Despite Luciene’s protests, Zha was glad she advocated for bringing Galen, and the Eximus Convictor with him, down to the surface of Aerialon. When their group had first entered Veralith’s temple during the Phaenonite Crackdown, there had been but a single priestess within its halls. Now, however, dozens of faithful occupied the shrine. If an unholy battle unfolded from these so-called priests, Zha wanted a Knight to have her back, not a still-sore Assassin.

  By that same token, Luciene was glad she advocated to her own crew to go to the surface alone. Had she been able to bring Zet with her, she may have, but the rest were no match for a Knight, if her allies turned on her. She did not think that fate likely, but she did imagine possibly needing to come to Veralith’s defense, or the defense of her mentor’s worshippers, from an overzealous Inquisitor. Were such a battle to unfold, at least her crew would remain safe aboard Katabasis. Bliss, even, had been relocated to the Imperial fleet they had joined up with, which was where the Knight had come from in the first place. Katabasis, therefore, had no more guests of volatile alignment.

  Yet, once on the surface, a battle seemed unlikely—the occupants of Veralith’s temple welcomed the trio of visitors—one of them giant and mechanical—with open arms, honored to have such guests with their halls. “Wait here,” Zha said, quietly, to the Knight as she slid out of its power gauntlet. “And remain alert.” The Knight bowed forward slightly, mocking a nod. Zha then walked to Luciene’s side, standing before the entrance to the temple where a basic procession was being prepared for the pair of guests. “What do you see, Angel, with those eyes of yours?” Zha asked.

  “Nothing untoward,” Luciene replied, gaze locked forward into the temple.

  A priestess, wrapped in robes of blue that opposed Luciene’s own crimson attire, emerged from the temple’s front portcullis to stride before the duo. She stood nearer to Luciene’s height than Zha’s, and bore an aged face with pale green eyes—not, then, the young, Zha-sized, blue-eyed priestess that had been here during the time of the Phaenonites. “Welcome, welcome!” the woman greeted the duo, ushering them closer. “Our patron has foretold of your arrival, yet it is an honor to receive you all the same! An Inquisitor of Holy Terra, an honorable Knight of untold renown, and an Angel touched by our patron in person! Bless my heart, I swoon!” she said, and padded her forehead with the back of a hand. Zha and Luciene looked to each other, both made uneasy by the performance ahead of them. “If I stand before you under the heat of the sun and the awe of your presence, I am certain to tip right over; please, let us enter unto the shade of our hallowed halls.”

  “And does our feverish hostess have a name?” Zha asked, hesitantly following after Luciene, who seemed more at peace near the temple than the Inquisitor could manage.

  “Verily,” the priestess replied, then loosed a disquieting laugh. “That is not a response in jest, but an answer—we faithful of our patron don names that reference the truth, for our patron revels in fact and honesty.”

  “So…you’re named…Verily?” Zha clarified. The priestess nodded back to the Inquisitor. “Got it. Verily, do you or your patron know why I’m here?”

  “Our patron most certainly does, for she sees all, knows all, and commands all,” Verily replied, pushing her chest out, prideful of following her patron. “I, myself, do not, though only because I have not needed to know.”

  “We have some questions of your—our—patron,” Luciene offered, glancing back to Zha after admitting that she, too, was faithful of this ‘Veralith.’

  “And we would be happy to answer them for the flame-touched!” Verily replied, giddy with excitement for having been spoken to by Luciene. “And are we not lucky, then, that I am a Seer of the faith? Ask, and if you must have an answer, you shall, for I shall find it from our patron herself!”

  Luciene turned to Zha and shrugged. The Inquisitor, meanwhile, dwelled on her surroundings and on what would be a proper, direct, but non-instigating question to ask. Verily had led the duo into a chamber lined with pews before a grand statue of a four-armed, winged, effeminate humanoid. It was hewn from a pillar of aquamarine rock, and itself shone in the gentle blue light that entered the room through a half-dozen so-colored panes of glass. The three women stood at the base of the statue, with Verily standing across from Zha while Luciene stood at the front of the rows of pews. A small handful of priests and priestesses dotted the pews further into the back of the room.

