Lord of the Night

She pushed them open with a strange sense of foreboding, feeling like some performing animal, and found herself on a narrow bridge, enclosed on all sides by thick plasplex. Even through the ice and settled snow that patterned the tunnel's outer surfaces she could see that the causeway stretched between the hive's central peak — in which the throne room skulked — and a lesser tower, rising parallel from the shadowed depths. She crossed the abyss with a lurch of nausea, horrified at the vertiginous chasm below her feet, and it was only Kaustus's quiet footsteps at her heel that kept her from crying out, or clinging to the handrail for her life.

The tunnel ended in a second set of doors and, with an impatient nod from her master, she pushed her way through.

And stopped.

In all of the palace — a maze of jewelled stairways and iMricately frescoed chapels, cloistered archways hung with tapestries of spun gold and elaborate congresia sporting sculptures of alabaster and onyx — it was difficult to imagine encountering anything that might shatter the atmosphere of perpetual, unyielding opulence. Nonetheless, Mita stepped through the painted doorway and felt her knees weaken.

'The governor has a fondness for curios,' Kaustus muttered, in explanation.

It was like a gallery. A bazaar. A treasure trove. And it was vast.

There were windows marking the entire periphery. Tiny reinforced portals, perhaps, but windows nonetheless: a subtle symbol of wealth which implied this one chamber, this circular cavern with its sky-blue dome and pearlescent columns, stretched the entire diameter of its tower.

And within it?

She'd never seen such measures. At close intervals, raised on silver plinths and bordered by bright illuminators, the governor's collection of antiquities and valuables could have easily held her spellbound for weeks. Books, archeotech, pictslates, sculptures, pickled beasts, jewels, antiques... At every angle there stood some priceless rarity, some article of unthinkable value, and Mita's blood raced to see them all. She tottered forwards as if drunk, and extended a hand towards a nearby exhibit — a great emerald containing at its heart the shadowy form of a tiny lizard.

'No touching.' Kaustus chided behind her, like a parent slapping his child's wrists. A gloved finger gestured vaguely upwards, drawing her eye towards the ceiling. Set in a wide ring around the plinth, like spotlights with narrow apertures, a bevy of lasguns glared down upon her, crude servos tracking every movement. At their centre, like some grotesque trophy displayed at the heart of a spider's web, a disembodied human head fixed its baleful eyes — long since replaced by compound optics — upon the tip of her outstretched hand.

'Security servitors.' Kaustus shrugged, voice bored. Mita noted without surprise — and only a small shiver of revulsion — that similar effigies, rotting flesh hanging from slack bones, gazed down upon each and every item in Zagrif s collection.

She pulled back her hand slowly, uncomfortably aware of the machine intelligence above. At some arbitrary point its attention seemed to dwindle, as if no longer judging her a threat, and the lasguns returned to a neutral spread with a soft hiss.

'Effective,' she said, controlling her voice.

'Indeed.'

She turned towards the remainder of the room, her eyes drawn towards an accumulation of spotlights on one side, and a dais higher than any other. She took a step towards it, curious, and stopped.

Something uncoiled in her brain like a great spider, scuttling between uncertainties, and she knew.

'He's here...' she whispered, fists clenching, head jerking from left to right, seeking that hunched shape, that midnight form, those burning red eyes.

'What did you say?' Kaustus said, his voice so close to her ear that she jumped.

'H-he's here! The Night Lord! I feel him! He's in here!'

And then something sharp tugged against the fabric of her arm, and before she could glimpse down to see what had punctured her skin the lights of the gallery dimmed in her eyes, the sky-blue dome clouded over, and her consciousness spiralled away.

Zso Sahaal

Zso Sahaal sat upon a throne of fur and bone, armoured fingers steepled before him, and brooded on past and future.

Tomorrow he would strike. A guildhall, perhaps or some other Administratum stronghold some communicatory centre where the Imperial fools would keep their mutant slaves.

It had been the witch that had given him the idea. Mutants and slaves... Yes.

That was tomorrow. The future. The first step upon a road to redemption.

As for the past, as for that swirl of violence and chaos that had brought him here, to this smog-thick place, as for the madness that left him seated in darkness upon a throne of bone, as for yesterday...

They had carried him.