AN :

I WROTE THE NEXT BLURB A WEEK AGO. IT'S CONTENTS ARE, FOR REASONS OBVIOUS TO ANYONE OF YOU WHO HAS KEPT UP WITH INTERNATIONAL NEWS, A BIT DEPRESSING AND, WITH THE RECOIL, ONE BIG RANT. DON'T HESITATE TO SKIP IT IF YOU JUST WANT TO READ THE NEXT PART OF THE STORY, IT'S MORE HERE FOR VENTING PURPOSES THAN ANYTHING ELSE. I JUST FEEL THAT IT WOULD BE ... WRONG TO JUST DELETE IT.

…

…

…

Imagine that you are playing a game of Warhammer 40000 with your friends. The game has been going on for almost three hours now, and you are being pummeled in the dirt, but it's all in good fun and you are having a very good time. Your army, a warband of the Black Legion, is fighting against the Taus and the Black Templars over the ruins of a former Imperial City conquered by the Taus. A bunch of your cultists is about to charge a Tau squad inside one of the trenches. It's a little after midnight.

Then someone enters the room, holding a phone in his hand, his face pale. He tells you that the capital of your country has been attacked by fanatics on several locations. Already, dozens of dead are confirmed. The whole city is threatening to turn into a warzone. The responsibles of the attacks are known, their motivations all too clear.

At first, I couldn't believe it. I asked if he was joking. Of course, he wasn't. Who could joke about things like that ? There are few things I can imagine crashing the mood like that, save for the attack being right there. I felt like smashing my models to pieces. Irrational, heh ? Didn't make any sense. Still wanted to do it, though.

It has become more difficult to write stories in the aftermath of that. I suppose the theory that the popularity of war games goes down the closer you are to an actual war does hold some merit after all, and I was several hundred kilometers away from the site. Minutes before the first attack, I uploaded the short story 'Perfection Betrayed' and went to my tabletop gaming club for the evening. I hate that kind of irony. And on a Friday 13th , to boot. It will take us decades to wash off the increase in fearful superstition from that.

…

Sorry. On a lighter note, the forces of Chaos were being destroyed on the table that night, much like they were on Earth in any place that doesn't involve the slaughter of defenseless civilians by brainwashed idiots. You know, for all that players complain to Games Workshop about the Chaos Marines being weak, they are certainly a faithful representation of the actual deluded madmen who believe that ruthless murder will please any kind of higher power worthy of worship.

"Takes a deep breath."

OK, RANT OVER NOW. ONTO MORE PLEASANT THINGS.

This is the first part of the Battle for Asthenar, a story arc that will last for several chapters (I have enough ideas for ten of them, even if I will probably abandon some) and conclude the greater War for Parecxis story. It will not be the end of this fic after that, though, so don't worry (and anyway, this is still a far-off eventuality). If you have any question, leave them in your review or PM me.

This chapter is shorter than usual, and to be honest I rushed it a little bit to get it out now, a week after ... the last short story I published. The shortness is probably going to be the case for the few next ones too, so that I can try to make them more action-packed. It should also mean that I will be able to write them more quickly, but don't expect too much. IRL stuff is taking a lot of time right now.

Thanks to all of you for reading this story. If you like this chapter, please follow, favorite, and review.

Zahariel out.

I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.

Tarek watched the legions of the Lost and the Damned as they approached Asthenar from the west. Tens of thousands of Chaos cultists were drawing near the vague demarcation between the countryside, ravaged by freak storms, minor daemons and blood-crazed wretches, and what the servants of the Emperor called, with a bitter irony, the Graveyard. It was there, in the ruins surrounding the fortified city, that the first stage of the battle for Asthenar would be waged. All across the expanse of torn down buildings, dozens of squads similar to Tarek's own were hiding, prepared to ambush the four different armies that had come to besiege the last free city of Parecxis. The former navy captain didn't envy those who would face the eastern army, which was composed of the Forsaken Sons themselves. Then again, he didn't envy those in the south, who would have to deal with the remaining Plague Zombies of Talexorn, or in the north, where the poor bastards would have to fight against the monsters that had destroyed Nalemos and turned its population into not just slaves, but resources. Come to think of it, his own posting wasn't especially better, but at least he knew that the ones he was to face and kill were in his league in this war for control of the system.

