Chapter 25: Intercessors


The door was closed... Closed. Locked and shut firmly, a guard posted expressly for her protection on the other side and the arcane wards on the room were tried and tested. The Unicorn was safe.

'You're safe. You're safe. You're safe.'

Sunset breathlessly whispers to herself, stirring quietly beneath the luxurious sheets in the royal ambassadorial suite. Every little tug and pull rasps her sensitive coat like razorblades. Despite the promise of arcane wards, her eyes never stopped flitting from corner to corner of the well-lit room in a desperate bid to catch whatever dark spirit slithered from the smallest shadow.

Arcane runes and wards lined the crown moulding that encircled the ceilings, and hovered over the lintles and arches of windows and doors of the royal suite. It all looked like somewhat posh and pampas decoration, but Twilight had spent the better part of ten minutes explaining everything in detail.

The Alicorn had softly cooed, and endlessly apologized for everything as she embraced Sunset and tucked the Unicorn's muzzle into her neck. Sunset had lashed out at first, thundering her forehooves into Twilight's chest and shoving her back as memories bubbled up to the surface of smooth skin sizzling away to blisters as it caressed her tuft. The image of scales had been there for a second, and gone with the grotesque tide.

Both memories had dissolved in a flash, but since then Sunset knew they weren't going to go away. The Lurker was there. Somewhere. Kanathara, whose hooves shatter mountains, would not be denied.

Sunset's breathing races to the point of hyperventilation as the fragmented memories burble back to the surface. Twilight's every comforting stroke of her mane, every soft embrace and gentle word was reflected in parody.

She felt like she was touching yellow gunk for a moment, the urging of something in the back of her skull. Then the minotauress... or whatever she was, had brushed Starlight's mane and slid her tongue up her horn where they were both scalded and sizzled like oil on a hot skillet. They came away charred and weeping a noxious perfumed fluid. The Dark Temptress looked at her hand, perfumed ichor dripping from the broiled fingers as she splayed them apart, then shivered.

It wasn't from the cold.

Twilight had disappeared after that. Then returned, trying the same thing. Disappeared. And again returned. The mindless, formless words she whispered and softly droned on about hadn't settled in Sunset's mind as she'd hidden herself beneath the sheets and muttered a question she couldn't pin down.

"Twilight, when will the sun rise?"

She'd screamed when Twilight tried to turn the lights out. After that her friend hadn't left her side for a very long time. But did it matter? The individual is unimport- every quiet word of warmth and friendship passed unheard as the Unicorn's fugue took hold.

The gentle tick of a grandmother clock on the far wall next to a luxurious alabaster divan slowly drew Sunset's attention. Between the rhythmic tick-tock of the clock, the glint of fire off filigree candelabras, and reflections off a polished bronze bust, the abundance of 'stuff' became apparent. As did the hollow emptiness at the realization that Twilight never came back. Those were the nascent stirrings which brought her back to some semblance of sapience.

"Twilight?" Sunset's high pitched whimper goes unanswered.

In the alabaster and gold room furnished with the wealth of a modest town, the Unicorn slowly came to her senses only to realize that she was alone.

Heavy blankets swaddle her form, and her eyes rove around the chamber. Now, no longer worried about immediate dangers or fighting back contact, the Unicorn surveys the richly furnished suite. White plastered walls are covered with rich velvet and cloth tapestries, priceless paintings adorn what's left. There was even the Equestria's masters, and Sunset was left staring blankly at Marchelangelo's Battle of the centaurs past a free standing bust of Filly Broncolleschi's Pillars of Equestria.

Forget a town, this was worth a fortune. And despite that, the golden filigree fixtures and cabinetry, the seashell plasterwork and crown moulding lining the arched ceilings, and even the rococo divan in the corner, it was empty.

