Ishmael Kane had not had a panic attack since first joining Luciene’s crew what felt like eons ago, but now, aboard the Blackstone Fortress of his nightmares, he was fighting to stave one off. He had not confessed to anyone, not even Nessa, of his most recent dream from the night prior. Once more he stood among the shadows, once more under the reach of the sinister Fortress, this foul ancient weapon of empires past. Such sights would have been enough to test him, especially in the wake of having been the one responsible for Eutophoria’s destruction. Kane’s mental acuity was far removed from stable following that ordeal.

  Yet the true source of his psychological tumult was the woman in his dreams, who once beat him nearly senseless and now accompanied him into the bowels of this nightmarish, Noctilith labyrinth. What was her role in all this? What was his supposed to be?

  At least there was combat, and ample amounts of it. Fighting for his life proved an adequate distraction. Eyeless, slate-skinned, ghoulish humanoids haunted the Fortress’s halls, accompanied by small, tripedal, arachnid mockeries of servoskulls. It was not Kane’s place to know what he was shooting at, only to know that he should shoot at it. In fact, very few seemed to know what the things were that were attacking them, not even the Inquisitors or Luciene. Zet was the only one who seemed to have any real idea of the nature of his surroundings, and casually cut down anything that opposed him without evidencing a second thought—of course, the emotionless mechanical Xenos rarely evidenced much of his thoughts to begin with.

  Luckily for those of flesh and blood, like Kane, the mechanized tripedal arachnids had an apparent tendency to target Zet above any of the other intruders, and he was more than capable of handling their animosity toward him. Unfortunately for those of flesh and blood, the ghouls that stalked the halls seemed to favor the living, and they were fast and relentless. A half dozen bullets or las-blasts were required to fell a single one, and they came in droves. Luciene and the Assassin-Inquisitor, Bliss, were capable of cutting them down with apparent ease, and Nessa seemed able to contend with one at a time, but their numbers were all but verminous in scope.

  Thankfully, a slow trickle of Trantos’s troops—often Tempestus Scions—made it into the depths of the Fortress to back up their advance. Further, every now and then the Fortress shuddered from some cataclysmic event outside, and when it did the mechanical arachnids gave pause. That allowed Zet to momentarily redirect his attention to the ghouls as needed.

  Yet, another thing bothered Kane—that being the uncharacteristic fury that rippled from Luciene’s blows. The Angel was usually so calm and collected, and even if not fully omniscient, at least possessed some confident certainty in her actions. But not so now, for as her Eviscerator earned its namesake, she proved more relentless than the Xenos ghouls that surged unto the edge of her blade. Kane noted that her rage seemed to match her aura, or perhaps vice versa. Just as he had never seen her so generally angry, he had also never known her powers to be so vibrant. Always glimmering gold, yes, but now she emanated a sea of pulsing power that overwhelmed and incinerated her foes as quick as they came. Yet, Kane found, he himself was unharmed by her presence, and if anything felt emboldened. It may have been her aura that held him together at all.

  Eventually, perhaps half a kilometer into the Fortress, the shadow of one of the arachnid-drones crept out from a faraway corner, only this one hinted at an opponent of far greater stature. As they neared in their advance, so, too, did this new foe, with firing tubes lining the sides of its body whereas the smaller sort had proven to be melee combatants. The giant machine opened fire upon their group, blasting nearby ghouls to blackened ash, and Kane and his allies only survived as Zet put up a barrier of green, hexagonal lights that intercepted their assailant’s attacks—albeit not without strain; even Zet’s defenses proved to wane against such a foe. When the machine gave pause to its volley, however, Luciene shot out from their group, and in the blink of an eye had already carved through the machine and flown past it. The contraption blew out in an explosion of fraying lights and arcing electricity, its three slender legs being tossed throughout the intersection of its hall and Luciene’s.

  Then the Fortress shook again.

  “Should we be in here?” Kane muttered to his group. “What with lance batteries already meeting their marks?”

  “Our vessels have yet to penetrate this vessel’s shielding,” Inquisitor Trantos replied, shaking her head.

  “What, then?” Kane furthered, gesturing widely at their shaking surroundings.

  “The clash of crimson and stygian titans,” Luciene answered, rejoining the group. “Which I am ashamed not to partake in. Yet I suspect my strength is better saved for smacking some sense into my former mentor.”

  “You still want her alive?” Trantos asked.

