this time, a vast section of the Needle's base blasted outward with it, and negative flames licked the stonework. The Needle swayed dangerous. A chain of explosions began, sending the height at which Alexos stood swinging too and fro like a treetop in a storm.

Where would Sheka have gone? He spent several seconds pondering the question before realizing that there was only one possible answer. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He knew that this would require, at least, the few pathetic remains of the gem at his chest, but he was dead if he didn't do this anyway. Outward he stepped, away from the Needle, and opened his eyes...in the Golden Grove.

+++


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## Chaosrider

Intense! Can't wait for the next part!


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## Templar Marshal

Yeah more more More!:laugh:


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## Mossy Toes

More more more? Here, have more more more!

+++

*Chapter X: Storm Front Looming*

+++

Sheka was seated beside the Southern Font, crying. Her face jerked up with Alexos's arrival, and her expression froze.

“Alexos,” she said, neutrally.

He stood, silently. He felt a rivulet of blood from his injury seeped through the waist of his pants, but the wound seemed somehow...distant. His lips, as he licked and opened them to speak, felt numb and unresponsive.

“Alexos,” Sheka repeated, a faint quiver entering her voice.

He took a slow, hesitant step forward.

“Alexos,” she said, her voice breaking and tears began running down her face again, along already-glistening streaks.

He stepped in close and sat beside her, hugging her body close to his. She sunk into his encircling arms, taking much-needed support, and sobs wracked her body.

“I thought that you wouldn't come,” she said, eventually. “I said such cruel things, I thought that you-”

“Shhhh,” breathed Alexos tenderly, “It's all right. You don't have to be afraid. I'm here for you, Sheka. I'm here for you, and I'll never leave you.”

His arms were transparent in the moonlight, and he could feel the knots of his existence slipping and unraveling. So long as he held Sheka in his arms, though, everything was all right.

“I shouldn't-” hiccuped Sheka, but she stopped, hissing in sympathy as she caught sight of his gut. “You're hurt!”

“The Herald tried to keep me from speaking to you,” said Alexos. “I saw him off without too much difficulty, I think.”

“Alexos...” said Sheka again, meeting his gaze with worried eyes. “You're fading.”

He shrugged helplessly. “Perhaps not without too much difficulty, then,” he said, painfully. If there was no helping him, now that his gem was gone, he wanted to spare Sheka as much agony as he could. He was fraying, falling, coming apart.

“Don't go,” she said gently. “You don't have to.” And she straightened, pushing herself a few inches off the bench, to kiss him on the brow.

Warmth and solidity flowed from the kiss, love and permanence. The texture and feeling of her, his ladylove, in his arms, became far more tangible. His mind swam back from the distant, wavering fugue into which it had been sinking. The mess of mangled skin on his side melted, smoothed, and was gone as if it had never been, leaving only the stains of blood in his garments.

“Thank you,” he said, meeting her gaze with a heartfelt smile.

“I had-” said Sheka, stumbling on her words, “a while to think. I always cared for you, and...I daresay that you never stopped caring for me. You never stopped remembering me as I was, even with the distance brought by all of those years of such close separation.” He nodded, but it seemed like she wanted to speak now, to get things off her chest, so he didn't reply just yet.

“It was such agony,” she continued, “such pain to be locked inside my mind, unable to act or speak. It...” she shuddered, “it did not leave me unchanged.

“The only time that I could have any freedom whatsoever—when you released me from my bonds—a dozen voices would ripple through my mind, and I would still be bound by invisible strictures against any outside communication. I wanted so desperately to tell you what I was feeling, how lost I would have been without you. I wanted to tell you that I loved you.”

“And now you can, Sheka,” he replied, “and I believe you. And I love you in return. I might be damned for it, but I love you. More than my thankless vocation, more than the Emperor's Holy Wars—Throne help me, more than the Emperor Himself. I love you.”

“Don't say that,” Sheka whispered in desperate denial. “Don't lie to me.”

“I would never lie to you, Sheka,” he replied, his voice choked with emotion. He hugged her once again, more tightly, to himself. The pressure of her body against his leg reminded him of something else.

“Here,” he said, releasing her and digging into his pocket. He took out the torc which he had found in the Fens and presented it to her reverently. She took it slowly, carefully, and tears welled in her eyes once again.

Now, after all of these years, their separation was well and truly ended.

+

They sat together for several hours, speaking together and crying, kissing and laughing in equal measure. For a time, the sounds of distant thunder, or something similar, rumbled through the realm, but Alexos paid it little heed and, in time, it receded.

Eventually, however, the Queen of the Dream arrived. She was followed by the Court, and it was in the most bedraggled state that Alexos had ever seen. A bare few rode sauri-mounts, and a scattering carried glit-blades. Only the Queen herself was pristine and unmarked, and several of the Courtiers appeared injured—a marvel, in the world where such injuries could normally be healed with a flick of the mind.

When the Queen saw Alexos, she tensed and grew wrathful. She spurred her mount across the little distance of the Grove remaining to reach the Font, and reined up only just short of running him down. Alexos suspected that this was more due to Sheka's proximity to him than any mercy for him, from the Queen's demeanor.

“Do you know what you have done?” the Queen hissed, enraged. “The Needle is cast down and the hordes of Nightmare march the land _en mass_, led by the Sins reawakened. The servant-drones have gone insane and torn themselves to pieces. We, the Court, were driven from the Palace, and the Village has been razed to the ground. The Everchanging Maze lies toppled and ruined, and the Hunting Grounds now serve for the Nightmares to hunt _us_!”

“Your Majesty,” replied Alexos levelly, “would you accuse me, an Imperial Commissar, of unleashing these horrors? A better question than 'what have I done?' to ask yourself, is, methinks, 'what is it that your Herald has done?'”

“You have brought about this turmoil! The Herald himself told me as such, before leading his Hounds to face Arrogance. He is my right hand, and would no more betray me than your Emperor would rise from His Throne for a quick dance!”

“Speak carefully, My Queen,” said Alexos rigidly, “for your words flaunt the very borders of heresy. Am I to assume that you, like your heretical Herald of Nightmare, are the foes of His Word?”

"I did not invite you into this place, commissar, this realm of the core of my mind,” snapped the Queen. “I came here to escape the Mundus; to cast off all shackles of drudgery; to shed the coil of mortality. I saw the terrors of your god, and too the opiation of the masses within His message of hatred and intolerance. You think that you are shunned, commissar? Walk a mile in a psyker's shoes. No, I do not hate the Emperor—but I have no love for Him, either."

“You will regret those words,” growled Alexos, stepping forward threateningly. “A great many-”

“Montra!” cried Sheka. “Your Majesty! Can you not put aside your differences and confront the Herald? He is the true danger here!”

“But," said the Queen icily, “he is not. The source of all the agony that this realm is currently suffering stands before me, wispy and feeble.”

“Where is your Herald now, then? How long ago did you send him out to 'do battle with Arrogance', and why has he not returned to protect his Queen?”

The Queen hissed in frustration and her sauri-mount stomped uneasily beneath her. She yanked its reins and turned it lengthwise in front of Alexos and Sheka.

“Very well,” she said through gritted teeth. “If it is the only way to convince you, I shall scry him in his current location.”

She slid from the back of her Sauri-mount and stalked over to them. Once at their side, she jerked her hand, and a small sphere of water leapt from the Font to hover over to her. The water flattened into a disc and then froze into clear, smooth ice, which quickly turned dark and opaque. A flickering image formed in it, and Alexos leaned around to look at it as well.

The Herald rode a massive, feathered, draconian wyrm, mounted upon a saddle fastened to its sides by bloody staples. Swarming around the beast were all manner of Nightmares, of types which Alexos both recognized and did not.

“No!” shrieked the Queen, flinging the plate of ice away in wrath and betrayal. It shattered upon the stone edge of the Font. She staggered back and away, shoving away the curious, snuffling snout of her sauri-mount. She sagged, breathing deeply, looking at her hands as if unable to believe the image that they had just held. “No,” she whimpered, swaying.

For a moment it looked as if she was going to fall, abandoned and listless. Those of her Court that had arrived and been watching stood stunned, silent and motionless, at her sudden weakness. Then—incredibly—it was Sheka stepped forward and supported her, whispering comfort in her ear.

+

Once the Queen regathered her composure, and scried a good deal more to ensure herself as to the truth of the situation, she addressed her Court, Alexos and Sheka.

“We are in a trying time,” the Queen said, her voice hollow, “and we have suffered great losses. Many of our number have fallen captive to the Nightmares, and one of our most powerful has defected to join them. They dominate our world, having thrown out all balances and divisions. Soon, they shall challenge us once again—and where we make our stand shall decide all of the difference.

“Already they have driven us from the Palace of Colors. The foulest of beasts roost there now, toying with and shattering our gathered sculptures. Even were it not already fallen into their hands, however, it is as much the dominion of the treacherous Herald as it is my own, and would not serve for our defense.

“Here, the Golden Grove, is the only place where we can address our foe with hope of victory. I led you here for the protection of the Southern Font, whose aura of wholesomeness leaches the strength from our foul foes as they draw near. Should we remain here, the Herald shall be forced to meet us on our own ground, and his hordes shall crash upon us and break like a storm's front upon a hive.

“The Herald is a dangerous foe. His usurpation of my powers has been long and gradual, but inexorable all the same. He has defeated Arrogance itself in single combat, though how I know not, and now rides upon its back. Additionally, now that he has been freed from the pretense of obedience, he has available for use all the more terrible of weapons.

“Know, however, that his forces can be defeated! Many times in the past we have thrown back incursions of the Nightmarish, and this time shall be little different. I give you my word as the Queen that we shall be triumphant, and that order shall be restored once again.

“I thank you all for standing with me against this evil. Now, however, we must see to our preparations for war.”

