Things were looking … fine-ish, even with me and Selerig ourselves to merely mini-Astartes levels of power and a thin bio-armour in her case and a Neis equivalent for me.

  The defenders were tough and didn’t even flinch at the t Orks charging at them with gleeful abandon. They didn’t even twitch when some of the Greenskin pulled out Tau-sourced railguns and psma rifles that created head-sized sizzling holes in whatever they hit.

  Stormtroopers, as I’d learned, were made of steruff than that and these even more so. These were the best of the best, the ones who took to both their training and indoation like fishes to the water, and were as such trusted by the Inquisition to assist them in their duties.

  It didn’t help them though, that I flicked out healing pulses of bio-energy and soul energy onto whichever Ork impressed me and was alive enough after doing so.

  “Traitor!” One of them near me shouted as I sent another’s head flying, dang under his following spray of sfire and kig him in the chest hard enough to send him crashing into a wall. He spat to the side, raising his hell-gun in trembling hands. “Heretic!”

  I snorted, shifting the neis armour on my left hand into a small shield which I used to swat his bullet to the side before running him right through with the silvery bde I’d shifted my right hand into.

  Fanatics, zealots and overly stubborn morons irritated me. Some might say they were is, born to the wrong time and were just the results of societal brainwashing.

  To them I say, fuck you. These ts were beyond help and would have been gleefully grinning had they mao kill me.

  I liked to think of myself as a mirror in circumstances like this, ign all bullshit and refleg their attitudes towards me right back at them.

  If they surrendered, I’d have let them, but with how they were … well, who gave a fuck. Fuck them. That fanatical zealotry radiating off of them annoyed me enough to shank them just by itself and shooting at me more than made them deserving of my bde.

  So I sughtered them. It had been nothing personal, initially, but now I took some measure of satisfa in killing every st one of them who shot either bullets or idiotic curses at me.

  Then I heard it, a screeot unlike what I’d heard some smaller Tyranids make ing from further up one hallway. My rgely retracted aura, kept so to make me focus on the fight I was taking part i like one of the human Psykers closing in quickly.

  It felt … wrong, feral. I frowned, putting up a psychic shield around me for a moment and ign the dozens of hellfire rounds spttering against it iually.

  Then I saw her … or it, to be more accurate, because only the shape remained human. I threw off the pyful restris I’d pyself and grabbed the Psyker in a vice-like grip, pulling it up close to observe.

  “What have they doo you?” I asked, fingers reag up to cup the sunken cheeks of the ‘woman’. She tried to snap at me like some rabid dog, her eyes bloodshot and mouth foaming.

  Her power surged, struggling to get out of my hold and I could tell she was reag for more power than her body could handle. So I cmped down on it, squeezing the e she had to the like it was her throat.

  I reached into her mind, looking for clues on what, how and why this happeo a Psyker.

  It was both harder and a thousand times easier than usual, her mind was in tatters, fragmented and abused into near-oblivion.

  I looked through the fragments I could touch without breaking them even further, trying to be as gentle as I could. As I did, I felt a righteous fury rise up in my heart. I felt the woman’s pain, her desperation and her simpering pleas. I felt as she retreated further and further into her own mind as her psyche shattered further and further with each passing day uhe ministrations of Inquisitor Xahrace.

  Inquisitor Xahrace. I saw him before me, rger than life as he was from the kneeling perspective of the woman who had once been Mara, Shaman Queen of Nirea.

  But that was for ter, I … wao do something for this woman. The poor thing didn’t deserve even a thousandth of the suffering she’d gohrough.

  Unfortunately, while I could heal the body and protect the soul from daemons, I couldn’t do anything for the mind. Still, I did the best I could do.

  My power reached out, gently seeping into her body and log her soul in the while another part reached into the deepest depths of her mind where the st remains of her mind hid.

  Gng ihat st fragment, protected by her failing power, I saw a little girl barely into her puberty rog bad forth and hugging her knees, calling for her mother.

  I ehat fragment, proteg it from the rest and the abuse still lingering on them as a gigantic soul tendril of mine pierced into the and fished out her soul, battering away all the lingering daemons.

  Then I pulled both into my Realm, pg the soul into one of the nicer little sub-realms and linking it up with that mind fragment.

  As for the body, … I tur into dust after taking a single sample of it for when I had time to make a rept for the woman. For now, she’d be fine in my little budget afterlife. I could make her a new body ter once I could make sure her mind was intaough for it and had the time otherwise.

  Now though, I had an Inquisitor to hunt and kill very painfully.