  Having scanned over her surroundings, Zha decided on an icebreaker. “Do you—or, your patron…who am I to ask? Do you recall when my fellow Agents were here last?”

  Verily, still smiling, looked at Zha with narrowed eyes. “Does Veralith recall when your fellow Agents were here last?” Verily repeated, demonstrating the form of the question to ask. Verily then closed her eyes and looked skyward for a moment, then shuddered. Her eyes opened, and they twinkled in the blue light that reflected off the statue. “Yes, of course she does. Four of your fellows cleaned our basement of its rats. Veralith is pleased and thankful for their volunteered efforts.”

  Zha raised an eyebrow. That would have been more than a century ago, and while Verily was an older woman, she was not north of seventy, and likewise did not appear to be using any rejuvenat. There were powers at play beyond the women present in the room. I, Zha recalled, had made the judgment call at the time to let the temple stand even after its then-priestess showed signs of premonitory skills, but now Zha began to question whether I had made the right decision.

  Zha, already sensing that she was playing in another’s game, began to search for her puppeteer. “The pantheon upon which your patron stands—are their others?” she asked of the Seer.

  “There are,” Verily admitted, “though they are not worthy of much worship. They are four, four lights in the dark to burn away the shadows.”

  “Is it sacrilege to speak the names of the other three within this temple, or may I enquire thus?” Zha asked.

  “It is, alas. I would not advise it,” Verily replied. Zha was momentarily stunned by the blunt honesty; it was a genuine response given in earnest, and not veiled as a threat. Yet Zha knew she would have been wise not to press the issue directly.

  While Zha played a game of cat-and-mouse with the Seer, Luciene scanned the room. The crimson-clad Angel felt compelled to look over the scene and its occupants more closely, feeling, herself, watched. In the meantime, Zha continued, “Where is Veralith now?”

  The Seer looked skyward again, and again shuddered before returning her gaze to the Inquisitor. While this happened, Luciene found the gaze she was looking for, and her eyes widened to meet the two sky-blue eyes that locked with hers. “Stradling the Sea of Souls even yet, clearing a path from which to strike at the Leviathan,” the Seer answered Zha, while Luciene matched the creeping, amused smile across from her with a frown of her own.

  “Trantos,” Luciene called, and the Inquisitor pivoted in place. Seeing Luciene staring in one direction, Zha’s eyes slid to match her compatriot’s gaze, finding a young maiden, of fair hair and complexion, sitting casually within a pew, arms stretched over its backside and her legs folded over one another. It was she, in fact, that I had met and worked with over a century ago. And she had not aged a day. “You are as I remember you,” Luciene said amidst the three-way staring contest, and at last blinked.

  “And your gilded eyes have looked upon a darkness so vast you know not, yet, how to comprehend it,” the young priestess replied. She then turned, her gaze pausing briefly on Zha, but continuing on to look to the Seer. “Leave us.” The Seer bowed courteously, then departed from the scene. Though not addressed, the other priests in the room rose from their pews and took their leave as well. The young woman then nodded ahead. “Bit gaudy, isn’t it?” she asked of the large aquamarine statue behind Zha. “Though your Immortal Imperium, Trantos, does adore that sort of thing, does it not?”

  “I…I don’t—”

  “Come now, you have legs stiff beneath you yet, Inquisitor. Straighten yourself out,” the priestess chastised her, then looked to Luciene. “You both have questions. I would hear yours first, to give this thinker time to think.”

  “Is it true?” Luciene asked.

  “Cutting straight to the point, eh? In a past life, I think you were a bigger fan of foreplay,” the priestess said, then sighed and rose from her pew. “I’ll have to ask you to be more specific. Is what true?”

  “Are you using me, Veralith?” Luciene hissed, and stepped up to the priestess.

  The priestess smiled warmly, and lifted a hand to touch the face of the giant that towered over her. “Yes. And so is she,” the priestess said, tilting her head toward Zha. “And you use others. That is life; we all must lean on one another from time to time.”

  “To what end?” Luciene demanded.

  “To spread hope,” the priestess answered, moving her hand across Luciene’s face to push some of her hair aside. Luciene’s eyes widened slightly, and the priestess, again, allowed herself to a warm grin. The Angel, Zha saw, still possessed a vulnerability born from hope.