+

Refugees trickled in from all sides of the Grove. Commoners from the Village of Lost Souls, and fleeing, fearful Courtiers from the Delightful Gardens arrived, and more, all bearing the same tales of woe and terror. Captain Miaro was amongst their number, as well as the stout Master of the Hunt. When Alexos asked Miaro about Vogart and Mancharex, Miaro simply shook his head fretfully.

The Queen manifested sauri-mounts and glit-blades for all, and those who were more experienced with them began showing those less able and skilled how not to impale themselves or be thrown off and trampled upon by their mounts.

Alexos and Sheka aided the injured where they could, with her, of course, doing the entirety of the healing. Eventually, however, the Queen approached Alexos and asked to speak to him privately. He glanced over to where Sheka was assisting a group of eight—no, nine—make that eight old, white-bearded men, accompanied by one more who was not certain whether or not he existed, any longer, and so flickered in and out of reality.

“Very well,” Alexos murmured cautiously, and followed the Queen away to a low knoll in the Grove. 

She turned to face him, obviously uncomfortable. He was not dissatisfied with that, given her recent outbursts.

“I would like to apologize for my earlier words,” she said. “I am no opponent of the Emperor, nor do I doubt His divinity. Great truths are bound within His very existence, and I, as a psyker, can feel the Astronomicon constantly. It shines upon me like a second sun, always there to provide warmth, direction, and some small measure of sanity—even, no, especially here, in the Immaterium.

“Truly, I—I meant no disrespect. Forgive, I have been, simply, discomfited by your arrival as a representative of the Imperium, in recent days. Especially, in retrospect, with the Herald to drip poison into my ear. I had thought myself—beyond all of that.”

Alexos considered her words, biting back dogma and superstition-based, thoroughly ingrained rebuttals.

“Please,” she continued at his lack of a reply, “accept this offer me. A bridge-building measure, if you will. I would grant you the title of Royal Commissar of my realm—unofficial outside of it, of course—and accompanying that title would come this gift.”

She extended an ornate bolt pistol. It was white-cased, and bore inscriptions and decorations in gold leaf. It looked ridiculously out of place and oversized in her delicate hand.

Alexos weighed his options carefully. He felt as if the world held its breath in that moment, with the Queen's hand outstretched. It turned around them, vast, monumental, and with endless, numberless futures stretching from this point forward. The consequences of his response here would be farther-reaching than he could possibly dare to imagine.

He looked at the Queen carefully. She did not seem to be trying to deceive him, and it was, in all probability, entirely in ignorance that the title she offered him sounded hollowly blasphemous to his own ears. Since Sheka's reawakening, he had been opened up to new possibilities, he had reacted to situations in manners which he knew were vastly unorthodox, and betrayals of much that he stood for. In that light, and in the light of how the Queen had reacted to the Herald's true, heretical nature...perhaps she deserved his trust.

He took the pistol from her hand.

“I will accept the weapon, My Queen,” he said gently. “The title that I possess already, however, was lain upon me as an extension of the Emperor's will. It is all the authority which I need, or even to which I can justly lay claim. I thank you, nonetheless, for the offer.”

She nodded, some of the tension seeping from her frame.

“Some words, however,” said Alexos sadly, “cannot be unsaid. Your penitence does you credit, and I accept your apology. Know this, though—there shall be a reckoning after all of this; a day of judgment that calls upon higher minds and justices than my own. Knowing this, will you yet take my pledge of service?”

“I do,” the Queen said. “I accept this, and I will face the consequences of my actions. I confess that I am...afraid. Uncertain. Of what will come after, certainly, but more of the Herald, whom I have granted such confidence for so long, and who now shows himself as consorting with the Darken Powers. I spoke to inspire confidence, earlier, but in truth, I know not whether it is possible that we will be able to defeat him.”

“Fear not, Your Majesty. Three times have Sheka and I defeated him in—the Mundus, if that is what you wish to call it. Mundane reality. We have slain his pawns, the thralls with which he walks the outside world. And again, without my lady's help, I slew him four times here in your realm, with him killing me only twice in return.

“He can most certainly be stopped, and his meddling plots be torn asunder. I know that he had not anticipated that Sheka and I would follow him here, and by our simple presence—along with his greed to use Sheka as another thrall—we have revealed him as the treacherous viper that he is. We must now be the bootheel which crushes him into the floor.”

“So we can hope,” replied the Queen, nodding along to Alexos's words.

“Not hope,” he remonstrated. He was truly getting into his element now—and was not that his job as a commissar? To keep morale high with his rhetoric, and by extension, ensure that victory would be theirs? “Hope is a slippery, unworthy thing. Hopes are what allow the Herald to scheme and manipulate, to weave his rachnidwebs and to erect barriers between us. We must make our own victory, seize our aspirations, and choke from our enemy his vitality.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding more surely. “The Herald can only gain if I remain under the shadow of intimidation toward him.

“Precisely, Your Majesty. You created this entire realm. You are the source and termination of all of its power. The only strength that the Herald possesses, here, is that which you lend to him.”

She paused, breathing deeply and gazing into the distance. “And now, I shall make him rue ever turning his back upon me.” Alexos smiled in agreement, baring his white teeth. She turned to him, a new question on her lips.

“How, though, will you survive this battle yet to come? A mere,” she paused diplomatically, “kiss,” she said carefully, “is not enough to do more than affix you to the edge of this reality. If you are willing, I could offer you something more..tangible.” Her tone was flirtatious, yes, but also fragile. Alexos, looking at her, saw, beyond her beauty and allure, just how needy and uncertain she was.

“Than a kiss, or than the power which it grants?" he asked. "I am sorry, Your Majesty, but that won't be necessary. Sheka assures me that the link she has established with me is more than enough to supply me with all the strength that I need, and that maintaining the both of us will not be over-taxing to her.”

The Queen sighed, and they glanced over to where Sheka was her laying hands upon the ninth, incorporeal member of the group of old men and granting him, too, some measure of solidity—for the time being.

“I hope that she is truly worth this to you,” said the Queen wearily.

“She is,” Alexos replied with a smile. He examined his new bolt pistol more closely, and the Queen turned to depart. Alexos, however, called her back.

“Your Majesty,” he said, having realized the one flaw in his weapon. “My pistol has no extra ammunition. After expending the first clip, it will be useless.”

The Queen frowned, slightly perplexed for a moment, before laughing.

“My dear Alexos,” she said. “You have no need to fear. Your bolts are, effectively, without end.”

“But,” he asked, confused, "how?"

“I manifested it so that it functions,” she said, amused, “and will never run out. Not so that it makes sense!”

Laughing again, and now in a better mood, she strode off down the slight decline of the hill.

+


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## Templar Marshal

This is pretty good man keep it up k:. +rep


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## dark angel

Once again Mossy Toes, a _excellent_ update. I love this, always have and I always shall. Have some rep by the way, and hurry up and write the next part! :grin:


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## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter XI Part II*

+++

Alas, the night's reconciliation and joy was a fleeting thing. All to soon, the last of the refugees arrived at the font. These were running for their lives, as opposed to the bedraggled, beaten shuffling of the previous arrivals. They were followed by deep, unnatural barks and distant, indistinct, four-legged pursuers.

The Hounds did not approach the Font closely; not at first. They prowled the edges of the Grove, dark and lumbering. Their eyes were their only visible features; burning coals of hellfire. They sprang upon, and tore apart, the few members of the Queendom to arrive after their own taking up of positions.

The mere presence of the Hounds cast the rag-tag company at the Font into such alarm and confusion that no attempt could be made to rescue those poor, late-appearing souls. Alexos hoped—while busily calming the fears of those around him—that would reincarnate in an area of the realm more hospitable than here.

Manta-screamers fluttered by overhead, scattered and few at first, but growing in quantity. They kept the same perimeter as the Hounds, shrieking demoniacally and rotating around the Grove. Their motion gave Alexos the sensation of being caught inside the eye of a hurricane; a hurricane that would soon shift position and sweep over their own location.

Bursts of flame began to illuminate the night in the distance from every direction. Inhuman cackling blew upon the wind, and a constant, unpinpointable sussurus of sibilant whispers began. The Queen, pale and drawn with tense anticipation, made a passing comment about “bindings coming undone”, and the “crumbling of foundations”.

It was true, reality was becoming visibly unstable. Nether-light and macrospectral colors had begun to ripple across the predawn sky above. The realm was coming undone at the seams, closely resembling Alexos in that only a seal, a blessing, gave it any pretense of solidity: in its own case, the purity of the Southern Font. Alexos suppressed thoughts which considered the terrors and travesties against reality occurring in the parts of the realm not directly under the aegis of the Font, especially those areas beneath the corrupting influence of the Northern Font.

Alexos attempted to persuade the Queen and the more militant minds of her Court to launch a preliminary attack to destroy the Hounds and flocks of mantas before the main body of the Herald's forces arrived, but most of their minds were firmly set against it.

“What if that is precisely what the Herald awaits?” argued a young, arrogant Courtier. “It would not be unlike him, to have set so devious and scheming a plot. He waits until we are spread out and weakened, and then pounces whilst we cannot ably defend the Font. Such a risk is unconscionable.”

“No warfare is without risk,” growled Alexos, certain that the Courtier would have said no such thing about the Herald even a mere hour previously. “We shall not have an opportunity such as this again, and already, its window may have passed due to your dallying and foolish notions of honor. One does not strike the foe at their strongest point; one strikes where they are divided. The Herald's forces come at us piecemeal, and we cannot afford to allow them to conjoin. They have the force of numbers, but we can subvert and turn that against them if we smash them as they come. Unless we act now, we will throw everything away hunkering down over this glorified fountain!”

“Please,” said Sheka, “Your Majesty, Your Lordships. Listen to Commissar Alexos. His craft is war. I, fighting alongside him for a dozen years, have seen how well he knows it. His presence is a gift to us in these dark times, and his advice is sound. Do not squander it.”

The Queen listened to the impassioned debates, frowning, before giving her decision.

