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He nodded as if unsurprised. 'Yes. Yes, they've done it before. Though not to my mind.'
Mita frowned. 'Oh?'
A distant look stole the Night Lord's gaze. 'At the start,' he said. 'The assassin killed my master. She took the prize, s-so I followed. You see? I took it back from her, but the eldar came.'
'The prize? You mean the Corona Nox?'
'The Corona, yes... Yes, they tried to steal it, but I prevailed. I would not let them have it, witch, you understand? So they tricked me. They trapped me. My ship. All of us, deep in the warp.'
'What is the Corona Nox?' Mita asked, giving voice to the question that had tormented her so long.
For the first time since she entered this weird realm, his face creased in a frown, eyes dipping to meet hers. He looked as if her ignorance wounded him, deep within. 'You don't know?'
She shrugged. 'It... it looked like a crown!'
'Ha! Just a crown?' He shook his head, black eyes flashing. 'No, little witch, it's more than that. Fashioned by the Night Haunter himself, forged from the adamantium core of Nostramo, his birthworld. He wore it through all his life, and when he would have screamed with insanity and terror, it calmed him. When he would have listened to the whispers of the warp, it deafened him. When he burned with vengeance for the injuries his father wrought upon him, then it tasted his anger and stored it away. It's all that remains of my master, witch. Imbued with his divine essence, sealed with a perfect bloodstone. It is no mere crown. It is the captaincy of the Night Lords. He bequeathed it to me on the day he was murdered!'
Understanding came to Mita piece by piece, and with it came disbelief.
'But... but that's... Konrad Curze was killed mille
His frown deepened. 'Ten mille
And she knew as soon as she heard it that he spoke the truth. She sagged to her knees, astonished, overwhelmed by the ancientness of the creature before her.
He had been hating for aeons.
She knew she ought to destroy him, this atavistic relic of the Great Heresy. He was, after all, vulnerable before her. Naked, defenceless. Here, in this realm of psychic material, trapped within his own brain as if sealed inside-out, here she could crush him like a worm. In her mind's eye she imagined a weapon forming within her hand, and sure enough a cold weight sagged into existence, gathering solidity.
But his eyes...
So lonely. So wounded.
'Who are you?' he said, derailing her thoughts. 'Who do you serve?'
She swallowed and hid the gun behind her back, diverting her dangerous thoughts towards his question, relieved at the distraction. 'I am Mita Ashyn. Interrogator of the Divine Emperor's Holy Inquisition.'
'You serve this... this Kaustus? The one who has stolen my inheritance?'
'Yes. No... I did. Once. Not any more.'
'He rejected you, yes? Cast you aside.'
'It's not that simple, I—'
'It's always that simple.' He looked away. 'For the likes of us, at least.'
'What do you mean?'
'You know what I mean, little witch. Little mutant. Little abomination.'
She shook her head, forcing herself to calm, clearing her mind. 'You won't anger me, traitor,' she said.
The Night Lord tried to shrug, chains tightening across shoulders and arms, and returned his eyes to her face. 'I don't seek your anger,' he said, voice calm. 'Only your understanding. I ask you again: who do you serve?'
'I told you. I serve the Imperium.'
'But they hate you.'
'The Emperor does not! Ave Imperator! The Emperor loves all who give him praise!'
'Ha. You believe that, do you?'
The words formed in her head as if automatic: of course she believed it! Of course the Emperor loved her! And yet even in the confines of her mind, unspoken aloud, such dogma sounded empty, thoughtless, the recitals of a simpleton who knew no better.
Frustrated, angered by her i
'I don't have to listen to you, traitor,' she said.
The quaver in her voice was impossible to conceal.
And oh, oh warpspit and piss, she did need to listen to it. She did need to hear what the beast had to say.
Why? Why did she feel so obliged?
A self-appointed test of her faith, perhaps?
Or perhaps just the comfort of knowing she was not alone in feeling such doubts...
The crucified beast gave no sign of fear at the gun's wavering attention.
'So,' he nodded, brows arching, 'you have the love of one being, out of countless billions? And that is enough?'
'More than enough! You'd understand if you hadn't turned from His light.'
He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen features. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'
'No, but—'
'No. They are intertwined. One billion billion souls despise you. A single soul — so you say — loves you. You don't think this a bitter ratio?'
'Without the Emperor's love there is nothing. Vacuus Imperator diligo illic est nusquam.'
She was reduced to parroting lessons of her youth, and the Night Lord's slow smile told her that he knew it.
'I used to think the same,' he said, as if conceding a generous point. Then: 'Once.'
She racked the gun meaningfully, trying to find a reserve of conviction in her voice.
'Spare me your attempts at corruption. My faith is stronger than steel!'
He leaned down from his tall perch, eyes brimming with earnest curiosity. 'Why do you fight me,' he asked, 'when we are the same?'
'I'm nothing like you!'
A petulant rage gripped her then, the last vestiges of her tattered pride spreading wings of outrage at the very suggestion of her likeness to that... that devil... and before she could stop herself she'd squeezed the trigger of the apparated weapon.
The shot struck the crucified figure in his side, tearing a strange slash of flesh clear, to boil off into the sky, dissolving as it went, and in this curious i
He gave no sign of pain.
'Of course you are,' he hissed, and any trace of shock was gone now, any sense of childish bewilderment was lost. Now his eyes glimmered with guile. 'You are the unclean filth that serves in His name. You are the hated one. They fear you, and they loathe you, but still they use you...'