‘Are you coming in then?’ asked Golovko, and the impression of his horrific injury vanished. ‘I might need your help.’

Gregoras pushed himself from the wall and Kai saw his indecision.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘If Sarashina’s in trouble, then I want to help.’

Gregoras nodded and they set off after Golovko. A dozen Black Sentinels came with them, and they plunged into the wavering, uncertain light. The mindhall was cold, like a frozen tundra, and the floor crunched with newly-formed ice beneath their feet. Spiderwebs of frost crazed the wooden panels of the lower tiers, and puffs of ventilated smoke rose form the backpacks of the Black Sentinels.

Kai kept close to Gregoras, knowing on a very basic level that the cryptaesthesian was helping to shore up his mental defences. The power at work within the tower was so great that Kai didn’t think he’d have been able to resist it were it not for his help.

It was difficult to see exactly what was happening in the mindhall. The light at its centre was so powerful it outshone everything else. Kai had the powerful impression of a black silhouette, a black slice of limbs touching a sun that burned with a blinding sapphire light.

‘Mistress Aniq!’ he shouted, and the words left his mouth in a trail of colourful smoke, giggling gleefully as they took form and life before dissolving into the fertile air. Gregoras shot him a say nothinglook, and Kai’s mouth snapped shut before he could do anything else stupid.

The Black Sentinels spread out, rifles raised and grenades primed. Golovko marched at their head, the bulky launcher held out before him. He said nothing, but his manner suggested that he had seen this sort of thing before, though Kai couldn’t imagine where. He’d heard of warp-spawned creatures using astropaths as vessels to force their way into the material universe, but an entire mindhall?

Scraps of light swirled at the apex of the chamber like flocking birds, and Kai forced himself to look away from them. As his eyes began to adjust to the power of the light, he lifted a hand to his face and looked up into the tiers surrounding the centre of the chamber.

The astropaths of Choir Primus lay rigid in death, their eyes alight with eldritch fire that streamed from their useless sockets like phosphorent smoke. Their mouths were stretched in skeletal grins, and that same dead light burned between their burned lips as though they were screaming light.

The Black Sentinels surrounded the sphere of light, and Kai saw its surface was alive with writhing patterns, sun-bright streamers and spiralling grooves of emptiness. It shone like a miniature sun, but one that was the antithesis of Terra’s star. This was a dead sun, one that sucked life from the bodies around it.

Aniq Sarashina stood before the dead sun, her hand outstretched and bathed in the fires of its unnatural energies. Corposant lines of raw energy coiled up her arms, and her flesh was translucent. Veins, bones and muscle were plain to see, and the same light that streamed from the eyes of Choir Primus burned in hers.

Kai wished he could cry, for the sadness he felt was all too real. Mistress Sarashina was dying, any fool could see that, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He wanted to save her, as she had once saved him from a life wasted, but he could do nothing but watch as the warp light burned her away from the inside.

Ghosts of energy limned her body with ectoplasmic mist, creatures that pressed almost too lightly on the matter of the universe to be seen. They were little more than shimmers of consciousness, barely able to hold their presence in this world, yet they swirled protectively around Sarashina as though she was a prize they were unwilling to relinquish.

‘Gregoras?’ said Golovko. ‘How dangerous are these things?’

‘They are nothing,’ said Gregoras. ‘Base desires given form. They cannot hurt us.’

‘Really? This seems like quite an intrusion for something so powerless. Doesn’t seem like nothing to me.’

‘They are opportunistic parasite creatures. They crossed over when the walls collapsed.’

‘And what about that ball of light? Should I be worried about that?’

‘When you are dealing with the warp you should always be worried.’

‘So how do you destroy it?’

‘You don’t,’ said Gregoras. ‘I do.’

Gregoras stepped towards the sphere of light, his hands outstretched, and Kai felt the build up of potent psychic energy. Gregoras was already a powerful psyker, with abilities Kai would never be able to understand or wield, but in the aftermath of the Crimson King’s arrival on Terra, his strength was so much greater.

‘My mind is untouchable. It is as a locked room,’ he said. ‘None can enter without my authority. You have no power over me.’

The creatures of light withdrew from him, recognising a more powerful entity than they could hope to overcome. The burning sun seethed in mute rage, its brightness diminished, but still awesomely powerful.

‘These are not the fields you know,’ continued Gregoras, infusing every syllable with power and will. ‘This world is not yours and you do not belong here. Leave and befoul this place no more.’

The creatures hissed soundlessly, but retreated still further. They were not completely cowed, for they had a wellspring of energy to draw upon. The sphere of energy spun with ever greater urgency, as though its purpose here was not yet done, and a keening screech filled the mindhall. Kai’s hands flew to his ears, and even Golovko winced at the piercing volume.

The black armoured Sentinel commander took aim over the oversized barrel of his grenade launcher.

‘No!’ yelled Kai. ‘Please.’

At the sound of his voice, Sarashina turned towards him, and Kai felt her pain descend upon him. She knew she was dying, but she had held on for just this moment. Kai sank to his knees as he saw the weight of guilt and sorrow within her. He saw the anguish that she had been forced into this path, but beyond that was the determination that she would not fail, as though the fate of the galaxy itself hung upon what she must now do.

‘Don’t you move,’ warned Golovko, taking a step forward.

Sarashina didn’t even acknowledge him and took another step towards Kai.

Despite the cold, Kai was sweating, imagining what kind of dark power burned inside Sarashina. Gregoras shouted at him to move back, but Kai was pinned in place by Sarashina’s fiery eyes. They were locked to his, and Kai’s body was no longer his to command.

Gregoras began chanting the words of banishment, words taught only to the highest ranking members of the Telepathica, for to use them was to know the powers of the creatures of the warp, and such knowledge was not taught lightly.

Kai felt Sarashina’s grip on life slipping, as Gregoras poured his will into stopping her in her tracks. Golovko grabbed Kai’s shoulder to haul him away, but a sharp bang of energy threw him back. Smoke rose from where Golovko had touched him, but Kai was unhurt by the fire. Dimly he recalled that was where the robed stranger in his dream, the cognoscynth, had laid his hand.

‘Get away from him!’ screamed Gregoras, pouring all his power into his words of banishment.

‘I am not here to hurt him, Evander,’ said Sarashina, the words sounding as though the woman who spoke them was falling farther and farther away with every passing second.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To give him a warning.’

‘Warn him of what?’

‘A warning he must pass on to another.’

Gregoras approached Sarashina warily, as though unsure whether to continue his words of banishment or abandon them in the hope of learning something of value from Sarashina.

‘Is it the pattern? Tell me, Aniq, is it the pattern?’

‘Yes, Evander, it is,’ replied Sarashina, ‘but it is so much bigger than you ever knew. Or ever will. Not even the Emperor knows it all.’