Lord of the Night

Sweat beads pricked at her forehead.

Off to one side, as if in another world, a stumbling vindictor shoved her from his path, the blow of his elbow barely puncturing the psychic realm she was trying to cross. Her body collapsed to the floor, unpiloted, but she paid it no heed: lashing, striking, ripping out with immaterial fists at the gate lever again and again.

Nothing happened.

And then something cried out in the dark, and on the crest of a premonition she swivelled her head up into the inky abyss and saw it, the Night Lord, dropping its shoulders, lifting its grasping boots like an eagle's claws, and swooping.

It had seen her.

It was coming for her.

Directly.

Eyes blazing.

Filling her world.

Shrieking like a dying child.

She was going to die.

And then there was the energy she deeded, there was the adrenaline and fear and mingled rage, and there was the crackling fist of her psychic self, taking form, locking around the lever like a snapping maw, pulling with all its strength. Pulling so hard she felt her eyes fill with blood. Pulling so hard her ears popped and her heart roared in protest. Pulling so hard she thought her bones would shatter. She thought her veins would explode.

The lever turned.

The doors awoke like slumbering gods, shedding the layer of dust and ice scrawled across their i

The vindictors paused mid-riot. Maul blows went undelivered. Fingers eased from triggers. Doused in feeble luminosity, able at last to settle their frayed nerves and seek a modicum of calmness, the Preafect chaos ground to a slow, uncomfortable halt.

And above Mita's exhausted body, eyes blazing in the half-light, the Night Lord changed direction with seconds to spare, a bone-jarring jink from the vertical to the horizontal, the robe-tails of the man it had captured fluttering behind it. It whooped once — as if in farewell — and was swallowed by the ice-spume of the gates, splitting the snowy night with claws outstretched.

There were bodies everywhere. Most were dead of shotgun wounds.

And Mita Ashyn, who had spared the lives of those who remained, whose mind had been all but wiped away by the demands of the animus motus, sagged to the floor and felt as if she'd died. She considered whispering a prayer of thanks to the Emperor. It was the sort of thing she'd be expected to do.

But then... the Emperor hadn't saved her. She'd saved herself.

Just like always.

A flash of familiarity circulated through her, and she recalled the reflective shape of the Night Lord's psyche. Such doubt, such solitude. He had nothing but his principles to sustain him, nothing but himself to rely upon. Just like her.

A young Preafect approached, carefully crouching beside each body that littered the floor, checking for injuries, calling out for medics wherever he found life. He reached Mita's huddled form and squatted on his haunches, squinting at the rag-coated bundle that his eyes could scarcely make out.

'You okay? You injured?' he said, voice soft, with youth.

'I c-could use some help standing,' Mita stammered, all her energy spent.

The man backed away abruptly as if stung, recognising her face. Orodai had hardly been recalcitrant when it came to letting his men know whose testimony had lead them on this mission.

The Preafect continued his way along the heap of injured and dead as if she didn't exist, and it was only on the very cusp of her hearing that she heard him spit into the shadows, whispering beneath his breath.

'Witch.'

It was the last straw.

I just saved your life, you contemptible little shit.

Squatting on the floor of the Macharius Gateroom, bleeding from her ears and her nose, watching the crowds thin and the medics come and go, Mita Ashyn had something of a crisis of faith.

She sat for a long time and considered her place within events. In the main, the uncertainties that troubled her — exacerbated, no doubt, by exhaustion — revolved around a single query:

Why?

Why did she do it? Why had she struggled so hard, since those long-forgotten days when the blackships stole her from her family, to serve this bloated Imperium? Why had she toiled on behalf of these ignorant bastards, these bigoted fools who feared her and hated her and called her an abomination? Why had she bled and cried, why had she poured effort and energy into protecting the glory of an empire that... that had no place for her?

Had she been used? Had she been enslaved by those who sought only her destruction — a tame little witch that they could wield like a weapon until she ceased to be needed, and then snuff her out?

Why had she never felt these uncertainties before?

That, at least, was a question she could answer:

Because you've never found a partisan before.

Because you've never tasted such bitterness in another creature's soul, and it makes you question your own.

Because the Night Lord feels exactly the same.

She tried to shut out the whispers, the cruel inklings that spoke with her own voice, that stoked the fires of her paranoia, but they would not be silenced. They spread to overwhelm her, and in a panic she turned to the one glowing fragment of her soul which they could not penetrate: her faith.

In its glow, all her doubts were excised. By its light the whispering voices were silenced.

Had she been used? Had she been cruelly manipulated?

No, of course not. She fought not in the name of these people, but in the name of the Emperor! He did not hate her. Was it not through him that her powers were granted? Was it not through him that the future could be navigated, imparted through his tarot and the furor arcanum like seeds of prophecy?

He did not despise her. He would not use her so.

And yes, his agents were a teeming mass, contradictory and contemptible. Let them hate her, if they must. Let them pursue their own agendas, let them lock their horns together and schism like splintering ice. Let the Inquisition cast her out, let Orodai's black-suited worms despise her, let the whole of the universe rail against her if they must.

The Emperor loved her. She was certain.

Mollified, she rose to her feet. The vindictors had erected several small illuminator-tripods to allow the medics to work, and by their pale light she glanced around the room, sickened by the carnage. She wondered vaguely what to do next. Certainly her usefulness as a combatant had expired — she could barely stand, let alone fight — and at any rate the Night Lord was long gone. There would be no hope of catching it now.

Should she report, then, to Orodai? No doubt he would blame her for this calamity, and the curses of hateful men was something she could happily do without. No, she'd stay clear of Orodai, for now. He had more than enough to be getting along with.

Besides, there was one final strand to this vast, tangled investigation that remained un-plucked. One remaining clue to be pursued.

The package. That was why the Night Lord had come here in the first place. That was why he had entered the hive. That was why he had faced the Glacier Rats, captured Slake, ventured here to this blood-splattered room. All to retrieve the package that had been stolen from him.