Of all the things I hadn't anticipated, spending some of our rushed journey to Dargonus chatting with a child-like entity, blessed with enough curiosity to kill a thousand cats and cursed with the power to do so, was perhaps the strangest. It was almost enough to make me stop kicking myself for falling to Marazhai's trap. He had never wanted a honourable combat. He had understood someone from Dargonus, in the shape of Achilleas, was responsible for warning us of incoming Drukhari raids and decided to make an example.

That week of transit will forever remain etched in my memory. It brought me back to my time as a Commissar of the Guard — to those endless journeys from one end of the Calixis sector to the other, time spent training and waiting and training again until, in the fiery screams of dropships, we were thrown in the middle of a theatre of operations with more often than not minimal intelligence. Abelard's officers had, in the past year, done a decent job at whipping recruits into shape and I would have two battalions worth of soldiers under my command. They weren't Guard yet — the one semi large-scale engagement they had seen at Vheabos VI certainly wasn't enough for that — but they were good, and were getting better. Retaking a hive world, however, was a job for at least a full-strength regiment if the enemy decided to dig in their heels, and there was no telling how badly hurt the PDF would be by the time we arrived.

The translation directly in Dargonus orbit was a rough one. Translations always feel strange — a bit of nausea, a bit of vertigo — but that one, Holy Terra! Half the people aboard the ship were either puking their guts or trembling with sudden irrepressible pain. The superstructure groaned, the ship's spine twisting well beyond its tolerance, tearing apart some of the hull and plunging whole compartments in darkness when cables thick as my thigh were ripped away. And of course, we had translated right in the middle of a battle. By the time everyone had gotten their wits back and the auspex array worked again, we had multiple contacts both of Drukhari ships and our own fleet.

Cassia had done a stellar job by putting us is low orbit — a few hundred kilometers more and we'd have translated deep in the planet itself — and that put us in the interesting position of being behind Drukhari lines. Heinrix had hypothesised they would have brought their fleet right through our own — stationed at the Lagrange points — thanks to a webway portal, and to say they didn't like getting the taste of their own medicine was an understatement. We fired up our engines and downed what looked like a cruiser before they realised what was going on.

We hailed the flagship of the fleet, the giant battleship Caerula Umbra, that was thankfully mostly unscathed, but many smaller vessels were in bad shape. And losses had been heavy.

Emperor's Mercy to Caerula Umbra: Von Valancius dynastic flagship reporting for duty.

Caerula Umbra to Emperor's Mercy: You're a sight for sore eyes, Emperor's Mercy. Admiral Pasikeva ready to transfer command to Her Ladyship the lord-captain.

Emperor's Mercy to Caerula Umbra: Don't bother, Caerula Umbra, let Admiral Pasikeva go on with her battle plan. Just tell us where to strike.

One thing I had learned as a Commissar was that high command hated with a passion being interrupted in their battle plans — with good reason, mind you — and we definitely had barged in like a dog in a game of keels. Besides, Admiral Pasikeva had an excellent service record, and she used us extremely effectively to sow mayhem among the Drukhari. It wasn't a walk in the park; our shields got blown off right in the middle of it, and restarting them nearly left us dead at void for an hour. A shadow lance, or whatever the name, gutted our flank and nearly took out the starboard macro-cannons. But for every drop of our blood they shed, the Drukhari paid dearly and in the end we were left bleeding but victorious after two days and a half.

The situation, planet-side, was different. The PDF had buckled under the Drukhari's assault, its surviving regiments unable to regroup. Never, in the whole history of the protectorate, had Dargonus suffered a ground assault, and this one proved all the more destructive. Some hives were ravaged — either by the Drukhari themselves revelling in the mass slaughter of innocents, or by artillery strikes that left nothing but ruin in their wake. In others, handfuls of soldiers reinvented guerrilla tactics. The harshest combats, however, were in the hive where my palace was situated; the enemy must have correctly identified it as the place where ground high command was situated.

Thankfully, the air-defence batteries held, which meant our shuttles and dropships could fly unhindered. I, and the most combative of my retinue, dropped out on the marble shuttle-pad that used to impress me so much. Clementia Werserian, who had found herself the de facto commander of the remaining local units, had retaken it at great cost to allow us to land.