The army that faced the western gate of Asthenar was an army only in that its purpose was conquest and destruction. It had none of the uniformity that most armed forces in the galaxy's long, bloody history had shared, none of the comradeship that had united any of them which Tarek felt comfortable thinking of as a true army. About ten different groups were gathered at the edge of the circle of ruins that surrounded the wall, and through the lens of his binoculars Tarek could see that they kept their distances with each other. Though they had been forced into unity by the iron grip of the Forsaken Sons, trust among the heretics was a myth, each of their leaders eager to claim glory and recognition in the eyes of their masters for himself alone.

Tarek had heard the Sons of Calth talking about this among themselves. It seemed that it was in the very nature of Chaos that its followers were ever at odds with one another. The Dark Gods they served were locked in an eternal war, and their slaves were pawns in this conflict, sacrificed by the malevolent and insane sentiences that ruled over the hellish depths of the Immaterium. Only in the greatest endeavours did the Ruinous Powers ever put aside their differences. The Heresy had been such an event, but even then the forces of Chaos had been unable to work together. Terra had been saved in no small part due to the traitor sons of the Third Legion largely not taking part in the assault on the Imperial Palace, instead seeking to satisfy the twisted desires that their new allegiance had forced upon their once noble souls. Lies and betrayal were the way of Chaos, and it was the inevitable fate of evil to destroy itself if it endured too long on its own.

Here, however, a greater will was at work : that of Arken, the so-called Awakened One, greatest among traitors, master of the Forsaken Sons and unchallenged ruler of all servants of Chaos in the system. Like his father the Arch-Traitor Horus before him, with supreme ruthlessness and the cunning to match, the Chaos Lord had united the various factions of Parecxis' cultists into the army that marched on Asthenar from the west. Tarek supposed that if the bastard could keep the Astartes traitors from killing each other out of sheer madness, it would be easy for him to keep the cultists under his control.

Intelligence reports indicated that a command structure had been established at the arch-traitor command, with a supreme leader nominated by the Chaos Marines to command the mortal components of the army, while the group of Astartes accompanying the host advanced at its own pace. These so-called 'Unbound' were strange beings, in appearance indistinguishable from the other Traitor Marines, but far more volatile and less disciplined. More than one hundred of these warriors were stationed at the border, alongside various transport vehicles and heavy armor.

These, however, were not Tarek's concern. Their march seemed to have been delayed by inner conflict, and it would be several hours before they arrived to join the advance on the walls. The mission of the former navy captain targeted the mortals among the foe. Although it felt strange to Tarek to use the word 'mortal', he also felt that using the word 'human' to describe those assembled in the self-proclaimed 'Army of Shadows' would be a misnamer.

It was a carnival of horrors. The fact that those who made up the army had at one point been humans only increased the revulsion Tarek and his comrades felt when looking upon them. Chaos had claimed them body and soul, reshaping their flesh to the image of their most twisted desires. Through his googles, he had seen huge monstrosities of red muscle and white fangs, beings covered in heavy isolation suits that exuded fumes that seemed to turn all those around them into mindless husks, and many more. The thought that he would have to fight against such monsters would have caused him to freeze in dread, had he not already faced what the Arch-Enemy could unleash against the faithful of the Emperor.

In the long siege of Talexorn's Cathedral, Tarek had fought side by side with the Sons of Calth against the walking dead and their enslavers. He had stared the abomination that was Chaos in the face, and he had survived with his body and soul still his own. Before that, he had fought inside the Lady of the Three Seas, against the shadow daemons summoned by the dark sorcerer that the Space Marines had slain in the end. Twice already he had been placed in situations where his chances of survival were almost non-existence, yet he was still alive. He could still fight.

So, when he had been asked to join the forces that would strike the first blow against the traitors, he had accepted without hesitation. At least the Graveyard would not contain anyone he would have to protect. At least there he would be able to focus all of his attention on the enemy's destruction, to inflict some small measure of vengeance for all that had already been lost. He had actually been considered for the operation that had destroyed most of the Plague Legions coming from the south. It would have been an honor for him to give his life to destroy these abominations, but his superiors in the loyalist chain of command had decided that his determination and experience would be better used here. All he had been able to do was to send off poor old Adrien to his assigned, and willingly accepted, death. The traitors would pay for the clock-worker's fate, too.

