Inquisitor Alexi Dovator had always hated Warp travel. There was never anything to do, and sitting in one place for too long gave his mind time to wander. Its inevitable destination was never somewhere pleasant.

But more than that, Warp travel brought with it a multitude of complications and uncomfortable truths.

Years of training with the Ordo Malleus had prepared the Inquisitor for the worst fates imaginable. He had a deep understanding of the soul, of the daemonic, and how vulnerable humanity truly was. He had drawn upon and bent Warp energies to his will, quelled cults, exorcised daemons. And in all of this, he had felt determination, disgust, anger, but never fear. Yet the thought of becoming lost in the Warp while in transit truly scared him.

And he knew why: in the secret war against the Great Enemy,hewas in control. If he was to be dragged into an eternal hell, he wanted it to be by his own failings, not someone else's. And on a voidship, he was fully at the mercy of a Navigator, an impotent passenger hurtling across an infinite sea.

Navigators fascinated the Inquisitor. Mutants from birth, the result of millennia-long breeding programs and intermarriage, they possessed the telltale third eye of their genetic heritage: the Warp eye. With it, they gazed directly into hell, struggling to stay sane as they spent decades tracking the ebb and flow of the Warp's chaotic currents.

But it wasn't only the horrors of the Immaterium that they perceived. In the midst of all the madness shone the psychic light of the Astronomican, projected by the God-Emperor Himself on Holy Terra. A fixed reference point in the turbulent and ever-changing Immaterium, the Astronomican was the one constant a Navigator could rely on to plot safe passage through the void.

Navigation was only half of it. Were a voidship to enter the Immaterium unprotected, it would quickly be torn apart by voracious Warp spawn, eager to reach its crew and devour their souls. Or worse.

The Gellar Field solved this problem: it encased the ship in a protective bubble of real space, anathema to the denizens of the Immaterium. As long as the field held, the ship was safe. Warp travel was just like any other space travel: long and boring.

In truth, the Gellar Field was not simply a piece of technology administered by Tech-priests. It was powered by a psyker, held in a comatose state, projecting dreams of reality around the voidcraft. The mental exertion required to maintain this field was immense. Often, the psyker powering it did not survive an entire journey. These unfortunate souls were little more than replaceable batteries, their bodies still warm as they were discarded to make room for the next.

Distasteful as he found it all, Dovator understood: it was a brutal necessity that allowed the bloated, festering corpse of the Imperium to cling to life. Beset by countless enemies without and within, the billion worlds of mankind would wither away without the continued sacrifice of the Navigators and the dreamers.

And then there were the voices. While the Gellar Field protected the ship from daemonic incursion, it didn't do much for the scratching and the whispers, ever-present at the edges of the Inquisitor's mind.

Years of practice had taught Dovator how to tune them out, but whenever his mind wandered, his control tended to slip and the voices would find their way through, threatening, nagging, enticing.

Truth be told, he didn't always mind it. The voices underscored the dangers that lurked in the shadows, the knife's edge on which the continued existence of the Imperium rested, the Great Enemy he had sworn to tirelessly root out and destroy utterly.

Dovator removed his wide-brimmed hat and ran his fingers through his dark hair. With a loud sigh, he stretched out on his bed, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Sleeping would be as good a way as any to pass at least some of the time.

"Dovator…"

The Inquisitor opened his eyes again. The voices were starting early this time: they had only entered the Warp an hour ago.

Dovator stared at his ceiling, noting for the first time the seemingly excessive number of rivets holding it together. If the voices wouldn't let him sleep, he'd solve a mystery instead. He started counting.

"1… 2…"

"Dovator…"

The voice was oddly persistent.

"5… 6…"

"Alexi, can you hear me?"

The Inquisitor frowned. Something about this voice was different. It certainly wasn't uncommon for them to call him by name, but when they did, they always had something insidious to say, some tantalizing false promises to make. This voice was tentative, searching.Human?He stood up, replacing his hat on his head.

"What are you?"

"A friend. My name is Lucia. You haven't met me yet, but you will. Soon. I need your help. I… I'm going to die if you don't come. Please…Find me on Valais Secundus, the village of Glanvill on the southern peninsula of the northern continent. Hurry."

Dovator frowned again. He stood in silence, considering the voice's request.A friend I have not yet met…Was it possible?

The Inquisitor knew that time in the Warp could be unpredictable. He had heard tell of voidships that had emerged in real space long before they had even entered the Immaterium. Could a traveler from his future have found her way to him here?Perhaps…

Dovator moved slowly toward his desk, carefully weighing the risks of the probable scenarios.What if this is a trap?Some daemons were known to play convoluted games.

His hand hovered over the comm controls.What if it is true?Could he really ignore a plea for help? Consign this woman to death because he was uncertain?

Dovator shook his head slowly. One way or the other, he needed to know. He pressed a button.

"Weiss?"

