She might as well have attempted to tackle a stampeding grox.
Rebounding from his power armour with a thump and a sharp crackle — a rib, she guessed, blinking through sudden pain — she had a brief glimpse of the Night Lord through the smoke and ice, spinning and swooping amongst the servitors. In that blurring tableau he seemed to her to be a dervish, a god of blade and flight, dancing between gunfire and slashing at the unresisting metal of his foes.
She wondered if he would come to her assistance if she cried out.
She wondered if she would accept his help if he offered it.
The hive groaned again, dust and smog loosened from the ceiling as titanic forces shook it, and in his haste to flee Kaustus stumbled. Mita seized the opportunity without thinking, screwing up every last vestige of her inner strength, drawing deep on reserves that she barely knew existed, and lashed out with a pulse of psychic force.
She could not invade the inquisitor's mind. That wouldn't stop her from crushing his body.
The force of her own attack astonished her. The inquisitor was blasted from his feet as if struck by a grenade, shredded chaff from his robes scattered upon the air. The Corona slipped from his grasp and skittered across the floor, skidding in eldar blood. Beneath the torn gauze of Kaustus's cloak Mita could see that the very plates of his armour had been splintered, great cracks scuttling across chest and thighs as if struck by an invisible hammer.
'Is this what I've been repressing?' she wondered, dazzled. 'Is this what my faith has been denying me?'
Unfettered by ritual and prayer, unblinkered by needless devotions, the truth was as radiant as the warp itself.
The Emperor does not give me my power. My tutors lied!
It is my own!
She was on Kaustus in a flash, straddling his wide chest and beating knuckles across his nose. It snapped with an unpleasant crackle, so she punched it again, and again, venting the maelstrom of frustration and resentment that had been building in her soul for weeks.
'Bastard...' she hissed between blows, catching her breath, '...warp damned empty-skulled bastard!'
He recovered faster than she'd anticipated. Stunned or not, bleeding from a dozen rents, he was still an inquisitor. He still wore armour designed for the angels of the Adeptus Astartes. She should have known he wouldn't stay down so easily.
'Fool girl!' he roared, throwing her off. 'Where is it? Where is it?' He dragged himself upright and cast angry eyes across the floor, hunting the Corona Nox. Spotting its oily ring, already gathering a frosty patina, he lunged for it with a cry of triumph, once more forgetting the psyker that had brought him down.
Mita was ready for him. She knew exactly what to do.
One final effort. One final catching of her breath, one final reach down into her soul, clutching for dregs of power. One final attempt at the Animus Motus.
The Corona moved, edging away from the inquisitor's grasping fingers.
'Warp take you!' he raged, scrabbling after it. 'Give it to me!'
Another centimetre... another centimetre...
Klurik.
The crown jolted to a halt at the foot of an exhibit plinth, shadowed beneath whatever priceless relic — a leather-bound book, blasted apart in the earlier crossfire — occupied it.
'Ha!' Kaustus roared, locking fingers around its glossy frame. 'Mine!'
Mita smiled, muscles burning with endless fatigue. 'Not yours, you stupid bastard.'
And the security servitor that hung from the vaulted ceiling above the singed plinth blinked its metal eyes, ratcheted its slave-linked weapons towards the intruder it sensed below, and opened fire.
Kaustus fell apart like rotten meat.
Smoke lifted. Mita stared at the shredded morsel that remained of her master with confused feelings, triumph struggling against shame. Somewhere, out in the smoke and fire, the Night Lord shrieked and another servitor collapsed to the ground, torn apart. Mita barely heard it. Kaustus was still alive. Just.
'C... clever...' he smiled, blood slipping in frothing streamers from his mouth, patterning his tusks like scarlet totems. He winced, pain consuming his ruined form. 'Clever trick...'
She nodded, frowning. Something strange had happened to the inquisitor's mind, like a cloud passing from before the sun, and abruptly she found herself able to feel it, able to skim its surface emotions — pain, mostly — just as she could anyone else. Abruptly she understood.
'The eldar,' she whispered, thunderstruck. 'They've been controlling you from the beginning...'
'Y.-.yes. C-came to me before I recruited you. Did things... hkk... things to my brain. Th-the voices... oh God-Emperor...'
'Why? Warpdammit, Kaustus – why?'
'H...hah... Who knows? S-sometimes... sometimes the control faltered. Sometimes I could think clearly... nnk... hear their whispers... It meant nothing...'
She remembered the moments of uncertainty, the troubling instants in which his mind had seemed to convulse, briefly visible to her psychic senses.
She'd feared for his sanity. If only she'd known the truth. He'd been a puppet, struggling to cut his own strings. 'That's why you let me live...' she said, understanding flourishing. Another blast rocked the hive, tremors slipping through ice and steel. She ignored it: it was all background noise, irrelevant. 'That's why you never had me executed.'
He struggled to speak, blood puddling beneath him. 'I th-thought... I thought I could overcome it... The voices — Emperor preserve me — I... I thought I could resist. I— I was wrong. But sometimes... nn... sometimes I could... could fool them. I made them think you would be a help. I... I recruited you. They wanted me to kill you b-but... But I knew... I knew you'd be the one... to set me free...'
The light went out of his eyes. The Corona fell from his hand and rolled, slick with blood, wobbling as it tumbled, and she lifted it as it passed her, blinking tears from her eyes.
Such a simple thing. Such a little thing.
And then the world went white, and the gallery room pitched like a sinking ship, and the wall beside her was torn away like paper, crumpled in hands of razor steel.
Ice swarmed in through the rent, and with it came a wave of such agony that she screamed and screamed until her throat was raw.
Pain filled the universe. A shrieking like a million banshees drowned her senses, and clouds — worlds — of darkness stormed into the air. The warp lazed into reality like a descending blade, and every light that had ever existed was snuffed, every happiness was shredded, every quiet joy and instant of ecstasy was swallowed up and burned away.
A giant stood at the threshold of the shredded wall. It folded wings of tattered leather, wings that slipped between material and ether as if on fire, venting smoke and ash. It moved on legs of incorporeality, it bled across the spaces of the cavern like an echo of a figure.
It was not real.
It was more than real.
It was Chaos given form.
And through psychic torture that blinded her, through the shrieking of warp-beasts that exploded her ears, through coils of darkness that snared her soul and promised damnation to all who felt their touch, she saw the Night Lord Zso Sahaal stagger from the smoke and frost, arm hanging limp, face bleeding from a dozen cuts, and stare up at the vision of terror incarnate that had defiled reality with its presence.
'It's been a long time, Acerbus,' he growled. 'I barely recognise you.'
Zso Sahaal