  “What’s wrong?” Selly, the sweetheart that she was, felt my tumultuous emotions in an instant and was o me in a moment.

  “I think I am going to enjoy killing that Inquisitor,” I said darkly, my aura finding his location in moments. He was ing right towards us. Perfect. “He is one nasty bastard.”

  “No torture,” Selene said, squinting at me. “You promised.”

  “I did.” I defted a little, my shoulders slumping as I discarded half a dozen ideas about making him regret ever being born. “I’m still going to make it hurt. He more than deserves it.”

  With that, I sent Selene a summary of poor little Mara’s memories and she grimaced. “An Inquisitor? Really?”

  “He is just a man like any other,” I said darkly as I heard the g of his armoured footsteps approag evehe din of battle. “Just a man with far too much power and ris pced on him. He still bleeds red and shits brown. He will die like all the rest.”

  “No torture,” Seleerated, taking a trembling breath as she shook off the memory dump I’d given her. “Even a shitstain isn’t worth risking your mental health.”

  “You wish is my and,” I said, feeling myself smile thinly at her clear worry for me. I gave her a little pe the cheek just before I turo face the armoured man levelling a heavy fmer at the etlefield.

  When I saw it ignite, a ferocious grin stretched ay fad with a fliy hand redirected the burning promethium back at his own men.

  I wouldn’t torture him, I promised, but I was going to make him despair and feel at least a fra of the soul-crushing terror he’d made Mara feel.

  Crushing the egos ant, evil bastards is going to be my favourite hobby if I tinue on like this. Oh, well. Could have been worse. The Dark Eldar are testament to that.

  *****

  Zara stiffened, her steps halting for just long enough for the stormtrooper behio smack the butt of his gun into her kidney.

  She hissed, stumbling forward as the pain radiated throughout her body, but she could hardly bring herself to care.

  Her powers were unleashed now, set loose to kill the enemies of Mankind, but those very same powers also opened her eyes to the powers hiding just beh the veil.

  “Move,” one of the stormtroopers said, nudging her forward roughly, and she hurried to catch up with the Inquisitor.

  Well, it looked like that from the outside, anyway. She wao see, no she had to see what was happening in the cavernous ste room up ahead.

  It just so happehat the Inquisitor only now stepped through the door and raised his heavy fmer to fire.

  Zara peered under his shoulder, her violet eyes filling with curiosity for the first time in what felt like ages.

  The poor, drug-addled Psyker they’d been following was gone, reduced to dust … but Zara had felt it. She kly what she felt. For the first time ever, a departed soul had been cimed near her, saved from the terrible fate that awaited most.

  Oblivion, or worse. Oh so much worse, if the brief glimpses her powers allowed her were anything to go by.

  Zara was a divinationist and a telepath, her talent id in seeing what was hidden, and that’d given her an inkling to what happens to souls after death.

  And it wasn’t even close to how the chapins or the Ecclesiarchy described it. There was no afterlife worth living, the Emperor wasn’t there to take you under his prote; you were just … left alone, left to fend for yourself in a world even more treacherous and ruinous than the real one.

  She’d thought the Emperor just didn’t bother, likely far too busy guarding humanity from the grasp of the Great Enemy. Or maybe she’d just been too weak, too blind to see the powers of the Emperor at py … though she doubted that.

  Now those doubts were realised as she’d just felt a soul being embraced by some bright, brilliant power and whisked away. It was hard to miss it, practically impossible for a Psyker of her power being this close to the event.

  Not that she ever gave voice to her doubts, not doubting anythied to His Divine Majesty as a Psyker usually earned one quick trip to the afterlife … or something just as horrid involving Thrad her Psychic Hood.

  Not knowing what to expect, it took Zara a moment to take itle happening before her.

  Greenskin battled with their usual glee, pulling the triggers of their guns like it was giving them physical pleasure and fag them toon of stormtroopers huddled up behind cover.

  Zara’s eyes flitted over them, but only stopped when her gaze nded on the unique pair standing in the room. A pair of human-looking women.

  The smaller one was wearing some strange carapace-like armour, and another dressed in thin silky white robes that were just airy enough not to show more than the general shape of her body.

  Zara saw the pair of glistening emerald eyes staring at the Inquisitor with endless loathing in them, only eclipsed by the sheet psychic might she felt threatening to e bursting out of the woman.

  The heavy fmer fired, spitting a plume of hissing fmes forth and blinding Zara for a moment, the white-hot fmes bright enough to shihrough even her shut eyelids.

