‘I didn’t know we needed to,’ said Kai.

‘Then you are a bigger fool than you look.’

Despite his dislike of Gregoras, Kai wasn’t about to abandon his only anchor of safety in this maelstrom of unleashed horrors. So far they hadn’t seen anything beyond running Sentinels, but the flickering images of bloated bodies, fly-ridden corpses and skinless faces parading through his hindbrain told him that the Whispering Tower was now a place of horrors to match the Argo.

Gunfire echoed down the channel, followed by an explosion and the dull cough of grenade launchers. Kai heard screams, the sounds amplified by the acoustics of the narrow tunnel, but he couldn’t be sure he was really hearing them or if they were being carried into his mind by the whisper stones.

‘What’s happening here?’ asked Kai.

‘Magnus is here,’ said Gregoras.

‘Magnus the primarch?’

‘Of course Magnus the primarch, who else could unleash such powerful psychic force?’

‘How can he be on Terra? He’s halfway across the galaxy.’

‘I don’t know how, but Magnus the Red is here and his coming has unleashed power unlike anything you can possibly imagine.’

‘So is this an attack?’

Gregoras took a breath as he considered the question. ‘Not as such. I do not believe Magnus has betrayed us, at least not intentionally, but he has acted with such hubris that there will be no forgiveness for this act. The Emperor will have no choice but to make an example of him.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You knowwhat it means.’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Kai. ‘Tell me.’

‘It will mean the Wolves will be loosed again.’

Kai shivered, unsure of what Gregoras meant, but knowing on a primal level that it would be unwise to ask more.

‘Back in your chambers you said Mistress Sarashina’s name,’ said Kai. ‘Is she in danger?’

‘The very worst kind,’ confirmed Gregoras, finally finding the mark he sought on the walls. ‘The warp is giving her exactly what she wants. Damn, but I should have seen this. The Maiden and the Great Eye. Truth and the future, all bound together. The silver vixen, the heralds of the final truth. It all makes sense now.’

Gregoras was rambling now, random phrases from his insane researches spilling from his lips like a madman’s stream of consciousness. None of it made sense, but nothing of this made any sense. Who better to make sense of madness than a madman?

‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but if Mistress Sarashina is in danger, then we need to help her.’

Gregoras nodded and said, ‘If it is not already too late for her.’

KAI AND GREGORAS emerged from the bleed channels in one of the central hub chambers towards the base of the tower. Yellow light flashed from warning lumens and a number of bodies were stacked like cordwood at the entrance to one of the libraries. Kai gagged at the stench of blood and the actinic tang of lasfire. Streams of hard light blasted into the library from a ranked up squads of Black Sentinels.

Another group worked at the door to the Choir Primus mindhall, rigging melta charges to detonators, while Maxim Golovko paced impatiently behind the demolition crew like a caged predator. Alone of the Black Sentinels, Golovko went without a helmet, an open insult to the psykers of the Whispering Tower.

I do not fear you or need protecting from youthe gesture said.

A handful of Black Sentinels spun to face them as they emerged from the channel, rifles brought to bear with exacting precision and speed.

‘Hold!’ cried Gregoras. ‘Protocol cryptaesthesian!’

The guns were lowered, and Golovko strode through their ranks as more gunfire blasted into the library. The major general was livid, yet Kai sensed that he was taking great relish in his task of extermination.

‘I might have known I would find you drawn to the heart of this,’ he said.

‘Sarashina is in there?’ said Gregoras, pushing past the commander of the Black Sentinels.

‘With the Choir Primus,’ replied Golovko. ‘Do you know what’s happening?’

‘I have my suspicions, but we don’t have time for discussion. You need to get that door open. Now.’

An explosion blew out a choking cloud of dust, splinters and mulched paper from the library, and a howling scream of something unnatural rang from the walls. Whisper stones shattered with glassy pops, and Kai felt a surge of bloodthirsty rage fill him. His teeth bared and his fists clenched, but it passed as soon as Gregoras touched his shoulder. Kai felt the anger pour out of him, blinking away the red veil that had descended on him.

Gregoras had one hand on his shoulder, another pressed against a whisper stone that had survived the psychic surge.

‘Think!’ snapped Gregoras. ‘Maintain your defences.’

Kai nodded, ashamed he had allowed his mental buttresses to become so weakened in his fear of what was happening.

‘Get some null grenades in there,’ said Golovko, his tone brusque, but clipped and businesslike. ‘Don’t let that happen again.’

Kai had never liked Golovko, but the man had just endured a psychic attack without flinching. The only sign of the strain of holding it at bay was a pulsing vein at his temple that throbbed like a hydraulic pipe. Golovko saw his look and shook his head with a sneer.

‘It’ll take more than that to get by this soldier.’

Kai didn’t answer, and concentrated on maintaining his own wards against the power washing from the library. Through the smoke and sliced up bodies at the entrance, Kai saw a swirling morass of light and flesh, a patchwork monstrosity formed from still-living hosts and torn flesh given form and mobility by immaterial energies. He looked away as the entity sensed his scrutiny and wisps of light darted towards the door.

‘Don’t look at it,’ hissed Gregoras. ‘You of all people should know better than that.’

Another volley of gunfire stitched across the nascent form of the thing in the library, followed by a dull crumpof psychically resonant grenades. Immediately the air took on a thick, grainy quality, and the raging static of the warp spawn diminished to bearable levels.

‘Yeltsa, get in there and push that thing out of my tower,’ ordered Golovko, before turning back to the mindhall of Choir Primus. ‘How’s that breaching charge coming on?’

‘Done, sir,’ replied the demo-tech, backing away from the rigged door and handing the detonator box to Golovko.

Kai and Gregoras pressed themselves to the walls as Golovko stood in front of the door, unlimbering a bulky grenade launcher from his back.

‘Remember that’s Aniq Sarashina in there,’ said Gregoras.

‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ said Golovko. ‘But if it’s hostile, it’s going to die.’

‘If you kill her, you’ll answer to the Choirmaster.’

Golovko shrugged and pressed the activation thumb-switch on the detonator box.

Kai had been expecting a thunderous detonation and had his ears covered, but the melta charges simply glowed a fiery blue-white, and the only sound was the hiss of metal flashing to superheated liquid in seconds. Gobbets of molten metal drooled down the carven face of the door as the charges burned through the lock.

Golovko dropped the detonator and racked the loading tube of his grenade launcher.

He kicked the door open, and a host of gibbering voices flew from the unsealed chamber. Shrieks of babes yet to be born and corpses cold in the ground for millennia blasted from the mindhall, a chorus of the dead and still to die coalesced in one almighty bellow of fear and regret. Golovko stood firm in the face of this cyclone of the dead, unmoved and uncaring of their torments or lives unlived.

Kai felt the torrent of unleashed psychic energy and winced as it battered the defences of his mind. He felt the horror of each death within the mindhall, and impossible tears spilled down his cheeks as he felt the last moments of each of the astropaths within. A pale light, like a beacon lit far beneath the surface of a clear ocean spilled from the mindhall, wavering and uncertain. It threw Golovko’s shadow out behind him and, for a fraction of a second, Kai could have sworn his face was a mask of blood, as though some nightmare parasite had exploded from within his skull.