From the moment we landed aboard the Jewel of the Void, we were fighting for our lives – or at least that was my impression at the time. The real danger, of course, would come later; but things certainly weren't quiet despite that.

The landing bay in which the gunship carrying me and my retinue had touched down was already a battlefield by the time we got there. Exposed as it was to the open void, the pirates couldn't simply drown us in superior numbers, but there were dozens of combat servitors present, led by renegades in void-suits.

Our own armors were more than suitable for that environment, as was Malicia's, and if Akivasha needed air to breathe her skinsuit must have provided it somehow despite its minimalist design. The borgs had certainly looked fascinated with the piece of archeotech, sending her looks that, if not for how much of their bodies they had replaced with metal, I would have taken for another kind of interest entirely. And while that would have been understandable given the Paragon's appearance, I really didn't need that kind of complication right now (or ever, if I had anything to say about it).

I strode down the gunship's ramp with my chainsword in one hand and my bolt pistol in the other, looking every bit the image of the fearless leader I was supposed to be. Something which had once been a man, but was now a mindless pile of pale flesh and sparking power tools, rushed in my direction. Panic seized me at the sight, and I fired at it reflexively. My suit of power armor absorbed the bolt pistol's recoil, allowing me to land a shot directly in the servitor's scarred skull, turning it to mist. To my horror, it kept advancing, its muscles and augmetics still following the last instructions of its now-destroyed brain.

Then it was struck by the concentrated fire of half a dozen troopers, and what was left of its body finally went down. The whole thing had taken less than five seconds, but adrenaline had made it seem much longer. It was reassuring, in a morbid way, to have confirmation that my estimates of how bad this whole operation would be were on point – though mercifully, I still had no idea of how short of the reality my worst expectations would turn out to be.

The rest of the landing bay was secured in a few minutes without me needing to do anything other than stomp around and wave my weapons threateningly, with only a couple of USA troopers being wounded by the improvised combat servitors. Nothing Panacea couldn't fix right away, but the damage to their armor meant they needed to withdraw to the gunships for the time being. I made a show of checking on them and ensuring they wouldn't suffer from void exposure, which the bloodthirsty morons lapped up without question.

There were no enemy survivors to take prisoner, but I hadn't expected any. Fighting in a depressurised landing bay wasn't exactly the kind of environment suitable for non-lethal takedowns. On a related subject, after the last of the troop transports had landed, one of the borgs accompanying the boarding force went to a console standing against the wall opposite the window into the void and plugged themselves in.

Soon, they had suborned the machine-spirit of this section of the ship (which, based on their angry muttering over the vox-link, hadn't been much of a challenge due to its appalling treatment by its current masters), and begun sealing the landing bay and activating the atmosphere pumps. The process took several minutes, during which I went over our next course of action with the squad commanders.

As was standard practice for boarding operations (at least according to Hektor, and Areelu had confirmed it), half of our force would make for the bridge, while the other would secure the Enginarium. I was, of course, expected to lead the team which would seize the bridge. While both objectives were equally important to taking control of the ship, the bridge was the more glamorous target, and the one where Jabbus himself could be found.

"Be on the lookout for traps and ambushes," I reminded the officer in charge of the other half of the boarding force, one Captain Olivia. Obviously, as far as I was concerned, they could all walk into a plasma reactor, but I would be the one their relatives on Slawkenberg would blame if they died stupidly. "And don't lower your guard for any reason. We know from Smile that there are no depths to which these wretches won't sink."

"Yes, Liberator !" She saluted me, slamming her fist against her chest, the gesture followed by every trooper around her. Her helmet masked her face, but the fervor I could hear in her voice made my skin crawl.

The borg pulled a lever, and the two airlocks leading into the landing bay opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Predictably, a hail of las-bolts and small-arms' fire immediately began to pour through the openings. The crew had had time to prepare for us, as we had known they would. Still, less than twenty minutes had passed between the landing of the first transport and the opening of the airlocks, and there was only so fast people could be moved across a voidfaring city to face invaders.

As a result, the next obstacle we faced was a rabble of several scores pirates and void crew, armed with a wide variety of weapons, whose fire pinged harmlessly against our armor. Despite knowing that the odds of them managing to penetrate the suit of power armor around me were astronomical, I still had to fight the instinct to dive for the closest cover, something which I managed through a truly heroic effort of will.