“We will wait,” she said. “They dare not approach closer, yet. In doing in so, the Font's influence would diminish and weaken them. When they come, regardless of numbers, they will wither, fade, and become easy prey for even the least militarily adept of our number. There is nothing that they can do.”

“But Your Majesty!” Alexos cried. “Do you not think that the Herald has foreseen the obstacle of the Font? He will have his own foul tools to address the problem...”

But she remained unmoved, and Alexos retired frustrated, cursing the grox-headed stupidity of nobles through gritted teeth.

They waited, and the Darken Host came to them.

Hundreds of wild, multi-colored, shambling horrors came, beings which resembled nothing so much as shifting masses of tentacles, mouths, and limbs. They laughed and breathed sporadic sheets of mutating flame, caring not if they caught their compatriots in them and left them all the more deformed.

Dotted amongst these drifted levitating, looming, bird-headed hook-beaks which moved jerkily, unnaturally. These breathed gouts of multi-colored flame, too, which shone on their smooth, shimmering hides.

Packs of Vulpes came, also. Some of the beasts were aflame, like the one which Alexos had helped slay on the Hunting Ground, and some not; some glowed sickly, and some not; some were massive and muscled, compared to the specimen that Alexos had fought, and some smaller, leaner, and more wiry.

As the first pre-dawn illumination began to creep into the sky, the Hounds became more visible. They were pitch black, creatures of artifice wrought from cast iron and given motive capability by some unholy force which glowed in their eyes and burned in their gullets. They were as far removed from the Terran Hound as was their typical prey, the Vulpes, from, comparatively, the Terran Fox. The irony did not go unnoticed by Alexos that the Hound and Vulpes now stalked new prey, and side by side.

Other creatures swarmed amid the masses of the enemy as well: the rock-basilisks that Alexos had seen climbing the Darken Cliffs, and a second type of flying creature; hunched, gangly furies. More foul things that Alexos did not recognize followed, gibbering insanely and shifting from shape to shape, or howling and beating themselves with long, lacerating talons.

But all of these were the foot soldiers and forerunners of the Nightmare horde, nothing more.

Behind them came the goliath forms of Sloth and Gluttony, supposedly the two most daunting of the Sins. Sloth roared its discomfort to the assembled masses, lumbering forward only because driven by a pack of the bird-headed flamers.

Gluttony was similar to its one-eyed brother Sin only in height. However, it crawled like an infant, and its girth was vastly more prodigious. It was a jiggling, two-headed colossus of fat, greedily snatching up and shoving into its craws whatever came into its arms reach or crawling range. As it followed the horde, its gaze roved greedily from potential snack to potential snack. Against the expanse of the Darken Host, however, its constant gobbling had virtually no effect.

Most horrifying, Alexos realized, as Gluttony turned away briefly to snatch up a kicking Vulpes and drop it into one of its mouths, was the fact that it had no anus. It was as naked and sexless as Sloth, and it also had no method of excretion, by which it could pass the indigestible within whatever it consumed. Everything that it ate stayed within it.

These gut-churning horrors were not the end, however. After them came the Beast, the Traitor Enfleshed, the Herald of Nightmare.

He was mounted upon a great, blue-feathered, wingless wyrm. Its rustling coils, when in motion, made a noise which, while at first seeming harmless, crept into the ear canal and took up residence there. It echoed and grew, ever stronger until faint anomalies and hidden meanings became audible which, upon extensive reflection, promised to drive the listener insane.

The Herald himself had become a crackling locus of dark power, surrounded by an aura of perversity and blackness. His saddle was bolted to the sides of the wyrm, and one hand rested casually upon a pair of reins which cut into the edges of Arrogance's mouth whenever the Herald so much as twitched them.

The forces of the Archenemy encircled the Grove, coming no closer than the edges of the trees. The horrors jabbered and leapt, the flamers breathed teardrops of many-colored fire into the air, and the screaming mantas circled.

Then the ranks of the enemy parted, and a lone figure walked slowly forward—a figure that Alexos recognized immediately. Envy.

Now, however, instead of appearing simply as a darkling shade, an anti-human's silhouette, veins of flickering red instability were shot through him. He lurched and staggered as he made his way toward the defenders of the Font, and as he drew closer, wisps of darkness began to scrawl backward off him, filaments of his being washed away by the power of the Font.

Alexos raised his bolt pistol. “Your Majesty,” he said to the Queen, “we have no need to meet Envy. There is nothing that he, the Herald's Herald, can tell us that we want to hear. Do I have your permission to terminate him?”

“You do not,” said the Queen. “There is no need to fire upon a messenger simply bearing terms, however horrific the host at his back. The worst that he can do is threaten us before we turn him back.”

Envy arrived, trembling. Faint lips formed in the inky blackness of his face, which spoke waveringly, stuttering.

“The...the...the the the Herald is—the Herald demands. Surrender. Total surrender to the new, new order of all Things. Yield. Yield. Yield. Or be overrun. He will not will not will be—will not be—denied. Will spare, he says—will spare all here a thousand torments, after they bow to him.

“Can attest. Such pain. Such terror and agony. Such—such—such. If I go back without—with refusal, such pain the more. Masked Traitor, backstabber, will devour me, as he has Greed and Wrath. Turned from us. Pain! Don't make me—don't make—don't-”

The Queen sneered. “Envy the Envoy, is it? Does the Herald really think that I care if he consumes you? Or that I will accept such a fate and and lowering as he promises? Get back to him and tell him that sending you to grovel was pointless.”

Tears welled up from shaded, hazy, indistinct eyes. “Thousand not so many, in all, compared to the million in his grasp. Don't want—didn't want—you are forcing me...”

Envy bowed his head, turned jerkily away, and staggered a step away. Alexos began to relax, when the Sin whirled and charged, his claws unsheathing. The commissar dove in front of the Queen, firing his bolt pistol—but the bolts simply passed through the specter undetonated, and Envy tore past them both, ignoring him and the Queen.

Envy charged toward the Font, and the Queen cried out in horrified realization, but before he could be stopped, he threw himself into its waters and, with a cry, dissolved.

The result was immediate and intense. Alexos felt nails run across his skin and tasted vomit in his throat. A vile scent filled the air, which warped and spasmed visibly for a split second. All five senses were assaulted. Quickly, however, the onslaught receded and left him feeling faintly sick.

Members of the court cried out as they felt the tainted energy now radiating from the Wellspring of Purity. Several of the weaker members of the Court had already collapsed, and Alexos supposed that the flash of _wrongness_ which had hit them all had been much more powerful in proper psykers. Other Courtiers were pale and shaking.

Alexos turned back to look at the edges of the Grove, and his gut clenched in horror. The Darken Host was surging forward.

+++


----------



## Zwan

I read chapter one (finally). Very nice. Some comments; 


It was a pointless exercise in futility

An exercise in futility is by definition, ‘pointless’. I’d drop it. 

Gundread 58th carried sandbags and trowels and other implements with which they could shore up the defenses being constructed.

I’d replace trowels with ‘entrenching tools’ – trowels sounds a bit domestic. 

The enemy’s backs had been broken in this

Would change to either ‘the enemy’s back had been broken’ or ‘the enemies’ backs had been broken’


and then all hell exploded


An almost laughable turn of phrase. 

the protection offered by the cover was nominal at best.

I’d drop the ‘at best’.


“At them!” he cried, loping with long strides across the open ground. “At them in the Emperor’s name, or by Thor I’ll send you to Him early!”

Alexos sprinted forward with long, loping strides, waving his pistol


A lot of long, loping strides in these sentences. 


Miaro’s loss would be felt harder than all the soldier.

Typo

“And how does this effect us?

Affect. 


The commissar sticking up for the major in front of the inept colonel was a little cliched for my taste, although I'm one to talk. 

Will crack on when I have time, good work so far - I can see why this is so popular.


----------



## Mossy Toes

I'll get right around to editing. That scene with Alexos sticking up for Vutch...was a late addition to the rest of the story, edited in at a later date. I was never too happy with it, and it might bear a little tweaking...


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Interlude III*

+++

The heretic screamed incomprehensible obscenities into Major Vutch’s face, and by way of reply, she jammed her lasgun—and the bayonet clipped to its barrel—into its throat. Blood sprayed from his shattered larynx and she kicked him off the blade and out the window.

She quickly ducked back into the cover of the wall beside the window, not wanting to leave herself exposed to enemy sniper fire longer than she had to. Two windows down, another grapnel-clamp smashed through the pane and lodged itself in the corner of the window frame. She bent double and hurried over to it, taking care not to expose herself, and then smashed the clamp with the butt of her lasgun until it fell to pieces. The cable—stretched taut under the weight of an ascending heretic—whirred away into the night. She was satisfied by the shriek which accompanied its departure.

The previous grapnel was jerking in such a manner to indicate another climber swinging his weight up the cable. She cursed and rushed back to it, arriving in time to cut off the woman climber’s fingers as she attempted to haul herself through the window frame. After she fell, it was the work of several precious moments for Kay to unfasten the hook and let it follow.

Vutch’s soldiers were hard-pressed. The status of the Infirmarium was now not so much quiet broken by sporadic moments of action as constant fighting interspersed with infrequent breathers. The last few hours had been particularly hellish; they had finally run out of grenades, and the enemy had realized as much, and were pushing them harder in response. The stairwell was choked and clogged with corpses, up which the enemy were forced to clamber to attack; a sheer, macabre, unsteady slope of shattered limbs, broken torsos, and contorted faces.

But still the fanatics came. Some would use the bodies of their compatriots as shields, but such slowed them down enough to make easier targets for shots from the above side of the opening to the stairwell. They came in waves, in hordes, in pushes to clog the stairs; the living clambering over the dead in their haste to join them. The enemy howled as they charged, howled as they were scythed down by massed lasfire, and died howling their bitter, twisted hatred of all things Imperial.