"Twilight?" Sunset asked again, panning her gaze past the carved posts of the stately bed on which she'd been resting. A small shudder courses from her head to her hocks as she carefully shuffles the sheet aside and twists herself just enough to slip out from under the downy gold threaded comforter. With barely a hiss from the silken bedspread, she drops to the lush cerulean bedside carpet. It tickles her frogs, but even then a pang of apprehension ripples up her legs and freezes her as more memories slosh back to prominence.

It wasn't just a dream. 'Now I see it with my own two eyes, and still wonder if I'm aslee-' Then in it was something more. But a prickle of something else hammers something else into her head. A heady screech of melded ecstatic pain in the back of her head sends spikes of sickness through her stomach, causing the Unicorn to dry heave at the unnatural voice tickling her ear.

'Focus, S-' A sudden flash of golden eyes is just as swiftly replaced by a sickly brush of her tail and heated perfumed breath spilling over her nape.

Sunset fruitlessly kicks backward. Her right hind leg giving an involuntary shudder before it goes limp, toppling hard. She careens into the bedpost and scrapes past it, crashing straight into a settee at the end of the bed. It overturns, sending the the Unicorn sprawling across the cold marble floor.

With a nauseous moan of discomfort, she curls up in a miserable ball of matted fur for a moment but keeps her eyes open. Already she didn't want to see what felt burned behind her eyelids. The Unicorn tried to force it all down, but nothing was helping.

Sunset slurs and tries to find her hooves. With a staggering lurch, she puts all four limbs back under her. "-S so damned close." and has to swallow hard again as another whisper tickles her ear fluff while dripping stinging droplets across her haunch.

Before she knew it, Sunset was at the door and opening it with a breathless gasp. "Twahligh?" She slurs almost drunkenly, spotting a gold clad Earth pony guard a hooflength away.

"Miss Sunset?" He straightens his back, "Are you alright? How can we help?" the stallion's smooth baritone prickles the back of her mind. A tone similar to something... something she should...

The cackling laugh blots that thought out, but not before Sunset leans on the door frame and asks, "Where'shee?" Sunset's tongue feels thick and numb, like she'd licked a sandbox.

"Princess Sparkle is currently occupied." The canned reply came easily, but the slight twitch of his ear against the armour clicked the metal as his plain ashen coloured muzzle contorts in a scrunch of genuine concern. "Ma'am, we should get you back to your bed. We're-"

"Take me to'err." Sunset blathers aloud, "No matter what happens, take me to her." For whatever reason, the words flowed a little easier. With a soft bump and lean, she shoves herself off the door frame stands.

The solar guardstallion nods and asks, "Do you need a hoof, ma'am?"

"If I do-" she swallows back the tide of bile creeping up her throat with a quiet belch, "You'll be the first to know."

He nods, and the pair head down the first long hallway. And while Sunset's head still buzzes with nearly rhythmic flashes of discomfort, she set her focus on counting passing alcoves and hallways. The darkness still gathers here and there, but the torches were lit and cast a healthy glow throughout the castle corridors. But so many doors were shut and guards on constant patrol, that the very air was unnatural calm.

Three levels of twisting passageways and sealed chambers later, Sunset's old sense of direction was finally starting to return. She already could place the final destination as she was guided sharply to the right down a wide stairwell that led to the Castle's catacomb basement. It was always out of the way and non-descript, all the better for regular ponies to naively ignore. If only they knew what lay sealed away in Canterlot Castle's deepest depths...

And for the first time, a wane smile passes her lips. 'Good thing the Princesses have this under control.' Though, perhaps that's exactly what happened. The frown falters as her hooves transition from lush crimson carpeting to hard marble. Like a bucket of cold water splashed on her face, she spots a familiar pair of figures at the end of the hallway.

A pale blue mare decked out in a ludicrous magicians getup gestures wildly at a pacing lavender Unicorn. The later of which has her head down as she methodically walks the five paces from wall to wall and doubles right back without showing the slightest note of hesitation.

Her stallion guard nods towards the pair, "It's just-"

"Thank you, I... I think I can take it from here." Sunset draws a ragged breath.