Tarek knew that this was a suicide mission. Those who had volunteered for the operation would very likely never return to the relative safety of Asthenar's walls. But if the armies were allowed to reach the walls in their current state, they would be unstoppable. A preliminary strike was the only way to create an opportunity for the loyalist commanders. It would be a slim opportunity, mind you, but that was better than nothing. Every traitor the commandos buried in the Graveyard would be one less which the Forsaken Sons could hurl at the walls, every bullet they forced the enemy to waste was one less that could be used against the defenders of the last free city of Parecxis.

Veros, the Son of Calth who had been assigned to Tarek's group of volunteers, turned toward the navy captain. His armor had been covered in a camouflage cloak that allowed him to hide even in plain sight, and the remaining exposed parts were covered in dust so that as long as he did not move, he was doing a very good impression of a big piece of rubble. The Space Marine's helmet concealed his expression and its speakers turned his voice into a perpetually angry growl, but there was no mistaking the concern in his voice :

'It is time to begin. Are you afraid ?'

Despite the situation, Tarek couldn't help but smile. For all that the Sons of Calth's Chapter was rumoured to be closer to mortals than most of the loyalist Space Marines, they were still awkward in their interaction with unaugmented humans.

'Of course I am afraid,' he answered. 'Aren't you ?' he added as an afterthought. 'I don't remember if that whole thing about the Space Marines knowing no fear was propaganda or not.'

The Legionary took a moment to consider his reply. Tarek got the distinct impression that he was not trying to find the correct answer, but how to best phrase it. During the Great Crusade, the Space Marines had been lauded as the pinnacle of genetic engineering, designed by the Emperor Himself to be His ultimate warriors. Though the Heresy had dealt a terrible blow to their image in the eyes of the Imperium's human population, the rise of the Ecclesiarchy had also granted them an angelic status among the masses, and it was difficult to distinguish between reality and the daydreams of those who would most likely never set eyes on a true Astartes during their lives.

'We do know fear,' Veros finally replied. 'But it is a different kind of fear than what you experience. We do not panic, the necessary biological functions for that were removed from us during our transformation. However, we can still feel the deeper, more thoughtful fears. I guess you could say we know dread, rather than fear. We dread the death of our battle-brothers. We dread the failure of our mission. I suppose each of us also has his own personal fears as well.'

'And what would yours be ?'

There was a moment of silence, and Tarek worried that he had asked something too personal. But then Veros answered, in a slow and weary tone :

'I dread what we will become. I am afraid of the changes that were running their course through the Imperium before we lost contact with it, and of those who will come after. Freedoms are being restricted, paranoia increases with each passing year, and in our hunt of the traitors we have left many worlds smoking ruins. I fear that in the end, there will be nothing left of the ideals of the Great Crusade, as the Lords of Terra sacrifice them on the altar of pragmatism and survival. I dread, paradoxically, what fear itself may turn Mankind into.'

'Lucky for you that neither of us will ever see that, then,' remarked Tarek.

'Lucky for me indeed,' chuckled Veros, before dropping the façade of good humor and refocusing on their goal. It was time to start killing heretics.

Their first target was a group of ten cultists carrying long-distance rifles and poisoned blades. Tarek recognized them : they were killers of the Cartel, the criminal organization that had plagued Parecxis for long before the coming of the Storm – long before the Heresy itself. Their advance was awkward, each of them surveying the others as much as their surroundings. The enemy commander had sent them ahead of his main force to act as scouts, but they were unused to working together – each was a hitman, used to performing solo assassinations on unsuspecting targets. They were probably the closest thing to actual scouts that the Chaos filth had, but they were far from being capable enough when matched against a trap designed by the Sons of Calth.

The ambush sprung into action as the squad was cautiously crossing the space between two ruined buildings that had once been warehouses for the local Manufactorums. It was executed at perfection. All seven human members had been trained in guerilla assaults for weeks by Sons of Calth who were veterans of the Underworld War, and they rose from their hiding places as one, aiming and shooting in a single gesture. Those who had performed best on the firing ranges shot two target each, and each shot hit the intended target. Nine hitmen went down, their chest or skull burst apart by high-intensity las-fire or high-caliber solid rounds. Only one of them survived the volley, his customized full-body armor capable of resisting the shot that had sought to spray his brain on the pavement.