Instead of doing the sensible thing, I raised my sword in the direction of the horde, infusing the gesture with as much nonchalant disdain as I could muster, and declared :

"Kill them all."

Which was an order the maniacs around me were more than happy to obey. Given how laughably outmatched the pirates were, I see no point in describing the utter carnage that ensued : suffice to say that, soon, the decks of the Jewel ran red with pirate blood as we butchered our foes. Within moments, they were all dead, and we continued on our way, with me having no choice but to walk in the vanguard.

The schematics of the ship had been downloaded into my armor from the Worldwounder's databanks, which contained information about every type of vessel in the Imperium. Combined with my hiver's instincts for navigating tight corridors in a three-dimensional space, I had a clear idea of how to get to the bridge without needing to call up the map which had been uploaded to my armor's internal cogitator before leaving the flagship. Not that I had any desired to go there myself, since this was guaranteed to be the most heavily-defended place on the entire vessel, but since I couldn't avoid it, I might as well give the defenders as little time to react to our intrusion as I could.

The most direct route to the bridge was where the enemy would put their strongest defenses, and I had no intention of facing them if I could at all avoid it. I didn't put it like that to my companions, obviously : as far as they were concerned, the path I had selected was merely the one which would bring us to our destination the quickest so we could confront the mastermind behind the Bloodied Crown and all the horrors it had inflicted on the people of the Torredon Subsector.

Out of my three companions, Akivasha alone hadn't fought since we'd landed, preferring to stick by my side. It was difficult to read her body language, as her millennia of existence had slowly eroded away any humanity her transformation into a blood-sucking mutant might have left her with, but I was reasonably certain she considered the defenders of the Jewel of the Void to be beneath her.

In the end, I was to be more grateful for her initial restraint than I could imagine – but of course, I had no way of knowing that at the time.

Despite my best efforts, our progress through the Jewel of the Void was far from unimpeded. There must have been thousands of enforcers aboard the ship, and all of them would be on the hunt for the intruders who had seized the landing bay. We moved quickly enough to keep them from bringing their superior numbers to bear, however, and the few engagements we couldn't avoid ended with gratifying speed, despite my fear that we might be slowed down and eventually overwhelmed.

The higher we went through the pirate ship's levels, the more luxurious our surroundings became. While nothing we saw matched the opulence on display aboard the Worldwounder, it was clear Jabbus had invested much of his ill-gotten gains into making his ship a veritable void-worthy palace. I wouldn't go so far as claim it was comfortable for the common crew, however.

The poor wretches fled from us whenever they caught sight of us (the mere sound of our approach, I presumed, not being enough for them to identify us as intruders rather than more of Jabbus' enforcers). What few glimpses of them I managed to catch were enough to convince me that, despite the differences in their surroundings, they weren't treated any better than the crew of the Murderous Jest.

It wasn't until we arrived into what I recognized as a trophy room that my palms began to tingle, in that way which had often warned me of imminent danger – although, much to my despair, rarely in time to avoid it.

The room was a long corridor, lit up by a succession of chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. On each side, pieces of jewellery and art were displayed in armourcrys cases, with a little display underneath each explaining its origins and the circumstances of its acquisition, in a sordid parody of a museum which reminded me uncomfortably of Areelu's own Dynastic galleries aboard the Worldwounder. For all that her ancestor had been bestowed a Warrant of Trade by the Imperium, there had been little difference between Jan Van Yastobaal and the Bloodied Crown.

"That's weird," said Lieutenant Nathan, the USA officer in charge of the assault party.

"What is it ?" I asked, raising a hand to forestall any further movement.

"The auspex isn't working right," the officer replied, sounding as pleased about it as I did. "There's some kind of interference in the room that's making all returns nonsensical." He looked at the various display pieces visible from our position at the entrance, and added : "some of these things might be interfering with the auspex : I remember my team and I encountering some weird materials while training aboard Emeli's Gift that had a similar effect."

I had no desire to walk into such an open space, and fortunately the troopers accompanying me were reluctant to let their Liberator be the first to walk into a potential ambush. At a gesture from Nathan, a fireteam ventured into the trophy room while we huddled around the entrance, moving with the kind of speed and precision you would expect from people who had been trained aboard the most dangerous sections of Slawkenberg's very own Space Hulk.

