Glyceris didn't recognize me when I knocked on his door. The disheveled man in dirty rags was a shadow of his former kingpin self. He dwelled alone in a decaying abandoned mansion in the bleak outskirts of a city permanently veiled in heavy smog.

The memories of this frontier world were still vivid years after I'd set foot on its surface during my ill-fated apprenticeship. Its northern continent was occupied by the hive that extended from snow-covered mountains of the polar cap to the narrow strip of sea that separated it from the sandy shores where the enigmatic fortress of Aphedron's dreams stood among the dunes. The locals thought the southern lands were a cursed place, left by the inhabitants even before the Heresy, and towns and villages beyond the sea sheltered but convicts and smugglers who had nothing to lose.

Seldom visited by Imperial officials, the world lived by itself, sustained by relatively primitive technologies. Street gangs fought in dark alleys and sidestreets while the aristocracy enjoyed sunlight in their crystal solars miles over the surface. Many jobless citizens moved to waste-polluted outskirts where cheap town houses and cottages were built of shit and sticks among slagheaps and stunted trees.

The past owner of the former kingpin's mansion should have been a wealthy man once, but the district had been abandoned and blighted centuries ago. Carcasses of long dead trees surrounded the peeled, rotten building with mauled doors and broken windows. Generations of burglars had stolen everything even remotely worthy before Glyceris squatted it to nurture his madness.

I'd learned from Ordo investigators that he'd changed more than twenty worlds on his mindless journey. Nine worlds ago his wife had left him with almost all his wealth, and the rest had been spent to the dime for spook and brandy. Gaunt and skinny as a dessicated corpse, he stood before me with an unfinished bottle of cheap booze in his trembling yellow hands.

'He's sent you. Her ancient rival.' He showed his rotten teeth in a mean grin.

'Just don't disappoint us like that.' I shook my head. 'You praised your discretion when we talked in the underhive slurs last time.'

'Her breath crosses the abyss to reach us outcasts doomed to crave for the cup of her whoredom.'

'Drugs kill, man.' Uncle frowned.

'Might be chaotic taint.' Angel warned me.

I probed his aura with caution, ready to retreat at any moment. Nothing familiar and almost nothing peculiar. A faded note of musk that lasted for a second that might be just the world's mark. Yet he recoiled at my psychic touch with a frantic scream.

'He sees me. He will find the old fool. He will find the porphyrous champion. He will find the predator.'

'A relatively normal human aura,' I said. 'But drugs have ruined his brain. His sanity has been enough to arrive to the same world Pimenta is still hiding on.'

'Judging by the story of your youth,' Angel said, 'the place has an impure secret that attracts heretics. Let's inform the Ordo Malleus lest we risk to get corrupted.'

'The daemon-hunters are way too clamorous in their custom of shooting from the hip. I want to untangle the case to the end. It's connected to something more disturbing than the summoning on Coreopsis.'

Fluffster approached the shivering ex-tycoon, and a small syringe appeared from his paw. Glyceris gasped at the injection and took a deep breath. A minute later he paced back to the unlit rooms slowly.

'Let's enter,' Fluffster said. 'A bit of neuroleptics will give temporary respite to his weary mind.'

I stepped in first lighting my flashlight. Lumps of dirty spiderwebs and dust stuck to my hat and coat as I moved through the long corridor following the madman. Most of the room doors were broken, and the rooms were packed with layers of nearly fossilized rubbish.

Glyceris lived in the shaded part where he couldn't hear any noise from the nearby cottages. His quarters stank of booze and human waste, and the walls were covered with strange shapes he had drawn on dust and soot. He curled up in his nest of rags paying no more attention to the intruders. All windows in the room were boarded up save the one that faced south. Hot wind from the slagheaps burst in through the deformed frame, and I bet I felt a hint of musk and ambergris again.

'I doubt he'll ever be able to talk to us.' I sat down to a broken box.

'There must be other items that can talk instead,' Fluffster said. 'I will try some serums to restore at least part of his sanity for a while.'

'Pimenta has arrived here right after Atlas embarked to Coreopsis. He is always moving from district to district, and even the news of his daughter's execution didn't bother him. He hasn't done anything heretical yet, if reports are to believe, and spends his days drinking and duelling for money.'