"With all due respect, ma'am; I was instructed by the Princess to guard you and keep you safe." he flashes a friendly grin, though it was laced with a determined sureness that said 'don't ask me again, please.'

She nods her assent, then picks up her pace. Her canter swerves a little in an awkward zig-zag, but the clatter of hooves seemed to alert at least Trixie. The stagemare pulling a sour face for a moment, looking back at Starlight Glimmer, and voicing a frustrated 'Gah!' that Sunset could hear drift through the halls as an explosive echo.

"Starlight, Trixie!" Sunset calls, getting the lavender mare to stiffen and shoot her head up as she hears her name.

"Sunset!" Starlight wheels and gallops full pace at her. The smile that lights up her muzzle couldn't have been faked, and the mare's skidding stop still flings her into Sunset.

Both mares wheeze with a little "Oooof..." at the contact, but Starlight swiftly wraps her forehooves around Sunset and tightly squeezes. There's a little happy hum, partially accompanied by a hollow sigh and clop of hooves dragging themselves towards her.

Starlight offers up a sheepish smile before sucking in a breath, "Sunset, I'm so so so happy to see you up and about. After, y'know, we were all worried. How re you feeling?"

The evident concern written on the mare's face eased Sunset's ill feelings, getting her to relax into the embrace and fold into the mare's warmth for a second or two. "I'm...okay..." The warmth is stolen away as Sunset quirks a brow and holds her out at hoof's length. Obviously spotting the hesitation, she casts a doubtful frown in Sunset's direction. "Okay-okay, I'm not great, but I think I can help."

"Hmmph," Sunset catches the slow plod of Trixie as the showmare ambles towards their little display. "Trixie doubts that you can help more than Twilight, Celestia, and Luna."

"Wait," Sunset blinks, "Luna's awake? Wait-wait... three princesses are in there?"

"Yeah. I mean, originally Luna just wanted me and Twilight to go in, but Celestia kinda just jumped in ahead. Not like we could stop her." Starlight sits on her haunches and shrugs, prompting Starlight to follow suit as the guardstallion clattered up behind them, armour jangling.

Trixie eyes him for a second before snorting, "Sure, one Unicorn and a golden toy guardspony will probably be enough to save the day if you want to trot on in. Pfft, even Moonprancer was smart enough to let them go do it by themselves."

The solar guard stiffens to attention, fixing the braggart a steady but unvoiced glare. Starlight just nods quickly, "Thought it might be better to stay here, okay, somepony begged me to stay here but..."

"It's your job Starlight!" It quickly dawns on Sunset that she'd entered the middle of some sort of domestic dispute as Starlight closes her eyes with a resigned sigh that even made her shoulders slump.

Nerving herself up, Starlight nibbles her bottom lip and elevates her eyes so she was looking at the ceiling over Sunset's head, "Twilight made me a school councilor, Trixie. What we got to do with Discord and Thorax-"

"And you've helped exactly zero ponies doing that. They don't need you because, so far as everypony else but the Princess of Paperwork is concerned, the school and its students don't actually exist. Help Trixie! She exists, and is a pony who does nee-requi- uh, wants your help." The stagemare stamps her hoof and petulantly scrunches her muzzle.

The flash of momentary anger flits across Starlight's muzzle as her left ear waggles. She slowly turns her head, though still keeps embracing the fiery-hued Unicorn. However it appears to Trixie, it was unwelcome as the mare narrows her eyes. But the unseen expression Starlight shot her did make the showmare rear her head and take a step backward. "We'll talk about it later." Starlight replies with an icy calm finality.

Turning back to Sunset, Starlight's face was a picturesque mask of matronly concern and comfort. "I'm glad to see you up and about. I'm sure Moondancer will say that too. She's not so bad. So, if you'd like to join us we'd like that. We can just stay here, everything will be alright." Her twinkling, soulful lavender eyes stare into hers...

A flash of gold, a strain of gritted teeth. 'Find it at all costs! Find Horus Lupercal!' The Serpent King's visage flashes before her eyes. She sees the Lurker's taunt: bearing witness to the sickly black charred skeleton hunched protectively over a pile of desiccated bones. The skin of his face and hands scorched away as he presses his ruined bulk against an obsidian wall while picked at by wary shades in cobalt blue.