It didn't help them. As their sergeant was about to call out for the rest of us to join them, there was a flash of light so bright it briefly blinded me despite my armor's eye-lenses immediately darkening, and a wave of heat that we could feel even through the layered plating standing between my body and its source.

In the blink of an eye, the entire group of USA troopers were caught in the inferno. They didn't even have time to scream before their armors succumbed to the supernatural heat and the bodies within ceased to be biology and became physics : by the time my vision returned, all that was left of them was a handful of distorted shadows burned into the opposite wall, amidst the melted remnants of some golden sculpture whose aesthetics had only been improved by being melted to slag.

I had seen enough flamers being used in my time at the Schola (Commissarial cadets were supposed to know the basics of every type of weapon commonly in use in the Imperial Guard, and the Sororitas were never shy about providing enthusiastic demonstrations) to know that this was no natural fire, and my bowels spasmed. I had witnessed far more displays of sorcery than I was comfortable with since landing on Slawkenberg with no idea of what I had gotten myself into, but most of the time, those had been performed by people who were, at least in theory, on my side. The only exceptions were the various dupes of Nurgle I had crossed paths with, and those had been more aimed at summoning the footsoldiers of the Lord of Decay than attacking me directly.

So I was familiar enough with psykers to know that such an attack was a sign of an extremely powerful witch. I looked around frantically, looking for the source of the attack. Immediately, my eyes were drawn to a man who had just emerged from his hiding spot between two truly ugly examples of the taxidermist's art.

He was wearing wargear of much higher quality than the cobbled-together wargear common to the pirates we'd crushed on our way through the ship. His body was surrounded by the same kind of haze common on Slawkenberg's hottest days. The effect was especially pronounced around his hands, which were glowing with a fell glow, which was already starting to increase again.

Beyond the raw terror which nearly completely consumed me, part of my mind pointed out that this must be another of the wyrds we knew the Bloodied Crown was trafficking. However, nothing in Hektor's report of those he'd encountered aboard the Murderous Jest had indicated they had been capable of such destruction. Which made sense now that I thought about it : obviously Jabbus would have kept the most powerful feral psykers for his own use.

On the plus side, I thought morbidly, at least the five dead troopers hadn't had time to suffer : their souls had ended up straight in the Warp, probably very confused as to what exactly had happened. I tried not to think about what fate awaited them in the afterlife, and perhaps fortunately, my immediate circumstances provided more than enough distraction.

With an effort of will, I focused on my predicament. I was all too aware that only blind luck and Lieutenant Nathan's caution in keeping an eye on the auspex despite our advance having been all but unstoppable so far had kept me from being obliterated along with the vanguard. For all its added bells and whistles, my armor was not any tougher than that of the troopers around me : all it would take was for the pyrokinetic to unleash another such attack for me to end up having to explain myself to a doubtlessly very hacked-off Emperor.

This was no time for half-measures, and I resorted to use to one of my trump cards immediately.

"Jurgen, kill them !" I shouted, all thoughts of minimizing his use of his psychic powers cast asides in the face of the current danger. His use of the Warp might kill me, but it hadn't done so before, and if nothing was done fast then the pyrokinetic most definitely would. Given the chance between the possibility of death and the near-certainty of it, I would pick the former every time.

I expected the skull of the enemy psyker to pop, or for something else equally unpleasant to happen to him, but a couple of seconds passed (an eternity in battle, as anyone who has ever had to fight for their life will tell you) and nothing happened.

I was about to shout at Jurgen to hurry the frak up, when I heard my aide's voice over the strike force's vox-net. It was strained, as if it were taking a herculean effort for him to speak at all :

"I … can't, sir," he said.

Despite my reluctance to take my eyes off the pyrokinetic, I cast a quick glance backward, and to my horror, I saw that everyone else in the boarding party was still immobile despite the attack we had just suffered – including Jurgen and Malicia. The air around them was crackling with fey lights, and my stomach dropped as understanding dawned on me. The pyrokinetic who had just barbecued half a dozen troopers wasn't working alone : there was at least one other psyker at work here, who had used their own abilities to paralyse the rest of my escort.

