Two Inquisitors, a master pilot, a Rogue Trader and their Seneschal, a Bounty Hunter, and a Brown-and-Black-clad Sybarite gathered around the war room. The pilot and one of the Inquisitors had their arms wrapped around one another, and held each other close. Both Inquisitors eyed the Sybarite carefully and with some disdain. The Sybarite, in turn, kept an eye on the Bounty Hunter, while the Rogue Trader and their Seneschal assumed commanding posts at the head of the table keeping most from ripping each other’s’ throats out.

  “So, how’s this meant to work?” I asked before giving everyone the opportunity to settle in fully.

  “Perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves, as we don’t know the full picture either, despite hosting three of you among our fleet,” the Seneschal offered on behalf of their master. I shrugged, uncaring. “I am Marcin van Grimm, Seneschal to the Great and Honorable Eleanor Sigird.”

  As we tightened our mutual grips on one another, Mirena asked, “Sigird?”

  “The very same,” Eleanor, the Rogue Trader standing behind her Seneschal, answered, emotionless. She was dressed in Vostroyan attire not unlike those we found, confiscated, and later burned within Antonius Sigird’s possession many years ago. Her eyes fixed with mine and flashed. “You killed my Uncle.”

  “So, I am surrounded by enemies. Got it. Makes things simpler,” I admitted.

  I wouldn’t mind lashing out at them with you, you know, Cronos suggested to me.

  “Now wait just a minute, Blackgar,” the other Inquisitor at the table insisted. I glared at him. His wardrobe seemed to match mine, for he was clad in a long black cloak and little else distinguishing, save for the golden, embroidered Inquisitorial =][= on his torso, which had had its signature skull replaced with a clock’s face. Unlike me, he had two arms and two eyes. “Eleanor is—”

  “Your Uncle was a heretic of the highest order,” I stated, choosing to ignore the other Inquisitor and directing my attention back to Antonius Sigird’s apparent Niece.

  “I know,” Eleanor admitted, accepting the slight without any show of emotion.

  “And from the company you keep,” I began, and nodded toward the Sybarite, “you seem to be following in his footsteps.”

  “Khael and their Kabal are among the roster of Sanctioned—” the Seneschal tried.

  “Not by me they’re not,” I interjected again. I turned to the Sybarite, Khael. “How many humans have you butchered, Xenos?”

  Khael’s head pivoted, slowly, to turn toward me, face obscured behind their helmet. With a voice that hissed like a viper, the Xenos answered, “From what your Inquisitor friend claims, fewer than you have, Blackgar. An honor, then, to be among such an echelon of your kind—even if your psychic presence…weighs on me and my Kabal.”

  “For what it’s worth—” the Bounty Hunter tried, voice modulated behind his rebreather, but I was ready for him too.

  “Oh, I’ll get to you in a minute, Svoren,” I shot back, indicating to him that I already knew his name. Sure, he was human at least. But the Ordo Hereticus had wanted to interrogate him for some time, and he proved noncompliant in that regard. Not a good look.

  Fists pounded into the table. My gaze turned toward the other Inquisitor, who had punched wood—wood! A Rogue Trader’s indulgences, I suppose. “Throne above, Blackgar! Can you wait a few damn seconds for me to explain things, to even state my identity for the record?”

  “Does your name matter?” I asked in reply. “You’re an Inquisitor of the Ordo Chronos,” I stated, gesturing to his torso with his Ordo’s insignia embroidered on it. “Which explains how you knew where to find Mirena and me. It’s that damn informant of yours again, is it, pulling the strings to make sure everyone behaves across the vastness of time? Will I ever get to meet them and give them a piece of my mind?”

  “Eventually, in a manner of speaking,” the Inquisitor grumbled. “Please, allow me to set the stage for this gathering.”

  “I wish you would,” I teased, but backed off, letting the Inquisitor have his time to shine.

  My teasing irked him, evidenced through squinting eyes, clenched fists, and barred teeth. But he nevertheless carried on without snapping entirely. “When you slew Antonius Sigird, his Warrant of Trade was confiscated and put on probation, not dissolved. You made use of his fleet, now passed on to Inquisitor Trantos. Eleanor Sigird, here, has been given a Letter of Marque to right some of the wrongs Antonius committed against the Imperium; should she succeed, she will inherit Antonius’s Warrant of Trade and absolve—in the eyes of the Imperium—her family name. So, she is invested and committed to the Inquisition’s cause with motivations personal and professional alike.”

  I glanced to Eleanor, who nodded to me, her face still an emotionless and unreadable brick. Luckily for me, I had my mind, which even with cursory scans could determine with some confidence that what this Ordo Chronos Inquisitor said of Eleanor was true—she had a genuine, vested interest in getting her family name out from Antonius’s shadow.