'So ends your Serpent King, my little Sunbeam. I know something that will let you forget that deluded nonsense.'

But the booming voice strains, 'Knowledge is power and truth commands a price more dear than that of a soul. I've spent mine to get us this far, do not squander it. You bear the wealth of hindsight bought by the greatest of catastrophes.'

Her stomach twists in knots, feeling the whispers and images of her friends with a serpentine pair of arms enfolding her from behind. The Lurker's serpentine tongue flickering millimeters from her ear as she whispers ideas and words about her friends, of the 'fun' that could be had. But it was about her, some despicable repugnant 'couple'... and offered. The sensation was parasitic. 'Say the word, I can be inside you in more ways than one. And you'll never want anything else, though I'll be willing to share everything.'

Everything goaded her to not think about it. To indulge. To forget... forget.

"SUNSET!" Starlight shakes her bodily, snapping the Unicorn's focus back into a pair of terrified, worried eyes.

"What's wrong with her, Starlight!?" Trixie stares over her friend's shoulder, looming in almost uncomfortably close. But the warm hoof hesitantly pressed to her shoulder, and the shock of genuine concern the often chilly mare displayed was... almost reassuring.

Sunset flicks her head to the side, "That bitch. That's what she was doing." Each memory, each thought, came one after another and the latter was always the deplorable depravity of the Lurker.

"Uuuuum... who?" Trixie cautiously asks, expecting some condemnation as Starlight just sighs and clamps a hoof around her in another embrace.

"The Lurker, a Nightmare that was around Luna... hmmmph." Melting into the embrace, Sunset suddenly blinks, "She has to hear about this. She has to know."

"Okay, Trixie doesn't often like repeating herself. But 'who'?" The showmare asks after lofting an eyebrow.

"Luna! I have to go see Luna and tell her what happened." Sunset tries to disentangle herself from the embrace, finding that it was easy enough. Shrugging off the hooves, the fiery Unicorn takes a breath. "Where?"

While momentarily a little sullen, Starlight blinks, ears perking up. "Oh, just over here." she cranes her neck to gesture to a rather nondescript room before quickly rising to lead the way.

Sunset follows a little more shakily as she tries to follow suit and rise to all fours. Surprisingly, Trixie slips against her right side, helping to lift her to standing. But the little glare shot between them said it was more about just not being deemed 'less useful' than the stallion guard who had been mid-stride to help.

In just a few seconds, they had crossed the threshold, leaving Sunset with a resounding sense of déjà vu. "The mirror..." she whispers.

"Yeah," Starlight glances back with a smile, "I mean Twilight made one in her study then attuned it with her book. But this is the-"

"Original. I remember... it was here before." Sunset sighs, barely noticing Moondancer who stands stock still, silhouetted by the soft moonbeams streaking down from the ceiling like celestial rays. It all stole her breath, the same moment feeling like she was the reckless, avaricious Unicorn from years ago. "Starlight," she begins warily, "I think I could use some help."

"Okay." Starlight nods. "It's only fair I come along, as you let me come along last time."

"W-wait, what?!" Trixie warbles in surprise. "You can't just... Moondancer, tell her she's crazy!"

"I mean... she's not wrong." Moondancer says, the shine off her glasses hiding her eyes from view. "Which is almost a first. But, uh, Sunset... I'm glad to see you up and not, you know, comatose. Please say that this isn't the first place you wanted to go when you got out of bed."

Fighting back a blush, the Unicorn mare takes a breath to nerve herself up and pushes herself away from Trixie and towards the mirror. "You don't have to follow."

"Pfft, Trixie won't! The princesses can handle this!" Trixie pleads, and keeps pace with the slowly plodding Unicorn mare. "You can barely walk."

"Which is why I said I'd help her." Starlight trots right back, sidling up on Sunset's left and giving her a reassuring nod.

