'Oh, God-Emperor, no...'

The blade punched into the meat of the giant's throat with a wet thump.

Bracing himself, black teeth bared, the priest sliced outwards, cutting through jugular and windpipe, opening a fleshy crevice in Cog's neck. To Mita's horror he awoke for an instant, and the burst of innocent bewilderment, the flash of contact with her own eyes — questioning, pleading, trusting — would haunt her for as long as she lived.

Time returned to normal with the hot spray of released blood against her face, a geyser of scalding magma, patterning walls and ceiling. She cried out, senses tumbling, thrashing to escape from the sticky eruption.

'Your loyalty should be to your inquisitor alone,' the priest hissed into the dying warrior's ear, harsh voice thick with triumph, eyes flicking up to glower at Mita through the crimson drizzle. 'Not this creature.'

Cog died with a gurgle.

Something snapped behind Mita's eyes.

'No!' she screamed, psychic claws boiling outwards, all self-control gone, slash-stabbing into the ether to shred the priest's thoughts like paper. Red venom covered her vision, rage slipped between her defences like sand pouring through fingers, and she reached out for his brain like a hungry wolf, relishing the terror on his face.

And then corded muscles closed around her shoulders, a gauntleted hand swatted at the back of her head, and the retinue of Inquisitor Ipoqr Kaustus ripped through the connecting wall of the next cell in a riot of dust and fabric, hollering prayers and warcries, shouting for her blood.

She should have known better.

Of course the inquisitor would send backup.

Of course he wouldn't leave it to a withered priest.

She'd failed his test. She should have known that wouldn't be the end of it.

As power swords flickered in the dust and guidance optics shimmered from hooded binox headsets, Mita realised it was probably the last oversight she would ever make.

A gun-metal blade burned itself across her vision, its wielder shouting wordlessly as his stroke descended. Somewhere nearby the sisters of the Order Panacear were screaming, the hooded figures of the retinue pushing past them, ignoring their protests, boiling from the shattered wall hollering curses and orders: all of them impressions of a chaotic environment that swirled into Mita's overloaded senses.

She ducked beneath the swordstroke and spun inside the acolyte's guard, elbowing him in the guts then driving the heel of her hand into his nose as he stumbled, feeling it crackle and puncture his brain somewhere within. A razor-stab of premonition — a frozen image of scorching contrails streaking towards her, like toothy-mouthed maggots — caught behind her eyes, and without conscious thought she seized the tumbling corpse beneath its shoulders and pulled it upright.

Bolter fire exploded across her senses, true to the premonition: throbbing at the air and dazzling her with its phosphor bright muzzleflash. The corpse shuddered beneath her grip, clotted lumps of fat and bloodpaste tumbling forwards like a waterfall, shedding its weight — and its shielding — with every moment. The force of each percussive blow forced her backwards, legs straining, crumpling into a ball. She was being caged. Overborne. Destroyed.

And whilst the gunservitor pinned her down, kept her sprawled against her grisly cover, she could guarantee that the rest of the Inquistor's loyal warriors had split, sneaking along adjacent corridors, surrounding her like wolves around a lamb.

Get up.

That dangerous voice again, whispering its incautious counsel into her heart.

Get up, fool! You're better than this!

The servitor paused to reload — whispering columns of metal sliding a fresh clip into place, smooth actuators ejecting its predecessor on a tide of gunsmoke. Mita seized the opportunity to assess her surroundings, gaze flashing left and right as her head crept above the mangled body's charred shoulder.

Don't die here, Mita. Don't die on the floor.

You're better than this!

Everywhere was smoke, a thick blanket of bittersweet stench that itched at her eyes and clouded her nostrils. The servitor stood foresquare in the doorway, hunched back rising from heavy unjointed legs, head a sunken battery of optics and twitching sensoria that dangled, like a vulture's beak, between and below the line of its shoulders. Beyond it the veiled shapes of the retinue capered in the adjacent room, every action underwritten by the dull tone of a cognis logi, assessing tactics and possibilities aloud. Nearer still, cringing in a corner beside the bloodslicked bed with his robe dishevelled and a strangled prayer on his breath, was the priest.

The split-second of eye-contact was all it took Mita to acknowledge he hadn't intended on finding himself trapped in a room with her.

Footsteps echoed through thin walls at her back, other warriors, taking up position, preparing to close the iron claw around her. You're better than this! The voice was right.

The bolterfire resumed, and now with every impact and subsequent detonation the corpse that covered her unravelled more, hammering at her legs, driving the breath from her body, hurting her.

Concentrate.

The priest. Remember the priest!

She closed herself down. She wiped away the world from her senses. She rose up from her body and slid like a harpoon into the priest's head. He tried to resist, for all the good it did him.

Down, down, down... Through layers of character and bubble-slick tiers of memory, past instincts and dreams, sliding between secret desires and repressed rages like a rip-blade, aimed at a heart. She closed astral fingers around that slumbering pearl, that black beacon of uncertainty and disloyally she had felt before. A tiny seed, perhaps, the faintest of rebellious sentiments, but fully formed nonetheless. She pricked at his neuroses, swelled his paranoia with an artist's hand, and suddenly — like breaking an egg — she cracked it open and released it.

In his mind, clenching upon itself, protesting at the invader within its bounds, every certainty the priest had ever felt collapsed beneath him. Every faith, every trust, every loyalty: all of them dissolved, turning inwards, burning at his soul.

He could trust nothing.

He could tolerate no one.

The world was against him.

The instinct, of course, was to flee.

He leapt upright with a startled shriek, hookah clattering free of its straps and shattering at his feet. His charge propelled him out from his corner, robes fluttering, and into the path of the servitor. He crashed into its hulking frame even as he crossed the stream of its firestorm, bolter shells shredded him, picking clean his bones. His frail form was gone within instants, reduced to jelly and bonepowder, but it was enough.

Mita arose behind the wailing man from her moist cover with a shriek, hand closing around the discarded powersword as she moved, gliding to one side and lunging with all her might.

Even as the servitor's field of fire cleared, the unexpected obstacle blasted to wet fragments as quickly as it had arisen, a cautionary algorithm chattered against its engine-brain. It was nowhere near fast enough.

Mita cleaved the massive beast in two with a single stroke, punched through the shocked crowd of non-combatant retainers still lurking beyond the door, and was gone.

As she sprinted through the clamouring wastes of Cuspseal, breath catching in her throat, muscles aching, clothes slick with Cog's blood, a single word swam in her thoughts like a leviathan, rising from some twilight realm, absorbing every iota of her mind.