Lord of the Night

The press of bodies was too great. She'd struggled as valiantly as she could, keeping her head low, pushing through jostling Preafects like a rat between the legs of elephants. At every accidental contact there were rebuttals and curses — 'It's the beast! Sweet Emperor, the beast is here!' — which inevitably drew the unkind attention of hacking power mauls, slash-stabbing blades and carelessly discharged shotguns. It was thanks only to the utter completeness of the dark that most attacks were carried wide, and to her precognitive senses that she had thus far been forewarned of any imminent weapons-fire.

But no longer. Abruptly the crush was too great, the herd of panicking men was packed together too tight for her to wriggle through, and each was too busy shouting and cowering to listen to the woman in their midst.

'Binox, you fools!' she'd been shouting, all along. 'Put your damned binox on!'

For all the good it would do, she might as well have addressed her advice to the Emperor himself. Useless!

Did... did I just think that?

Again, she wondered at the Night Lord's ability to sow discord. A death here, a death there, utter darkness and a medley of horrific shrieks: these, it would seem, were the ingredients of his domination. These simple things, able to turn hardened veterans of street law into cringing whelps. Able to leave her thoughtlessly questioning her own god... It was, she admitted awkwardly, impressively effective. None of which offered her much assistance in the task of reaching her goal. A shotgun stock blurred out of the soupy green image of her binox and she ducked it with a curse, amazed — besides anything else — that its owner could be so colossally stupid as to think such a flimsy attack could hurt the Night Lord, even if she had been it.

Another push, another repelling jab. This was getting her nowhere. She was so damned close!

A spray of warmth patterned her cheek, blood scattered from on high, and another shriek rang out nearby: the beast striking again, like an eagle dipping its talons below the surface of an unquiet lagoon, plucking out some thrashing silvery thing with a cry. Even with the goggles she couldn't see her foe clearly, only a blur, an indistinct something, trailing carnage as it leapt away, claws glittering.

The psychic glut hanging above the crowd reached agonising saturation behind her eyes: an intensity of confusion and dread that, impossible to block out, all but destroyed her. She felt her knees weaken and for an instant was sure she would fall. Staggering, she wondered how long she'd last beneath the booted feet of the stampeding Preafects.

And then the one remaining course of action arose in her mind. She could not reach the snowgate controls — she could barely stand upright, by the Throne! — and like a drowning soul clinging to a rope she grabbed at the idea and did not let go.

The animus motus. Telekinesis.

Very definitely not her forte.

Like all sanctioned psykers trained by the Scholastia Psykana, her psychic gifts could be shaped and hardened, manifesting themselves as physical forces — albeit clumsily — like opportunistic swings of club and fist. It was a gift borne in the heat of the moment, an impetuous force with which to strikeout like a hammer when danger threatened, or to turn aside a blow before it could fall. Using it as a precision instrument, calculatingly reaching out to change the world, was something at which she had never excelled.

It drained her energy like a bleeding wound.

A good psyker knows his limits, her tutors had smugly informed her. This is yours.

Well, warp take them! There was nothing else for it.

Agitated, shocked at her own sudden disrespect for her revered masters, she drew a deep breath and steadied herself, clenching her fists. She tried to be calm, to reach out from the cold centre of her soul, focusing all her will upon the snowgate lever... but of course that was the wrong tactic. She needed not calm, but rage: sudden and impulsive — and to plan for such a thing was to immediately negate it.

Sweat beads pricked at her forehead.

Off to one side, as if in another world, a stumbling vindictor shoved her from his path, the blow of his elbow barely puncturing the psychic realm she was trying to cross. Her body collapsed to the floor, unpiloted, but she paid it no heed: lashing, striking, ripping out with immaterial fists at the gate lever again and again.

Nothing happened.

And then something cried out in the dark, and on the crest of a premonition she swivelled her head up into the inky abyss and saw it, the Night Lord, dropping its shoulders, lifting its grasping boots like an eagle's claws, and swooping.

It had seen her.

It was coming for her.

Directly.

Eyes blazing.

Filling her world.

Shrieking like a dying child.

She was going to die.