The survivor froze in place, and Tarek could almost see the stupefied expression behind his helmet. It reminded him of his scuffles with the Cartel years ago, when he had been a simple worker on the docks of Talexorn. Back then, the brawls had opposed him and his co-workers to the thugs of the Cartel's smuggling rings over drunken arguments and threats for 'protection money', as they had said. The Arbites had been doing a rather good job at keeping the peace on Parecxis as far as Tarek knew, but there were some things the God-Emperor Himself couldn't remove from human nature. Greed was one of them, and the taxes of the Administratum had led more than one unscrupulous magnate of trade to use the services of the smugglers for precious, heavily regulated cargo. That the money they spent was used to fuel a criminal empire instead of helping the effort of the Great Crusade was apparently not something they felt concerned with.

And back then, just like now, the criminals had been caught by complete surprise when their victims hit back. It was possibly even worse for the last hitman, used as he was to strike down his targets in one single shot without needing to fear counter-attack.

The more things change, thought Tarek …

Veros moved before the killer-for-hire could emerge from his shock. As if materializing out of thin air, the Space Marine appeared behind the hitman and caught his neck in his left wrist. Then, with an audible crunck, he shattered the man's vertebral column as easily as Tarek would have a twig, killing him instantly.

… the more they stay the same.

The Astartes tossed the body aside, more bones cracking as it hit the ground. It was a reminder that even a casual move from a transhuman had enough force behind it to kill a mortal soldier. Tarek did not doubt that the display had been deliberate, as a way to remind the human members of the squad the threat that the Space Marines on the other side posed. Unsubtle, but effective.

Before the squad could begin to move toward their next target, the sound of slow clapping drew their attention to the side of the street from which the dead hitmen had arrived. There stood a silhouette clad in a black robe, the hood of which cast its face completely into shadows. The air around it seemed to vibrate with contained power, and when they looked in its direction, the loyalists felt as if they could see motion at the corner of their vision : dark shapes of horn and claws, hissing with hunger and hate. The ambient temperature fell, a coating of ice forming on the ground and walls. A word passed through their minds : psyker.

'Well done,' said the silhouette in a voice that was definitely male. It was also calm and cultivated, with barely a hint of the lunacy of its owner. 'I am the Prophet in Rags,' continued the renegade with a shallow, mocking bow. 'And though I have no love for these fools of the Cartel, I am afraid my allegiance to the Accords demand that I kill you all now.'

Veros rushed toward the psyker, moving faster than any Space Marine Tarek had ever seen, faster than he would have believed possible. But before he could reach his prey, the Prophet casually lifted his right hand in the Astartes' direction, and a wave of kinetic force slammed into Veros, cancelling the momentum of his charge and sending him flying through the nearest wall.

The rest of the squad did not freeze in place. They had all faced the impossible before, and though the power displayed by the present foe surpassed what most of them had ever seen, they still knew that staying here would be a death sentence – and, worse, a useless sacrifice. They scattered in groups of one or two, running through the labyrinthine streets toward pre-planned retreats and hiding places. Tarek ran alone, and before long, he heard the mocking laughter of the psyker behind him. It appeared that he had been the one the renegade had chosen to follow. A moment later, he felt a wave of sickness pass through him, nearly making him fall over before it dissipated. When it did, the sounds of the rest of the city had gone silent.

'I do not want anyone to disturb this little game,' said the Prophet leisurely. 'I can see your soul, little man. It burns bright with defiance, but it is still so small … Do you really think you can push back the darkness with so weak a candle ?'

'Shut up,' murmured Tarek between his teeth as he kept running.

The former navy captain could hear the footstep of his pursuer clearly in the unnatural silence that severed them from the wider battle. The renegade psyker was walking slowly, with careful and deliberate steps, but the distance between the two never seemed to increase. Accursed sorcery, thought Tarek. The Librarians of the Sons of Calth had only deployed their psychic neutralization field on the other side of the wall, where all the soldiers and civilians were. As much as he understood the meaning of that decision tactically, Tarek still wished they had extended their efforts to include the Graveyard right now.

'I hear the wailing of the ghosts clinging to your shadow. All those you have lost, all those you saw die, all those you couldn't protect … Truly, you are a perfect reflection of the fools opposing the coming of the new age to this world … Tarek.'

He could not help it. When he heard his name come out of the creature's mouth, Tarek froze in place, his mind suddenly filled with a hundred tales of what the Warp-touched could do to you once they knew your true name. Surprisingly, the sound of following steps had also ceased.

'Yes … 'continued the renegade, pensive. 'Tarek. That is your name, is it not ? The one bestowed upon you by your mother on the night she gave birth to you in this lower-hive clinic … just before she died. The Warp knows your name, little man.'

