crusting his neck. Blowflies billowed around us, their buzzing incessant in our ears.
'Come on/ he said. 4Ve've come this far.' His words came broken up as he was repeatedly forced to spit out flies that mobbed around his dry lips.
I looked around. The sea of black ooze went on forever. The sky over our heads was thickly dark, but I realised that the billowing clouds were impossibly vast swarms of flies, blocking out the light.
Firelights, distant, flashing, reflected across the slime.
We were in the outer reaches of the Chaos Titan's mind-link.
Swathed in films of ectoplasmic ooze, we struggled forward, holding each other for support. Rassi was moaning. His psychic self had brought no cane to support him.
Flames underlit the horizon and the sea of sludge rolled nauseatingly. I had not encountered a mental landscape this abominable since my first dreams of Cherubael, years before.
Cherubael.
Just the thought of him in my mind brought the flies rushing around me. The slime reacted too, popping and bubbling about my knees. I felt a keening, a sharp need, that filled the polluted air around me.
Cherubael. Cherubael.
'Stop it!' wailed Rassi.
'Stop what?'
'Whatever you're thinking about, stop it. The whole world is reacting/
'I'm sorry…' I suppressed the notion of Cherubael in my mind with every ounce of my will. The tremors subsided.
Throne, Gregor. I don't know what you've got in your head, I don't want to know…' said Rassi. 'But… I pity you/
We trudged forward, first one of us slipping over, then the other, then one bringing the other down. The deep slime licked at us, hungry.
Thousands of kilometres ahead of us, a source of power throbbed. I could dimly make out the silhouette of a man. But it wasn't a man. It was
Daemonic forms ghosted around us. Their spectral, screaming faces were madness to behold. They were like smoke, like shadowplay. They snarled at us.
Another few hundred metres and images began to flash into my mind. We were breaking into the edges of the Titan's memory sphere.
I saw such things.
May the God-Emperor spare me, I saw such things then.
I stood on the brink and peered into the abyss of the Titan's memories. I saw cities die in flames. I saw legions of the Imperial Guard incinerated. I saw Space Marines die in their hundreds, scurrying around my feet like ants.
I saw planets catch fire and burn to ashes. I saw Imperial Titans, proud warlords, burst apart and die under the onslaught of my hands.
I saw the gates of the Imperial Palace on Terra through a blizzard of fire. I saw down through many thousands of years.
I saw Horus, vile and screaming out his wrath.
I saw the whole Heresy played out in front of my eyes.
I saw the Age of Strife, and witnessed first hand the Dark Age of Technology that preceded it.
I fell, plummeting through history, through the stored memory of
I saw too much. I started to scream.
Rassi slapped me hard around the face.
'Gregor! Come on now, we are almost there!'
We were at the heart of it all now, frail as whispers. We were in the bridge of the Titan, seeing the multiple, overlapping spectres of the men who had commanded it, all sat in the princeps's throne, all dead.
Daemons crouched on my back, writhed on my shoulders, gnawed at my ears and cheeks.
I saw horror. Absolute horror.
Beside me, Rassi reached out and touched the mind-impulse unit built into the floor of the bridge.
'Now, I think…' he said. 'Alizebeth!' I yelled.
In the rank confines of the chapel, Bequin leapt forward and grabbed the ranestaff from the hands of two inquisitors who were quivering with power, stress and terror, our eyes rolled up blankly so that only the whites showed. She gripped the ranestaff, focused her untouchable force and-
FIVE
My plan fails.
Damn Verveuk all to hell.
The unthinkable.
She was killed.
Not at once, of course. The backrip of the Titan's terrible sentience tore into her, overwhelmed her untouchable quality by dint of its sheer force, and broke her mind.
Electrical discharge crackled down the haft of my ranestaff, throwing Rassi and myself away and blasting Alizebeth back across the chapel. The scorch marks are still visible on the uncorruptible steel: the perfectly etched fingerprints of Poul Rassi, Gregor Eisenhorn and Alizebeth Bequin.
Nayl told me afterwards that the psychic recoil had tossed Rassi and myself to either side like dolls, but the main force had been directed at Bequin. She had flown through the air a dozen metres, her cloak fluttering out and cracked off the back wall of the chapel with a sound that Nayl knew meant snapping bones.
He ran to her, calling her name. Fischig lurched forward too. Rassi and I lay on the ground, weeping and gasping. The ranestaff, steaming, had landed on the stone floor between us with a clang.
My plan had failed dismally and completely.
Blood trickling from my nose, I got up, Swole and Haar helping me. I had little idea where I was. Images of the Age of Strife still permeated my mind. 'Rassi?' I gasped.
'Alive!' said Begundi, crouching next to the sprawled inquisitor. 'But he's weak…'
'Alizebeth?' I asked softly, looking to where she lay. Fischig and Nayl were huddled over her. Nayl looked back at me, and shook his head.
'No…' I said, pushing Kara Swole away as I stepped forward. Not Alizebeth. Not her, after all this time.
'She's hurt bad, boss,' Nayl said. 'I'll try to make her comfortable, but.
The tread of
I staggered towards Bequin. She looked so still. So broken.
'Oh sweet Emperor, please, no-'
'Inquisitor…' said Haar. 'We're dead now, aren't we, for sure?'
I realised slowly that the Titan was right outside.
'What are you doing?' Begundi yelled at me.
I had no idea. I was only partially conscious. I had Barbarisater in my fist and was running for the door. I think I meant to go out and face the Titan with my sword. That's how far gone I
