I squeezed the shard in my fist trying to ignore growing pain in the solar plexus. The abomination's enticing presence veiled me with a cloud of musk scent. I straightened up gasping for the heady smell. Unfamiliar vigour and strength filled me as never before, and I licked my lips, intoxicated by power and lust flowing into my mind from the shard.

'Lassie, you're... no more like yourself.' Uncle stared at me anxiously. 'Some swag, of course, but mean as those underhive junkie mobster chicks.'

'That's the point.' An intimidating note in my new voice both surprised and encouraged me.

I came up to the gambling tables and pushed aside a few bored loiterers without ceremony.

'What about all-in, buddies?' I pulled the brightest of my smiles and winked at the meanest-looking smuggler at the table.

He smirked back. 'A new face, and not an ugly one. Do you have enough to pay after you lose?'

'A hundred thousand for the first bet.' I kicked one of the dead-drunk players off his chair and took his place.

'Whom are you mourning - a doddering hubby, a generous daddy or a thousand innocent souls from a trading ship?'

'Much more than a thousand. I dare you all.'

'This is even more.' The smuggler took a handful of polished gems out of his belt purse. 'If you win, take them. But if you lose, you'll dance stark naked on this bloody table.'

The gamblers roared with laughter. I grabbed a goblet of booze and emptied it with a single gulp. My midriff hurt like I'd just got a bullet to my chest. If I turn too much attention to that we'll get stuck here, I thought squeezing the shard tighter.

One of the men shuffled the cards and handed the pack to me. I let the shard slip down my sleeve, shuffled the pack once again and slapped it against the table. Two more smugglers added their stakes to the bank. I put two cards before the players in strained silence, trying to catch the thread of future unfurling before my psychic glance.

Unequal. That won't be too suspicious. First, second, third, fourth card fell on the table. I bet I saw what was the next one even before I turned it face up.

'Damn the beginner's luck,' the first player grunted. 'You shouldn't miss that.'

'You're welcome to win it back. If you have anything else to put on stake this time.'

After two more rounds the bank had grown so a few bigger players joined the game, tempted by the lucrative prize. Enticed by the shard's sorcery, they couldn't even realize they were trying their luck against a psyker card sharp. Cramps in the chest made me lean on the table. First drops of blood poured out of my nose and mouth staining my scarf, and I wrapped it tighter to avoid unnecessary attention. The table was a battlefield and so was I.

At the start of another round I noticed the guide who was standing at the closest column quietly watching the game. Uncle clenched his fists and frowned when I drew the first cards. Equal. I had the right to withdraw my prize, twenty times more than my initial stake. The largest sum I'd ever had, probably enough to buy a ship of my own. The price of a single short trip was enough to have decades of decent life on a peaceful backwater world.

Everything went almost black. I reeled backward, and Uncle put a glass of booze to my lips. The scarf was now soaked with blood that started dripping under the carapace.

A strong hand grabbed me by the shoulder, and a wave of psychic might struck my mind. I caught my breath and turned to the newcomer. Aphedron towered over the ragtag crowd as a demigod of ancient myths, clad in amaranthine armour. The baleful pearl of the cursed crown radiated on his pale forehead. He'd never been that majestic and intimidating, an embodiment of bestial allure and might.

'I have a right to buy the bank from you.' He put his hand on the pile of gems and drugs.

'Are you ready to add your biggest treasure to the bank?' Despite the magical intoxication the faint voice of reason still said my luck was no match for his.

'For a special stake from you. The place is swarmed by illegal psykers but their souls are already taken by the place's enigmatic spirit. I need a soul to pay for the passage, you need the bigger shard to give it a try.'

'Your cards are always marked. Uncle, call the guide.'

I felt so weak I couldn't even get up by now. The guide approached me slipping soundlessly between drunken idlers.

'Leave the prize for yourself,' he whispered. 'I'll take what you're hiding in your sleeve.'

I stuffed a handful of gems into my pocket and let the shard slip out to my palm. The guide's crooked hand snatched it in a moment. The heady haze dissolved, and I gasped for air rising to my feet. My rivals stared at me with sudden indignation.

'The witch has suckered us in.' The first player whipped out a pistol. 'A card sharp.'

The gamblers leapt to their feet, ready to tear me to pieces. I reached for my weapons but Aphedron raised his hand, and I felt the touch of his shard-amplified will that made the smugglers freeze.