  Luciene paused and looked at her for a few moments, then admitted, “I do not know.”

  “The Imperium cannot sanction her continued freedom among the stars. The only way she lives after today, if at all, is in chains,” Trantos explained. “Please understand that, Luciene.”

  With another pause, Luciene nodded and agreed, “I shall try to. Everyone making do? Let us continue deeper.” As Luciene turned to lead the group again, Kane could have sworn her eyes locked with his. She saw something in him, still, or so Kane thought. Something Kane remained unaware of.

  In her eyes, Kane thought he saw guilt.

  ***

  Curse Cal, Mirena thought, and then she bit her tongue, though she had not spoken. I, she felt then, had been cursed enough. Even in grief, he still insists on biting off more than he can chew, and on his own at that. And me? What the frig am I meant to do here?

  Mirena had done well with a Laspistol for hundreds of years, but in halls of Noctilith, she felt it was little more than a laser pointer. Even Zha’s Boltpistol was far more effective, to say nothing of Bliss’s hands—which seemed to punch like the Bird’s battlecannon—or not-Lucene’s Eviscerator, which in her angelic grasp sufficed to cleave through their opposition without meeting meaningful resistance. And then there were the Xenos weapons that surrounded her, which also, begrudgingly, produced greater results than Mirena’s own pistol.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Mirena felt her presence, in stalking through those forlorn halls, was as impactful as her Laspistol—which is to say, not. And yet, she reminded herself, Cal—and the Emperor—has placed me here. Surely there is a reason for that, and it will not be found via inaction or pondering.

  And such inner conflict was fought while within not-Lucene’s vibrant golden aura, no less. When their group rounded a corner and stepped into a vast, octagonal room filled with blasphemous technologies and lined with profane concentrations of Chaos, not-Lucene was snatched from their sides in a flash of sky-blue light. Then deprived of the confidence instilled by not-Lucene’s aura, Mirena—and most others—fell into a panic, eyes opened to being surrounded by Xenos, Xenotech, and Warpcraft of unimaginable designs and unthinkable origins.

  If there was some form of cohesion to their group, it fell apart in an instant. Mirena herself but blinked and found herself having fled behind a desk covered in research notes written in a non-Gothic language—a journey, no doubt, carried out by her base survival instincts. And just so, she dared not spend much time reading the notes on the desk she cowered behind.

  Most terrifying of all was the large, tripedal contraption that stood in the center of the room, much like the first that not-Lucene had obliterated with a single blow, except this one was adorned at its apex with what Mirena most-likened to a Navigator’s throne. Translucent, shielding its contents from the outside world and vice versa, while the being inside, of depraved green flesh and covered in countless warts and gaping maws, was itself plugged into a half dozen tubes and wires that fed into the rest of the machine.

  As Mirena fought to gather her wits, she spied the firing tubes of the machine glow a sickly light for a moment, and hid herself behind her desk once more. Arcs of Warpcraft then frayed out from the Xenotech monstrosity, each one striking a different grouping of soldiers that had begun to regain their wits. The attacks scattered on impact, chaining from one victim to the next, and in a flash of gutwrenching light and blood-curdling screams, anyone so-struck burst into a shower of gore.

  “Not often, no, not at all, that victims come so willingly to test the Everchanging!” gurgled the beast within the tripod, a hint of elation in its otherwise-monotone voice, as though speaking through a vox.

  Mirena cowered, collapsing to the ground and barely able to breathe from her own fear. In the meantime, someone—the mechanized Xenos—still had the wits to reply to the monstrous fiend in the room. “Where is Luciene?” the Xenos roared, and Mirena heard the whirring hiss of its Xenotech slice through the beast’s lab. “Where!”

  “I won’t be able to answer if you cut my head off, now will I?” the monster replied, and its tripod scurried around the scene in apparent retreat. “Your Angel is just through that door, and yet not. A pocket dimension, not unlike your Tesseracts, albeit made by my sister. Isn’t she brilliant?” Then the Blackstone Fortress shook again, and the beast’s tripod fought to keep its footing. “Unlike my brother, who apparently cares not for the volatility of his surroundings!”

  Mirena heard Bliss somewhere nearby. “I have had enough of this Throne-forsaken family,” she hissed to herself, and then spun out from whatever cover she may have had. Bliss’s courage, in turn, infected Mirena and gave the landlocked pilot the inspiration to take in her surroundings from a non-emotive perspective. She poked her head out from around the cover of her desk, and spied Bliss sprint toward the center of the room, where the beast’s tripod dueled with not-Lucene’s mechanical Xenos ally.