Despite the horrendous casualties inflicted, most of the rushes made it to hand-to-hand combat through sheer weight of numbers. As the guardsmen at the stairwell brawled with the enemy, the soldiers lining the balcony that looked down on the stairs from behind continued to pour their fire into the heretics as they ascended. Their shots seared into enemy flesh up to a mere meters beneath where their fellow Imperials fought.

As a new tactic, the enemy scaled the sides of the building. Vutch’s contingent—little more than a squad of which remained—was stationed to hold these back, while the other two groups were on constant watch over the stairwell.

The problem was increased by the fact that their las-cells were swiftly dwindling. The cells were designed to recharge after little more than an hour’s exposure to direct sunlight, true, but in the deep of the night, no such recharging was possible.

Vutch cursed as another heretic clambered through one of the more distant windows. She raised her lasgun to drop him, but another one of her soldiers beat her to it. She shuffled over and began to work at dumping the corpse out the window.

As she dislodged this grapnel as well, a new noise reached her ears. Engines. Deep, powerful, massed engines.

“Major!” called one of her men, a corporal, waving a pair of magnoculars. “Come look at this!”

She gestured another of her soldiers, this one missing a hand, to take her position, and hurried over to the corporal’s position. He was stationed on a southward-facing window, in the third partition-quarter of the floor.

She took the magnoculars and peered uneasily above the window’s edge and out over the expanse of ruined hab-blocks and highways back toward the Imperial lines.

“Rhinos,” she murmured, identifying the black vehicles, tens of which rumbled from the friendly lines, smashing through heretic barricades and encampments several kilometers distant. They were indisputably heading towards the Infirmarium. “What are they doing, sending out the Arbites? Or…Holy Throne, they can’t be sending Astartes, can they?”

The corporal tried to jabber something excitedly, but Vutch cut him off. She had just seen the unmistakable sigil which adorned the side of the Rhino Armored Personnel Carriers—an ornately decorated “I”.

“The Inquisition. Holy Throne of Terra, those bastards are sending the bloody Inquisition to save our arses!”




+++


----------



## waltzmelancholy_07

Finally!... I finished reading everything.... Wow!... Mossy, this is just EPIC!... From Alexos being a typical Commissar to the disturbing actions of the Inquisition, everything is just COOL!... REP mate!... 

Cheers!...


----------



## Zwan

Chapter 2:

A hellgun exploded, taking its owner’s forearms with it.

Nice. 

This was to avoid ricochets he assumed. he admired their bravery, as such a tactic left them with no cover whatsoever.

Capital ‘H’ for ‘He’. Also I’m not sure about the logic of spurning cover, even if it is to avoid ricochets. 

and let loose a veritable wall of blazing promethium

Drop the veritable. 

impaled by fore-arm sized splinters

Forearm. 

he had picked it up, and leveled his

Levelled. 

But the Imperials were far from done, especially with Sheka on their side. She swept her arms forward, immolating a score of enemies. Her visage twisted once again an arrogant sneer, and she drifted forward, surrounded by a bow wave of death.

If she can immolate a whole bunch of them why can’t she just kill them all? Potential plot flaw, unless you can explain it away due to her needing to ‘recharge’ her powers somehow in between kinetic attacks.

Pluquats

What are these?


All in all, good, I have little to take issue with. Well done.


----------



## Mossy Toes

Pluquats--a fruit that I made up, similar to the Terran loquat or kumquat. I'm thinking that it's more similar to the former...

Loquat (not citrus) :









Kumquat (citrus, obviously) :









Another fictional item of consumption is shoka, mentioned later. It's a fungus that can be rendered into a nutritious, if not all that enjoyable, drink.

Well, she's killing them as fast as she's efficiently able. It's like...well, why doesn't Vandemarr shoot all of his enemies, if he's able to blast the heads off of those three? Sheka's killing them rather quickly, in this case by waving around a big sheet of spontaneous-combustivity in the middle of the enemy. I did try to convey that those bursting into flame were only those nearish to her, with the "bow wave" bit. Perhaps there's an effective range...

I forget where I got the datum about the cover, but it was from real life somewhere. Not like the scene in "Black Hawk Down", but the same concept, I suppose.

I'm glad that you're enjoying.

Edit: also, um, Open Office says "leveled" rather than "levelled".


----------



## shaantitus

This continues to be brilliant. Carry on.


----------



## TheJolt

Great work Mossy, this is brilliant because I didn't expect any of it! 

True talent at work here!

P.s Damn Zwan got to the capital 'H' before me. 

-TJ


----------



## Zwan

Mossy Toes said:


> Well, she's killing them as fast as she's efficiently able. It's like...well, why doesn't Vandemarr shoot all of his enemies, if he's able to blast the heads off of those three?


Ahhh, but now you're being flippant! There's a difference between Vandemarr and Sheka, namely that Vandemarr is, at the end of the day, just a man with a gun who relies on things such as line of sight and a steady aim. Sheka, at least the way I've been reading it, is a very powerful psyker who doesn't need line of sight and can conjure fire with (again as it seems to me) no limitations or drain on her power. Then, by that logic, why doesn't she just kill them all?

What I was suggesting (rather obliquely, but it was 1am!) was that you could explain that away by actually acknowledging in the story that there are limits to her range/power. Is that acceptable? 




Mossy Toes said:


> I forget where I got the datum about the cover, but it was from real life somewhere. Not like the scene in "Black Hawk Down", but the same concept, I suppose.


Fine. 



Mossy Toes said:


> I'm glad that you're enjoying.


I am. 



Mossy Toes said:


> Edit: also, um, Open Office says "leveled" rather than "levelled".


Yes, sorry it's the American spelling, I didn't think it would be different but it is.


----------



## Mossy Toes

TheJolt--just saying, though the BL forums are a lost and dead dream, there is the unofficial, BL employee endorsed-and-frequented Black Library Bolthole. Nice to see you here too, though!


----------



## TheJolt

*Smile*

Thanks Mossinator!

-TJ


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++

*Chapter XI: The Battle for the Font*

+++

As the multitude of varied evils charged, Arrogance's slithering coil-scrape noise changed. Before it had been subtle and one had been able, with difficulty, to put it out of the mind by concentration on something else. Now, however, it rolled over the mind, overpowering, and solid, definite words were audible.

_-Destroy-Betray-Deny-_ beat the dross-pulse of the wyrm.

The Court erupted into a confused melee. Courtier turned upon Courtier, and Lost Soul upon Lost Soul. Hypnotic suggestions, implanted by the Herald, and wounds and insults that had scabbed over, yet had never been healed, were lain bare. Sauri-mounts snapped at their fellows' riders in self-defense, chomping off arms and heads. The best of friends turned upon each other, driven by the screaming voice of Arrogance inside their mind, the tainted font, and the Herald's majicks.

Those unaffected were attacked from unawares, or did not know which way to turn, for on every side, bloody, purposeless betrayals were being enacted. The Court was tearing itself apart in an insane orgy of blood, even as the numberless Nightmares closed from all sides.

_-Destroy-Betray-Deny-_ beat the pulse, grinding into Alexos's skull with the force of a sledgehammer. The grinding power of the wyrm's call intermingled with the pitching nausea of the tainted Font, a painful duet inside his mind.

The Queen looked around frantically, glancing from treachery to treachery, her expression shocked and disbelieving.

Sheka breathed a distinctly unladylike curse in Alexos's ear. “You're the commissar,” she hissed to Alexos. “Do something!”

_-Destroy-Betray-Deny-_ boomed Arrogance again, triumph in its tone. The Herald waved his arms magnanimously as the Host swept forward through the trees.

“Stand to!” roared Alexos, prompted into action. “You miserable worms! How dare you spit upon the Queen's charity and shelter? Stand to, and face her foes!”

The convulsing body of the Court slowed, many of its constituent members turning to look at Alexos. Only a few knots of struggle remained, perpetrated by raving madmen or grudge-driven fools.

Alexos took careful, deliberate aim, and shot those who continued to fight one by one. For several of the last fights he was spared having to fire; the combatants ceased once they realized how Alexos was replying. Arrogance shrieked shrilly, its foul influence denied.

“You disgust me!" he shouted. "Turn yourselves about to face the true enemy! You fight against the foulest excretions of the Warp, here, for Queen and Emperor!”

“Queen and Emperor!” called several of the crowd's members, Miaro amongst them. The crowd picked up on the shout, louder, stronger. “Queen and Emperor!”

Alexos wheeled his sauri-mount around, facing it toward the Darken Host, which had nearly broached the clearing in which the Court waited. Several of those that Alexos had shot now reincarnated, dragging themselves from the waters of the Font, but as their actions were not immediately aggressive, he ignored them.

“For Her Realm and Terra!” he cried, spurring the mount forward.

“Her Realm and Terra!” came the thunderous, booming reply from behind him, and the rumbling roar of a hundred sauri-mounts charging.

The two forces collided like a pair of mag-lev trains in a head-on collision.

Alexos's mount shouldered through a pair of horrors with a shuddering crash. He ran one of them through as they passed, and wrenched the blade free with the continued motion. Another horror breathed flames across his mount's scales to no effect, and, by way of reply, the beast closed its jaws around what passed for the thing's head.

A screeching Vulpes barreled at him from the side and his mount danced to the side. Alexos unleashed a barrage of shots which detonated in a rippling chain down the beast's flank. It howled even louder, and twisted to face him better. Sheka swept into combat from its side, and burning death lanced from her upraised hands, smashing it to the ground.

Alexos spurred his mount to beside Sheka and blew the beak off of a hissing, drifting flamer with a pair of well-placed shots.

Beside them, the unstoppable form of one of the Hounds crushed its way through a pair of Courtiers. It pulped the head of one, who had been knocked from the saddle, with a well-placed stomp, and decapitated the other with a swift, lashing strike from one of its iron limbs. Alexos retaliated with a series of shots, but they burst without causing noticeable damage, and its attention fastened on him and Sheka.