The Prophet in Rags laughed, and the sound was enough to stir Tarek out of his paralysis and back in motion.

'That is hardly uncommon, though,' said the psyker lord as he too resumed his slow, reality-bending pursuit. 'The Warp knows everyone, just like everyone knows it … Especially on this planet. But still, there is something special about you, isn't it ? I look forward to discover what when I rip your soul from your body.'

Tarek intoned a prayed to the God-Emperor under his breath. Father Colin had taught him the words, and they had seemed to work back on the Lady. He doubted they could protect him from the witch's hateful powers, but he took comfort in the familiar words. They weren't a demand for deliverance, but a prayer for the strength to fight against the evil which threatened the people of the Master of Mankind.

'He cannot hear you, Tarek !' shouted the Prophet. 'Not here. Not now ! You are lost beyond His gaze, and soon the whole galaxy will be ! The storm hungers, little man … it screams its appetite into the souls of those willing to hear it, demanding torment to feed it ! One day, it will engulf the whole galaxy, and the light of your Corpse-God will flicker and fade. This is inevitable … Written into the stars themselves !'

'The empire will endure,' continued the madman, his tone feverish. 'It will resist its downfall for thousands of years to come. But its struggle will only feed the storm ! The Primordial Annihilator grows stronger the more you fight it, Tarek … That's why resistance is futile ! Cease running from your fate, little man ! Only by embracing it can you possibly survive the coming of Chaos !'

Tarek stopped. The heretic was right on precisely one thing, he realized. If he kept running, all he would achieve was tire himself out further. Though his body was fit, he could already feel the first signs of fatigue settling into his muscles. And since the witch had cut him off from his comrades, that meant that he could not keep buying time until reinforcements came to his rescue – besides, if he had wanted to fight where help was available, he would have stayed on the walls. His mission was one of preliminary strikes, and here he had an opportunity to confront one of the enemy's leaders. His chances of success were laughably small, but what choice did he have ? He would not die on the ground, crawling away from his foe.

He was done running. He turned toward the other side of the street, drew his pistol in one hand and his sword and the other, and aimed the barrel of the laser weapon straight at where the Prophet would appear. He doubted he would get more than one shot.

He didn't even get that. The motion was too fast for Tarek to see it. One moment the Prophet in Rags was half a dozen meters away, the next he was standing right in front of him. As the psyker's sudden move ceased, the kinetic energy he had accumulated from the action of defying the laws of physics was violently bled out into the surrounding reality as a kinetic impact lesser than the one that had felled Veros, but more than enough to send Tarek flying and crashing against the wall three meters behind him. Lights danced in his eyes as he struggled to keep his consciousness after the shock, and he was unable to shake off the dizziness in time to react before the psyker was in front of him once more.

'Coward,' he was able to spit out, just before the Prophet reached out to him, actually moving his arms for the first time since he had joined the battle.

'Show me,' the psyker whispered, ignoring Tarek's weak challenge. 'Show me what makes you special in the eyes of the Warp …'

The skeletal hands of the Prophet tightened around Tarek's skull, and the navy captain screamed as he felt the power of the psyker lord pour into his brain, ransacking his mind. Tarek screamed in agony as he felt tendrils of cold fire pierce through his skull, and his perception of the world around him fell apart. Dark fog surrounded him, while his sense of self began to slowly corrode.

He found himself in a dark place, lit only by a haze that emanated a weak, sickly light. Before he could look around or think long enough to realise that this was an illusion – a construct of his mind to represent the intrusion of the Chaos psyker inside his psyche – a silhouette appeared in front of him, feminine and indistinct. It spoke, its voice echoing all around Tarek and walls that were not there :

'Tarek ? Tarek, come here … Let me see you, my son …'

The woman's voice was familiar, though he had never heard it before, as was her face. Something deep within him reacted to it, some ancient, primal instinct that made him feel safe and secure. It was then that his mind clicked into place, and he recognized the apparition as the mother he had never known, who had died before he had been placed in the care of one of Parecxis' orphanages as a child. Tears ran down his cheeks as he was unable to contain his joy at the sight. And then, a fraction of a second later, that joy was crushed and replaced by sorrow and raw hate as another realization hit him like a hammer blow.