"Yeah?" There was a sharp, electronic cracking sound. Weiss cursed softly to himself. "Sorry. What can I do for you?"

Dovator sighed.This is a terrible idea…

"How far are we from the Valais system?"

Lucia beamed as Dovator faded from view, his familiar form in that wide-brimmed hat once again lost to the void.It worked!

Erebus had found him for her several weeks before the night of the attack. She knew that he would arrive in time to save her: on the morning of the farce that was her trial.

The Inquisitor had never told her why he had come to Glanvill, of all places. Perhaps he hadn't truly been convinced that the voice he heard was hers, or perhaps he had concerns over temporal paradoxes.

Whatever his motivation for keeping it a secret, Lucia finally knew the real reason he had come:shehad sent him there.

The psyker remembered the day of his arrival well. It was the day after the attack. She had been at home, still trying to make sense of what had happened the night before. Half the village had come, armed with pitchforks, knives, clubs, anything they could get their hands on.

Lucia had grown up with these people. They had been there when her parents passed. They had given freely. They had helped each other. And yet, in her darkest moment, when she was already terrified, confused, and feeling utterly alone, they had dragged her from her home, gagged and bound, fear and anger ruling their hearts.

The charge was witchcraft, she was told. There had been witnesses to Silas' death, and what they had seen could not be explained in any other way. But, as the villagers were so keen to remind her while they carried her away in chains, Glanvill was ruled by law, not mob justice. It would be left to the tribunal to weigh the evidence and decide on her fate.

At her trial, story after story presented coincidence as causal fact. One man told of how he had unintentionally shortchanged Lucia during a trade, but corrected the error once he had realized. Still, his livestock had been ravaged by wild beasts a week later. He had thought it merely bad fortune at the time, but now, the cause was painfully clear: witchcraft.

Another, a close family friend since childhood, told of how she had fallen ill shortly after her and Lucia had argued, and only by the grace of the God-Emperor, whose power was far beyond that of any witch, had she recovered.

And on and on the stories went, damning evidence, were any of it true.

'We treated you so well,' they had shouted at her, their disgust palpable. 'How could you do this to us?'

Lucia had denied it all, tried to reason with them that it was all just a coincidence, the accusations fueled by fear and speculation over Silas' death.

She tried to explain what had happened that night, cautiously avoiding any mention of her newly discovered psychic abilities. She told them that Silas had been drunk, and that when she had rushed past him to escape, he had fallen and hit his head.

They refuted her testimony: Silas had no head wounds, they declared. Lucia was forced to admit what had really happened.

Her retelling was tentative, subdued, and then poured out of her all at once, a confusing jumble of everything she had seen and felt that night. 'I don't understand what happened,' she had choked out through sobs.

'We think you do,' they had countered. 'We think youwantedhim dead. You bewitched him and made the whole thing happen. At least have the decency to tell us why!'

There was nothing left to say. They were deaf to her pleas, their minds already made up before the trial had even begun. She was different, dangerous, inhuman. She would have to burn.

Lucia sat in her cell, terrified. She was exhausted, mentally and physically. She had cried all her tears, uttered all her prayers. There was nothing she could do now but await her impending execution.

Hours had passed.

And then a man she had never seen before had come to her, soothing blue eyes barely visible in the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat. He had offered her the chance to join him in the fight for humanity; she hadn't known what to say.

Dovator sat with her for some time, opening her eyes to the horrors that lay beyond her idyllic little village, answering her questions about what she had experienced the night before. She had learned of galaxy-spanning war, of enemies both without and within. She had learned that billions of individuals, her would-be saviour among them, had abilities similar to her own, that they could be mastered and put to use in service of the God-Emperor.

As the time of her execution drew nearer still, Lucia had made her choice: as terrifying as it had all sounded, she would rather take her chances with this strange man than go meekly to her death; the promise of answers was too intriguing to pass up, and Lucia couldn't bear the thought of dying without knowing.

'Give me a moment to speak with the village elders,' the Inquisitor had told her. 'I will convince them to release you into my custody.'

Dovator hadn't been gone for very long before she heard a commotion outside her cell. There was a sharpcrackand the dull thud of the lock falling away. The door flew open, and the Inquisitor peered in. He reached out to her, beckoning. 'We need to go. Now.'

Lucia took his hand, and they ran. She never looked back.

The memory brought a smile to the psyker's face. She shook her head and chuckled softly, still amazed that they had managed to escape. The six years since had been filled with countless close calls. Through it all, she had grown and learned who she truly was as a person, what she was capable of.

Lucia turned to Erebus. It floated silently nearby, watching her intently. Maybe this creature really was on her side, after all.

She smiled. "Thanks for doing that for me."

Erebus seemed to want to return her smile, but thought better of it. Instead, it inclined its head in acknowledgement. "A fascinating detour. Shall we continue?"

Lucia nodded. "Where to?"