Of course it was possible that one single wyrd was responsible for both phenomena, but the idea that we were facing someone so powerful as to be able to use two psychic powers that I knew belonged to different branches of sorcery at the same time was too awful for me to contemplate seriously. If it were the case, I was already dead in any case.

Then, I caught motion in my peripheral vision, and nearly struck with my chainsword before recognizing who it was.

"Stay close to me," said Akivasha, and I nearly collapsed in relief at the realization that, for one reason or another, the Vampire also wasn't affected by the psychic paralysis which had befallen the rest of our group.

Some corner of my mind idly noted that, if I survived this mess, I would need to thank Harold for the wards the Tzeentchian magi had added to my suit of power armor. I couldn't think of any other reason why the spell which had immobilized my companions wasn't affecting me (a more pious man might have attributed it to the Emperor's protection, but I wasn't delusional enough to think He would directly intervene to help me, even before everything in my life had gone so horribly wrong).

As for Akivasha, who knew how her Vampire biology interacted with psychic power ? Honestly, after her display against Hash'ak'gik, I probably should have been more surprised she hadn't instantly turned our attackers into bloody mist.

"Urien !" shouted the pyrokinetic, his face distorted by a grimace of mixed disbelief and rage. "What the frak are you doing ?! Get these two to stop moving too !"

"I'm trying !" responded his accomplice, his own visage (which incongruously reminded me of some of the sneering aristocrats who had been so prevalent in Slawkenberg's high society before the Uprising) twisted in a rictus of concentration, sweat profusely running down his brow. "It's not working ! Something's blocking me !"

"Fine," spat the fire-wielding maniac. "Guess we're going to have to do this the hard way then !"

As it so often does in situations like this, time seemed to slow down to a crawl, giving me time to consider my options. I wanted nothing more than to run back the way we'd come, all the way back to the landing bay and aboard the transport before flying off to the Worldwounder. But that would be foolish. The corridor was packed with immobile armored troopers : finding a way through them would take time, which the pyrokinetic was sure to use to strike me in the back and incinerate me long before I could reach the nearest turn which would cut off his line of view.

Already, more power was gathering in the pyrokinetic's hands, and thanks to all the time I had been forced to spend near psykers, I suddenly realized why he had struck when he had, taking out half a squad of common troopers instead of any of the real heavy-hitters. Energy had to go somewhere : he must have been gathering strength for an attack before we'd entered the room, and had no choice but to let it loose, or he would have blown up in some spectacular and doubtlessly lethal fashion.

Before he could let loose another volley of Warp-fire, however, Akivasha moved with preternatural speed, too fast for me to see. I have no doubt that, had I not been wearing a suit of void-sealed armor, the burst of air from her sudden movement would have made me stumble. One moment she was standing next to me, then she was in front of the pyrokinetic with one hand buried into his chest. With a sound that would echo in my nightmares for weeks afterwards, she ripped his heart out of his ribcage.

The pyrokinetic looked at the bloody organ, eyes wide in shock, mouth moving silently. Then he ignited, as the energies he'd been gathering were abruptly released. Akivasha leapt back just in time to avoid being caught in the blast, which was accompanied by a ghastly chorus of voices that none of my armor's senses recorded but which I heard with painful clarity, before they were silenced, as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door shut on them.

By the time the warp-fire died down, nothing remained of the wyrd but a pile of ash. That was the most immediate threat taken care of, and I let loose a silent sigh of relief. But, as Akivasha began to move back toward the fray, something invisible slammed into the Paragon, sending her flying across the room, and I looked in the direction of the unseen blow to find another witch, who was holding her arms up. She was crying, I idly noticed, before realizing that the tears running down her cheeks were red : blood was pouring out of her eyes, freezing into small crimson crystals as it fell from her skin.

A telekinetic, then, similar to Jurgen – and probably near my aide in strength too, since she was capable of keeping Akivasha in check despite her prodigious strength. Fortunately, that appeared to require her full focus. So, despite my better judgement, I charged straight at the witch, aiming to kill her while she was busy with Akivasha.

I was half-way there when a man dressed in rags emerged from our ambushers' hiding spot, a demented, bloodthirsty smile on his face, which was covered in so many scars I found it difficult to find an unmarked spot of skin. With every step, his body grew, ripping through his tattered clothing and causing the deck beneath our feet to shake.

