He raised his voice so that the whole island could hear him, chilling tones like a breath upon the air. 'We must all restore our strength,' he announced, pulling the robes of the throne around him once more. 'Tomorrow... tomorrow we strike a blow for the Emperor's glory!'
And this time there was no muttering, no dark exchanges of glances, no uncertainty in the Shadowkin response.
This time they cheered.
Mita Ashyn
She was dreaming, and that was the one comfort she could take: that no matter how awful, how sickening, how wretched, the things she witnessed were only the product of her own mind, and owed nothing to reality.
There was a procession — that was the first detail that came upon her: a train of walking figures dressed in black cloaks, arising from the nothingness of her sleep like specks of oil, consolidating into figures that moved and sung. Leaning upon gnarled canes, they chanted in mantra-like harmony, stepping in time like a slow-motion army.
Her perspective shifted, widening its net, and a hive-shell starport opened up below her, hangars and towers jostling amongst baroque pylons and sweeping launch-pads, where fat shuttles sulked amongst chanting techpriests, blessed and maintained simultaneously. Here the temperature dipped, subject to the frozen whimsy of the storms that raged beyond the opening in the hive's shell. Here, alone in all the city, a hiver could brave the snow and catch a glimpse — cloud-shrouded and as dark as coal, but a glimpse nonetheless — of the sky.
At the end of a broad concourse, where would-be passengers thronged and shouted and complained, grotesque servitor drones dangled from ceiling joists like flies in webs of steel, needle-arms checking documents, uncaring eyes assessing passengers for concealed weapons, signs of disease, or whatever other arbitrary criteria they chose. Those that passed their capricious test hurried through ferrocrete arches towards the shuttles, whilst those that failed backed away in silent horror, split from their loved ones and destitute, all their funds wasted on the price of a single rejected ticket. Such wretches would invariably wind up dead, or else filter their way into the underhive where all the other dispossessed clamoured for warmth. But there could be no protest here, not beneath the gaze of the vindictors who straddled the entry gates and perched within turrets to either side of the concourse, helmed gazes surveying the sullen crowd for the slightest infraction. The dried blood on the ground was silent testament to the extent of their vigilance.
Amongst the crowds the procession of black cloaks marched like a shadow, and Mita's slumbering mind again wafted past, intrigued, wondering at their relevance. Well accustomed to the psychic insanity of prediction trances, with their excesses of colour and sound, to her this dreary vision could hardly be considered noteworthy. She wondered vaguely what it signified and scolded herself for such unfounded superstition. Beyond the realms of the psychic trance a dream was just that — a dream: no more meaningful than a random scattering of images, drawn together in an approximation of narrative.
But still... There was something not right here, in this fantasy vision...
Something that jarred...
Mita had arrived upon Equixus as part of the Inquisitorial caravan, and was therefore received at the uppermost of the hive's three starports. So great was the polarity between that tranquil maze of incense-shrouded lounges and this brutal compound that every detail shocked her, every petty act of rejection burned into her mind. Such was the reality of hive life — on every tier, a different world — but she had never witnessed the place laid out below her in the flesh. Why then had her slumbering brain chosen to imagine it, to fabricate its minutae as part of a dream?
The procession of cloaked figures joined the rear of the winding queue.
For a moment Mita had wondered whether she had somehow slipped into the Furor Arcanum, studying the strands of future possibility, but no: such visions were fat with fantasy, abstractions that required interpretation rather than humdrum visions such as this.
There was only one other option.
Could it be that her astral self had left its body? Could it be that these visions were neither dream nor fantasy nor future possibility, but presently occurring events? Could it be that she was remotely viewing things as they happened?
Of the four major disciplines practised in the Scholastia Psykana, she had always considered herself primarily a precognitor — observing the whimsy of the warp to determine future events — and had occasionally employed her talents as an empathitor — skimming emotion and thought from the minds of those around her. Even in the field of animus motus — telekinesis, the most physically draining of all — she had some small natural talent... but in mastering the role of proculitor, the remote viewer, she had failed dismally.
It was a discipline that carried its own risks, and was best suited to those without the distraction of other talents: allowing one's astral form to roam free was to expose it to any malevolent force within the warp that paid an interest. Mita had tried it only once, during her first year at the scholastia, and had been informed by the grim-faced adept-tutors that her mind was too ordered, too anxious, too uptight, to engender success. The discipline required the ability to un-focus, to relax — but to maintain a careful veneer of security nonetheless.
Could it be that in her present state — slumbering, surfing on an ebb of dreams and fantasies — her mind had allowed itself to relax enough to break free?
And that it was therefore vulnerable to attack?
With anxiety rising, choosing caution over curiosity, she tried to wake.
And could not.
Panic gripped her then, and as if from a great distance she remembered being in Governor Zagrifs gallery of treasures. She remembered the short stab of pain against her arm and slowly, with the certainty growing, she realised what was happening.
She had been drugged.
She had been knocked out like some misbehaving beast, shredding her defences and her disciplines and now — now, when she needed the ability to awake like never before — she found herself trapped, ineffectual, relaxed to the point that she had been plunged into a discipline that she had never been taught to master.
Her warp-gaze had elected to show her something, and she was powerless to decline.
Even as her astral form flexed in agitation the crowds below her began to shriek. The dreamscape haze turned bloody red and the phalanx of parading figures threw back the folds of their black cloaks to expose weapons held against their chests, and opened fire.
This, then, was what her senses had brought her here to see.
It was a massacre.
The attackers concentrated, where they could, upon the vindictor sentries — pressing superior numbers against them before they could respond. Even in the midst of her alarm Mita watched, helpless, as one by one the armoured Preafects toppled from their perches, lasbolts gashing them open, shotguns tumbling from grasping fists.
The crowd had become a living organism, bolting and flexing with a single voice, and at their heart people fell underfoot and were trampled, screams lost to the collective wail of terror.
When finally those few vindictors that remained summoned the presence of mind to return fire their targets proved more elusive than they had anticipated. With their black cloaks removed the aggressors dispersed, just faces amongst the turmoil, snapping off opportunistic rounds before vanishing into the crowd. Inevitably, the enforces chose retaliation above discretion.