'Why do you think so?' he said in a seemingly sweet voice.

'She's won every round.' The player looked down under Aphedron's brazen gaze.

'I've won every round in my life. Does that make me a card sharp?'

None of them was brave enough to utter a sound when Aphedron stuffed my prize into his belt pouch and held his gauntlet over the players' microchip rings placed at the bank pile. I got up holding on to Uncle's arm. Red and black circles whirled and danced before my eyes, even another gulp of booze couldn't wash away the metallic taste of blood.

'Meet you at the edge of the village at sunset.' I heard a faint whisper again, and the guide vanished in the crowd.

'Inquisition! An agent of the Ordos!' A furious cry startled the paralyzed gamblers.

One of the rogue psykers broke through the loiterers with a wraithbone charm in her outstretched hand. Before she could deal a crushing blow, Aphedron pushed me aside, and the witch staggered at his psychic attack.

'She's the agent of the Inquisition!' He shouted pointing at the witch.

His hypnotic power made everyone present forget who was the initial accuser. The gamblers shot their pistols at the same time, and the psyker's violent cry of pain shook the hall. Bleeding from multiple wounds, she rushed for the table in blind frenzy. Unable to resist the surge of madness, the loiterers snatched their weapons and entered the wild fight.

Blood ran under the overturned table as they all hacked and clawed at one another like crazed beasts stomping on the fallen wounded and dead. I pulled Uncle to the exit while Aphedron was unwinding his battle-whip for the bound daemon could feast on the madness.

When I finally got fully back to my senses, we were walking the night streets, and not a sound from the gambling den could be heard in the solemn quietude of the forlorn ruins. Flickering lights appeared in collapsed window frames and doorways and died out the moment I glimpsed at them. Distant spectral voices were but whispers we couldn't catch.

'Sorcery is outrageous.' Uncle wiped his forehead looking around. 'It's the same bloody street for an hour. The same twenty houses that repeat after another turn.'

'My senses barely work at all after this glorious gambling.'

'But your prize had been taken by this image of lechery.'

'What a flattering description.' A tentacle coiled around my waist and tugged me backwards.

Aphedron's incandescent aura dazzled me as I was already almost helpless. I stepped closer, drawn by the enticing sorcerous allure. A sudden wave of musk scent awakened the silenced hunger and haze again. Uncle stood still with his eyes thoughtless and empty.

'A defender as magnificent does deserve some gratitude.' Aphedron showed his shark teeth.

I pointed at his pouch. 'You can buy yourself a frigging palace out of purest crack for my gratitude.'

'I've just bought the bank.'

'Don't tell me I have to waste my emergency trinket right now.'

My hands didn't obey anymore. The whole body got lazy and limp, and I would fall down but for the iron grip of the Slaaneshite's tendril.

'You'll have a chance to feel like a movie star today. It's a shame you won't live long enough to see the reaction of the stunned audience at your workplace.'

'I'm not photogenic, sorry.' The haze was too strong to feel afraid.

'No one is when the Magnificent is around. Another compromising vid-log in a single month, what a pain in the arse for the poor workaholic Platydoras. Even a dirty mind like mine cannot imagine the way he'll get owned by the Segmentum Ordo authorities.'

'I've got some business to do in the owl.'

'You cannot get back to the owl without your shard.'

'You won't get to the Casbah even with one. You let me go today, and I'll take you along tomorrow.'

He frowned considering risks, then grabbed me by the face.

'I don't need the guide as badly as you. And I'm pretty sure you'll ditch me. Let me keep your dear Uncle till tomorrow then.'

'That's why they call you Pansexualis.'

'I'm a devotee of Slaanesh, not Nurgle.'

He took a tiny purple fleck out of a small pocket of his pouch. I clenched my teeth but he stuffed it under my lip and rubbed it on the gum.

'Get familiar with my apothecary's latest invention. Good old poison with a pinch of warp trickery. If you don't turn up at sunset, it'll distort your flesh and eat you away till you dissolve into a pool of narcotic liquid.'

'I thought you had a better opinion of my honesty.' I shivered as the jaw went numb.

'You dare to say that after you led a band of Iron Arses to my sweet garden.' He squeezed my neck. 'And I don't like owing debts to people as petty as you.'

He threw me over his shoulder and made a sign to Uncle. It took no more than ten steps along the street to get out of the cursed village to the silent sea of dunes.