This particular wyrd must be a biokinetic, capable of shaping his own flesh according to his perverse imagination. There were examples of that type of psyker in the Crèche for the Gifted on Slawkenberg, but none of them could do anything like this – a fact for which I, as well as the luckless souls tasked with taking care of and training the infant psykers, was deeply grateful for.

Looking at him, it was clear that he was powerful enough to not simply transform existing matter, but conjure more from the Warp, as he was growing before my very eyes into a monstrous, hulking form. His head was grotesquely huge compared to the rest of his body, but while the maw full of teeth was very attention-catching in itself, my focus was on the sharp talons that ended his comparatively frail, but much longer arms.

"I'm going to rip you apart !" the beast bellowed. Thick strands of saliva were projected along with the words, and the overall effect was as grotesque as it was terrifying.

"I've killed bigger monsters than you," I riposted. Which was even true : compared to Hash'ak'gik, this mutated freak was downright tiny. Of course, I wasn't inside the Liberator Armor this time, and his claws would kill me just as dead as the Daemon Prince of Nurgle's would have given the chance.

In the end, I believe it was my regular sparring sessions with Hektor which saved my life. Unlike Zerayah, I was under no illusion that I could defeat the World Eater if he ever took me seriously or stopped being intimidated by my fraudulent reputation, but even with him holding back, duelling a Space Marine had sharpened my combat instincts to a level far beyond what old Miyamoto de Bergerac had been able to pound into my skull at the Schola.

It had also made me somewhat used to facing larger opponents, although the psyker's transformed form was far bigger than Hektor. I dodged the first swipe of my enemy's claws, which tore through the metal plating of the deck like it was parchment. Ignoring the vivid images of how easily those claws would rip into my armor if given the chance my imagination was conjuring, I moved closer to the behemoth, hoping to get inside his reach. It was a risky gambit, but something about the way the giant moved made me think that the wyrd wasn't used to fighting in this form, despite clearly being well into adulthood, and presumably having had years to learn to use his unnatural gifts.

I made a mental note of that fact, sure that it would be important later, but at the time I was more concerned with what it meant for my odds of survival. Raising my left hand, I fired a volley of bolter shells in the vague direction of his face. I didn't have time to aim, but at such close range and with such a large target, most of my shots still hit, creating large, bloody craters and causing the beast to recoil, howling in pain and lashing out with his claws, thankfully hitting only empty air.

The wounds I had inflicted, while gory, were all superficial, and started closing before my eyes. Clearly, the psychically-created flesh was tougher than it ought to be, as I knew all too well what a bolt pistol would do to an unarmored human. But while my shots had failed to inflict any lasting damage, they had been enough to create an opening.

Seizing the opportunity while it lasted, I holstered my bolt pistol, shifted my chainsword to a two-handed grip, and struck with all the strength I could draw out of my power armor.

The blade bit deep into the biokinetic's throat. A torrent of foul ichor erupted, drenching my armor, and I could only imagine how awful the stench would be had I decided not to wear my helmet for some Emperor-forsaken reason.

I pushed my weapon deeper, and felt a brief resistance as its adamantium teeth met the monster's spinal column. I pivoted on my feet, moving my entire body around, and with a roar of effort, severed the entire grotesque head from his shoulders. It fell ponderously, hitting the deck with a wet sound, its additional heft already melting away into unidentifiable ectoplasm.

"Kelor !" The telekinetic witch holding Akivasha at bay cried out in dismay.

That distraction proved fatal, as it caused her spell's pressure to weaken just enough for the Paragon to cross the remaining distance between them and tear her head off with her bare hands, before slicing our final foe, the one responsible for paralysing the rest of our group, by slicing him open from throat to belly.

And just like that, it was over. The tension in the air from so many potent psykers using their tainted gifts all at once dissipated, and I only then realized how close we must surely have come to one or more of the wyrds being turned into conduits for the daemons which forever wait behind the veil between Materium and Immaterium for a chance to come across. The whole battle couldn't have taken more than a minute or two between the initial fiery attack and the death of the last attacker, even if it had seemed to take much longer to my panicked mind.

"Thank you, Lady Akivasha," I said to the blood-drenched Vampire. "That was very resourceful."