  So, Zha took action, and interjected. She could have sworn, however, that the priestess’s gaze fell to her before she even opened her mouth, as though knowing in advance that she was to speak. “She lies,” Zha said, defying the temple’s patron.

  “Far be it for an Inquisitor to accuse another of lying,” the priestess laughed. It was a girlish thing, young and carefree, more disarming than her gentle gaze or her soft smiles. She sounded, moved, and acted as youthful as she looked. But looks could be deceiving. “Your Inquisition is built on lies, you know, all the way back to the Sigillite.”

  “What does my spreading hope get for you?” Luciene asked, pulling the priestess’s attention away from Zha.

  “Counter question: What answer are you hoping to hear? If I tell you that you spreading hope is in itself sufficient for me, would that please you, would you believe it at face value? Or if I were to vindicate your Inquisitorial compatriot and say I wanted you to spread hope so I could better crush it in your wake, would you rejoice in newfound nihilism?” the priestess queried. Then, before Luciene settled on a response, the priestess shrugged and said, “We’ll get back to you.” She then slid away from the Angel and strode up to Zha, looking her over for a moment before staring, calmly, into the Inquisitor’s eyes. “How is Blackgar holding up?” she asked after a pause, tapping her head.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “He—what? Not well, what with the machinations of Cro—”

  “Hush!” the priestess shushed her. “Speaking the daemon’s name empowers it. I’ll admit though—for what that daemon is, Blackgar has performed admirably. I am not without a heart, you see; it benefits me none to see you and your ilk suffer at the hands of that daemon, and I would just as soon see it slain if I could. I owe Blackgar thanks for buying us the time he has, and I am not one to leave my debts unpaid,” the priestess said, and Zha got the sense she was reaffirming her own thoughts rather than explaining herself to Zha.

  “I’m quite confident he has little interest in your thanks,” Zha muttered. The priestess glared at her, but Zha found it within herself to meet her gaze. “Are you…Veralith? Proper? Then your Seer—”

  “The Seers here are not psykers, they receive messages from beyond…from me,” the priestess shrugged, and then her eyes twinkled a bit. “What stands before you is my flesh and blood, from Vaktez. When the others received gifts from the gods, they took the power into themselves and changed their flesh to match. I took some, to change small minutiae of my biology, but the majority of my gifts went into duplicating and externalizing my consciousness. That Veralith surfs the Sea of Souls as my Seer said. It is that one, I assume, which you most seek.”

  “And…the Leviathan?” Zha wondered.

  “Leviathan. The tendril of Xenos you call Tyranids. I—she—intends to destroy it, as well as everything behind it. I would mount the Hive Mind’s skull within these halls as a show of my dominance, if these halls would survive the night, which I assume they won’t, what with that Knight being outside or your ships overhead,” the priestess sighed.

  Luciene stepped up to and loomed over the priestess-Veralith from behind. The priestess, though aware of her presence, showed no signs of intimidation nor turned to face the Angel. “Which one of you discovered me on Ophelia?” Luciene asked in a hiss.

  “Not I, but the other,” the priestess shrugged, still not caring enough to face Luciene. “She did assume my visage, as I recall—our memories, our consciousnesses are synced. I see and feel as she does, and vice versa. Our thoughts are the same. It hardly matters for your query; the only tangible difference between us are the powers we possess—she is a being of pure Empyreal-might, a force of nature on a celestial scale. I am but a girl.”

  “Seems short-sighted,” Zha offered, raising an eyebrow.

  The priestess snorted. “Why, because you can capture and interrogate me? Torture me for information? Go ahead. I won’t talk beyond this parley, and you’ll find my mind vexing to your psykers. Part of the biomancy I gave this body was the means to disable my ability to feel pain. And frankly, I keep this flesh around just as a reminder of who I once was, and what is at stake. To deprive me of that will be a sentimental loss, but hardly an important one.”

  “I disagree,” Zha shook her head. “Ouranos captured the other you once, didn’t he?” Zha asked, and the priestess’s expression finally soured. “That left you and you alone on the outside. You are of some import to your other self, a safeguard against tactical failures.”