"But you can't leave Trixie!" The mare actually shouts loud enough to spatter some spittle in Sunset's mane. She did cringe, at least a little abash by the display. "So if you're going, then Trixie is going too!"

"Well, I'm not going." Moondancer says while pushing her glasses up further up the bridge of her muzzle.

With a long suffering sigh, Starlight Glimmer gives Sunset a little head bob directed at the mirror before focusing on Trixie. "Hey, Trix." She stops, letting Sunset slip out from between the pair. Barely a moment passe dafter Sunset had slid between them, than the lavender mare darts her head in, stealing a kiss from the showmare. Cupping a hoof to her cheek and tilting her head, Starlight wetly locks their muzzles together. With nostrils flared and eyes screwed tightly shut, Trixie melts into the kiss and leans forward to wrap a hoof around her mare's withers.

Moondancer casts an uneasy glance between the pair and Sunset, flashing a tremendously awkward grimace that said, 'I sure hope you're not expecting anything.'

After more than half a minute, Starlight breaks away from Trixie, bands of saliva stretching between their muzzles as tongues remain entwined for just a moment longer. Trixie gasps for a greedy breath of air, but her eyes slowly flutter open, the red flush burned onto her muzzle. It was quiet, passing just between the two, "Promise Trixie you'll be safe and come back in one piece, please."

Starlight responds with a more tender pecked kiss and a wide smile. "I promise." She tenderly nuzzles her companion, sharing a last hug before nodding and trotting over to Sunset with a little salute to Moondancer as an after thought.

When the solar guard made a move to accompany them, Sunset just smiles, "We got it. Keep those two safe here, and I'll be sure to tell the princess about your loyalty. This is something we have to do." and with that, and another grateful smile at both Trixie and Moondancer, she led the pair through the rippling silver mirror.

The silence that passed after the two Unicorns left was deafening.

Moondancer clears her throat, not so much as looking over to the fellow Unicorn five paces away, "Y'know, if we went in there, we'd probably just get in the way."

"Trixie is never in the way," she snorts, eyes still fixed on the mirror, "she always contributes above and beyond what's expected."

It drags a chuff of disdain from Moondancer, "Not hard when that's 'nothing but parlor tricks'."

"Remind Trixie," The showmare said, pulling her starry cloak protectively around her and sitting down to wait, "who squealed and then locked up like a foal when big-bad- Discord showed up?"

"That was what rational ponies do, something you have obviously no experience with." Moondancer awkwardly meanders closer, trying to at least look a little unassuming as she did so.

"That may be so," Trixie adjusts the brim of her hat, still not deeming to look at the other two ponies in the room, "but Trixie knows something she has a lot more experience with than you."

"... I hate you, you know that, right?"

And for once in quite some time, Trixie smirks, not even commenting as Moondancer took a seat a hooflength from her, "Yes, Trixie would have it no other way."

There's a silence. "No, but seriously, you go in there with three princesses and two apparently ridiculous Unicorns and you'll be the one to catch the arrow by blundering into the middle of a fight. And our guard here isn't a Unicorn so he's out of the picture."

"And Trixie already has her great and heartbreaking deathbed speech thought up and planned out." She lifts a hoof to her chest, "Then, naturally, she will be the heroin of the story and miraculously saved to live happily ever after as the fifth princess of Equestria."

"Oh. My. Luna." Moondancer's sigh dissolves into an almost pained groan as she rubs at her muzzle.

It all just draws a wry Cheshire grin from Trixie. The mare's voice dips into her husky, conspiratorial lilt, "Don't think Trixie didn't catch you staring at your favourite princess on our way to the tower."

"Y-Y... You will shut up about that RIGHT now."


The distant thunder of chanting throngs didn't reach everywhere in the acropolis. While the rain slicked pilgrims of the Warmaster settle outside on muddy slopes in putrid squalor, the inner sanctum rings with the uplifted voices of the enlightened. The temnos between them, the sacred sanctuary grounds of the Delphos, even now thronged with the soon-to-be enlightened warriors of the next age. Upon the pronaos of the sacred Delphos rests the warrior kings of the 16th legion, awaiting the return of their risen god.