His mother was dead. She had been dead for forty years, her soul gone to whatever afterlife awaited low-grade prostitutes in the underhive. This was not her – he refused to believe that the Prophet had the power to pull her spirit back from the grave. This was an illusion. This was a lie. A mirage conjured from the depths of his mind to make him willingly open himself to the psyker's mental intrusion.

'How dare you,' he whispered, before rage overcame him at the insult and blasphemy. 'How dare you !'

Anger sharpened his mind, tearing through the fog that had threatened to overcome it. In the wake of his anger came his faith, and he wielded it like a weapon in its own right against the mental assault. Words of prayer and honor came to the fore of his spiritual self, inscribing themselves onto his mind's eye in fiery letters that made the corruptive presence wither in agony. The flames filled his mind, pure and clean, banishing the darkness that was the psyker's influence.

Tarek screamed in exaltation as he gathered all of his self, all the grief and rage and pain that had accumulated within him since the coming of the Warp Storm. He fuelled the mental fire with these emotions, and the fire grew hot and strong, reaching beyond the confines of Tarek's own psyche and through the link that the Prophet had established between himself and his prey.

He beheld a mental landscape of nightmares, conjured from every corner of the psyker's memory. Tarek knew that those touched by the Warp were haunted by visions of this hellish realm, and that only the procedure of binding to the God-Emperor could protect a psyker from the madness of Chaos – though even this blessing had its limits. Here, he was looking at the results of a lifetime of wild sorcery, with only the practitioner's willpower protecting him from the depredations of daemons.

It had clearly not been enough. The mark of the Warp was all over the soul of the self-styled sorcerer lord, rendered into blood, fire and shadow. Images of infernal beasts towered above armored bastions representing the last remnants of sanity of the psyker, lashing out at the defences with fiery whips and claws. The screams of shreds of soul and sentience being tortured eternally resounded amidst the daemonic howls, and the sky was ablaze with a storm like the one in the heavens of Parecxis, but boiling with the power of torment untold. On instinct, he forced himself forward. Something was fuelling the storm of the psyker's power, he could feel it. Something that didn't belong to Chaos, something it had stolen, enslaved, but not broken. He reached out with his mind, and though he was unable to make contact, he felt whatever was on the other side react to his attempt. Though the emotions that emanated from it were entirely different in … structure, for lack of a better word, from anything Tarek had ever known, he could still recognize surprise, shock, and even a faint trace of hope.

Then the link was brutally severed, casting him back into his body. His vision cleared, and he was once more in the physical world, his head held in between the hands of the Prophet in Rags. This close, he could see the face that the psyker lord hid beneath his hood, twisted in shock at the escape of Tarek from his soul-trap and pain at the effort it had taken to prevent him from actually causing harm into the Prophet's psyche. The face itself was nondescript safe for the twin trails of blood that fell from the eyes – had Tarek crossed paths with the Prophet in the street, he would have forgotten his existence at the very next step – but there was something that caught the navy captain's attention.

The traitor was wearing a crown of black metal – simple steel forged in a circular pattern. The headgear was encrusted with half a dozen gemstones that shone with an inner light. The stones were beautiful, even if they had been bent to an evil purpose. He knew then that the gems were the physical representation of what he had felt fuelling the psyker's energies in the mental realm.

Suddenly, the Prophet froze. Lightning the colour of azure was pouring from the gemstones within his crown and spreading all over his body, blocking his body in place. The gems were glowing with an angry light, and Tarek felt uneasy as he looked upon them. Although nowhere near the level of disgust that the children of Chaos inspired him, the stones' light reminded him of the presence he had felt when repelling the Prophet's assault on his mind. That presence had called to his primitive instincts as being utterly alien. But whatever the presence within the crown was, and whatever its motives were for turning against its wearer at this very moment, it wasn't of the Warp, and it was fighting the Prophet. That was all that Tarek needed to know.

'No,' growled the Prophet. 'Not now. Not now !'

'Seems that your little power source is no longer cooperating,' said Tarek, trying to coax sensation and strength back into his body.

Though he had repelled the intrusion, his flesh had still suffered from the psychic assault. He felt cold, numb and hurt at the same time. Perhaps the numbness was a physical sensation, while the pain was the manifestation of the spiritual damage his self had taken. If he survived, his burning mind noted abstently, he would probably need to talk to the Librarians and the priests again. There was no telling what this had done to his soul.

