There was so much blood. Too much, not just in the moral sense as an eyewitness to it, but in the logistical, physical sense. For Shanolok, a non-Hive developed world of (formerly) some twelve-billion souls, there may have been some sixty-billion liters of blood shared by its human population. And that would have been enough to make the streets run red across several cities.
But Shanolok was plagued by oceans of crimson gore, currents forming and carrying all manner of debris around the world. All life combined, human; animal; insect; plankton; and everything else still, would not have managed to produce the blood requirement that now seeped across the surface of the reddened planet. The world itself was dying, for its continents buckled and broke under the super-oceanic weight they now had to support. This continental compression released subsurface heat and magma, which kept the blood-oceans warm from below, occasionally bubbling and bursting out, releasing the pained gasps of the planet within.
The blood-ocean’s currents were of varying strength and size, but all were cyclical, already having developed a natural state of equilibrium. Where these currents brushed ashore of the continents below, their debris piled up, resulting in small but nevertheless apparent mountain ranges of skeletal debris. Natural-forming golgothas spread across crimson lands, a rippling sea of bones carried by the sloughing mass beneath.
Among the reddened currents across the world, one stood out for its more yellowish tone. It collected down a narrow band latitudinally north to south and back around, and some currents of crimson emptied into it while others originated from it. Bone marrow. The yellow marrow was diminishing, but there were signs that its reserves had been replenished as biological fat was brought into this band from across the world. The red marrow, however, was growing at a decelerating rate, but growing all the same, and from it poured out the creation of new blood cells to wash across the land. There was no sign of sentience upon the world, praise the Throne, but the blood circulation systems of billions, if not trillions of lives, continued on and homogenized into one.
Zha wondered if, given time, a pyroclastic-and-sanguinated ‘heart’ might form with some measure of direction or purpose. She perished the thought quickly, or, rather, she tried. But the nightmarish idea haunted her yet.
While there was no life upon the world, there was power. Power rippled beneath the bloody surface, and not just of the volcanic sort. Psychic energy sizzled and spread through the crimson wastes, and it was not directionless. In pulses, this energy pulled toward the cosmos in one particular direction, consistent even as the world spun. At the height of such a pulse, the psychic forces would then decay and spread across the planet once more as streaks of light under the gory surface of the world. But this psykana would return, and with stark regularity, every fifty minutes and twenty-four seconds, to once more surge toward the skies above, pulling a mound of crimson with it.
Shanolok, Zha knew, had been sacrificed. However, the dark rewards of that ritualistic sacrifice had yet to be reaped. The world had been reduced to a reserve of power as yet untapped. Though Zha issued the investigative order of her crew to extrapolate, at the cosmic level, the direction of the psychic pulses, she already knew where they were pointing. The world’s latent psykana was pointing toward those that had sacrificed the planet, toward Veralith, into the path of the Leviathan. Zha also suspected they would have been able to find other worlds like Shanolok, also with subsurface psychic energies pointing toward the Leviathan. How many? She dared not wonder. Too many.
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” Bliss asked, stepping up to Zha’s side at Coldbreed’s deck’s frontal viewport. There was still a slight falter in Bliss’s stride, only perceptible to Zha and likely not even to Bliss herself, but otherwise the Assassin had recovered from her bout with Lunacius.
“Something grotesquely awful, and awfully grotesque,” Zha replied, eyes not lifting from Shanolok. She imagined it was very likely she was standing and watching the world in the same place and manner that its assailants had as they brought about its doom.
“Ships,” Bliss said then, pointing out.
“Yeah,” Zha nodded, but still did not shift her gaze. She had already accounted for the local flotilla of vessels that had been annihilated, their wrecks now drifting through the void aimlessly. A weaponized moon of Shanolok had also been destroyed—not merely the weapons on the moon, but the celestial body itself, shattered, some of its debris already fallen unto the world and sinking beneath crimson waves.
“Doesn’t seem the invaders suffered any casualties,” Bliss surmised, as indeed, only the carcasses of Imperial vessels dotted the void before the Inquisitors.
“No.”
Bliss paused from that response, taking a moment to eye Zha over. “Am I disturbing you, Zha? Would you rather be alone with your thoughts?”
“No, Bliss,” Zha answered, and at last allowed herself a deep breath, in and out. She then turned to face Bliss, eyes trembling at first, and then, with a long blink, still and dulled. “I appreciate the company of someone I can rely on. No one should be left alone with the vision of…that. Not that I would wish its visage unto the eyes of my allies, but—”
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“I understand, Zha,” Bliss cut her off, and brought Zha into a hug. Zha relished it; Bliss’s embrace was soft and warm, yet strong, as could be expected. Despite the horrors she had just witnessed, Zha closed her eyes in Bliss’s hold, and wanted very much to sleep, then. Bliss’s lecture to follow, however, kept her awake. “Much as our flesh deceives it, we’re old hags, you and I. But I was a killer already when I stepped into this life long ago; you were but a young girl. That’s not an insult; I envy the humanity you’ve brought along with you, and Callant would be proud of who you have become, as his mentor was of him.”
“I don’t need his pride,” Zha started, and reluctantly pulled away from Bliss to gaze upon Shanolok once more. “I need my own. And I need…him. What would he do here, with this?”
