‘We? Who is we?’

Saturnalia answered that question. ‘The neurolocutors of the Legio Custodes,’ said the Custodian. ‘You are being taken to the dungeons of the Imperial Palace, and whatever is in your head will be stripped out by men skilled in the obtaining of information at any cost.’

‘Wait!’ said Kai, turning to Gregoras. ‘You can’t let them take me! I didn’t do anything.’

His cries fell on deaf ears, and the cryptaesthesian simply watched as the Custodians fastened a brass circlet around Kai’s temples.

‘No! What’s that?’ cried Kai.

His question was answered a second later as he heard a soft buzzing sound and his nervous system shut down, leaving him limp in the grip of the Custodians

‘No!’ wept Kai. ‘Please, I’m begging you. I don’t know anything. She didn’t pass anything to me, I swear. You’re wasting your time, please! You’re making a mistake!’

‘The Legio Custodes does not make mistakes,’ said Saturnalia.

‘Gregoras!’ yelled Kai. ‘Please help me! I’m begging you!’

The cryptaesthesian did not answer, and Kai screamed as he was dragged from the mindhall towards a steel gurney and interrogators equipped with scalpels, trepanning drills and invasive neuro-psychic probes.

PART 2

THE VEILED CITY

Can you imagine what it means to be blind?

Truly blind, not the simple removal of the visual sense or the temporary darkness of night, but utterly bereft of sensation. That is what they think they have done to me by severing my connection to the Great Ocean, but such a concept displays a literalness of thought that betrays ignorance of the warp’s true nature.

It is all around me, no matter what my gaolers believe, but it pleases me to let them think they have wounded me with their damping collars and walls impregnated with psi-resistant crystals. I felt the cataclysmic arrival of my gene-father in the depths of the palace, and I still feel the havoc that resonates around the globe in its aftermath. I touched the mind of the Crimson King and I saw a measure of what drove him to such desperate action.

Though I am Athanaean, the foresight of the Corvidae and the vanity of the Pavoni are not unknown to me. Nor are the visceral arts of the Raptora or the Pyrae beyond my reach, though it irritates me to wield such vulgar powers. An Adept Exemptus of the Thousand Sons is master of many things and is a more terrible foe than anyone here understands.

But it is well to keep your foes ignorant of your true strength.

All war is deception, and wars are won by those who can best conceal their blows.

I can hear the thoughts of my caged brothers, the controlled anger of Ashuba and the febrile rages of his twin. The dour gloom of Gythua is amusing in small doses, as are the petulant diatribes Argentus Kiron composes. No one who matters will hear them, but his desire to perfect his outrage knows no bounds.

All of them rage at the injustice done to us, not one of them understanding that it could be no other way. Tagore still broods on the insultingly small force sent to apprehend us, but his rage is spread thin: at our captors for coming for us in the first place, at the men who killed his fellow warriors, at his Legion for abandoning him.

But most of all, it is directed at me for not warning them.

How can I begin to explain my reasoning to him when I do not understand it myself?

It was not the words of the psi-hunter that persuaded me to stand aside. His words were as meaningless as the random mind-noise of warp-scraps. Rather, it was the dream that stayed my hand, the dream of the icy, blue-lit tomb that gave me pause.

In my dream I walk its frozen catacombs and I see that the ground is littered with shards of glassy bone. Millions carpet the flagstones, pouring from the broken sepulchres in an endless tide. I see each individual fragment, each one reflective and carrying a memory etched on its vitrified surface.

A great red eye reflected in broken shards of bone.

I know this eye. I know it well, and it is speaking to me of a terrible crime, though I do not yet understand what it is saying.

It is a bleak place, this tomb where I wander in the bleak light of torches frozen in time, their flames unmoving and lifeless. The dead are all around me, I can feel them looking at me. The weight of their accusations is like a curse, to use a pejorative of the ancients.

Though this is a city of death, it is frighteningly beautiful. Rearing statues of hooded reapers and spiteful angels adorn the grand avenues of the dead, their expressions frozen at their most tempestuous.

Something flits past at the edge of my vision, something vividly coloured in this landscape of the morbid. It darts between the towering, monolithic statuary, a scavenger creature that could not possibly be here. I recognise its tapered snout and rust-coloured fur, the black edging to its ears and feet.

Canis Lupus, a species extinct for thousands of years, yet here it is.

I am no Biologis, but somehow I know this creature will not die here. The wolf shadows my path through the blizzard of bone, drawing closer with every passing moment, though I wave my arms and shout bloody threats at it. Seeing that the wolf will not be dissuaded from its approach, I ignore its presence and concentrate on where my steps carry me.

Towards a monstrous statue, one that was not there a moment ago, but which rears from the landscape like a vast missile emerging from a silo. It is the winged statue of a faceless angel, fashioned from a strange, twilight black stone. Bone dust falls from its wide shoulders, and avalanches big enough to bury one of the Terran hives thunder past. Like any initiate of the word of Magnus, I understand the symbolism of powerful elemental forces, and know full well the times of upheaval they herald.

I sense something within this statue, something malevolent watching through its smooth featureless face.

As I am aware of its presence, it too is aware of me.

The sky above this newly emerged statue gleams with dull metal and golden spires. A starship hangs motionless above this mausoleum city. Its pristine blue paint been burned away, and only the pearlescent stubs of its master’s insignia remain to indicate that it was once a vessel of the XIII Legion. The ship’s name is etched into its hull in letters hundreds of metres high, the curling script hammered onto its adamantium hull in the shipyards of Calth.

The Argo.

I know this vessel. It is a ghost ship, gutted from within by nightmarish creatures of sublime horror. Red-scaled skin, oily black tongues and eyes that reflect every vile thought you ever had. Everyone on that vessel is dead, and their deaths weigh heavily on the conscience of one who draws ever nearer.

He believes it is his fault. I know this with a certainty that is as unshakable as it is ludicrous. What could he possibly have done to condemn that incredible vessel to such a violent death?

Yet certainty is foolish in a place like this, a place where truth and lies can cross the vast gulfs of space in an instant. I deal in the intangible, the allegorical and the phantasmal, yet I assert certitude. The irony is not lost on me.

Only then do I realise I am not alone, there are others with me.

I recognise them and I see that they are all dead. Ghosts yet to be. They lament their passing and try to tell me of the manner of their deaths, but their words are nonsensical and I cannot understand them. By their own choosing, each one of them is outcast and dead. Each one has been slain for reasons only he can know, be it honour, pride, vanity or a hunger for knowledge.