The child of Colchis inhales a heady breath of incense laden smoke as he kneels with his sword laid out in front of him. The simple blade was an ancient thing from the dawn of the Great Crusade, though its crosstree was now replaced: the wings of the Imperial raptor no longer welcome among the sons of the illuminated. Instead, the shape of a glittering evening star binds the hilt and its simple grey power-feed to the silvered longsword. The sharp icicle tip glitters where the fuller reaches all the way back from just behind the tip. Its equal was outside, held by the great prowling First Captain himself.

Captain Kal Belekar draws in another breath, his mind reaching out to hear the faintest glimmer of chants through the ether. No noise reached from the inner naos of the temple to the pronaos chamber separating the faithful from the wilds of the sons of Horus Lupercal. But voices still ring through the mists of the empyrion, the song, a note of cosmic completion.

Letting out the held breath with a satisfied hiss, the captain of the 94th remains in contemplative meditation while surrounded by the statuesque rows of his warriors standing at attention. They had lined the inner halls just behind the great opening gate for four days now, unmoving. Relentless. They had been in the shadows when Horus had been ferried in by wiling hands as if by ancient Charon himself.

'Grand are the plans of those who built the cosmos. Great are their works. Hallowed be their messengers.'

His meditation comes to a swift end, interrupted by a soft chime from the helmet laid at his side. With a reluctant sigh, the captain reaches for his plumed casque. But the white cloaked attendant standing at attention to his right replies before before the need to even lock the helmet in place.

"Captain, the surveyors have detected motion in the Lesser Halls of Nurgleth." his voice a droning a bleak monotone as if deeply entranced.

Kal Belekar sighs again, reaching to his unsheathed blade while placing the red transverse crested helm atop his bald head. "Sor Akal, I take it that this is serious enough that Baskaroth's squad can not handle it alone?"

"Perhaps. We felt it prudent to inform you, sir. Where there is one, there is often more in the wings, as wolves are wont to do." his lieutenant nods once, blue eyes shining in the dark like candles.

Rising to his feet, the captain blink-clickes the two squads of warriors to attention, signalling them to fall in behind him. Already he was watching the augury servo-skull's recording that flashed before his eyes. Spotting the ten shapes moving through the empty halls at the bottom of the catacomb, he felt the anxious hum of adrenaline coursing through his blood stream.

"You were right to tell me." Kal Belekar's eyes flicker across the grainy images of a trio of Horus's captains heading the strike squad through the darkness as he leads his own thirty warriors through the abyssal gloom with only their helmet preysense and a thin glint of incense burners to guide them. "Confrontation was inevitable, lieutenant. Prepare yourselves."

"Erebus said-" Two guardians open the inner chamber door with a resounding boom, letting a wash of sound break over them like a tide and halting the lieutenant's reply.

But the captain picks up where his subordinate left off, "Erebus's plans deal with the Warmaster. While the Sons of Horus no longer look as they once did, they are just as savage and dogged in their views as ever. Conflict, was thus, inevitable. Know your foe, or the battle is half-lost already and only the gods may save you."

The column of astartes strides into the open hall as masters of all they survey. But the throngs of milling men, beasts, and halfway-between creatures gather in the darkened corners of the towering naos chamber reaching up into the blackness cast by circles of enormous bonfires. Hallucinogenic smoke wafts down the steps as purple flames dance with tongues of red and orange, reflecting off glossy polished plinths and cubic monoliths jutting from tiered terraces of carved onyx.

The lecherous writhing of thousands of fur-clad savages cavort and twist in ecstatic plays of frothing indulgence in some circles. They themselves spiral into others in a dance of exquisite madness with savage bouts of marshal bloodletting in others as every hedonistic indulgence echoes to the clamour of cacophonous musical bands playing in different corners of the rooms.