'I wish I knew how he got mad and for how long the madness had been creeping under the pompous image of a crime boss.' Fluffster looked at the man mumbling in his sleep.

'There was nothing remarkable in his youth. Atlas and Pimenta were his trading companions, and he'd had a few deep space raids before he got married and settled in the city. Then something forced him to return to the slurs after he broke up with his buddies. The last voyage when the whole crew died after a dysfunction of the Gellar field. He lied to me on that evening, when he told me about the frightening discovery. He was aboard the ship as well but decided to give up rogue trade after the accident.'

'We'll learn what he saw there.'

'Hope we're not to live in this dump,' Uncle said indignantly. 'Only a madman can choose a junkyard for a house. Not an ounce of comfort but dust, stench and infection.'

'Let's move the owl to the roof to hide it behind a collapsed section of the attic,' I suggested. 'But first we have to examine the mansion for clues.'

'It's evening, lassie. We've been riding the owl for six hours from the space port to the Hummocks. Now I'll use our remaining food stocks to prepare dinner, and you have half an hour to roam around.'

There was nothing of use in Glyceris' bedroom. Rows of bottles, bags of trash he'd probably found in the local garbage heaps to sell them for more booze, week-old unfinished sandwiches, expired instant noodles.

'Hobo chic.' I smiled. 'An easy way to get rid of the obsessive cult of body pleasures. I've always felt uneasy at Uncle's cult of food while that was the only reason why my mentor valued him more than other hired guns.'

'The type of a concerned daddy that'll hang polka dot curtains in a bomb shelter before an Exterminatus.' Fluffster shook his head. 'Exactly like Lord Platydoras. The kind of people running around and yelling at the storm that has ruined their gingerbread houses.'

'I can understand Uncle's paranoia. He was far away when cultists murdered his children and his wife died of grief. He's always nervous when one of us three leaves the owl. The venture to the traitor camp has given him lots of new grey hairs.'

'He mustn't serve an Inquisitor if he's going to cluck over his boss as if she's a toddler.'

'I'd agree while Angel and Sister would not.'

'Once you go on long enough, you'll get why they haven't grown up and will hardly ever do.'

'I'm aware of the peculiarities of their training. But, if we talk about space marines, Aphedron and Aspersum are obviously different as well as the Iron Hands.'

'The Iron Hands are hardened barbarians who stay among their kind for longer than the Blood Angels and cultivate their warlike spirit. But I wouldn't call that real maturity. Some chapters resist the post-Heresy cowardly custom of emasculating the Imperium's defenders. The Space Wolves, the Salamanders, the Raven Guard and more. As for the Chaos Lords, that's a totally different thing. They were taken from their homeworlds as young men, not kids, and were raised not to linger in a decaying world but to be paragons of a new life after the Great Crusade. There's irony in the fact that the best men of that time died, and only the fallen traitors live on as a reminder of His Angels' past glory.'

We walked on tiptoes past snoring Glyceris and went up a rotten stairway. The tin roof above rumbled under heavy steps as Angel was helping Uncle to park the owl. Fluffster pointed down and lit the stepway with his flashlight.

'Have you noticed that?'

'Deep cracks, about to collapse.' I shrugged my shoulders.

'Not that. You have to be extremely attentive to solve cases quickly and effectively. The layer of dust is not as thick as in the other places, and there're even footprints. He used to visit the attic quite frequently. About a month ago for the last time.'

'So if he has some clues or relics, we should search upstairs.'

I wrapped my scarf around the lower half of my face and pushed the attic door. It suddenly fell off its hinges, and a cloud of stirred dust enveloped us. Fluffster covered his nose with one paw and hurried to a large closed window, kicking away pieces of decayed furniture and shards of glass. He opened the shutters, and grey twilight leaked into the trashed attic.

'The southern window again,' I said. 'The other ones are all boarded up.'

'You know the answer. Look at the footprints here.'

'Right over his sleeping nest.'

Empty bottles and food boxes stood in even half-circle rows like a fortress rampart. Behind the improvised parapet next to the wall there was an untidy heap of used paper towels mottled with dried blood. Fluffster picked it up carefully, and I saw uneven written lines on the lower towel sheets. Underneath, in a wide gap between the floor boards, we found a lump of crumpled paper. When I took it out, I caught a slight disturbance in the warp around.