Bliss paused again, wondering whether she had offended Zha somehow, and then joined her in looking on at Shanolok. “Well, Callant is the militant sort. He’d muster arms and men, and chase after whoever did this. And destroy them. He never fails at that, does he? Granted, he also likes to get his hands dirty, and would probably place himself in harm’s way as ever he has, undoubtedly resulting in some personal injury. You don’t have to do that part.”
“But you think I should rally some forces and stage an attack on Veralith?” Zha asked.
“Is there another option? I shouldn’t need to point out that this can’t continue,” Bliss said, gesturing toward Shanolok.
“No, it can’t, I just…I met her, Bliss. She is monstrous. And she is smart, smarter than Ouranos was, smarter than I am. She will know we’re coming,” Zha explained.
Bliss nodded. “The Phaenonites knew Callant was coming, and they were undying. They died. Mortoc, curse his name, knew Callant was coming, and he lost his head—”
“—thanks to you.”
“All the same,” Bliss shrugged, then continued with her point. “Even Ouranos is dead, now. So what if Veralith knows we’re coming? We’ll bleed, yeah, I don’t doubt that. We’ll lose people,” like myself, Bliss added, to herself. “But in the end, we’ll do what must be done. We ever have.”
“I don’t like losing people,” Zha said in a growl. There was subtext to what was otherwise an obvious statement. At first, Bliss wondered if Zha knew whether Bliss thought her own demise was imminent. But Bliss deduced the sentiment extended beyond merely herself; the thought of loss infuriated the younger Inquisitor to no end. She would move heaven and earth to keep her allies together, and despite such will, they had fallen so very far apart and, in most cases, perished in spite of her efforts.
“You’re much like him,” Bliss said, warmly, upon that realization.
“I know,” Zha muttered. But from his gifts he denies himself the opportunity to accept loss, her words echoed in her mind, her evaluative condemnation of me following the Red Stain all those years ago. I had not changed and, worse, that trait of mine had rubbed off on Zha, or at the very least reinforced a similar condition in her.
Where Zha and I may have wrestled with this perceived blight, Bliss saw it was a virtue, and smiled gently in recognizing it in Zha. Zha, she knew then, was my worthy successor. But then Bliss’s smile faded—what did that mean for me, if my replacement was already fighting my fights?
“There is,” Zha said, and refocused Bliss’s attention to the matter at hand, “another issue with mustering support.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve been off the grid to keep Mr. Blackgar safe from our peers in the Inquisition. If we reach out to the Inquisition for aid, that will change; we will have to come forward with some things. And how do we explain Luciene, and her allies deserter and Xenos? We don’t have the strength to fight this fight on our own, even with Luciene and her crew, but we may have rightfully outcasted ourselves from our Imperium due to the company we’ve kept,” Zha explained, then shook her head. “And what’s more, I am not sure we could even find available support. I hear one of the Emperor’s sons has returned, and usurped power from the High Lords to launch a crusade across the stars. I am no Primarch. I am, as you say, just a girl. How am I to match this ghastly foe?”
“Try to have a bit of hope,” Bliss suggested, and nodded outward to the scene ahead. A gold light streaked across crimson skies over Shanolok, rising toward the nearby Xenos vessel. Luciene had wanted to see the world for herself, vowing not to get wrapped up in any combat on the surface if dangers lurked below, which they did not appear to. “Again, we will do what we must. And we will suffer the consequences afterward. But this battle has to be won, and we’re the only ones that know to fight it.”
“Inquisitors,” beckoned a familiar voice behind the pair. They turned to face Caleb Vakian, still serving Zha Trantos as Captain of the Coldbreed. “We have your trace of that psykanic pulse, Inquisitor Trantos,” he reported.
“Where to?”
“The Apotheosis system, and with debatable accuracy, the fourth planet thereof. It is an Imperial world,” Captain Vakian answered.
Zha snorted and turned to Bliss, muttering, “A perfect candidate for four miscreants of Chaos to exalt themselves under ruinous eyes.” Bliss nodded. Zha turned back to Captain Vakian. “Prepare the fleet for Warp Translation. We pursue Apotheosis. Also, ensure the fleet is prepared for military engagement upon our arrival.”
“It shall be done. Inquisitors,” Captain Vakian bowed, and took his leave of the pair.
“Allies?” Bliss asked.
“I will find them if I can,” Zha nodded. “But if I cannot, we must fight this fight all the same. Time is not on our side, I suspect.”
“Much like him indeed,” Bliss laughed. Zha did not. Instead, after another deep breath, Zha took a step to leave from Bliss’s side. Bliss interrupted that movement, embracing Zha in a hug from behind, momentarily catching the younger Inquisitor off guard. But Zha, again, let herself ease into Bliss’s embrace, which she found an easy task. “I will keep you safe, Zha, as best I can. We all will. I promised as such to Callant.”
Zha sat with that for a moment, then wrestled her way out of Bliss’s clutches. “I may not want you to,” she said, and left the scene.
Bliss watched her go, and when she had gone, Bliss muttered, “Like daughter, like father.” She then turned, slowly, to look upon Shanolok one final time. Or, so she intended. Instead, her gaze fell past the world, into the void beyond. “Wherever you are now, you’ve done an excellent job of things, my love. Zha will see this through, as you taught her to, and I…,” she started, and took a deep breath herself, as Zha had. “I will do my best. I owe her, and you, that much. After that…well, I don’t imagine there will be an after.”