As the astartes ascend the steps, simian Davinites and paint daubed humans scramble away from them. The bestial warriors were mostly ungulates, like minotaurs and satyrs of mythic ages past, though they bowed their crowns of horns and edge away into the darkness as the grey-clad warriors of Colchis proceed up the stairs linking the four tiers of chaotic glory.

A flurry of bat wings flutters above them, but Kal Belekar keeps his sights on the towering dual doors leading to the sacred adyton wherein the Warmaster lay with the high priests of the Serpent Lodge. Shimmering firelight glints off the towering bronze reliefs depicting the mythic tree of life and the serpent who began it all.

A twisted pair of bronze clad minotaurs stand on either side of the portal, male to the left and female to the right. Brass chains affixed to their waists and looped around their twisting horns rattle and clank as they kneel to the approaching astartes. Even then, the towering sentinels were barely shorter than the captain.

Kal Belekar lifts up a gauntleted hand, "We require immediate entrance to converse with the Prophet."

After a guttural grunt of acknowledgement, both snort and bend their backs before striding along the landing. The chains pull taut against sunken anchors as the minotaurs strain with effort, and with a groan of protest, the metal doors slowly yawn open.

With an upraised hand and a blink-clicked command to 'secure', the Captain proceeds alone into the darkened alcove. Firelight reveals an ennead of white robe clad humans in front of a narrow granite fissure closed off with a round burial boulder. Small, shrunken, waif-like shells impassively look at the Word Bearer's captain through silver avian-fashioned masks. As the captain passes the threshold, the Minotaurs growl as they turn and slowly push the gates closed.

Only once the sound of the thronging masses outside are silenced, does the lead of the group of nine speak in a hushed voice.

"You endanger the ritual, child of Colchis. This must be of the utmost importance." Her breathless rasp barely makes it to the warrior's ears as if the air were stolen from her lungs.

"The Prophet must know, warriors of Horus Lupercal have entered the Delphos." Kal Belekar impersonally informs the group.

The next creature, a young twisted girl on the speaker's left picks up in a wheezing hiss, "So be it, but there is always a sacrifice to be made to appease the powers. Speak a name."

The captain pauses for a moment, head bobbing with silent contemplation. "Sol Akal, lieutenant, ninty-forth company."

A third figure opposite the thin girl nods, slowly bobbing his head as the other eight robed figured did as well. "A sacrifice without pain and loss is no sacrifice, the soul of a trusted subordinate is acceptable to us." He reaches for a silver clasp of a twin-tailed comet and unfastens it. The white robe falls from his frail form and disappears like a winking shadow. "Blood for blood."

Without hesitation, the captain flicks the blade from his scabbard, slicing the man from groin to shoulder in a glitter of blue lightning. The bisected halves of the man slop to the floor, the blood seeping out from him in gushing torrents. The scarlet river flows straight towards the corners of the room, congealing in the depths as the withered form exanguinates itself into a chalky white desiccated corpse, having aged centuries in moments. And with it, the other eight figures disappear in glints of white light.

With a low grinding rasp, the stone rolls aside, revealing the nave of the temple.

Kal Belekar enters through the naturally worn fissure, edging a cavernous space with low sibilant whisper-chants and the flickering glut of tallow fueled flames. Exiting the short weather-worn traverse, the captain emerges, eyes immediately fixed to the figure in the center of the room.

There, clothed in just a white gauze shroud of silk upon a granite slab, is the still form of Horus Lupercal. Eight lanterns cast a spectral myriad of colours across his waxy features.
Even on deaths door, the ashen figure commands attention and respect. The captain barely keeps himself from kneeling in front of the Warmaster.

His attention was broken as a single gaunt figure clad in fur and feathers, crosses the floor from a huddled procession. She wears a barbaric plumed mask, its wide wooden frame slathered in vegetable dyes of blue, orange, and green, though the captain deeply suspected the red pinched slashes across the slitted eyes were made of dried blood. Kal Belekar had seen her in conference with Erebus several times. Akshub, the high priestess. She says nothing, but the voice in his head comes chiding and harsh, 'What are you doing here?!'