I've seen my fair share of battlefields. I've heard the wordless cries of the wounded, the rough keens of those about to die in fear, and the rattles that shake the shell-shocked. I've smelled burning promethium, blood and spilled guts in the same breath of air. Galmon Epsilon, my last campaign as Commissar, had been the worst — and brought out by the folly of one man alone, too — but this was nearly as bad. When the shuttle disembarked us, followed by about fifty men and women drawn in squads, I almost didn't recognise the place. Sandbags and barricades gave an illusion of security, that the number of wounded and dead immediately broke. The head chirurgeon pushed me unceremoniously so that her servitors and medicae could rush to the wounded, applying medi-kits for first aid. It had been understood that every shuttle landing with reinforcements would take off with as much wounded as the medbay could fit. Sentries and snipers were relieved so that they could rest. While Clementia gave me her situation report, we walked the perimeter and I made a point to at least salute everyone. They were tired and grimy, covered in blood not always their own. Lasguns had not always been enough; knife and chainsword had worked in close ambushes. And many had carried a bleeding comrade back to safety, sometimes only to find out they had carried the dead.

Every intelligence pointed to the Drukhari dracon Marazhai being holed up in my palace, because when one is powerful, one likes to commit one's crimes among priceless works of art and wipe one's blade on rare silks. Apparently.

Get in, collect victims to use as slaves or to kill later, and get out, such was the Drukhari's usual modus operandi. Neither Clementia nor Heinrix had any idea why they would engage in such a protracted raid that would be heavy in casualties, but those considerations fell to the background with the need to carve ourselves a way to the palace. Argenta and I took point to clear the way; the sister relished the occasion to spray rogue xenos with bolter rounds, and our advance wasn't exactly discreet. Twice we came upon entrenched enemy groups that gave us a run for our money. They had scouts on what Heinrix called jetbikes — flying things they rode with ease and use to harass us until Pasqal, who was growing increasingly angry with those machines definitely not blessed by the Omnissiah, landed two of them with a lucky shot of his new melta. Yrliet merely sniped them from afar.

During our advance, we witnessed first-hand what the Drukhari did. On Grantis, we had arrived too late and merely saw the cadavers. On Vheabos VI, we had arrived early enough that exactions had remained somewhat limited. On Dargonus, we saw it all.

Wounded soldiers crying for help, laid atop mines that would shred those minded to bring them relief. Common people crucified holding a dead man's switch that would bring death to their loved ones the instant they let go. Bodies, ripped open and defiled, propped in scenes that spoke to the cruel ingenuity behind their torture. It wasn't just war — war is always ugly, but here was an intent to bring out the worst of everything. Imperial symbols (and my predecessors had been quite liberal in putting them everywhere) weren't merely destroyed, but debased in ways that revelled in blasphemy. Mockeries of the dead were everywhere, be it in the trophy-like display of severed members mimicking the Aquila or in the gruesome spectacle of people hanged from the blessing hands of stone saints. I was glad I had ordered Cassia to stay on the Emperor's Mercy.

As we progressed, we left soldiers to hold the way open; I wasn't about to get cut from the shuttle-pad. When we got to the palace, it was just me and my retinue. The great stairs to the doors were stained with blood, but we sat, drank, and ate a little. The von Valancius coat of arms worked in the pavement below was barely visible for the rubble, bodies, and body parts strewn over the plaza. If Olever af Putnam had survived the raid, he'd have a fit about the quantity of work needed to refit everything for my Magnae Accessio.

The inside of the palace was silent, and rank of death. A lone surviving servitor still performed its automated tasks, oblivious to the carnage that had unfolded.

We had decided to start by my quarters: they held a cogitator that Pasqal hoped to link again to the defence mainframe and bring whatever remained of the high command throughout the planet together again. Running along the destroyed palace corridors reminded me of those nightmares where familiar places get this uncanny feeling of being wrong. Wherever the Drukhari were, they hadn't bothered to keep lookouts and we progressed unhindered and unchallenged through the marks of the slaughter they had committed. Every palace servant, every guard, had been slain in, once again, creative ways that must have prolonged immensely their suffering. The lucky ones had fallen during the first assault, torn apart by those shuriken pistols Jae favoured, dark pools of clotted blood beneath them. The rest… Let's just say there were bodily fluids in there that were neither blood nor piss. I recognised too many faces.