  Still, her chosen company did not sit well with me. I did not need it verbally explained that she was using Svoren as a personal ‘fixer’ and the Xenos Khael and their Kabal as some form of muscle. What their arrangement may have been made little difference to me; heretic-accused and Xenos were still just that.

  “Now,” the other Inquisitor continued, “as you say, I had the Honorable Sigird maneuver her fleet—along with mine—to find you and your…associate…on Merkalla.”

  “You can call a Squig a Squig, don’t need to beat around the bush on us being lovers,” I muttered, to which Mirena evidenced as such and kissed my shoulder.

  “Err, right. Ever the romantic, you are, Blackgar,” the Inquisitor sighed. “In any event, as you are used to, you now find yourself surrounded by a sizable interplanetary assault force.”

  “Trying to intimidate me?”

  He shook his head. “Trying to make you feel at home for what’s to come.”

  “And what is to come?” the Seneschal, van Grimm, asked on behalf of his master. “Your Inquisition is hardly forthcoming with information, even less so with your Ordo in particular.” With that, I had to nod in agreement.

  “War,” the Inquisitor answered. “A battle looms in the path of Leviathan, yet it will not be Tyranids we face, but the Agents of the Archenemy. I call upon those here to make haste for the Apotheosis system and strike down a most unholy foe.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “I suppose this is at the behest of your informant?” I suggested. He nodded in confirmation.

  And though he picked up the explanation from there, it was not the Inquisitor’s voice I focused on next. Apotheosis, Cronos mused in my thoughts.

  Whose, I wonder? I thought back.

  I imagine Veralith believes it’s hers.

  I know that name…but why do I get the sense your beliefs differ, daemon? My query went unanswered, save for echoing laughter within my head.

  When I returned to the conversation at the table, Khael was speaking. “Allow me,” the Xenos said at the end of a larger thought, and I was glad to have missed as much from the Xenos as I had. That said, to have traded the Xenos’s words for a daemon’s was not a good bargain, either. Nevertheless, Khael reached over the table and dropped some xenotech upon its center. Lights danced out from the contraption, akin to an auspex projection, though the detail here was, admittedly, finer and more precise. Before us was displayed the image of an eight-pointed starfort everyone present knew all too well—a Blackstone Fortress.

  “That’s what The Despoiler used to break Cadia,” Mirena observed, to which the rest of us nodded, some more solemn than others. Khael seemed particularly disinterested in the specifics of that comparison.

  “Yes, a great many have fallen into The Despoiler’s hands, though your Imperium has, likewise, done a fine job at destroying them,” Khael admitted. “They are of old Aeldari origin, before the Fall and splintering of my species. We called them Talismans of Vaul, though understandably that is not how you know them. Regardless, I am familiar with this structure’s designs and, more importantly, its weaknesses.”

  I turned to the other Inquisitor. “You’ll have me listen to a Xenos for military advice?”

  “That depends; do you have any interest, Blackgar, in slaying the forces of the Archenemy on behalf of your God Emperor?” he returned, then looked back to the array of lights before us. “Continue, please, Khael.”

  Khael nodded and, for the time being, ignored my protests. “Observe its four main cannons; these harness the raw Empyrean, and no vessel in this fleet will survive more than a few seconds under such hellfire. That our enemy is Empyreal in nature only reinforces this fact; we must assume they can better capitalize on Empyreal weapons such as these.”

  “You spoke of weaknesses?” Eleanor suggested.

  Khael nodded again, then reached toward the projection and, with a hand gesture, enlarged and focused the projection onto the Blackstone Fortress’s center. “A small sun powers the entire fortress. Yes, it is guarded behind immense shielding and armor. But if this core is breached, the fortress will fall, its weapons will be inoperable, and its defenses muted. While this may put one in the path of the fortress’s main cannons, hitting it from its sides, along the length of those cannons, present strike angles with the least armor between the void and the core. Striking the fortress from above or below is folly, though those are also the safest areas in a theatre of combat against its armaments.”

  “What of boarding angles?” I asked, and, from my cooperation, Khael looked to me again, welcoming the question.

  “Cal,” Mirena sighed, hinting at her displeasure from the idea. I held her tighter still.

  “There are some,” Khael answered. “Notably, there are access hatches under the main cannons, along the prongs of the fortress. And from within, the fortress is intended to support a breathable atmosphere, though it will be hostile to intruders.”

  “If it is of Xenos design, would it not find its current owners intruders?” I offered.