'The sheets are a diary of madness.' I nodded at the yellowed towels. 'The earliest have almost even writing, and the latest are a chaotic mess of weird symbols. I don't remember anything like that in the manuals. Only a few look remotely like Genestealer spiral emblems. But the man isn't a genestealer himself for sure. There should have been other traces of a cult.'

'Sister will analyze the blood of this writing. We'll arrange the sheets in time order after dinner.'

'The crumpled thing is way more suspicious. It's also handwriting but a different hand. A table of standard date and coordinates here. A page from a spaceship log-book.'

I unwrapped the paper carefully, and a small shard of glass fell out to my hand. I felt like it was a stab to my chest where the sacrificial mark had been. The shard edges were smooth as if molten by a great flame, and inside there was a barely visible dark spot. A gust of wind brought the smell of musk again, and this time it didn't fade away in a second.

'Give it to me and don't look inside.' Fluffster suddenly snatched the shard from my palm.

'A corrupted flect?'

'Worse. Even a shard as small as this costs a fortune.'

'Let's sell it and buy a ship then.' I winked at him. 'Tired of running around spaceports in search for a desperate moron who agrees to work with us.'

'You'll give up the idea when you learn where it's from. There was a void construct named Torquetum right at the borders of the Eye of Terror. Once a band of sorcerer-brethren arrived there to ask a question to the Iron Oculus, a mighty oracle sealed within the Silver Pavilion of Torquetum. They were way too gullible, and let in a horrible foe. They managed to escape with the oracle's help, and the moment they left the station it split into trillions of shards, and each of them carried a shadow of the foe's presence. The great warp storm in the last days of the Heresy carried the shards throughout the galaxy, and they're believed to lead to wealth and power but lead to damnation only.'

'That thing is the source of his wealth. Like the daemonic crown. He mocked me when I asked about the purple pearls, but the thing he keeps is the same kind of crap.'

'It needs to be contained lest you wish to attract unnecessary attention. It's safer than in the times of the Heresy but still.'

We left the attic and walked out to the roof. The clouds above were already almost dark, and countless lights were scattered over the Hammocks as if starry skies unfurled underneath. A small lamp cast a warm glow on the owl door, and a tasty smell of cooking stew was wafting from the inside. Uncle was sitting in the doorway peeling oranges, and Sister and Angel were waiting for dinner with spoons and bowls at ready. The steaming teapot was neatly covered with a cosy, the tablecloth on our small table was perfectly clean and smooth.

'You said half an hour.' Fluffster frowned.

'I have to care for all three, and you're never eager to help, you lazy rodent,' Uncle grunted back.

'Fluffster has been busy working with Volentia,' Sister spoke up for the cricetid.

'Volentia has been working, and the rodent has been hanging out with her as usual. I only wonder how he ever manages to be on time while he's that slow.'

'The faster you chase the future, the likelier it will evade you.' Fluffster disappeared inside the owl with a sigh.

I sat to the table and put the heap of sheets on my knees.

'Lassie, take this crap away. It's not for dinner. They're infested worse than a train toilet.'

'Just one of them. It's urgent.'

I swallowed a spoonful of stew and smoothed the record sheet carefully. Frail and burnt on one side, it was no easy reading. The journey itself must have been kinda special as the captain had decided to give up digital logs. For no one could see them save the closest circle.

The dates had been erased by the burn, and only a half of the coordinates was readable. 'Warp route Kappa-Beta seven-three-seven, So...' I typed that into the search field of the Galaxy map on my dataslate. The route from Ultramar to Sotha, previously used to carry supply cargoes to the now-dead homeworld of the Scythes of the Emperor. Now out of use for about a decade after the Tyranids had ravaged the sector. A subtle hint of the foul devourer again.

'The seventieth day since we turned away from the route. The depths of the warp are almost empty as if a giant shadow has fallen over us. Even warp-krakens have disappeared giving way to eerie shapes weaved from dirty smoke. The smell of musk prevails throughout. Pimenta is laughing like he's high, and Glyceris is shaking in terror.'

Late captain Atlas. Even the Lutetia conspiracy was probably petty compared to this strange quest. Glyceris had reasons to get obsessed with security and prudence, even though that didn't help.