The antechamber to my study was empty, too, but noises drifted through the door, that was slightly ajar. Voices, xenos voices, speaking in their own language, too low for my elucidator to translate. We took our positions and ran in. Three — no, four — tall and lanky Drukhari stood over prisoners; they shot one just as we came in. In the familiar room, I could realise how out of proportions they truly were, taller than any human and moving with an impossible, stomach-churning, grace. We had taken them at unawares, so busy had they been in their torture, and they paid for their carelessness in a short and brutal fight where they didn't stand a chance.

My desk was ruined. It appeared to have served as a makeshift operating table to vivisect people. We turned over the bodies — the secretary Heinrix had terrorised to get to our secret date before we let on our ill-fated journey, my maid, a noble I didn't recognise… The last one, however, was still breathing, despite many deep cuts over his scarred skin, but without his rebreather he struggled and his lips were nearly blue: Achilleas Scalander, secretary of the Administratum and agent of the Golden Throne.

Heinrix rushed to him and I felt the cold of his biomancy. Scalander's eyes slowly came back into focus; he tried to wet his lips and coughed instead. Heinrix propped him up and I held my canteen for him to drink.

'God-Emperor preserve me,' he croaked. 'Is… is it truly you, Your Ladyship?'

Some would have struck him — the xenos expert in residence — for failing to prevent the attack on Dargonus. I didn't even have the heart to scold him.

'In the flesh. Are you all right?' I mean, he obviously wasn't. But it was as good an opening as any.

He winced and tried to sit better; whenever he moved, his wounds reopened. I sent Yrliet and Argenta to guard the door while he spouted the kind of humble platitude that is socially acceptable to deflect the interest of one's superior. Leave it to the Inquisition to ingrain some reflexes so deep even the brink of death doesn't remove them.

'What happened here?' I asked.

Scalander didn't answer until Heinrix nodded.

'When the report came from orbit about the xenos attach, I was in the Administratum halls, resolving the matter of your succession. I rushed to my shuttle and prayed to the God-Emperor that I would reach the palace before they struck. But before I could get rid of all the picts and documents I had gathered, the palace was besieged. I had to take a risk and… burn it all. The xenos surrounded me when I was setting fire to the last remaining orders. And they decided to… have fun with me.'

So he did have informants within the Drukhari themselves, or he wouldn't have taken that sort of risk. My opinion of him shot up for protecting his sources, although those sources hadn't warned him about the raid, either blindsided themselves or complicit. He closed his eyes shut and said: 'Holy Emperor, deliver me from those memories!'

There is a time and a place for everything, and interrogating a wounded, freshly traumatised man was neither. I told him that, if he could leave the palace in his own, he could receive help in getting to the medicae at the shuttle-pad. Or he could wait for us to conclude our business here.

With Heinrix's help, he rose and, after steadying himself on the desk, decided he would try and get to the shuttle-pad on his own. He left, limping, breathing hard. We kept vox-silence, so I couldn't send someone to meet him. I hoped that he would be all right.

While Pasqal did his thing with the cogitator, I quickly went through the rest of my quarters. They had been ransacked and were empty except for someone — a minor noble of the court — hiding beneath my bed, of all places. I sent him after Scalander with strict orders to help.

On a hunch, we decided to go next to the throne room. The way was studded with mines and traps. Far in the distance, outside, renewed gunfire told of a new assault, but inside was a dreary silence. Smells of death and fire abounded.

The throne room, once a resplendent testament to the Rogue Traders' authority and might, was a death pit, full of the maimed bodies of palace servants and guards who tried to make a last stand there. The lovely stained-glass windows, once tessellated in colourful patterns, were all broken. Burning promethium fumes drifted from the hive outside, and in the smoky air light fell in spears over my throne, where a Drukhari — tall, insolent — sat, a hungry, murderous grin upon his face. Marazhai. Alone, or so it seemed. He casually gestured with his hand, either welcoming us or inviting us to admire the brutalised hall.

