The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind

Kaeria’s narrowed gaze saw a host of emotions on the various captives’ faces. Some were shouting in their soundproof pods, beating their fists bloody against the transparent panels. Some were curled in foetal positions and seemed to sleep. Several even seemed to be in silent rapture, utterly calm and composed. Others lay with their heads back, eyes and mouths open, and… Yes. She could imagine, just about, that these last souls with their rigor mortis expressions were tortured singers.

She had believed they were screaming. Given what was being done to them, it seemed far likelier.

What could they possibly sound like?

She could summon one of the young novices who hadn’t yet oathed her tongue to tranquillity, to ask on her behalf. Yet as Kaeria stared around the chamber, hearing only the rumble of the Golden Throne’s supplemental generators, she felt grateful for the gift of her hollow heart. Some questions needed no answers.

She turned her gaze to the enthroned Emperor, feeling the acid of bitter irony. Here sat her king, committing His consciousness to the machine created to save a species. And yet, chained in place across the chamber and trapped within parasitic coffin-pods, one thousand prisoners screamed in silence and psychically sang their souls away. Batteries for the Throne, so the Emperor might be free. Human lives reduced to sources of psychic power.

Sacrifices. The thought set her scalp prickling.

The throne room’s power flickered for a moment on the edge of failure. Machines around the chamber slowed, several of them giving ugly whines of protesting mechanisms until the power stabilised. One of the coffins emitted a hauntingly gentle chime as the data panel on its surface flashed red with warning signs.

The first one has died, Kaeria thought. Died already, so soon.

Upon the Throne itself, as the generators around the chamber hummed louder, the Emperor of Mankind opened His eyes.

III Choir

This is now. All of her memories, all of those thens, reel to a close. No longer lying on the grass, hearing a distant storm. No longer confined in the cargo hold of a spaceship, treated as a slave. They were then, and this is now.

Skoia opens her eyes.

She is bound within her own coffin, bathed in tremulous sound. It rises, octave by octave, and she thinks of deep-sea monsters, ship-eating creatures stirring and thrashing upon the lightless ocean beds as they begin to rise.

She breathes in, managing only a shallow mouthful of air. Her heart beats slowly, so slowly.

She presses her hands to the thickness of the vision panel, knowing instinctively that it isn’t for her to see out, it’s for her captors to look in. To see her, to see if she’s still alive.

Her next breath is harder than the first. She has to fight to suck it in, and it scarcely gets past her throat. Already the edges of her vision darken to grey.

She beats her fists against the window, making the coffin sway gently, the motion no different from a rocking cradle.

Her third breath barely comes at all. In that moment she cries out – not with her mouth but with her mind. She screams for the spirits to come to her. She beseeches them for their aid. She curses them for their silence. Panic drives her past holiness into blasphemy, and still she screams.