'Day seventy-one. The shadow's getting deeper. Pimenta suggested shutting down the Gellar field, but no one supported the decision.'

'Day seventy-three. The smell is suffocating. The astropaths are comatose. The crew is ready to start a mutiny. I had to promise them a bigger share of our future wealth to pacify them.'

'Day seventy-five. Pimenta has turned off the field at 'night,' and the vessel is overwhelmed by the smoke. We've started seeing dreams again, obscure and fleeting. The same seen by every member of the crew: a fortress outline in the distance. The crystal shard is glowing brighter every hour.'

'Day eighty. We've entered an asteroid field. Uncounted thousands of shards are floating amid the thick smokescreen. Crystal, obsidian and brass inscribed with phosphorous runes. The smell is sickening. The crew has been halved by now. Every hour we find new pools of blood with the rest of the bodies evaporated by the eerie smoke. It has condensed into bestial silhouettes constantly floating at the very edge of our field of vision. They don't approach us as long as long as we keep close to the shard. The dreams repeat every day with deadly precision.'

'Day eighty-six. The crew is all dead. For the better. The diary didn't lie. A splendid sight, a scarlet serpent that can swallow suns whole...'

The end. Glyceris had torn it out of the log journal even though it had been likely to cost him his life. Aphedron wasn't the only one to have learned about the treasure hidden in the strange fortress. I'd asked some inquisitors about that and had even tried to find clues in the Ordo Library on Uebotia, but there were virtually no records of other encounters.

After the dinner I walked to the edge of the roof where the cricetid was devouring another block of processed cheese.

'That obnoxious hired gun has at least one good trait.' He crumpled the foil and unwrapped a new portion. 'He never forgets to buy my favourite treat.'

I retold him the logs.

'I'll send a request to Ultramar. Something must have survived the Hive Fleet invasion. And we have to contact Lord Corydoras, he has access to the archives on Luna. He might even agree to contact the Librarium of Titan through his acquaintance of Lady Cichlasoma.'

'As if it could change anything.' He grumbled with sadness I didn't expect. 'Do you really believe a single solved case can drive the gathering storm away? That's just another harbinger of the events we've been waiting with fear for all the hundred centuries.'

'We mustn't give up anyway.'

'I've seen more than you and I'm tired to death. My mentor burnt to ashes long ago, and my peers are too short-sighted. I've failed in everything I could, and now I'm condemned to this silly body. A funny animal from a petting zoo.'

'Tomorrow we'll go to the city to find Pimenta. Cheer up. I'm also tired of Imudon's stalking but we have to do our job. The very idea of going to bed sounds disgusting after the latest jolly weeks in the warp.'

'Imudon won't disturb you in the proximity of the shard. But you have to watch out for the madman. He's back on his feet. Listen.'

Quiet creeking of the stairway. Careful steps in the attic underneath. A desperate, insane howl.

'He's taken my treasures! He's robbed me! He's found me! Found me!'

'I wish I knew who are those he mentions.'

'You will one day,' Fluffster's tone was sinister.

Glyceris' fists pummeled on the door to the roof. He yowled and sobbed, too weak to break it down.

'Fluffster, open the door and grab him by the neck.'

'I'll try some medicines at night anyway.'

'Right now.'

Fluffster unbolted the door without a word. Glyceris screamed trying to writhe out of his iron grip. When I slapped him on the shoulder, he froze in panic.

'What happened to the diary you've found before embarking?'

'Your puppeteer needs it,' he whispered with his eyes closed.

'Yes.' I decided to play along with his delirium.

'I haven't seen it since we returned. Pimenta has taken it for himself. All I managed to get was that record page... And a small chink of the shard. Tell him to go after Pimenta, not me. Not me. Not me.'

The rest was muffled out by scared, plaintful sobs. Sister came closer and took him by the hands. He didn't even move, rendered helpless by some unknown threat.

I gave the rest of the sheets to Fluffster and retreated to the owl. Pimenta had been seen in the bars of the Moonshine Corners for a few times during the last month, and he'd never been discreet. His blademaster skills made him a deadly adversary but with a space marine by my side I had nothing to worry about. I wasn't sure what we should do next. None of my acolytes would agree but the dangerous perspective thrilled and haunted me years after the first attempt. I had to break in to the Casbah.