  Khael paused a moment. “I see your point. It’s possible. Though, counterpoint: the one you call ‘The Despoiler’ has managed to sustain themselves within these fortresses’ halls. I wouldn’t bet on your theory in light of that evidence.” Fair enough.

  “Regardless, she will be there,” I muttered, albeit loud enough for the table to hear.

  “She?” Svoren asked.

  “The Angel,” the Ordo Chronos Inquisitor answered, nodding to me. He knew. He probably knew how the whole damn battle would play out. The extent of the threats we faced. Who would have to die to win the day for the Emperor. I looked to him, and he nodded again. He knew I knew he knew. I tried for his mind, albeit not so greatly as to cause discomfort and cause a scene. Nevertheless, a smile passed over his lips, as he certainly felt me rummaging about in his head and finding nothing, as I once had with Bliss’s. If nothing else, the Imperium certainly knew how to train minds to hide things from psykers. In the long run, that was probably a good thing.

  van Grimm, the Seneschal, grunted. “There is more at play here than the rest of us understand. What, exactly, are we up against? What’s at stake?”

  His eyes still fixed with mine, the other Inquisitior answered. “Everything. The Imperium itself, and every other form of life in the galaxy, hangs in the balance at Apotheosis. Not immediately, of course, but if we fail,” he started, and his ‘we’ felt as though he had been referring to me. “All will be lost in time.” He then turned back to the group. “Sounds a bit grandiose, doesn’t it? Perhaps deserving of a larger fleet? Alas, we must make do with what we have on hand, as is ever our Glorious Imperium’s tale. As to what we face, Khael knows, don’t you?”

  The Xenos loosed something between a laugh and a sigh, and straightened his posture out, towering over everyone else at the table in the process. “Yours would be a mind I would relish picking apart,” Khael replied.

  “In that, we agree,” I added, frowning.

  Khael turned to Eleanor and her Seneschal, then. “We near the fulfillment of our Pact. My Kabal has hunted the Dreadful Four for dozens of centuries, and through you, we shall finally come to a head with them at this battle. They are not Neverborn, but are more daemonic in nature than many of the Empyrean’s spawn. And we must assume they command a host of thrall from the Empyrean to fulfill their bidding as well. Indeed, my scouts speak of a contingent of daemonettes that had deployed to the Eutophorian colony before its recent disappearance. These lesser foes will be as meat shields to the Four.”

  Mirena tugged on the back of my robes, gripping them tightly, and I must confess to a moment of personal shame, for from her doing so I first thought of The Finality. Of how I was right to prevent her from joining my doomed invasion of the vessel on-foot. She would have died, had she been there. I doubt I would have been given the opportunity to save her a second time, as I once had on the surface of Quintus. And thus, my shame: why, then, was I proud of my vindication, garnered via her fears?

  But she was not fearful of The Finality, not in this meeting. She was fearful of me, of what I was going to do in the fight ahead. As Khael described the legions of daemons we were soon to face, Mirena knew I planned to throw myself in harm’s way again, as ever I had. I, too, held her in my grasp more tightly before grunting and declaring, “Mirena and I must retire to our quarters—of which, I assume we have quarters. If not, we can just as well return to the Bird.”

  “We have only just begun to discuss—”

  “Marcin,” Eleanor interrupted her Seneschal, locking eyes with me again. From the side of the table, the other Inquisitor straightened his posture as well, and seemed surprised that I was not confronting him further. His knowledge of the future was not omniscient, I gleamed then. “Find and show them to their quarters. They know what they feel they must to act when the time comes. We mustn’t bore our guests with the extras if they do not pine for them.”

  “Of course, milord,” van Grimm agreed without protest, and stepped from the table to lead us on without another word. In the meantime, however, Eleanor turned to her bodyguard, Svoren, and nodded.

  I glanced back to the pair, namely Svoren. “If you disturb us,” I warned him, “I will deny you your interrogation. Act wisely, Bounty Hunter, or not at all.” I then turned from the table and left the schemers to their schemes. “Talk to me,” I whispered to Mirena when we had left earshot of the others, though if his ears were good enough or otherwise bionic, van Grimm may have heard us.

  “Do I even need to?” Mirena whispered back. “You know what I’m thinking, even without poking around my head.” She sighed then, and then stepped ahead of me and pulled me into a hug. “Do you want to die, Cal?”

  The same question Bliss had asked of me. I was as uncertain of my answer then as I had been the first time. “No.”

  “Try to remember that, then, for our sake,” Mirena insisted, and then let us return to following after the Seneschal. Our sake. As with Bliss, Mirena felt her life entwined with mine, to end were mine to.

  In a way, if the daemon got its way, perhaps she was right.