Lord of the Night

At that moment, as the roadway grew slick with blood, as the screams of dying women and children saturated Mita's dreaming mind, her psychic senses struck upon a dark suspicion. A taint, almost, an infinitesimal cancer, gnawing at the edge of her perception.

He's here...

She drew back from the spectacle, noting that already a column of vindictors rushed to reinforce their beleaguered fellows, and cast her eye further outwards. This was a dangerous moment. Where before she had raged against the dream now she must immerse herself within it, sinking into its folds, trawling its shadows for her target. As she did so with a shudder the colours around her intensified, the edges of buildings and cables hardened—

And in the warp, a hair's breadth from reality itself, the unctuous wisp of light that was Mita's astral form brightened, like a flare.

At the gate the crowd broke its ranks and swarmed through the checkpoints. Shrieking and fleeing across the concrete beyond, cloaks flapping, the starport descended piece by bloody piece into anarchy. Hundreds had died already, and as Mita shifted her psychic self towards the dark blemish she sought, leaving behind the crackle of gunfire and the shouts of the wounded, she knew that hundreds more would join them.

And she knew, now, that it was all a waste.

The attack was merely a diversion.

She found it — him — nearby, drawn to his spectral shadow like a shark to blood.

He had crawled from the depths of the undercity from a fissure at the hive's base, where industrial smog belched upwards in long curtains, and had scaled the plated walls of the lower tiers claw by claw, rising towards the starport's gaping launchfields not from within, but without. Where normally a squad of vindictors could be found, thermal cloaks flapping in the wind, gazing out in ceaseless vigil for just such an incursion, now the beast's route was clear, now the sentries had rushed off to reinforce elsewhere, now his shadow fell across nothing but empty concrete and silent, unattended shuttles.

The Night Lord's entrance to the starport went utterly u

She swept around him with the dreamscape fracturing at her heel, all her tenuous energies gobbled by his presence. Where before she had felt the taint about him like a faint promise, now it was a wound in reality itself, swarming around him and sucking at her mind. He had opened himself to Chaos, she could see, and in consequence there was some strange quality to him in this esoteric reality, some otherness that here, in this place of uncertain physicality and warp-borne visions, burned around him like a corona. She felt as though she swam a viscous ocean, and to even approach him took every shred of her effort. He existed at the heart of a great darkness, a blemish in the warp, and she struggled to see him through the fog of his soul. Something was happening to his boundary, some trick of what passed for light. Some sense of motion.

Of swarming...

And the voices... Cluttering, whispering, giggling tones, on the cusp of hearing. Were they real?

The Raptor dragged behind him a jaegar squad of humans, coated warriors who wasted little effort in attempting to speed his climb, content to allow their lord to take their weight. One by one they joined him at the edge of the platform, casting off ropes and buckles, unlimbering from cases upon their backs long tubes, hollow and undecorated, like the blowpipes of some jungle race.

The voices reached a keening pitch in Mita's mind and the air — the very fabric of this fantasy place — began to boil around the Chaos Marine's form, as if his mere presence were anathema to reality.

He paused. He glanced around himself as if listening to something that only he could hear, and his companions exchanged nervous glances.

'She is here,' he said.

'M-my lord?'

The witch. She is here. She is watching!

Mita's panic surged. How could he know?

In fear and reflex she tried to kick herself free of the dream, but it was too late, she had immersed herself too deeply, the drug continued to grip her blood, and she could not escape into the waking world.

The Night Lord's companions had taken up combat stances, knives and hatchets brandished.

'Where, my lord?' one hissed, voice little more than a whisper. 'What should we do?'

'Fear not,' the monster said, and its voice betrayed its amusement. 'We each have our guardian spirits. It is not wise to eavesdrop on one such as I. As the bitch will discover.'

And then the distortions that boiled around his outline seemed to pulse, and the fabric of the dreamscape ripped, and there, there, like splinters of shadow hanging in the sky, the chittering somethings of the warp were released.

They clamoured around her. They pressed in, trying to fasten leech-like mouths to her screaming soul, slipping long claws into her mind.

And finally, as the sound of the Night Lord's laughter rushed in to fill her world, as the cost of scrying too deep unfolded its tentacles and teeth around her, the drugs that crippled her body ran their course and she awoke, mercifully, gratefully, with a scream.

She was in her cell, she saw immediately. Whatever had happened to her, whoever had dragged her, she'd been returned to her quarters without so much as a braise. Given that Kaustus was the only one present when unconsciousness had claimed her, it was an uncomfortable possibility that presented itself. Had he done this to her?

But why? Why had he called her to the governor's gallery? Why had he instructed her through those doors? And why, Emperor's oath, why, would her own master incapacitate her just as she sensed the enemy's presence?

She pushed it from her mind. It was an enigma that would have to wait.

She was dressed and sprinting towards her master's suite within instants, and with every footfall she blotted out the horror of what had happened inside the dream. Her tutors at the scholastia would have been revolted by her foolishness, scrying so close and so unguarded to a creature of Chaos — little wonder she'd fallen prey to the predators of the warp! She should no more hunt sharks by painting herself in fresh blood than she should use her warpsight to spy upon agents of the ruinous powers, and as she berated herself Kaustus's unkind words came back to her with razor-like clarity:

'You lack experience. You are unqualified in the ways of Chaos.'

He'd been right. The bastard.

Still, she lived yet. She'd escaped — though barely. And now she had news for the inquisitor that could not wait.

'My lord!' she howled, bursting past the sentries at his doorway, 'I know where he is! I know where the trai—'

And stopped.

Kaustus was not in his chambers.

A semicircle of amused stares greeted her abrupt silence, the retinue taking its leisure en masse. Priests glanced up from mumbled prayers, scholars raised horned brows from ancient manuscripts, warriors paused in games of dice, and on every hooded face a demeaning smile played.

'Looks like someone finally woke up,' said one.

Mita blanched. 'I... What? What do you mean?'

'The inquisitor said you were taking a break.' A chuckle rolled across the room.

Indignity burst like a ripe boil in Mita's mind.

'I was drugged, warpspit and piss! What do you expect?'

'Yeah... He said you'd been suffering from paranoia, too.'

More titters circulated. Mita took a breath and rose above it.

'Where is he?' she demanded. 'I haven't time for this. It's important.'

'He isn't to be disturbed.'

'Tell me! I order you to tell me!'