Lord of the Night

For a moment Mita had wondered whether she had somehow slipped into the Furor Arcanum, studying the strands of future possibility, but no: such visions were fat with fantasy, abstractions that required interpretation rather than humdrum visions such as this.

There was only one other option.

Could it be that her astral self had left its body? Could it be that these visions were neither dream nor fantasy nor future possibility, but presently occurring events? Could it be that she was remotely viewing things as they happened?

Of the four major disciplines practised in the Scholastia Psykana, she had always considered herself primarily a precognitor — observing the whimsy of the warp to determine future events — and had occasionally employed her talents as an empathitor — skimming emotion and thought from the minds of those around her. Even in the field of animus motus — telekinesis, the most physically draining of all — she had some small natural talent... but in mastering the role of proculitor, the remote viewer, she had failed dismally.

It was a discipline that carried its own risks, and was best suited to those without the distraction of other talents: allowing one's astral form to roam free was to expose it to any malevolent force within the warp that paid an interest. Mita had tried it only once, during her first year at the scholastia, and had been informed by the grim-faced adept-tutors that her mind was too ordered, too anxious, too uptight, to engender success. The discipline required the ability to un-focus, to relax — but to maintain a careful veneer of security nonetheless.

Could it be that in her present state — slumbering, surfing on an ebb of dreams and fantasies — her mind had allowed itself to relax enough to break free?

And that it was therefore vulnerable to attack?

With anxiety rising, choosing caution over curiosity, she tried to wake.

And could not.

Panic gripped her then, and as if from a great distance she remembered being in Governor Zagrifs gallery of treasures. She remembered the short stab of pain against her arm and slowly, with the certainty growing, she realised what was happening.

She had been drugged.

She had been knocked out like some misbehaving beast, shredding her defences and her disciplines and now — now, when she needed the ability to awake like never before — she found herself trapped, ineffectual, relaxed to the point that she had been plunged into a discipline that she had never been taught to master.

Her warp-gaze had elected to show her something, and she was powerless to decline.

Even as her astral form flexed in agitation the crowds below her began to shriek. The dreamscape haze turned bloody red and the phalanx of parading figures threw back the folds of their black cloaks to expose weapons held against their chests, and opened fire.

This, then, was what her senses had brought her here to see.

It was a massacre.

The attackers concentrated, where they could, upon the vindictor sentries — pressing superior numbers against them before they could respond. Even in the midst of her alarm Mita watched, helpless, as one by one the armoured Preafects toppled from their perches, lasbolts gashing them open, shotguns tumbling from grasping fists.

The crowd had become a living organism, bolting and flexing with a single voice, and at their heart people fell underfoot and were trampled, screams lost to the collective wail of terror.

When finally those few vindictors that remained summoned the presence of mind to return fire their targets proved more elusive than they had anticipated. With their black cloaks removed the aggressors dispersed, just faces amongst the turmoil, snapping off opportunistic rounds before vanishing into the crowd. Inevitably, the enforces chose retaliation above discretion.

Snapping orders across the breadth of the concourse, they turned their shotguns upon the crowd and opened fire indiscriminately. Such was the reality of the Emperor's law: it was better to sacrifice the innocent in pursuit of the guilty than to allow the heretic, the traitor or the abomination to escape.

At that moment, as the roadway grew slick with blood, as the screams of dying women and children saturated Mita's dreaming mind, her psychic senses struck upon a dark suspicion. A taint, almost, an infinitesimal cancer, gnawing at the edge of her perception.

He's here...

She drew back from the spectacle, noting that already a column of vindictors rushed to reinforce their beleaguered fellows, and cast her eye further outwards. This was a dangerous moment. Where before she had raged against the dream now she must immerse herself within it, sinking into its folds, trawling its shadows for her target. As she did so with a shudder the colours around her intensified, the edges of buildings and cables hardened—

And in the warp, a hair's breadth from reality itself, the unctuous wisp of light that was Mita's astral form brightened, like a flare.