'Tomorrow afternoon, the same place.' He pinched my cheek and put me on the ground.

Uncle rubbed his temples looking at the moonlit owl in the distance.

'On days like that I feel really old.'

Fluffster met me right at the entrance to the trailer. He had completely recovered in a few hours, quite earlier than I expected.

'So good you're back.' I shook his paw with a feeling of relief but blushed when I recalled what I'd done to his things.

'One cannot have a rest without getting robbed,' he reproached me pointing at the mauled locker.

'At least I haven't lost your volkite gun to Aphedron.'

'I've told you to keep away from the shard.'

'So I've done everything to keep it as away from us as possible. And it would have brought us a ship of our own if the lecher didn't purloin my prize.'

'What if this comes out?'

'I doubt this is tech-heresy to be a matter of concern for a Magos.'

'I've seen a rogue trader who sold a shard like that to a radical inquisitor. Both have never left the vaults of Mimas ever after.'

'It won't be honest to rat out your boss after she's done her best to help you in a moment of weakness. I'll buy you a crate of processed cheese once we get back to the city.'

'You swore you'd give up warp-stuff after the raid to Coreopsis.'

'One needs a fortune to be a staunch Puritan. So that you don't have to bother about funds or manpower.'

'Have you at least succeeded?'

'We embark for the fortress tomorrow in the evening. But I'm sorry for the uninvited addition to the team.'

The starry night was followed by a scorching day, and when shadows had grown longer and the western sky turned red, we left the owl for the smuggler village. Elegiac and seemingly harmless in broad daylight, the streets were completely empty.

I noticed the guide's crooked shape only when we walked up to the ruins. Sister couldn't hide her disgust at the sight.

'A tainted mutant,' she whispered. 'Are you sure the village dwellers are no foul Genestealers?'

'If you don't shut up right now, he'll refuse," I snapped back. 'His service cost us a ship. Or a life sentence in a nice place in the Solar system.'

The guide examined my team and pulled a sour grimace.

'The sands will trap and distract them. None of them has been touched by the warp. That's why even your mentor didn't dare to get there.'

'I have no other choice. I'm a poor fighter alone as you can see by my wonderful ammunition.'

'You may reach out to them but I doubt that helps.'

'One more with psyker power here, man.' Aphedron stepped out of the ruins fully clad for battle.

'The lady's stake was higher.'

'We've settled the matter last night and she agreed to take me in.'

Purple and scarlet clouds unfurled over the western dunes blood red in the evening sun. The musky wind was hot and strong, and soft, distant murmurs reached my ears with every gust. Enchanted by the place's majesty, we passed through the shifting streets of colourful tiles and evergreens, even Angel and Sister stopped muttering about heresy. Turn after turn, street after street under the same haunting sunset.

A faint feeling of danger woke up inside when we left the last street and stepped onto the crimson sand. Far away in the spectral mist, the painfully familiar outline grew from the dunes, as flowy and surreal as no human building can be. Even picts of xeno craftworld palaces seemed miniscule and mundane compared to the creepy un-harmony of this giant hive. A thin stripe of a path led to its colossal gates meandering under the strangest angles.

'Keep the road in sight.' The guide's voice rustled in our ears. 'There're no other roads. One step aside, and you're lost forever.'

'We're not new to the place,' said Aphedron.

The guide vanished with no trace.

'Let's rock then. It's time to kick asses and sniff warp-dust.' He turned to my team and grinned from ear to ear showing his shark teeth.

He reached for a little pouch on his belt and pulled an even more sinister grin.

'Damn, I'm outta dust and I'm getting angry.'

Sister got pale and pulled the hood over her eyes. Angel grabbed his bolter. Uncle frowned. Only Fluffster paid no attention.

'Damn, I'm looking good.' Aphedron marched forward, delighted by their reaction.

'Watch out for him, not me,' I ordered my team.

Step by step. Turn by turn. I couldn't take my eyes off the formidable citadel. The most impressive and unfathomable place I'd ever visited. Its yearning was growing stronger. A mother's call. A lover's craving, Aphedron had called it before.

'Have a look behind.' Aphedron's tentacle slipped down my side and hip.

I turned back slowly, and my heart sank. Aphedron was standing alone at a dune slope. My team was nowhere to be found. I probed my vox. The line was deadly silent as if I got to the core of the world or out to deep space.