Sheka's attacks rocked it as it charged, leaving molten craters, but the juggernaut's motion was as unshakable as a glacier's. It shouldered into Alexos, knocking his sauri-mount to the ground and sending him sprawling.

The Hound's head lunged forward, tearing out the throat of Alexos's mount, and then the beast lurched after him too. He rolled to one side as its gnarled iron paw slammed into the ground beside him, leaving an imprint centimeters deep. The roaring, burning jaws snapped at Alexos and he scrambled backwards. The Hound continued to come at him, gnashing its teeth. He leveled his bolt pistol and fired a trio of bolts into its infernal maw.

The beast roared, reared, and flailed in agony. Wickedly sharp talons slashed the air just in front of the still-retreating Alexos. It lurched to one side, the light in its eyes flaring erratically, then vomited a gout of magma onto its forepaws and collapsed. Alexos began to pick himself up, before realizing that a trio of Vulpes now surrounded him, two of which were flaming. They hissed gleefully.

Sheka tore the first into halves, and crushed the skull of the second with a massive telekinetic blow. The third scrambled away, whimpering, but Alexos brought it down with more than a dozen bolts in a scant few seconds.

He and Sheka turned their attentions onto a pack of the onyx rock-basilisks, which were now slithering toward them, murder in their amber eyes.

+

The whirlwind of death tore through the embroiled combatants with all the rage of the greatest tempest. It ripped through Courtier, horror, Lost Soul, and flamer alike, contemptuous of such notions as honor and mercy. Spongy, daemonic horror muscles were cleaved with the same ease as that of the gnarled sauri-mounts, and Hounds were broken and shattered alongside Lost Souls.

For the ferocity of the fighting and the multitude of deaths, however, surprisingly few corpses resulted. The more daemonic of the foe disintegrated upon death, leaving only the splayed bodies of the Vulpes, Hounds, sauri-mounts, and the like. Similarly, the bodies of the Font's defenders remained in existence only briefly before shimmering out of existence and being birthed again, letting them rise from the waters of the Southern Font refreshed anew.

But the taint weakened those reborn, and continued to radiate its foul influence as the defenders fought, sickening and undoing. Just as Alexos had felt himself dissolving earlier, now all the players in this brutal drama began to fray. Insubstantiality began to creep into the edges of vision, and a fuzzy, unclear haze crept over the far boundaries of the Grove—a haze no longer dispelled by the Queen's presence.

When dying, the weakest of the Lost Souls were no longer returning. Instead, their corpses remained where they fell.

The enemy were affected by this dissolution as well. The Font's purity, Alexos surmised, could not be entirely sullied by but one of the Sins; only lessened and turned, slightly, against the defenders. The Darken Host was beginning to come undone, too, if all too slowly. The horrors howled in fury as their flesh was flayed away from their bodies by the gentle sussurations of the Font and their vibrant colorations faded.

The Sins alone seemed unaffected, smashing undaunted through the ranks of the Court. Their efforts provided the backbone of the Host's assault, and so Alexos was not all that surprised when he and Sheka came across the Queen driving against the looming cyclops, Sloth.

“To me, My Court!” she cried, and Alexos and Sheka came.

Sloth roared in pained discomfort as the Queen's bolts of lightning arched across it, smashing a pair of Courtiers and a flamer out of its way in its efforts to get to her. Her rust-red mount darted around its clumsy blows.

Sheka threw handfuls of flame from the other side, whipping the pallid Sin's attention around. As it began to lumber towards them, Alexos aimed his bolt pistol and carefully fired, blowing out Sloth's lone eye.

The Sin staggered and clapped its hands over the bloody socket, but remained uncharacteristically silent for nearly two seconds, in which it continued to be bathed in lightning and flame. Then it began to moan, long and low. The cry built in volume, growing louder and louder, until Alexos covered his ears in an ineffectual attempt to block it out.

Sloth charged him like a raging bull, its face dribbling gore and ocular humors. Alexos sprinted out of the way and the Sin slammed into one of the pluquat trees of the Grove. The tree toppled with a crash, crushing a Vulpes underneath. Alexos added his own bolt shells to the psychic blasts that the Sin was suffering. It staggered back around and charged toward Alexos and Sheka again. They split to its either side.

Sloth's flesh was blackened and splitting, its muscles exposed to the open air, cooked, twitching, but the Sin refused to die. It stomped through a clutch of horrors toward the Queen, but the red sauri-mount darted, once again, nimbly away.

Sheka unleashed a long, protracted burst of flame that splattered over Sloth's shoulders, and it howled again, whipping back to charge her once more. Sheka kept up the blasts of fire, scourging swathes of its meat away, baring and blackening its skeletal structure. At the last moment she dove away—but the Sin had finally caught on, and swept out its arms. When it felt Sheka, it grabbed her in one of its grotesquely massive hands and swept her against itself in a bone-crushing hug.

Sheka's limp, lifeless shape was dropped, and Alexos's craw rose uncontrollably—but then her body faded, and, he assumed, she climbed anew from the waters of the Font.

The Sin swayed in place, finally slowing in regards to its injuries. Its face, its shoulders, its arms and its chest—all of these had been stripped to the bone and left blackened, oozing internal fluids from between the cracks.

A wave of sauri-mounted Courtiers crashed into its legs, slashing its calves and stabbing its thighs, and finally toppled it. It moaned on the ground, flailing and knocking sauri flying, until the Queen sent a final blast of lightning into its face. At last, it lay still.

Swiftly, steadily, it began to decay—not dissolve, like a horror or flamer, but rather go black, rotting and becoming rancid as quickly as a dead Vulpes.

The Courtiers cheered, picking themselves up or wheeling their mounts around to group back together. The Master of the Hunt waved his glit-blade in the air ecstatically, crying the triumph to the sky.

His shouts were cut short when one of the the razor-mawed mantas, swooped down and decapitated him. His corpse dissolved.

“Screamers! Furies!” called one of the Lost Souls—a former Sanctioned Psyker—pointing above. The entire weight of the enemy's daemonic fliers were descending upon Sloth's killers.

The Queen laughed and raked immaterial claws across the sky. A rain of severed limbs and chunks of manta spattered amidst the Courtiers.

“Go!” she cried. “Stop Gluttony! I shall join you as soon as these have been dispatched!”

Those few Courtiers and Lost Souls still mounted rode off to aid the fight against Gluttony, and Alexos led the score on foot away too. He accompanied his march with bolts into the sky.

As they passed the tree that Sloth had toppled, a plain Vulpes—the one that Alexos had thought crushed, earlier—burst out. It slew half a dozen Courtiers in seconds, a dervish of bladed claws from an unexpected quarter.

Alexos managed to get off one bolt, which exploded on its chest, but it was too closely surrounded by Lost Souls and Courtiersfor him to be able to shoot with impunity.

A lone Lost Soul ducked in under the slashing claws, untouched, and rammed his sword into the Vulpes's neck up to the hilt.

The Vulpes staggered drunkenly and collapsed. The man yanked his sword free in a swift, professional movement.

“Congratulations, captain,” Alexos said, allowing himself to show how impressed he was. Miaro turned and nodded gravely. There was an air of completion in his eyes, as if taking the fight against the enemies of the Emperor had banished whatever vagueness had been preying upon his mind.

The group turned and moved toward Gluttony once again. A pack of horrors barred their way, but a combination of bolt and blade swiftly saw them off.

Gluttony, when they finally approached it, was crashing through the trees and snapping off boughs with its passage. As they watched, it picked up a thrashing sauri-mount and bit off its front half. The rear end was swift to follow, in its second head's mouth, and then the obese Sin chewed. Bone snapped and ground, and frothy blood spurted from both of its pairs of lips, dribbling down over its naked, rolling chest.

One of the last Courtiers who had ridden ahead, the one whose mount had just been consumed, turned and fled. Gluttony thundered after him.

Alexos aimed for the Sin's eyes with his pistol again, but Gluttony's were smaller than Sloth's one, and beadier, and hidden in folds of fat. The Sin frowned as his shots pockmarked its brow and cheeks, until it saw how closely the newcomers were bunched. Then its face brightened into a greedy smile. Gluttony lurched toward them, unstoppable in its malicious, hungering glee.

“Scatter!” roared Alexos, and the men and women around him split up in every direction.

A mounted Lost Soul slashed the Sin from behind, and was sprayed with a gout of acidic ichor from the wound. She and her sauri-mount shrieked and fell to the ground, rolling in agony.

Gluttony grabbed another of their number and hoisted the struggling Courtier into the air. Knowing that it was otherwise too late for the man, Alexos shot him. The Courtier dissolved before Gluttony's jowls could close around him, and the Sin howled in rage at being denied.

Courtiers had told Alexos, earlier, that anybody eaten by the Sin would be unable to respawn elsewhere, and would be caught and subsumed into its gross obesity, eternally tortured and aware.

Other Lost Souls and Courtiers were dancing in, cutting, and jerking away, now, attempting to avoid Gluttony's burning blood. The wounds that they inflicted were superficial at best, and the Sin crushed more than one by simply shifting its weight as it tried to snatch up another of its tormenters. Its gaze settled on the whimpering, burnt woman and mount. It scooped those up and lifted them toward its mouth.

Miaro hacked into the Sin's elbow, severing tendons. It howled, dropping its intended meal, and lashed out. The captain sidestepped its blow, and plunged his sword into its stomach at neck height. He followed the move by yanking down, cleaving fatty flesh with ease and splitting the Sin's gut wide open. A tide of acid and half-digested bodies spilled out, swamping Miaro and leaving him thrashing, burning on the ground, but the damage was done.

The Sin howled, babbled to itself witlessly, and slumped forward in death on top of Captain Miaro, crushing him utterly. Alexos looked back, but he did not emerge from the Font.