'At last!' he cried in that honeyed voice of his, 'I was beginning to think that your lumbering bucket had perished on the way back! Such a resolution would have satisfied neither you nor me, would it?'

Abelard grew apoplectic; the sight of a xenos on the dynastic throne must have been too much for him. He spat:

'What… How did… You will cease defiling a relic of the Imperium with your presence, xenos scum!'

'What, this abomination?' The Drukhari tapped a finger on the armrest. 'With pleasure. But first, I will finish my conversation with your master, mon-keigh.'

Argenta being Argenta, she rained a hail of bolter rounds in the general direction of the throne, none of which hit thanks to the protective field that shimmered over it. A gift of the Mechanicus to the von Valancius who had allowed them almost free reign over Kiava Gamma. Marazhai tutt-tutted and raised a finger.

'I can feel your anger, your rage… and your pain from witnessing the state of your halls.' His voice was a caress, softer than any lover's, that made me seethe. 'I trusted that you would appreciate our efforts here. I could have long vanished in the tangles of the Webway without awaiting your arrival, mon-keigh, but I could not refuse myself the small pleasure of savouring your torment at the sight of what I have done to your home.'

There was no deactivating the force field from the outside, that much I knew, and I wondered if an orbital strike on that wing would obliterate it. And if I could call for one discreetly while still having time to get the hell out of those coordinates. But now Marazhai was addressing Yrliet, full of saccharine mockery.

'You are still with her, cousin? How fares your search for your lost family? Or is being at a mon-keigh's beck and call occupying all your thoughts and time?'

'You will be silent, Dark One, or I will silence you myself!' Well, Yrliet's usual calm was done for. She radiated anger and offence.

I stepped forward, hands behind my back so I could sign instructions to the others. Signal for reinforcements, my fingers spelled. Two squads. Out loud, I said:

'You deceived me when you appointed the place of your final battle.'

He laughed.

'The sole thing that your kind is good for, mon-keigh, is your ability to suffer. I have long been surfeited with physical pain — your kin provide it in abundance from their cages in Commorragh. The pain of the soul, on the other hand, is a rare delight. After all, I had to recompense you for all the trouble you have caused me. However, did I not give you a gracious gift as well? Among those you slaughtered on the palace steps was pesky, meddling Tazarra who harrowed your worlds and led many a raid in the Koronus Expanse. You have garnered her head, and I — a peaceful existence where she is not constantly in my way.' He gave me a thin smile. 'To die at the hands of a mon-keigh is the worst possible punishment for a champion of the gladiatorial arenas of Commorragh. Her final moments were torturous.'

Oh, but he loved listening to himself! Behind me, Abelard tapped the hilt of his hammer: short, short, long. Signal blocked, couldn't get through. Spread out, cover the room, my fingers replied. He would have to leave that throne some time.

'One xenos down, one more remains,' I said. 'I'll tan your hide and make it into placemats.'

'Do not be greedy, mon-keigh — you should be satisfied with the handouts that I so kindly throw you.' He breathed in deeply, ecstasy spreading over his delicate features. 'But my business here is done. I have spent enough time in realspace savouring the precious wine of your suffering, and it is time to bid you goodbye. But I won't leave you all alone — you wouldn't appreciate that, would you?'

Marazhai waved a lazy hand; two jetbikes flew in through the broken windows and landed before the throne. 'Kabalites of the Reaving Tempest,' he said, 'I leave this mon-keigh to you. Enjoy yourselves.'

Rising, Marazhai sprung on the closest jetbike and, reactor screaming, was out before any of us could line up a shot. And another, more immediate problem, was upon us: out of nowhere, through a Webway portal, a bunch of Drukhari fell upon us, outnumbering us, and they looked tougher than those we had dealt with outside. They had beasts, savage things the size of an air-car with fangs dripping with poison. They had wyches, ready to manipulate unspeakable forces against us. Their warriors's long, ornate swords looked horribly sharp. We braced ourselves, and all hell broke loose.