He smirked at my shock. 'Their chance of getting out isn't too high. But still higher than yours.'

'That's not what I wanted from my very first missions. To lose them all at once in a risky game. I hoped to become like Plodia and Corydoras, not to stay alone and get consumed by your ambitions. I hope the poison kills me before you present me to the hungry guards of this place.'

'You have to eat a ton of cinnamon rolls and keep your legs open to become like Plodia.'

'I've heard about her Chaos-worshipping youth but she has changed and doesn't deserve such slander.'

'I have to dispel your illusions about this exemplar couple, babe. You've been away from the frontlines for so long you haven't heard the latest news. The adorable Lady Interpunctella has got so pissed off by her slick of a husband she's taken a custom of venturing out to pirate worlds under her old rogue trader guise pretending to do reconnaissance. One day, she managed to hook up with the fabulous Pirate King at last.'

'That's a lie. I've heard Lord Corydoras was at the head of a brilliant operation that let our forces capture his battleship.'

'The Panther managed to escape the wounded vessel. This fat whore, dressed in her best garments, found him in a rebel port feasting with his officers and sworn capers. She drank his wine perched on his lap, more excited than ever before in her husband's boring company. But when she swallowed another portion of sweets from the table, her corset lacing burst revealing the rosette, and, much worse, her pot belly. When she realized she'd got caught, she was ready to do any of his bidding to avoid getting exposed to the superiors. She used her rosette to let him recapture the Biruang, and when the sweet vid-logs of her amorous adventures were found by her husband, she fled with the Panther's fleet so he had to declare her missing in action.'

'I'm sorry for Lord Corydoras.' Another sad revelation.

'Why so? The cowardly man who wasn't able to win back his own wife is now pondering on getting back to the safety of his mansion on Luna before things get hot.'

'Shut up. No one is perfect, even you.'

'Even me,' he agreed with bitterness I didn't expect. 'I wasn't a deranged junkie like today in my better years. Running after perfection and pleasure has got me further from being perfect than ever. That's why I strive to get to the Casbah, lest my lascivious patron turns me into a mindless bunch of tentacles like that Inquisitor on Coreopsis.'

'How have you learned about the fortress?'

'The Panther told me. We were friends in the promising days the Emperor's Children and the Luna Wolves crusaded together looking forward to a brighter future. He hasn't mutated for the heritage of his royal mother, while I gave in to the Lord of Excess to find a new purpose in a world without purpose. The treasure inside grants godly power and freedom to the one who manages to complete the challenge. Maybe that's why you, a pathetic girl next door, are going to take it for yourself. Your only chance to become something apart from cannon fodder for the coming war.'

'I'm only eager to complete the case I've taken up.'

'It doesn't matter.' He stopped and dragged me closer. 'Your tiny pure soul will be taken by the guards, and a log starring you will be discovered by Platydoras right during his lunch break.'

He snapped his fingers, and a fly similar to my cyber-moth flew out of his belt pouch.

'Look at this pretty thing. A cyber-drone with warp machinery, films interesting things and sends them through the warp better than any astropath. I won it in a game of cards at a friendly reunion of legionnaires. By the way, I visited the place in the alluring company of your colleague enchanted by perspectives of Chaotic ascension. She was steaming hot and had nothing but her rosette on. But I got so drunk I lost her to a Death Guard Poxmonger. The fellow's got so many social diseases at once that I'd count as truly innocent compared to him. I was so angry at the loss I gave him a pouch of dust and suggested a rematch. When we finished, the lady was nowhere to be seen so he gave me the fly instead.'

'Do you really think such stories can sway anyone to Chaos?'

'Just something to cheer you up before you start earning your antidote. You have to spread your legs if you want to be like Plodia.'

My mind ceded to a flood of his psyker-might. Bound by the sorcery, I couldn't grab my weapons. Aphedron's tentacles coiled around my neck, one of his kine-blades slashed a side clasp of my carapace.

A faint gust of chilling wind muffled the abominable whispers of Slaanesh. Even the desert heat ceded. Aphedron cussed and put me back on the ground.

'Didn't expect them to get this far. As we now risk to face the law, come with me to the Casbah.'

As if nothing had just happened, he gave me a bloodcurdling shark smile and raised his hand in a dramatic gesture to the skies lit by dark sunset flame where the hive of dreams and nightmares was waiting for another madman's plea.