  Blinking away the dots in her blurry vision, Zara saw … that the woman who’d been the main target of the fmes stood unharmed. As did the greenskin, the only ones worse off were the defending stormtroopers who seemingly all took a melta grenade up their asses.

  The ave their warcry, their bestial voices sending a wave of dread down Zara’s spine as her bones and lungs cttered from the primal bellow.

  They lunged forward, right at the Inquisitor who wasted no time to level his auto-bolter at them and spray them with the explosive shells.

  “Back,” the oke, her voice as soft as the silky clothes she wore looked but everyone in the room heard it.

  To Zara’s mix of horror and awe, the Greenskin stiffened and like beaten puppies subserviently lowered their ons and stepped back.

  Thrace wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth though, and tinued firing at them.

  The white-an stepped forward, the gs of her boot’s heels against the metal floor the only sound besides Thrace’s bolter firing.

  Every bolter shell that flew at her, or at the Orks halted mid-air or flew up and into the ceiling, exploding harmlessly.

  “You’ll run out of shells,” the woman said dispassionately, walking towards the Inquisitor. Seeing as the man was wearing power armour, it would have usually been a moally stupid idea, but Zara couldn’t feel like fronting the woman had been the real idiotic idea. “Inquisitor Xahrace, I presume?”

  Thrace took a step back, though Zara k was not from fear or anything of the sort. Thrace wasn’t a coward … but he also thought he was the Emperift to humanity, and that his own life was worth more than millions of others’, and even the success of his mission.

  He took a brief gnce behind him, his helmet’s visor panning across the stormtroopers still lined up behind him and Zara took a gnce as well.

  They stood frozen, muscles twitg and straining against an invisible hold.

  “Well, you make an atrocious versationalist,” the woman sighed theatrically, which would have been more believable if Zara couldn’t feel the naked hatred washing off of her in waves. “You still feel fident. Hmmm. Why is that? Do you think that tin you hide inside will do anything to protect you from me?”

  “It has done well enough against your wretched kind so far,” Thrace said, his voice bring from the vox speaker built into his armour. “Traitorous Witch.”

  Without another word, he raised his fmer again and Zara snapped her eyes shut, surprised when she could actually scamper away from the bloomihat followed.

  “Burch,” the woman’s murmur ighe hissing air, travelling to the ears of everyone in the room. “What an aradition, do you know how the inal story went? It was a only held belief, that if you suspected someone of being a witch, one of the ways to test whether that was true was to bur the stake.”

  Zara watched as the fmes harmlessly swirled around, as if guided by some invisible current. Plumes flickered, dang around like a troupe of their own while the woman walked in their midst, not even a single ember scorg her robes.

  “If the woman burned,” the ashen haired woman said, her mouth curving into a mog grin. “Then she wasn’t a witow was she? But if she did?”

  The woman looked down at herself, then with a flick of her hand all the fmes got snuffed out in an instant.

  Thrace pou her, lightning cw poised to tear the woman to shreds. Then he froze, still mid-lunge, like time came to a crashing stop with the tip of his cws bare inches away from the woman’s body.

  “You thought those silly anti-Psyker Wards in your armour were going to protect you, didn’t you?” The woman asked with faux pity, walking up to the man’s still as a statue form and patted his armoured chest. “An unfortunate miscalcution on your part, you couldn’t know I wasn’t one of the sad, weak little Psykers you beat into the dirt with just the power of your idiotic beliefs and a power armour … oh, finally a hint of dread! How exg! But you still hope, I wonder why that could be?”

  The woman’s eyes panned over to Zara just as the -bead in her ears buzzed and Thrace’s voice came through, nearly shouting into her ears. “Kill it, kill the Heretic this instant or you know what happens!”

  Zara gulped, her eyes not leaving the predatory pair of emerald eyes locked onto her like a Lictor to its prey. This is it, if I just mao kill him instead of-

  Something pierced the skin of her neck, just uhe colr part of her Psychic Hood and an icy dread washed over Zara just as her mind started to go numb. She clutched at her head, a primal shriek of agony, speaking of the soul-rending pain she was feeling tore its way out of her throat.

  Her mind trembled, the power of her shackles, both physical aal g down on her entire being. She couldn’t breathe, the physical part strig her windpipe and cutting off the blood flow in her arteries while the psychic part came down on her mind like a charging ifex, sm it until she could barely think of anything but the pain spreading through her body. The pain, and the st and she’d heard.

  “Kill the Heretic.”

  P3t1