The captain regards her, and makes to speak only to find his lips all but welded shut. Instead, the understanding of the message prompts his thought just as clearly. 'I must speak to Erebus, it is vital.'

'What can be so important that you desecrate the ritual of ascension?' Akshub narrows her yellow eyes and scrunches her pronounced lips.

'A strike team from the Sons of Horus have entered the Delphos. They will be here, soon.' Kal Belekar nods, fixing her with a stare behind the blue lenses.

Her answer is delayed, as if shaken but he can see the frustration and surprise squirm across her bestial face like some silent theatrical play. 'So be it. There is the path'

Akshub points to a corner shrouded in darkness. The Word Bearer captain crosses the chamber, but keeps well away from the intricate array of salt and chalk lines laid out around the Warmaster. Crossing through the gloom, the blackness itself felt as if it was trying to tug at his limbs and the distances between the pools of lantern light felt far longer than they should be.

But after almost a minute, the Word Bearer arrived at the directed hollow, finding it a narrow fissure carved into the primordial rock. Squeezing his armoured bulk inside, he hears the whisper of the voiceless neverborn, spotting wisps of light sliding through the darkness, only faintly obscuring a distant blue white glow silhouetting the edges of jagged rock. They clasp to his pauldrons, wanting him to stay, trying to tempt him back as nails scrape on his pauldrons and inhuman eyes peer back through the armourglas lenses. A phantom tongue laps along his back from the black carapace's sockets along his spine, connecting the dots.

He ignores each and every one, focusing his gaze on the faint glow seeping through the narrow, winding defile. And there, as the last tendrils slip from his limbs, he spots the swirling nothingess of the void. And what seems like merely fifty paces away, in the eye of the storm of roiling blue and purple flame, is the clear glow cast from an eight-pointed star. And at its heart, connecting all the lines, is the nearly unrecognizable figure of his First Chaplain.

Intricate gold and silver chains connect the First Chaplain's fingers to the edges of each point of the Primordial Star, intricate gold, silver, brass, and iron links glittering in the dancing warplight that swirls around him in a hurricane, whipping a black cloak around his scarlet armoured frame. Horns stretch from his leering helm, the staff of power floating in the air beside him. But the tattered scraps of oath parchment and prayer pennants whip and ripple around him in the cyclonic whirlpool rushing around him.

"Belekar!" Erebus snarls as if through water, "Can't you see I'm occupie-"

"Horus, I could use your help about now." A feminine voice hisses from the ether, pulsing like a wave around him and crashing like a wave against Erebus.

Another different voice whispers moments after that, "I think I'd prefer to stay here and wait for Starlight and the rest of my friends, I hope you understand."

Erebus strains with a snarl of effort, one of the iron links dangling loose in the air as if whips from his outstretched hand like a banner caught in an updraft.

Glancing back for a moment by instinct, Kal Belekar glances over his shoulder. Through the fissure he beholds four wraith like figures gathered around the guttering astral form of the supine Warmaster. Indistinct bestial shapes clutter around him in pale flickering outlines, whispering, taunting, clutching at his limbs as whatever is said is left between them.

Turning back to the First Chaplain, the captain nods, "The Hounds of Horus are here, Lord Erebus. Instructions?"

The First Chaplain hisses in effort as with a ricocheting 'ping', one brass chain comes undone at the base before a second silver chain snaps, shrapnel shards flicking off as it's lost to the winds. Erebus snarls with a grunt of effort, "No prisoners, no witnesses. Stand fast! Order the rest of your company from the Hand of Fate to the Vengeful Spirit, we have work to do and little time to do it. You will be briefed upon arrival."

But behind the warp-swept sorcerer, Kal Belekar spots a shimmer in the distance. The small blot of light, golden and profound in the tempest of darkness.

The captain edges back towards the fissure, putting all his effort into suddenly leaden limbs, "Yes lord, as you command."