  The priestess stepped as near to Zha as possible without bumping into her, and Zha could feel a slight tingling in her presence. While it was likely true that most of Veralith’s power was kept elsewhere, the girl hiding in a temple on Aerialon still rippled of colossal psykanic forces; enough, perhaps, to have rivaled me pre-Finality. “And do you suppose, oh brilliant Inquisitor, that I would have so trivially allowed you to take my flesh from me? Oh, Ouranos, the damned fool. He played his part well, I suppose—one must respect their enemies’ accomplishments, lest one never manage to overcome them. But he and his victory were only ever a temporary setback.”

  Luciene, again, approached the priestess-Veralith from behind, this time placing a hand atop her shoulder and trying to pull her away from Zha. She failed at that, but did manage to get the priestess to turn about and face her. “Why is hope important to you, Veralith?”

  “Did I say it was?” the priestess smirked, coy. “It’s important to you. And that is important to me.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you vibrant. You still have a long way to go in that regard, but you’re making great strides as of late. Your battles with the Night Daemon and Lunacius saw you reach new peaks of power. You can do better, though, and I look forward to seeing how bright you can become,” she answered.

  “I could have killed Lunacius. As Bliss Carmichael could have, from what I understand. Does his potential loss not worry you?” Luciene pressed.

  This time, the priestess grinned wide enough to flash her finely-kept teeth. It was a knowing grin, as though being in on a joke that had not yet been uttered. “Not in the slightest,” she shook her head, still smiling. “Everyone dies someday.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me.”

  Zha interrupted their back-and-forth, then, and pulled the priestess-Veralith’s attention back her way. “Why were you here?” she asked, and the priestess rose an eyebrow her way. “All those years ago; what was the point of being here at the time?”

  “What do you mean?” the priestess frowned. “I wanted to meet the two of them, is all. This one,” she said, and gestured behind herself toward Luciene, “and the one bearing the Night Daemon. And lo, behold, now you’re here. Perhaps I set you on your way. Perhaps, by having met those two when I did, I orchestrated Ouranos’s defeat a century in advance, and thus the other-me’s freedom from his prison. Or perhaps I just wanted to say hello.” She shrugged, then, with another smile, added, “Hello.”

  “And where will you be sending us next, then?” Zha asked.

  “Oh, want a clue, do you?” the priestess laughed, again disarming both Zha and Luciene in the process. “Hm, let me think,” she started, and stepped away from the pair, ruminating aloud. “You two have each been to Merkalla, each seeing the first summoning of the Night Daemon. So, you have that under your belt. You’re still missing a couple pieces before you’re ready for the end, though. If you’re so inclined to heed my advice, go poke your heads in on the world the Imperium calls Shanolok. That’s the most recent one—perhaps you’ll be able to start figuring things out from the work of my brother, Galpalos,” she suggested, turning to face the duo, now standing directly beneath the outstretched arms of the aquamarine statue.

  “What about Vaktez?” Zha asked.

  “What about it?”

  “What happened there?”

  The priestess-Veralith scoffed and shrugged. “What didn’t happen there? Old Night came, and with it, isolationism, disease, and famine. Those that remained turned to whatever they could to survive. Yes, that includes the temptations and predations of the Warp. Mordefir and Lunacius led their rebellions, eventually going to war with one another. I advocated for peace, with the promise of something better. Galpalos helped realize that future with cures and salves for the maligned. The four of us brought the world into harmony, and then set out from there to do the same across the stars.”

  “You plunged the world into the Empyrean,” Zha asserted. The priestess shrugged that retort off, as though it was just another way of phrasing what she had.

  “Lunacius killed someone important to me and my friends,” Luciene seethed, one hand tensing and another reaching for her Eviscerator.

  “And one of Mordefir’s agents caused untold death and destruction within the Imperium, cost Callant Blackgar an arm, and me two of my friends,” Zha agreed, unholstering a Bolt pistol, but keeping it pointed toward the ground for the time being.

