Lusha wondered vaguely where it led.
His team cast long shadows across the lip of the abyss, the sinking sun painting the sky a piebald red. Like splattered blood.
“El’Lusha...” Vre’Tong’ata commed. “I’ve found something.”
The shas’vre’s suit drifted forwards, mandible fingers extended and holding something small. “It was lying on the floor,” he explained.
El’Lusha mentally commanded his own digits to unfold from their protective sheaths and watched with interest as Tong’ata tipped two fragments of display wafer into his grip.
Placed side by side, it was just possible to make out the cracked message.
“Oh,” he whispered, beginning to understand. “Oh, Kais...”
“What is it, Shas’el?”
He looked back round at the pit, swollen darkness gathering around it like anti-light. “It is a reason, Shas’vre.”
A long range comm warning chimed peacefully, interrupting his thoughts.
“Shas’el? This is the Or’es Tash’var.”
“Ui’Gorty’l?”
“Yes. Shas’el, something’s happened. Whatever was blocking Kais’s signal has vanished. We think it was a gue’la communicator, holding open a channel with the shas’la.”
“And now it’s gone? Can you raise him?”
“Not yet, Shas’el. There’s a lot of interference.”
Lusha took a breath, fighting the adrenaline. “Kor’ui,” he said, keeping his tones measured and calm. “Listen very carefully. Find Fio’el Boran. Tell him to boost the signal. Tell him I need to be able to speak to Shas’la Kais.”
VIII
19.12 HRS (SYS. LOCAL — DOLUMAR IV, Ultima Seg. #4356/E)
And Meyloch Severus, Governor-Regent of Dolumar IV, overseer of Colony 4356/E, ranking adept of the Administratum and appointed forgemaster of Mechanicus Industrium Dol.322, was pushed unceremoniously into a tiny corner of his own brain.
Perhaps, as the daemon consciousness that had hissed and murmured to him for twenty-one years finally grew bored of whispers and snatched up his body like a puppetmaster, Severus realised all too late that he’d been betrayed.
Powers untold. Riches without number. Eternal life. Daemonhood. All these things and more he’d been promised. Instead he was brushed aside and used.
Tarkh’ax’s freedom was not yet complete, but, growing impatient, the daemonlord chose to conduct the last moments of the ritual that would release him himself, rather than whispering unsubtle instructions into some foppish idiot’s subconscious. He’d grown strong enough, now, to control his disciple’s body — even from within the vestiges of his warp cage.
It was but the tiniest glimmer of the power he’d wield when the walls came crashing down and he imposed himself into the physicality of a host body.
A strong host body.
He glared through Severus’s eyes at the tau ethereal and dismissed the grey figure as a possibility. The host would need to be corruptible. Tainted.
Attempting to infiltrate Ko’vash’s mind had been like waves breaking against a cliff. It would take centuries to wear him down. Ironic, then, that it would take just moments to wipe him away utterly. He raised the knife for a killing blow.
Severus had captured the admiral and ethereal with good intentions, Tarkh’ax supposed. Two high-ranking officials, corrupted and returned to their people, would be a valuable resource indeed. But the admiral had broken like dry wood and the ethereal was a steel fortress. Two extremes. Both useless.
The knife caught the light hungrily.
A doorway opened behind him with a wet gurgle. He grinned.
“Ahh...” he groaned happily. “Cometh the man.”
He turned in his place, uncomfortable with the ungainly movements of the governor’s body, opting instead to levitate, eyes glowing.
It wasn’t who he expected.
Kais stepped into the vast chamber and choked. He felt like thick cords were wrapping around his chest and mind — constricting his breath and torturing his thoughts. His impressions of the pit floor came at him in a jumble, twisted by chaotic influence. He felt himself stagger.
Sludge.
Sunlight, weak and dying, filtering down from above.
Blood.
Walls of damp obsidian, spine-encrusted and laced with runes and sigils that flexed and coiled with a life of their own.
Shadows.
Four sub-chambers, carved gargoyle gods glaring from stonehewn walls above writhing altars.
Smoke.
The pillar of light; an energyspike that rippled up from a star at the base of the pit into the dizzying vortex heights above.
Evil.
And the gue’la governor. Walking on the air, eyes and mouth and ears burning with living fire, staring down at him with a twisted leer. The Mont’au devil overcame Kais utterly and said: We’re home.
“It’s you...” the human hissed, its voice a medley of screams and echoes and cobwebs, nonetheless contriving to sound annoyed. “I was expecting the Space Marine... You were always my... contingency plan...”
Kais levelled his gun, not listening. He gritted his teeth and dragged his hand onto the trigger, curled his finger around the familiar shape and—
And froze.
“You can’t, little tau,” the thing said, its laugh a dry rasp. “You’ve been prepared.”
“What?”
“You think that little whisper in your head is yourself? Your... mm... what did you call it? Your Mont’au. Your rage. Heh heh heh...”
“What do y... I don’t...”
“You’ve strayed away from your path, little tau. And I’ve led you.”
Kais sank to his knees, bile rising in his belly. It was too much.
“I sensed you this morning, when you set down on this world. I’ve had millennia to prepare, little tau. Millennia of oozing myself into the minds of mortals. I’ve whispered and hissed into more brains than I can remember, through the years. I tasted your species this morning, like a fine wine, and found it wanting...”
“Nnn...”
“So disappointing, I thought. An incorruptible race. No psychic powers. No dark desires or secret horrors... Hmm... On that count, at least, I was wrong. You merely keep them well hidden...
But you... alone among thousands. I could taste you! Such bitterness! Such shame!
You’re strong, there’s no doubt about it. You’re skilled at your craft. You cut a bloody swathe to me like a knife through the warp, but not because you could...
Because I made you want to...
And now you seriously think you can cast off my gift and kill me? Little tau, you have a lot to learn.”
Kais retched on air, feeling his muscles going limp. “G-get... Get out of my head...”
“You and the Space Marine. My two choices. I called you to my side and you came, like faithful cubs. I’ve played you like puppets, little tau. And now I’m out of time, and the Space Marine is late, and you will have to do.
“You wouldn’t begrudge me a little blood before you die, would you? I must drink of the host — a corrupted host — before assuming its flesh. That’s how it works, little thing. It would be such a pity to damage you any more than necessary...”
The body drifted forwards, coruscating energies ebbing from its wide eyes and leering mouth, a blaze of skin and fire. In its hand the dagger was a slash of light. Kais couldn’t even breath, frozen solid by the very fury and rage that had sustained him. Betrayed by his own blood. Deceived by his own mind.