+

Hours later, it felt like, the sun crawled over the blurred horizon. Alexos was exhausted. He sported a pronounced limp from a deeply cutting leg injury, and he had caught a gout of horror-flame full in the chest, leaving the flesh blackened and peeling. He had not, however, been killed. He did not know if he would recover from such a—the irony of the situation struck him. He was wondering whether or not he would survive dying.

Less and less defenders were respawning, that was certainly true. Alexos could no longer find any living Lost Souls in a casual glance, only their corpses. The Courtiers, too, had been whittled down by the Font and attrition, and they were few and far between. All the survivors had slowly been beaten back by the hordes of the enemy until they were clustered close to the Font.

Sheka and the Queen were defending against a massive push on its far side, currently. He himself was some distance away, with a detachment of Courtiers, holding against whatever stragglers of the enemy came their way. Most, however, were currently focused on the other side of the Font.

The enemy horde had lessened, to be sure, and become almost entirely insubstantial. They were, however, still definitely corporeal enough to kill the defenders, and numerous enough to swamp them with plenty to spare.

Alexos impaled a flamer as it drifted toward him, flailing its limbs wildly and spitting multi-colored tongues of fire, and watched dispassionately as it died and faded. A crippled Hound hobbled toward him and he dispatched with a quartet of shots into one of its eye sockets. Two horrors, scattered remnants of the melee on the other side of the Font, stumbled at him. He shot one mechanically, then raised his blade to hack down the other.

His arm was jolted by pain and shock, and suddenly wouldn't react. He looked up tiredly, and saw that it was missing. He frowned, stumbled backward, and shot the horror down. Then he wheeled in exhaustion, still trying to comprehend the fact that his arm had vanished—been severed—even as blood was spurting down his side.

And he saw Arrogance, surrounded by several freshly—and permanently—dead Courtiers. The Master of the Hunt was among the corpses.

“Pathetic,” hissed the Herald, jerking Alexos into the air with a choking, telekinetic grasp. The commissar kicked, but his injured leg would not respond. He flailed, but even his pistol arm was too numb, too weary to...

“Tzeentchi bastard,” croaked Alexos through a dry and cracked throat. He was bleeding out, he knew. He was bleeding out, and he felt so...empty. So lifeless.

“Oh,” spat the Herald, “how cunning you are, Commissar Alexos. Your deduction astounds me; however could you have guessed my allegiance? Declaring such things, however, I fint to be so very childish.

“And you're coming apart at the seams. This it the last time that you'll be seeing me, I'm afraid. Your unwelcome intrusion here is at an end. Tell me, commissar, now do you see the fate of those who meddle in things greater than themselves?”

Alexos grunted a hateful denial, but the Herald crushed his throat before he could form any words, and tossed him, discarded, to the ground. Blackness closed in.

+

The void clutched at Alexos, seeking to drag him away. He was thrown, tumbling away into the obscurity, wracked by burning stabs of spite and malice. Without orientation or sight, he was lost, suspended, hanging in the void.

And he was tired. He was feverish and exhausted, unbalanced yet uncaring. The verge of something else trembled in the emptiness, the hint of something more. If he followed this feeling, and surely one could follow feelings, here in the warp, would he end in the Halls of the Emperor's Judgment?

But the kiss upon his brow was cool, cold, soothing. It was an anchor, and some distant part of his mind clung to it. A soft whisper caressed him and drew him back, pulling him to reality. He climbed the ladder of love that she, his ladylove, extended, and surfaced back into corporeality.

+

Sheka's face above him, sweating and pale. She took him, pulled him from the waters, held his head between her hands and stroked his hair and temples until the dizziness faded. Alexos cursed internally for not having taken the Queen's offer for succor before the Host had arrived: he could have spared Sheka this exertion, and allowed her to turn her attentions to better facing the foe.

“I won't let you slip away that easily,” she said, smiling wearily.

“I wouldn't dare,” he replied, and hauled himself up off the ground.




+++


----------



## Mossy Toes

Zwan/FF and Jolt--a warning to the two of you. I'm going to be posting up the last chapter and the postlude quite soon, so there may be certain major spoilers which, by association with this thread, you could easily be exposed to too early. You have my apologies in advance, and my recommendation to exercise caution.


----------



## Chaosrider

amazing, yet again..


----------



## Mossy Toes

+++ 

*Chapter XII: Dissolution*

+++

It was not with a roar that the last of the combatants faded, but a sigh. The side-conflicts of slow-fading nobles and quick-fading daemons, all dissolving together, were finally dying away. Only the faint suggestions of their forms were left behind; only the most distant clashes of their conflict reched the ear. Long dead psykers finally slipped into the cold sleep of death, and the Darken Host is no more. Echoes and the faintest imagery were all that remained.

But the keystones remained, even as the last of the lesser players dispatched each other and slipped into nothingness. The Herald, Arrogance, the Queen, Sheka, and by the extension of that last, Alexos. All of the others—the members of the Court and the daemons against which they had struggled—were blown away, so much inconsequential dust in the wind.

Lightning flashed, crisping Arrogance’s feathers. The wyrm hissed contemptuously, slithering forward toward the Queen and her darting mount. Sheka added her pyrotechnics to the mix, but the Herald vaulted from his saddle and swept through the air toward her, engaging her in a battle of crackling energy and diverting her attentions.

Alexos added his bolts to the fray against him, but to little effect. They burst fruitlessly on shimmering wards conjured by the Herald. The enemy retaliated against Alexos, however, forcing Sheka to split her own defenses to protect them both—a distraction upon which the Herald capitalized.

His powers so massively boosted—by the consumption of two Sins, at least as Envy had claimed—the Herald was having no apparent difficulty in driving Sheka back. Alexos swore impotently, powerless to turn the battle back.

Arrogance let off a howling shriek, shaking reality and sending shivers of dissolution out and away. Alexos turned to see the wyrm topple, headless, and crumble into ashes and dust.

The Queen swept forward, no longer mounted, the winds of her wrath whipping up the remnants of Arrogance and setting her clothes fluttering. A nimbus of anger and derision radiated from her posture and expression.

“That was no Sin,” she spat, contemptuous and sent the Herald staggering with a howling gust. He fought back, twisting her winds into a seething knot and channeling it into a rippling, multi-colored spear. He sent bursts of green energy coruscating along its length back toward her.

“True enough,” he replied carelessly. “Tchar-zanek was simply a daemon with whom I had a mutual compact. No Sin, merely arrogant enough to believe that he had the better of me.”

“You are not welcome here, Pride!” roared the Queen, but even she was being driven back. Alexos’s bolts continued to have no effect on the shimmering wards around the Herald, and when he attempted to close the distance between them, he found an invisible wall obstructing his passage. Sheka’s attacks were likewise sloughed aside with an apparently insulting ease.

Herald and Queen met, trading blows of psychic energy as well as careful strikes and parries with their respective spears—his glimmering and hers her unique glit-blade.

“You see me at last,” laughed the Herald, “stripped bare of one more layer of duplicity. But I was not like your mind’s other petty spawn; I grew into the role of Pride after we defeated the original in the realm’s Foundation Crusades, as was my intent all along.

“Tell me, though, my dear, promiscuous Queen,” lilted the Herald, his voice cruel, “where is the Seventh Sin? Three lie dead and three have been consumed, but where is the presence of Lust?”

Alexos coughed in surprise as the words hit him. He had missed that aspect of Nightmare entirely, when it and an obvious answer had been sitting him in the face the whole time. Was it possible that—the Queen’s face paled as she came to the same conclusion.

“You lie!” she spat, lashing out with lightning which the Herald deflected into Sheka. Alexos’s love rocked backward but absorbed the blow.

“I lie?” gloated the Herald. “But I never stated a thing, dear heart. Incidentally, by the by, do you recall that delightful elixir which I gave you after the creation of the Maze? And our celebrations afterward…delightful.”

“I am not Lust!” shrieked the queen, stabbing desperately with her glit-spear. In one unspeakably fast motion, the Herald batted her spear to the ground, flowed forward, planted his foot on the shaft to trap it where it was, and ran the Queen through. Her wards flared ineffectually, and died. Sheka cried out and the Dream shuddered.

The Queen stumbled backwards and away, but her motion was arrested by the Herald’s spear, of which the blade and a good dozen centimeters of the shaft protruded from her back.

“I’m afraid that you are, Kaela. Whores can’t escape their nature.”

She looked dumbly down at the shaft and put her hand to it. Blood that had run from her gut dribbled off of her hand. Her gaze shifted back up at the Herald. Alexos expected her to topple or slump to the ground at any second, but she simply stood there.

“Yes I can,” she said eventually, softly. “Montra has taught me that much, at least.”

The Herald twisted the spear and attempted to tear it free, giving off a cross between a snort and a snarl.

“You forget yourself, my Herald. I am the origin and termination of all power in this realm. Your position is entirely at my suffrance, and you have usurped and lied far too much. Begone.”

“No,” hissed the Herald.

“Begone.” The Queen’s voice rang louder and more firmly.

“No!” shrieked the Herald, disbelieving, his clothes and flesh flaking and drifting away behind him.

“Begone!” The command rang immutable, a single, divine pronouncement in what little remained of this crumbling world. The Herald’s grip on the spear fell away, and it was he who sunk to his knees, not the impaled yet radiant Queen.

“I served you,” he whimpered, his muscles slithering from his bones and his voice fading, fading, dying. “I slaved for you and brought you only the best. I brought you all of your subjects, all but these two, pathetic betrayers who have turned you against me! How can you be so cruel as to cast me out, away? You are nothing without me! Nothing! Without...me...”

The skeletal thing that remained, black anti-lightning crackling over its bones, vomited a glot of congealed, writhing nether-essence and collapsed. The glot splashed to the ground, writhed, and subsided. It spread into a black, lifeless puddle. It was, Alexos presumed, the remnants of the Sins that the Herald had consumed.

“It is done,” breathed the Queen, sounding more shocked than relieved.

