Lord of the Night

Sahaal was uncomfortable with such unrestrained warmth, and struggled to find an answer. The condemnitor's return to the Shadowkin had effected an almost miraculous transformation, all their sullenness and suspicion crumbling upon itself, becoming devotion once more. It was as if they had been waiting to have their zeal directed, as if their obeisance was without question but, lacking an interface, had become cold and bitter. None of them had relished facing their demigod master themselves, and only via the mediating presence of their leader could they direct their energies.

By the mere art of worshipping him, Condemnitor Chianni had abruptly become his most vital resource. He breathed a thankful prayer to the spirit of his master for returning her to his side in his moment of need.

'Rest,' he instructed her, accepting her grasping supplications without any outward display of chagrin. 'Restore your strength.'

He raised his voice so that the whole island could hear him, chilling tones like a breath upon the air. 'We must all restore our strength,' he announced, pulling the robes of the throne around him once more. 'Tomorrow... tomorrow we strike a blow for the Emperor's glory!'

And this time there was no muttering, no dark exchanges of glances, no uncertainty in the Shadowkin response.

This time they cheered.

Mita Ashyn

She was dreaming, and that was the one comfort she could take: that no matter how awful, how sickening, how wretched, the things she witnessed were only the product of her own mind, and owed nothing to reality.

There was a procession — that was the first detail that came upon her: a train of walking figures dressed in black cloaks, arising from the nothingness of her sleep like specks of oil, consolidating into figures that moved and sung. Leaning upon gnarled canes, they chanted in mantra-like harmony, stepping in time like a slow-motion army.

Her perspective shifted, widening its net, and a hive-shell starport opened up below her, hangars and towers jostling amongst baroque pylons and sweeping launch-pads, where fat shuttles sulked amongst chanting techpriests, blessed and maintained simultaneously. Here the temperature dipped, subject to the frozen whimsy of the storms that raged beyond the opening in the hive's shell. Here, alone in all the city, a hiver could brave the snow and catch a glimpse — cloud-shrouded and as dark as coal, but a glimpse nonetheless — of the sky.

At the end of a broad concourse, where would-be passengers thronged and shouted and complained, grotesque servitor drones dangled from ceiling joists like flies in webs of steel, needle-arms checking documents, uncaring eyes assessing passengers for concealed weapons, signs of disease, or whatever other arbitrary criteria they chose. Those that passed their capricious test hurried through ferrocrete arches towards the shuttles, whilst those that failed backed away in silent horror, split from their loved ones and destitute, all their funds wasted on the price of a single rejected ticket. Such wretches would invariably wind up dead, or else filter their way into the underhive where all the other dispossessed clamoured for warmth. But there could be no protest here, not beneath the gaze of the vindictors who straddled the entry gates and perched within turrets to either side of the concourse, helmed gazes surveying the sullen crowd for the slightest infraction. The dried blood on the ground was silent testament to the extent of their vigilance.

Amongst the crowds the procession of black cloaks marched like a shadow, and Mita's slumbering mind again wafted past, intrigued, wondering at their relevance. Well accustomed to the psychic insanity of prediction trances, with their excesses of colour and sound, to her this dreary vision could hardly be considered noteworthy. She wondered vaguely what it signified and scolded herself for such unfounded superstition. Beyond the realms of the psychic trance a dream was just that — a dream: no more meaningful than a random scattering of images, drawn together in an approximation of narrative.

But still... There was something not right here, in this fantasy vision...

Something that jarred...

Mita had arrived upon Equixus as part of the Inquisitorial caravan, and was therefore received at the uppermost of the hive's three starports. So great was the polarity between that tranquil maze of incense-shrouded lounges and this brutal compound that every detail shocked her, every petty act of rejection burned into her mind. Such was the reality of hive life — on every tier, a different world — but she had never witnessed the place laid out below her in the flesh. Why then had her slumbering brain chosen to imagine it, to fabricate its minutae as part of a dream?

The procession of cloaked figures joined the rear of the winding queue.