Without her presence, I was under no illusion as to how this ambush would have turned out. Even with me being able to move while the rest of the group was paralysed, the rest of the psykers would have torn me apart.

Akivasha inclined her head, smugness that all but radiating from her. Well, she had saved my life, so she had more than earned it as far as I was concerned.

"How are you feeling, Jurgen ?" I asked, knowing that a display of concern for my aide would go down well with the remaining troopers, especially right after they'd seen me dispatch a psychically-mutated abomination while they couldn't do anything to help.

"Fine now that gretchin-fondler's gone, sir," the Valhallan spat, in a display of vulgarity quite at odd with his usual attitude. He glared at the disembowelled corpse of Akivasha's latest victim, and I realized he must have been more shaken than I had thought. "That was really unpleasant," he continued. "I could feel him in my head, stopping my thoughts. Took a lot just to be able to talk."

"I see. And you, Malicia ?" I cared even less about my bloodward's comfort, but making it obvious wasn't a good idea given how many blades she was carrying on her person at any given time. And besides, she was a Drukhari with an entirely different biology.

"The same," she growled, clearly as happy about being rendered powerless as Jurgen. "I am looking forward to expressing my displeasure to whoever's responsible for this."

I was about to say something (what exactly, I wasn't sure) when I heard Areelu's voice in my ear.

"Ciaphas, what's going on ? Are you alright ?"

There was an edge of panic in her voice that someone less experienced at reading people than I would have missed, which I found oddly gratifying.

"I'm fine, Areelu," I replied, before inspiration suddenly struck, and I continued, injecting just the right amount of grief in my voice : "But not all of us were so lucky. We're going to need to look into protection from Warpcraft for the troopers if we're going to keep clashing with enemy psykers."

That would play well with my image of a caring leader, while also improving my chances of survival if we ended up facing more demented witches. And, to top it all off, it would divert considerable resources to something which would provide nearly no advantage against the Imperium when the time inevitably came for the Protectorate to be reintegrated into His Blessed Majesty's dominion.

Sure, the Imperial Guard made use of sanctioned psykers, but they were only a minuscule fraction of the resources available to the Emperor's Hammer, and far from the one most commanding officers preferred to rely upon. And it was better for my sanity to have the Tzeentchian work on warding the armor of as many USA troopers as possible rather than continuing their research into things Mankind was not meant to know.

With the psykers dead, the spell which had paralysed the rest of our group faded, and the USA troopers rushed into the room, making sure there weren't any further ambushes waiting for us. I said a few words in honor of the dead soldiers, adapting one of the rote speeches I had been taught at the Schola to fit the circumstances, and after a brief pause during which we all stood up and looked appropriately grave, Lieutenant Nathan barked an order to the remaining soldiers, and we continued our advance toward the bridge.

I don't mind admitting to a renewed sense of urgency as we crossed the remaining distance toward our destination. These wyrds had been far more powerful than the ones encountered by Hektor, which meant that Director Auric, the member of the cartel responsible for their trafficking, was much more dangerous than I'd previously believed (and, given that the man was crazy enough to deal with psykers in the first place, that bar had already been quite high).

Back in Adumbria, I had promised to deal with him mostly to appease Jurgen and keep up appearances in front of my supposed subordinates, but now it was clear that I needed him gone and his operations decisively shut down. That batch of Warp-touched killers had come far too close to succeeding for my liking : next time, I might not be so lucky.

Had I but known the true origin of the Bloodied Crown's wyrds, I would have been a great deal less sanguine about the whole situation, you can be sure of that. But, at the time, I still believed the whole thing to be another psyker trafficking ring similar to the one which had brought Jurgen to Perlia, if clearly more successful and widespread given the number of combat-worthy witches it had been able to procure for the cartel's use.

The reality, of course, was infinitely more terrifying, and would cause me headaches for years to come.


AN : Hello, everyone ! A shorter chapter than usual this time, mostly due to being entirely told from Cain's perspective. It was longer in the first draft, but I decided to cut it right after the ambush for pacing reasons.

Next up will be an update for Darth Cain, or maybe another one for ABR - after a year of struggle, getting the latest chapter out seems to have brought the Muse's attention back to that story. But by know, you all know I make no promises.

As always, I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter, and I look forward to your thoughts and comments.

Zahariel out.