+


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## waltzmelancholy_07

So the Queen could have ended everything in the first place with just the snap of a finger... Hmmm... Hahaha... 

It's really similar to Judgement Day: God letting Satan wreak havoc all over the world to convince him that he's winning. Then God kicks his ass at the opportune moment to remind him who God is...

Nice one Mossy:victory:...


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## Mossy Toes

Well, she has to realize that she's damn near omnipotent, first, and I'd say that being stunned by the info that you're one of the seven sins and then run through is a pretty good wake-up call...


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## Chaosrider

another amazing chapter.


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## Mossy Toes

+

Alexos stuck a boot-tip into the puddle and only pulled it away from the tar-like, sticky mass with difficulty. He scraped his toes against the ground to remove the noxious goo.

“The remnants of the Sins which he devoured are by no means pretty,” said the Queen idly, glancing at the puddle.

The skeleton twitched slightly. Alexos's gaze snapped back to it, but the motion had simply been more of the dark energy that had been crackling over it discharging. He looked back up.

The Queen was now looking down at the spear, which remained, as of yet, impaled through her chest. She put a hand to it and it dissolved, leaving the cloth of the Queen's clothes untorn and—despite the blood that Alexos could have sworn that he had seen earlier—unstained.

“The bindings are coming undone ever faster,” she said distantly, meeting his eyes. Sheka came up to Alexos's side and took his hand. “The roiling seas of the Warp will soon wash over my realm, leaving its entirety as nothing but a fading memory. The Sins would have been reborn from the Northern Font, were it to remain long enough, as would the Southern heal itself, but...enough damage has been done. I suppose that, in time, all must things pass.”

“All things but Him on Terra,” affirmed Alexos.

The Queen stared pensively down at skeleton, which was lying on its back. It twitched again. “He did so much for me,” she said. “So many times I would have been lost but for him and his assistance.”

“He was no friend of yours, Your Majesty,” said Sheka softly. “I came face to face with a great number of his atrocities in the Mundus, and his true nature was revealed here, in this final battle.”

“Yes, I understand,” said the Queen. Kaela, the Herald had called her. A pretty name. It reminded Alexos of Kay Vutch, the Dunmirran major. “That much is easy to see. However...what are we to do now?”

“Now?” repeated Alexos, an amused but not unkind smile touching his lips. “Now, Your Majesty, it's time for us to wake up.” The Queen's eyes widened, as if this was the first time that the idea had so much as occurred to her. Then her features softened in acceptance.

“I...” she said slowly, “I suppose so. To be sure, we will find no solace here soon enough, for here shall no longer be. Yes, it is that time.” She shrugged, acceding to this outcome with a smile—but an understandable hint of rueful sorrow flitted across her features all the same.

And with those words, she was gone. A whorl of wind span fallen pluquat leaves in the hollow space that she had been occupying. Several seconds later, and oh so softly, the world shivered.

“Goodbye, Your Majesty,” whispered Alexos. “May the Emperor light your path.”

He turned back toward Sheka and found himself enveloped by a pair of arms and a pair of scented, delightful lips. The latter were swiftly pressed against his own, and as he gripper her in his own hug, he reciprocated the attentions.

Eventually they broke their kisses off and sat on the grass, her inside the circle of his arms and her shoulder pushing into his side with a comfortable pressure. Alexos would have preferred to sit on the lip of the Font, but its aura remained sickening and nausea-inducing. That mag-lev of thought was swiftly and effectively defused.

Alexos glanced up as the light around him shifted, and he realized that they were sitting beneath the pluquat tree where it seemed like, so long ago, everything had begun. Where, at least, where everything had changed—once for the worse and once, indisputably, for the better.

He mentioned as much to Sheka, who laughed, and expressed her gratitude for his devotion with more hungry kisses. He indulged her, but eventually broke away again. Something was grating faintly against his nerves.

“What is it, Montra?” pouted Sheka.

“I don't know,” he said, casting his gaze slowly across their surroundings.

The Herald's corpse was laying face down beside its puddle, so was not the thing that had alerted him. He checked to make sure that his glit-blade and bolt pistol lay close to hand where he had discarded them, in case they became necessary for whatever reason, and looked out across the Grove and into the haze beyond.

The world was fading, dissolving, disappearing. The distances had bleached away into white nothingness, and were steadily crumbling into fractal infinities. The pluquat trees at the Font's edge had become pale, faint things; pastel imaginings of what a tree might be, rather than the lush, vibrant things that they had been mere hours before. The faint, glimmering sun, now several hand-heights above the horizon, seemed to be nothing more than the reflection of light off a wobbling coin. The world shivered faintly, again.

“It's not you, certainly,” he continued, shifting his gaze back down to make welcome eye contact.

“I should hope not,” she said archly, tilting her head down slightly, and staring up at him from beneath her elegant brows.

“It's something else that is-” he said, then broke off as an urgent consideration occurred to him. “Sheka, when you get back into the real world, will you just be...bound back up again? In you mind, I mean. I don't think that I could—there's no way I could live like that, again.”

“Shush, Montra,” breathed Sheka sympathetically. She snuggled her head in closer to his shoulder, tilting the angle at which her eyes met his even more. “You don't have to be afraid on that count. The mental barriers were already fraying when we came here, and all this has left me entirely more ready, more prepared, than before.

“My mind's self-imposed barriers won't be able to hold me from you any longer, of that I assure you. You saw how I had already begun to resurface over the days before we came here. This is the one thing that we can thank the Herald's involvement for, I think. An unintended byproduct.”

“I'd rather not thank him for anything,” growled Alexos, hugging her tight to take the sting out of the rebuke.. “It was you and your love that had been making those effects.”

She laughed again, obligingly, but remained clearly unconvinced. He, however, didn't dare believe that it was the fault of the Herald that Sheka was returned to him and would remain with him. Even if it appeared as an unplanned accident, no such thing could be for certain when lain against the lying, scheming, prescient followers of Tzeentch. The hidden, potential consequences of her awakening, of her newly opened vulnerabilities...he could not bear to give such things and what they would entail consideration.

Right now he and she would be at peace, come whatever may.

As if to directly contradict him, Sheka bit his ear. He laughed and pulled away, wincing at how sharp her teeth were. She bared them up at him playfully, and he recoiled in mock horror.

A hiss cut over their play. An ancient, cracked voice brought them back to the present locale, accompanied by a wash of sickness which swept over them both. Alexos hiccuped bile.

_“I...”_ came the distinct word, drifting menacingly.

Sheka glanced up at Alexos, shock written on her features, and they both turned back to where the Herald's body had lain. The skeleton no longer rested beside the puddle, but had apparently vanished.

_“Will...Not...”_ continued the voice. It resembled the snapping creak, the hissing shuffle of ancient leather. It was, however, swiftly clotting and congealing with the tones of flesh.

The two lovers scrambled to their feet, and Alexos saw the staggering corpse, which had moved so as to be hidden by the tree's trunk. With rippling, fluid motion, his muscles and skin licked back up along his jerking length, clothing him in substance once again.

_“Be...Undone!”_ finished the gnashing, whistling jaws in a shriek. The naked Herald was entirely reformed, now, except for his bare, unfleshed skull. Patchy portions of of the bones of his face and the dome of his head glimmered like gold. His tongue snaked back to its position between the now-lipless, ivory jaws, and his hollow eye sockets burned with illimitable hatred.

As the Herald lurched toward them, he also shuddered convulsively and soon bent over, vomiting a second writhing, squirming ball of darkness. A second Sin. That would explain his return: he had, when originally slain, voided himself of only one of the three Sins that he had consumed. It had apparently cost him his second to claw his way back into the realm itself.

The Herald had been greatly weakened by the Queen's banishment, that much was clear. It was time to address him for once and for all. Alexos took up his weapons from where they were lying and straightened. 

“Sheka,” he said, disgust writ heavily in his voice, “Let's send this crumbling thing back to the hell in which it belongs.”

“Certainly, my love,” his ladylove—his wife in all but ceremony—replied. A hard edge had crept into her voice that Alexos hadn't heard before: the tempering of her beautiful innocence with all her newly granted memories. It was music to Alexos's ears. “Let's.”

+


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## waltzmelancholy_07

Mossy, what was that?... Sheka biting Montra's ears and him recoiling in horror when he saw her teeth?... And the strange quality in her voice?....

Men, I sense another twist... And I also sense that the ending might not be a happy one...

Great chapter men!...

Cheers!...


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## Chaosrider

you enjoy this don't you mossy? torturing us like this!!!!


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## Mossy Toes

...I'd say no, but I really do. :mrgreen:


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## Chaosrider

heh, if i could, i'd do the same.


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## Mossy Toes

Well, here you go. The last of it, apart from the postlude.

+++

The Herald howled like a daemon and charged. Alexos and Sheka split, him firing bolts and her concussive thunderclaps. Both of these attacks were turned away by the palms of the Herald's hands, which batted them out of the air with unnatural, fiendish speed as he closed on them. His nails had grown to be long, talon-like things.

Alexos lashed out with his glit-blade as the Herald drew near enough, but the heretic caught the blade in his hand and yanked. Alexos jumped back and let go to avoid a swing by the Herald's other hand, and his nails snicked through the air right in front of Alexos's face. The sword was sent clattering away across the clearing to rest at the Font's base.

The Herald was hit square in the back by one of Sheka's attacks and his frame rattled. Flesh rippled, and the Herald staggered.

Alexos stepped to the side, blasting away with his bolt pistol. The bolts carved massive chunks out of the heretic's hide, dug craters inches across. A hand put up in a warding gesture was entirely blown away, leaving a jagged, bloody stump of bone remaining.

The pistol clicked empty—the Queen being no longer present to regenerate its supply of ammunition, it was rendered worthless. Alexos threw it into the Herald's face as more of Sheka's attacks slammed into him and sprinted away for his blade again.

