Lord of the Night

'Sergeant, for the love of the Emperor, would you be quiet.'

He glared, helmet clenched between nervous fingers.

'It's come to a bad thing,' he grumbled, 'when a soldier's denied a prayer for his soul.'

'You feel the need to pray?' she scowled, curling a lip. 'You have twenty men with unfeasibly large weapons standing right behind you, sergeant. What's to be afraid of?'

At this his grizzled mouth twitched in a pale imitation of a smile. Even afflicted by terrors of his own, the prospect of highlighting her ignorance was too delicious for him to pass up.

'This here is the Steel Forest, girl,' he said, nodding out into the canopy of tangled pipes and pilot lights.

'You told me you didn't know any names.'

'And I don't — unless they happen to be the sorts of places it's best to avoid.' He turned towards the viewing slot, glaring out into the dark. 'This is where you'll find the Shadowkin. And they don't much like intruders.'

PART TWO KINGDOM OF FEAR

Perhaps you believe yourself blameless. Perhaps you have acted, as you claim, in the interests of your people. Perhaps, in that respect, your guilt is negligible.

But I tell you this: there is strife enough in this galaxy without the ambitions of those who would construct empires of their own. Selfless or not, there is room only for one Emperor in this Imperium!

Judgement of Madam Inquisitor Trais Spirrus at the trial of Grigor "The Prosperous", short-lived ruler of the Dactylis system.

Zso Sahaal

His mind drifted, detached.

He had not slept in four days, and whilst it was true that the artifices of his enhanced brain and body could maintain alertness almost indefinitely, already the nagging seeds of exhaustion twitched at the back of his mind, threatening his efficacy. In this strange place he had conducted himself with unparalleled caution, never once allowing his vigilance to slip.

This, finally, in the lair of his newfound servants, had changed. Riding a wave of his own authority, surrounded by those who would no more allow him harm than kill themselves, Sahaal at last — mercifully — took the opportunity to rest.

They were named the Shadowkin, and they worshipped him. The fools.

He slipped into the arms of half-sleep with an eagerness he had not expected, and drowned in meditation.

He had been uncertain, at first. Confronted by a horde of black-shrouded peasants, creeping from the shadows in the wake of Herniatown's purgation, he had nearly slaughtered them without thought, coasting on the fury of what Nikhae had told him.

The Corona was gone!

His prize was lost to him, and as he stumbled directionless from the killing fields of Herniatown, these Shadowkin had mistaken him for a warrior of the Emperor.

They had seen pictoslates, perhaps, or illuminations in ancient scriptures. The Emperor had created the Space Marines: that much they knew. He had fashioned their primarchs, modelled their Legions, dispatched them to crusade in his name. They knew little of the intricacies of Imperial history, but they could not question the benevolence of such angelic warriors. A Space Marine was beyond imperfection.

They had never heard of the Horus Heresy. Sahaal wasn't surprised. The churning propaganda machines of the Imperium could hardly countenance the popular exposure of its own flawed past.

In the haze of his trance, Sahaal mused upon revealing the truth to his new acolytes, then discounted the possibility... To learn that half the Emperor's angels had turned to the dark fires of Chaos: to these under-hive scum such realities would seem ludicrous. Impossible. Cruel.

Sahaal was no more part of the Emperor's vast congregation than were the xenos that infested the galaxy, and it sickened him that the wide-eyed men and women of the Shadowkin should mistake him so easily. It was true that the seductions of Chaos also held little sway over him — he considered such metaphysical corruption a sign of weakness, of lack of focus — but his contempt for the Emperor matched that of any Chaotic anti-zealot nonetheless, and the Shadowkin's mistaken identity was difficult to swallow.

They saw his power armour, his narrow-eyed helm, his wedge-like shoulderguards, his jewelled bolter. They saw the intricate heraldry of his Legion, and whilst they could not hope to recognise it, they understood that such icons had ever been the remit of the Adeptus Astartes. They had watched him single handedly wipe out a nest of their most iniquitous enemies, and any doubts as to his righteousness were immediately expunged.

They saw him, and they saw a Space Marine, and so they saw a reflection of their god. He had almost killed them for it. And yet their devotion had warmed him — as mindless as that of a machine — and slowly, with growing momentum, his thoughts turned to another, shrewder path.

Herniatown had burned behind him, Nikhae's words — 'I-it's gone... It's sold!' — had scorched his mind, and the Shadowkin had fallen to his feet and praised him. Their worship had filled him with pleasure — pleasure borne upon a lie, but pleasure nonetheless — and slowly, hating himself, resisting the bile in his throat, he had said the one thing that could assure their loyalty. 'Ave Imperator.'

They had brought him to their lair, they had worshipped him, they had given him food and sanctuary, and so he slept.

Adrift upon the trance, he remembered Nikhae's screaming face as slice by slice he was skinned alive. 'Where is the package?'

'I told you, Zagrifs blood! It's gone!'

'Gone where?'

'Sold! W-warpspoor and piss! Y-you sh... shit! Sold!'

'Sold to whom? Speak, or I'll take your eyes.'

'No! N-not th—'

'Sold to whom?'

'Slake! The Collective! I swear it, Throne-as-my-witness! Slake!'

'What is this... "Slake"?'

'I don't... n-nuh...'

'Your eyes, Nikhae. Do you need both?'

'S-sweet Terra, a-a middleman! A go-between for upcity merchants! Slake!'

'Where is he, Nikhae? Where did you find him?'

'I didn't, h—'

'Where is he!'

'I don't know! H-he found us! H-he knew the ship would fall from the sky! He told us to be ready! He commissioned us, warp dammit!'

'He knew?'

'Yes!'

'He ordered the package by name?'

'Yes!'

'That is not possible.'

'I don't know how, but he kn—'

'You're lying to me.'

He was still screaming when there was no skin left for Sahaal to cut away.

Before he planted the fuelcell that destroyed the Glacier Rats' lair, Sahaal vented his rage upon the meaty husk that had once been Nikhae, expelling his fury on muscle and sinew and bone. It had made quite a mess.

The Corona was gone. He had a new target.

And like a dream, in that moment, when he staggered exhausted from Herniatown already planning this new hunt, the solution had delivered itself like a gift from the Four Gods.

The Shadowkin. An army of slaves, bound to him in devotion for the very thing he hated the most.

They would help him find Slake — whoever, whatever, he was.