'You will serve me,' snarled the psyker, no longer addressing Tarek. His eyes were closed and his face twisted in concentration, black sparks emanating from his eyes and mouth and clashing against the blue energy that held him in place. The veins on it turned black as his inner corruption was brought to the fore, and they bulged like he was on the verge of apoplexy. More blood was dripping his eyes now, joined by another rivulet from his nose. He was ranting now, spit flowing from his mouth as he did so. 'You are mine ! All of you are mine ! You belong to Chaos now, just like this world and all those upon it !'

Tarek lifted his sword. His weapon felt heavier than ever in his hands, and he was trembling with exhaustion. He would only have one shot at this : he wasn't sure he would be able to muster the strength for another blow.

'Not yet,' he whispered in answer to the Prophet's claims, knowing that the madman couldn't hear him, lost as he was in the struggle to regain control. 'Not yet.'

Something seemed to fall in place within the Prophet's mind, and his gaze focused on Tarek again, filled with hatred. When he spoke, his voice was laced in venom and spite :

'You think you have won ? You despicable little freak, I will …'

Tarek struck. The point of his sword pierced through the psyker's right eye and deep into his skull. The Chaos leader screamed in agony as the metal penetrated his brain, his focus disrupted in the most violent manner imaginable. Before Tarek's trust had even expended itself and the blade could reach the other side of the skull, the Prophet in Rags lost control of the unholy energies he was using to retake control of his crown. Streams of Warp-energy flowed from his mouth, ears and orbits in an uncontrolled torrent, and with a sickening pop, his head exploded.

'And they say third time is the charm,' breathed out Tarek before tearing his blade free from the remains of the dead psyker's skull. First the Lady of the Three Seas, then Talexorn, and now this – and still he lived on. It seemed that he would have to wait a little longer before finally meeting his death.

As fragments of mutated brain and sprays of tainted blood splattered on the ground, he thought, for a moment, that he could hear the sound of distant, cruel laughter. He looked down at the remains of the psyker, and saw the glint of the stone-encrusted crown. He didn't know what it was, but although its appearance caused him shivers, he instinctively knew that this was no fell relic of the Dark Gods. It had power, power that the self-proclaimed prophet had been able to use, but not master. At the last moment, that power had turned against him, giving Tarek the opportunity to gather his strength and strike back, even if he had no idea how exactly it had done so. If Tarek left it there, then another servant of Ruin could find it …

With blackness creeping it at the edge of his vision as he reached the absolute limit of his strength, Tarek picked up the crown and cleaned the blood off it with a scrap of the psyker's robes, before slipping it under his uniform and making his way out of the street. He didn't make three steps before his legs gave up under him, and he collapsed into the arms of one of his men, who had finally found him. Quickly, another pair of arms came to help support the unconscious captain, and another figure appeared, clad in ceramite bearing the tell-tale signs of violent kinetic damage.

'Bring him back into the city,' said Veros, his steps growing ever steadier despite his wounds as his enhanced metabolism worked to repair the damage. 'He needs healing.'

'He would want to stay,' answered one of the men carrying the former navy captain.

'Yes, he would,' admitted Veros. 'But he can do no more here. He will be of more use back there once he has recovered. Make no mistake : today, we have claimed the life of one of the enemy's lords. But it will take many such blows before we can hope to claim victory in this war. Bring him to safety, then come back here if you can. If you cannot, join one of the regiments on the wall.'

One of the soldiers gave an awkward salute while trying to keep Tarek's prone body from moving too much, and the duo began the long and dangerous way back to secret passages that led from the Graveyard and into Asthenar. Veros diverged his attention to the corpse of the psyker lord. In death, the witch was much less impressive that he had been in life, when the power of the Warp flowed through his body and haloed him. Now, he was nothing more than a corpse, quickly decaying as the corruption of Chaos in his body, no longer contained by his will, spread out through his flesh.

The Space Marine spat on the corpse, and returned to his mission. The rest of the men in his squad were gathering again, and even with the loss of two of them, there was a lot of things they could do. Their preparations would have been meaningless if they had not planned for the sudden loss of one or more of their members.

They were far behind the current enemy position, and there was much work to be done. Tarek had dealt a great blow to the traitors by killing the rogue psyker, but they were nowhere near fulfilling the objectives they had to met in order for the people of Asthenar to have any hope at all. And besides, thought Veros with a grim smile, it would not do for a Son of Calth to be outdone by a human.

Before the walls of Asthenar saw any combat, the traitors would pay a price in blood for every hundred meters of the Graveyard they took.