He picked it up and spun, ready to fight the Herald off if he had been closely followed, by the heretic had barely moved from his last position. He was standing still, his head twitching, and his hand and stump flying in warding gestures around him, almost with a life of their own. A shield had been erected that Sheka was having trouble breaking. Behind it, the Herald's wounds were rapidly shrinking and closing. Gaping pits blown in his ribcage closed, and patches of exposed muscle lain bare by Sheka's attacks were being covered, once again, by skin. Only the hand did not make a full recovery, instead returning as a fused lump of flesh and shards of bone.

The Herald shrieked and surged toward Sheka. Alexos ran to join her, but the Herald got to her first. She grabbed the air immediately between them, though, and dumped the Herald to the side with a sidestep and a jerking, throwing motion. The heretic was sent tumbling.

Alexos descended upon him, running him through once, twice. A flailing arm swept the commissar's legs out from under him and he rolled away. The Herald loomed over him, bleeding and battered.

Again, Sheka came to Alexos's rescue. The Herald was blown clear off his feet in a wash of heat and sent flying a handful of meters distant. Alexos hauled himself back to his feet, growling in contempt.

The Herald swayed where he was standing and crumpled to his knees, retching and spitting. Gobbets of blood, bile, and phlegm were mixed in with the darkness as it splattered out onto the ground in bursts. The remnants of Pride, the Sin that had seeped far deeper into the core of the Herald’s being than any of the others, had lost its equilibrium too, now, and was being forcibly purged from his body.

Sheka continued to flense and burn away his flesh as he huddled there, incapacitated by his weakness, and Alexos’s heart leapt with exaltation. They could do this! The bastard was falling apart at the seams!

Soon enough, however, the Herald rose from Sheka’s barrage of psychic energies. He grinned at them, having discarded all pretense of defense in the favor of working some newer, greater cantrip.

Alexos waded in close, hacking his sword across the Herald’s gut to lay bare and let slither out his intestines. He drew back and swung again, cleaving deeply into the Herald’s throat, then struck a third time, severing his uninjured arm at the elbow.

The commissar finished by ramming forward with a blow that buried the sword up to its hilt in the Herald’s open chest cavity. Most of the length of the blade protruded from the other side of his body, glistening, red, and wet.

The Herald, still standing but undeniably swaying in place, laughed. It came out as nothing more than a wet gurgle and was accompanied by a dribble of blood from his bisected trachea, but the mocking tone stretched beyond the audible. It echoed derisively through Alexos’s mind, infuriating him.

A nimbus of fiery energy began to play around the mangled heretic. Alexos wrenched the slippery hilt of the glit-blade from the Herald’s innards and, unopposed, slammed it into his opponent’s empty eye socket a half meter deep. The blade broke through his skull with an audible crack.

The Herald laughed harder and jerked off the ground, rising several man-heights into the air. The sword, lodged as it was in the Herald’s skull, was yanked from Alexos’s grasp. Sheka howled a curse which blasted away half of the Herald’s ribcage, but the laughter only intensified even more powerfully.

Then he swooped.

Fast as a bolt of lightning, irrevocably as an angel falling from the Emperor’s Grace, he swept downward. A burning, comet-like tail flared through the air behind him, and every inch of his passage was thereafter burned indelibly into Alexos’s mind. The Herald smashed into Sheka like a cyclonic torpedo.

Alexos heard her bones shatter and crackle; saw her back arch and her ribcage and spine distort. She was lifted, too, into the air by the power of the blow, pressed obscenely close to that foulest of traitors. Her head lolled lifelessly, still unspeakably beautiful.

With a howl of triumph, the Herald fell into pieces. A black wind wrapped around him, tearing him apart, bearing him away. As he vanished, he threw Sheka to the ground like a battered doll; a broken plaything. 

+

The world shivered as Alexos reached her side. She was already dead.

"You can't die in the Dream," he said distantly, and fell to his knees beside her. He pulled her broken frame clumsily onto his lap. There was no way that Sheka had been weakened to the point where she could not reincarnate, like the Courtiers and Lost Souls who had been unable to return, was there?

_Unless the rules change,_ whispered a treacherous recollection in the Herald's voice. And hadn't they? Hadn't the Font been tainted, the Sins been destroyed?

"You can't die in the Dream," he prayed fervently, willing Sheka's body to disappear and clamber, once again, from the waters of the Southern Font. Uselessly.

No whispered last words and oaths of eternal love. The last thing he had said to her, in life, was to order her to attack the Herald. And now...she was just a still and silent corpse.

_So long as the Queen remembers us, we cannot die. So unless she leaves us..._

And the Queen was gone. She was gone. Throne, oh Throne of Terra, Sheka was gone.

"You can't die in the Dream," he whispered in desperate, pathetic denial. He rocked back and forth, glassy-eyed, as this world—as his entire world—fell to pieces around him.

Shiver.

And everything came undone.

+++


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## shaantitus

I will have to re-iterate comments made by the others............ Want more, this is great.
More rep for mossy


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## Mossy Toes

I shall relent and have mercy. Here is the postlude, to wrap everything up.

+++

*Postlude*

+++

The last of the heretics died shrieking, squeezed between the deathtrap of the Guard-held stairs and the hammer of the Inquisitorial stormtroopers behind them. Wielding hellguns and clad in black carapace, Vutch's saviors strode relentlessly forward, putting blasts into those few, moaning heretics who had survived.

They fanned out at the second-floor landing, branching off with clipped, exact precision in fire teams of four to flush out the last of the enemies hiding within the Infirmarium. One cluster of the agents of the Inquisition, however, ascended the stairs to where the exhausted defenders waited.

They were led by a giant of a man, one who trod up the deep ramp of corpses with callous disregard. His head was shaved bald and his features were cold and impassive; with his build and his immobile features, he could easily be likened to a grox. His unlined face hinted at youth, but his eyes, even as they looked up as Major Vutch, looked dead and uncaring.

He was a man quite familiar to her.

"Temils," she said, barely managing to keep her voice straight. Anger and other emotions throttled each other in her gorge. He showed no surprise at her presence.

"The commissar," he replied as he reached the third floor, with painful directness. His manner stated without a doubt that, on this day, that chapter of her life was to remain closed. "Where is he?"

"Seven years," she said, casting aside his brutal, obvious disregard. "Seven Throne-damned years with no word from you, Temils. You're my _khelking_ twin!"

"Yes," said Temils levelly, " Major, I am. And it would have been better had we never again met. Take me to wherever you are keeping the commissar."

She did not reply—how could she respond in the face of such a declaration? Instead, she turned away, deeper into the third floor.

"This way," she said bitterly.

+

A stimm, a needle, pricking his arm with a spreading, liquid fire that dragged him back to his body and brought him from his comfortable numbness. Alexos opened his eyes and took deep, shuddering breaths as the Infirmarium swam back into focus around him.

"Sheka," he gasped eventually; the first word that he spoke. Major Vutch, one of the onlookers, flinched. Her expression told him everything that he needed to know.

Despair crushed down on him like a ten ton weight, and he cast about frantically, looking for his wife. She was resting, still and pale, on the bed beside him. He hauled himself onto his side toward her, the sudden motion taking him off the bed and onto the floor. The dizzying effort caused him to retch, and he spewed up a small splatter of bile before succumbing to dry-heaves. He dragged himself across the gap between the beds to her body and hauled himself up. He reached out with a trembling hand and caressed the curve of her jaw, her face, oh so gently.

"No," he whispered, "no, no no nonono." The denials devolved into inarticulate moan: the cry of a wounded beast.

He cast his gaze dazedly around the room. There was the Major, and beside her, a large, heavily-muscled man whose rich clothing and carapace armor bore the insignia of the Inquisition. The floor was wet, soaked with the aqueous solution from the stasis-cells. Shards of glittering glass were scattered across the floor as well: all the beauty and promise of the Realm of the Queen, shattered into a thousand pieces and now nothing but sharp, cutting edges that delved into Alexos's core.

The Queen herself was in appearance, psy-shackled and being led away, struggling, by stormtroopers. Her soaked hospital shift clung to her body, and her hair was bedraggled and wet. Her wild gaze fell on Alexos's bleary, shell-shocked face.

"Alexos!" she screamed desperately, "I am your Queen! Save me!"

He sat, dumb and still, his fingers still against Sheka's soft, cooling cheek.

Another figure, hooded, gagged, and even more tightly bound, was being dragged away, struggling ferociously. _Now do you see the fate of those who meddle in things greater than them?_ The phrase of memory rang in his mind in a numb, ironic tone. The words of the Herald, turned back against him.

"Commissar Alexos," said the Inquisitorial agent, snapping manacles to Alexos's wrists with swift, powerful motions. "I am Interrogator Temils Vutch. Come. We have many questions for you."

Major Kay Vutch lowered her eyes as Montra Alexos was led away by the Inquisition.




+++

-fin-

+++


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## Zwan

Just to let you know, I am still reading this.


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## waltzmelancholy_07

Sigh... Sad Ending.... Just as I predicted...

Poor Alexos... 

Nice ending mate... 

Cheers!


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## Chaosrider

i want to learn more about the vutch family


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## Mossy Toes

The only story really written about them is another of mine which you may or may not have read: Spyderweb. Of course, it's only about as long as a single solid chapter of _Plaything_, but...

More stories are planned, but I'm afraid that you're going to have to wait until after the BL Open Submissions Window to see more of them. After all, I'd rather see them published than just posted up!

In the likelihood that my story ideas are turned down, I'll be sure to post them up here. I have a whole novel's-worth of tales (hint hint) over the course of Temils's elevation to the rank of Inquisitor, with Kay featuring pretty heavily too, as well as a number of golden-masked psykers; drinking buddies of the Herald, you might say, as well as their shift manager.


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## Chaosrider

ooooo, me want to read heheh


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## welshboy600

Great story mate, I really enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.


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## Mossy Toes

Thanks for investing the time it takes to read this whole whopping thing! I'm glad that you enjoyed it.


----------