  Three legs, however, proved adequate enough to keep up with and fend off the Xenos, especially what with the summoning of some of the smaller drones that had plagued the Noctilith halls earlier in the allied incursion. That allowed, therefore, the warded whelp within the tripedal contraption to turn its weapons upon Bliss, who, like Mirena, dove for cover behind a large plinth—one, Mirena realized, had been oft-used for vivisection, and was stained with deep patches of blood and biomatter. While it served as sufficient cover for Bliss’s purposes, the beast’s weapons did sublimate that biomatter into a murky cloud of gore.

  The fortress shook again, and this time from peering out at the scene ahead, Mirena lost her footing and stumbled out into view. The beast sensed and turned toward her at once, and she froze in place, stunned in fear. “Ah, I sense the Night Daemon on you,” the creature said, its voice clearly meant for Mirena, though she hardly understood its words. “You are the one letting it fester in power, no? Better to end you, and pry the daemon from its nurturing womb.” And as the beast’s weapons began to glow green again, Mirena had but a single thought float through her mind:

  Insignificant. I’m insignificant compared to all this, and always have been. That may be the only thing I understand at all.

  Four firing tubes of the Everchanging’s weaponized dispersal unleashed their payload in Mirena’s direction with unholy screams of shrieking energy. She watched on as the light-green spray descended upon her, not with horror, but with relief. At least I’ll stop holding them back, now, she thought, and began to close her eyes for the last time.

  Then it struck her. No, not it, him. The blunt force of a body rammed into her torso and blasted wit and breath alike out from Mirena’s mind and lungs. Tears welled in her eyes from the pain as she was tackled aside, clouding her vision of her savior. She did not get a good look at his face, but did recognize the five-chambered pistol that fell from his grasp upon his impact. And then the lights overtook him before chaining to her. Yet unlike as had befallen a few dozen Tempestus Scions moments prior, when the chaining light touched Mirena, a swirling darkness consumed its sickly aurora before dissipating out from view.

  Mirena landed, hard, just as the pistol did. Her savior never landed, vanishing in the blink of an eye in a shower of red. There was a woman’s shriek from somewhere in the room. Mirena could not tell whose or from where it came.

  Mirena may have been awestruck, but not nearly as much so as Galpalos was. “A…a survivor? How? That’s impossible, inconceivable, unapproachable! Never in dozens of trillions of souls has there been—ack!” In focusing on Mirena’s survival, the beast neglected the Assassin that had poured every ounce of her strength and speed into reaching its tripod’s legs, and cut them out from under it. “No, you can’t—!” Galpalos shrieked as he fell from the safety of the skies. “I have so much work I must—urk!”

  “Shut up,” the mechanical Xenos replied, his bright green scythe embedded in the beast’s torso, used as leverage to lift the vile creature from the remains of its tripod. “You have said and caused enough pain already.”

  “I—” the beast meant to reply, but said nothing more before the Xenos’s necrodermal hand shot for its head and ripped it clean from its shoulders. The Xenos’s scythe then phased away, dropping the beast’s motionless corpse to the ground. The havoc and panic of the scene seemed to die down with the beast’s death, though the fortress was still far removed from “safe”—ghouls and drones still lurked in its halls, albeit having lost their commanding mind.

  A woman appeared next to Mirena, though her attention was not on the pilot. She was one of the two deserters Mirena had narrowly beaten just a few weeks ago, now an alleged ally. She looked down at the bloodstained remains of the man’s clothing, which had settled near the pistol he dropped. “What was it all for, then?” she muttered, kneeling and cradling his pistol in her hands.

  “He saved me,” Mirena noted.

  “Yes, he did. He was good. Deserving of better than that which the last few months provided him,” she replied, then sighed and shook her head. “But death is never pretty, is it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too. But it is good that you’re alive. You’re important in all this, somehow. Ishmael saw that much, enough to be willing to die for you,” she said.

  Am I? How can I be?

  things have meaning, and that meaning carries weight. I needed to ensure this chapter went a very specific way. As some might say, .

  Veralith and Cronos remain (and kinda Mordefir, though I don't think his fate is exactly a spoiler since Veralith already told you of her plans for him).