  “Such small losses,” the priestess said, shaking her head dismissively, and to that Zha raised the pistol toward her while Luciene drew her blade. “Neither of you can fathom the point of my efforts, not yet. But you will. Only then will I bring you in on my motivations, but you’ll have to trust that they exist until then. I am not dishonest; as I said earlier, it brings me no pleasure to see you and your allies suffer. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  “I’m trying very hard not to give in to anger, Veralith,” Luciene warned the girl, who rose an eyebrow, curious what the Angel meant. “What you say today is so unlike the woman that made me who I am.”

  “Perhaps you should embrace that nihilism after all, then,” the priestess suggested. “You want the truth, then? I’ll give it to you, despite the fact that having heard it, you will suffer further. But here: Yes, I am using you, and I always have been. Some Astartes rescued you from The Finality, and I killed them before you regained consciousness and took you under my wings,” she explained, pointing upward at the winged statue overhead. “I need you bright and shining for my plans, but the truth of you, Luciene, is that you are not a creature of hope. You are a spawn of the Corpse-God, having been a once-corpse yourself, and in keeping with the Anathema’s ways, your elements are fury and vengeance, not hope. So, indeed, perhaps I want you furious.”

  “Then you shall get what you want,” Luciene hissed, and faster than Zha could process, darted across the scene, Eviscerator revving. Yet her blade struck only aquamarine stone, the priestess vanishing from view in a brief but bright flash of blue-light. After dislodging her blade from the stone, Luciene sighed, then muttered, “You must be happy.”

  Zha said nothing for a moment, then realized it was she that Luciene was addressing. “Should I be? Why, because your faith has proven misplaced? No, Luciene—I may have seen that coming, but I don’t have to be happy about a friend’s misfortune. You are, in this life as in your prior, a true daughter of the Emperor. That makes you a prime target for His enemies. First Ouranos, now Veralith.”

  Luciene sat with that for a moment before turning to face her ‘friend,’ the faintest smile managing to creep out from her lips. “Well, friend, now what?”

  Zha buckled and winced under the answer to that question. “Now, I have Galen level this temple and exterminate its occupants, then warn the Inquisition about probable Warp Corruption on this world, as well as of the Xenos beneath its surface. After that, Shanolok.”

  “So a whole lot of people die,” Luciene surmised.

  Zha stiffened up and hardened her gaze. “Better one world than twenty.”

  “I’d rather not the one world at all. But fine, Shanolok.”

  ***

  Within Blackstone halls teeming with Empyreal energies, a young girl appeared off the ground with a sizzling flash. She landed gracefully, her fall slowed unnaturally, while the Empyrean washed over her. Her form shimmered like a mirage, and then, as the girl opened her eyes—then glowing in vibrant blue—, stabilized entirely. “Home sweet home,” the girl muttered.

  “Now there’s a face I haven’t seen for some eons,” Mordefir greeted the girl, standing a few meters to her side with his arms crossed over his chest. “Welcome home, sister. How’d it go?”

  “They want blood,” the girl began, but that response sufficed for her brother.

  “Excellent!” he bellowed, with such enthusiasm as to catch even his sister off-guard. “And you put them on our trail?”

  “I did, yes. Though who can say how quickly they will pick up our scent—Imperial vessels are so sluggish,” she sighed. “Where am I?”

  “Present,” Veralith answered, hovering into the hall ahead of her smaller self. “Mordy, if you wouldn’t mind, give us a moment.”

  Mordefir growled in response to his nickname, but did as he was told, and left the scene.

  “He doesn’t like you toying with his name, you know,” the younger-Veralith told her senior self.

  “And that’s what makes it fun,” the senior replied, brushing the warning off. “So, which of us shall it be, do you think?”

  “I think it should be me. If it were you, things would not change much, and that hardly seems fitting, does it? But with me, we can embrace change, as ever we have,” the younger answered, extending a hand toward her senior. Veralith-the-senior hesitated, then nodded, and took the hand of her flesh-and-blood up within her feathered grasp. Shortly after doing so, Veralith-the-senior faded into a form of pure Empyrean energies, much like those that washed throughout their Blackstone fortress, only these seeped into and under the skin of Veralith-the-younger.

  And the young girl began to Change, her powers Undivided for the first time since making her pact with Tchar during the Old Night.