The blood drizzle didn’t fall. Where the chaotic splatter effervesced into the air it hung immobile, as if spraying across some invisible shape suspended above the ground. Like water falling on glass.

—woop-woop-woop-woop—

The lights went orange then yellow, flickering on and off with a dizzy, oscillating rhythm. A cold voice, piped mechanically throughout the vessel, declared:

“Anomalous energy readings detected, all decks...”

The pulsing lights were an angry heartbeat, a palpitating gut, a crumpling lung. Kais fought to see into the adjoining room. The blood cascaded down, long tentacular rivulets dragging at his attention with some sensory gravity: forcing him to watch. The slit-throated trooper was dead now. Mostly.

A grisly rectangle of blood fluid formed over his corpse, red-black sheen taking on some sinister internal light, agitating and bubbling as it began to glow a deep, angry crimson.

The governor was laughing, long, dry whoops of air splitting his face, bloodslick knife brandished like a trophy. The glowing rectangle shimmered once, twice, three times.

El’Yis’ten, voice recognisable above the terrified groans and moans of the gue’la, said: “What’s—”

Then something came out of the rectangle and cleaved off her head. Time did its slowing-down jig.

“—intruder detection — intruder detection — all decks — intruder al—”

Blast shields closed on the viewing gallery windows and Kais hammered his fists impotently against them, adrenaline short-circuiting his mind.

He’d seen it. Whatever came out. Black, like oil. Like cancer. As big as the blue-toned captain, Ardias, but rust-pied and metal toned. Spines and chains and skulls. Red eyes. Red eyes like a desert reptile, but glowing from within. Hot embers in a cold fire grate.

He wished the screaming through the audio speaker would stop.

Without really thinking, he spun around and sprinted for the side door to collect his wargear. All he could think, all he could see in his mind, was a glowing pair of embers and a word: Mont’au.

The weight of the world surprised him, at first. He’d been too long without gravity, too long a shade of a shade, a wraith lost inside eggshell prisons of smoke and light.

A single splatter of blood, that was all it had taken, eventually. The final sacrament to bring the walls crumbling down. Three words of power to undo the ancient curse and a drizzle of red fluids to open the doors. There had been cracks already, of course. Imperfections growing by the moment, allowing his brothers brief forays into the blocky, unfamiliar solidity of the “real”.

For those lucky few, freedom had been short-lived, but they returned with tales of blood and carnage, with immateria-axes stained gore-red, with words of violence and hunger for killing. It fortified the rest of the prisoners, giving them hope and anticipation.

He’d howled away his bloodlust into the warp prison, watching as second by second his release grew nearer. Three millennia had been a long time to wait.

This Severus, this pawn of the Master, this small thing with its books and its incantations, this fur-hung fool: it gashed apart the throat of a single man-thing and the prison collapsed, the walls splintered with warpfire fury, the inchoate empyrean beyond wafted and grasped and—

Keraz the Violator was born into reality with a roar and a shriek and a neck-splitting lunge that pulverised in an instant the years and years of inactivity. The blood flowed and the world screamed and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

There were xenogens here: grey-faced things that cowered and shivered in his shadow. It didn’t matter. Blood is blood is blood. Red or grey or green or black, he didn’t care; it gushed and gouted, its rain splatter a cherished baptism against his armour, its slick ebbings hanging in matted chords from the chains wrapping his gauntlets. There was gunfire, somewhere. More of his brothers, emerging behind him. Less devoted, undoubtedly. Theirs was a service of command and obedience, an undivided gaggle of beliefs controlling their actions. They lacked Keraz’s devotion to a single aspect of their dark pantheon.

Blood for the Blood God!

Skulls for the Throne of Bone!

As inescapable as the night, the madness came upon him. Gunfire couldn’t hurt. Plasma orbs and pulse shots were a background staccato, rattling on his armour ineffectually. Only the killing was real.

A figure stepped into his path; a shape shrouded in a torus of energy and protective power that stayed his bloody hand, forcing a bellow of fury from his ancient guts. He recognised through the red haze the pinched features of Severus, his liberator, and tried to turn away to find a new plaything to crush, a new morsel to dissect.

“Stop,” the man said, and unbidden his feet obeyed. He had no choice. His roar of anger quaked through the world. Severus smiled, enjoying himself. “Take these ones. Take them to the planet surface.” He pointed to a dark recess, blood-splattered walls shadowing a pair of figures, and then he was gone, stepping lightly through the shimmering portal.

Keraz hefted his axe, chain edge shrieking, arrow wedge shadow falling across the cringing shapes. One was human, he saw without caring, old features open in terror, grey moustache quivering in a silent moan. The other was xeno, standing rigid and tense but betraying not a hint of fear.

It didn’t matter. Terror wasn’t compulsory — only blood mattered.

But the axe never came down — at its zenith the words of power gripped his body and Severus’s command overcame him. As meek as a lamb, but raging and boiling within, he dragged the two figures into the portal and vanished in a gust of energy and heat.

Kais was too late.

His mind still couldn’t be operating properly, surely. Surely he was too overwhelmed by this sudden escalation of events, this inexplicable horror. Surely that was why nothing was making any sense.

Figures appearing from nowhere, fluttering creatures cackling and gibbering, everywhere was blood and fire and hate. He thought, am I going mad?

Perhaps.

Whispers like cobwebs, like dessicated corpse talk, like the papery rustling of a million inserts, filled his mind. Perhaps this was a gue’la trick? Some hitherto unknown technology and resource they’d concealed from tau intelligence until it was needed? Yes — yes, that must be it.

A hidden army of berserk monstrosities, waiting to be unleashed; a cunning deceit they’d arranged to ensnare the Aun and crush the tau... He wondered briefly if El’Lusha and the others, still aboard the Or’es Tash’var, would concur. This was the remit of Auns and shas’os, not of flawed shas’las.

But...

But that wasn’t right... As he stumbled through twisted corridors, humans were screaming and dying, black monstrosities sweeping from glowing portals to murder the terrified paleskins, dragging them away to Aun-knows-where. And things, vermin with red-scale skin and spiny thorns, fluttered and swooped, scavenging amongst the bodies for flesh. They left trails of slime and pus as they crawled, chattering and giggling like infants.

Reaching the concilium was a blur. Had he slept? Was he, perhaps, dreaming? Where was the scowling blue-armoured Space Marine? In all this bedlam Kais would have welcomed a familiar face, even one so threatening as Ardias’s.

Towering devils. Black-on-red-on-rust armour. Eyes like volcanoes. Axes and guns and blades and claws. Spines and chains and leering skulls. Shadow Marines. Hate Marines. Pain Marines.

The voice in his brain, hissing and whispering, fluctuated and diminished — a poison echo like a ringing in his ear. He wondered if everyone could hear it, or if this was some awful new symptom of his madness.