“Uuuurrraaaaaarrrghhh!” the scream tore from the man’s throat as he was woken in agony. He thrashed against the torment but could not escape it, his body enveloped in a fine mesh suspending him in the air, trapping him and at once needling his entire body and setting it aflame. He did not know how long he screamed but when the pain subsided his voice was hoarse and his body ached from thrashing and involuntary contortions. Yet his body was unharmed by the mesh. Beyond the circle of light beamed down onto him, was darkness.
“I will ask once more. Who are you?”
Between haggard breaths he raised his head to regard the one who addressed him, striding from the darkness into the light. It was a post-human, bulked up further by the suit of tactical dreadnought armour it wore. But this was not one of the Angels of the Emperor, beloved by all. Not anymore. The armour was trimmed with polished metallic embellished with spikes and the imagery of fell beings. Leering visages cast in bronze adorned the knees. What appeared to be pale faces dangled from chains at the being’s shoulders. In its left hand it held a mammoth scythe though the blade was not the typical arcing edge of a farmer’s tool turned to war. No, this weapon terminated in a circular blade flanked by spikes curving about it like protective arms, with a crescent pointing to the rear. A blasted icon which was repeated upon the renegade’s armour.
“Rogue trader Gaicorne Joerus-“
“A LIE!” his interrogator roared, though the voice was muffled slightly.
His body was wracked with pain once more, his jaw clenching hard, grinding and eventually a tooth shattered.
And as soon as it had come, the pain vanished once again.
“Then where is your retinue, lord rogue trader?” the renegade marine asked.
He spat the fragments of tooth from his bloody mouth. “You killed them.”
The renegade brushed off the comment with a wave of his free hand.
“’twould be a poor, poor man…a sorry excuse for a rogue trader who ventured to the stars with such a small contingent. You lie. Your Warrant of Trade?”
“Th- the Lords of Terra will hear of thi-!” the captive shouted, his final words mangled by his own scream as the pain glove was activated once more.
Again he not know how much time passed but when he regained cognisance a table had been set before him upon which lay a suit of fine clothes, a rough all-weather cloak, a rebreather, a leather-bound girdlebook, Catachan Devil-hide boots, a pair of holsters, a survival knife and jewelry including a pair of large signet rings and a necklace featuring a large red oval crystal.
The terminator wore no helmet, though much of his face was hidden behind a leather mask. A brass vent covered his mouth and cables snaked past trepanation scalp scars back into the armour. One eye appeared pearly white while the other was its antithesis: the pupil dilated in the extreme. The renegade stepped forward to regard the items arranged on the table, and nodded.
“The appurtenances of a rogue trader.” It ran its gauntleted hand over the rich clothes, a finger along the blade of the survival knife and tapped the cover of the book, the leather extending beyond the tome itself to form a strap to secure it to one’s belt.
“My prayerbook,” the suspended man answered, his voice rough and dry.
“A devout man, are you, rogue trader Gaicorne Joerus?”
“My lord, th- this is a test? Of my piety?”
The renegade took a moment, finally smiling, the oiled flesh of his face creasing in amusement about his mask. “Of a kind.”
The man proceeded to begin reciting a prayer to the Emperor of Mankind with the manner of one who had uttered the hymn since he had been young enough to speak.
The terminator nodded once more. “I have no doubt you are possessed of a fine singing voice, and must apologise for what my ministrations have done to your throat...but what is such a pious man doing with...this?” he carefully popped the clasp of one of the holsters, drawing from it a slender pistol, too elegant to be of human design. Its body tapered to a flattened barrel, behind which there was a large, flat, circular magazine. “An Eldar weapon.”
The man stammered, urgent to excuse himself, “a find, m’lord. A souvenir of my travels.”
“Hmmm?” the terminator replied, amused. “And these?” it indicated the rings.
“Signet rings, m’lord-“ and he paused at the shaking of the terminator’s masked head. “Digital weapons,” he corrected himself.
“A hidden sting, eh?” the voice was considerably cultured for one rebuilt for war.
The suspended man managed to smile with his cracked lips.
“And what lies beneath that first deception?”
The man’s smile vanished, replaced with a frown of innocence. However, it had been a fraction too slow. There had been the hint of something else between the two expressions. Fear.
With surprising dexterity the renegade terminator picked up one of the rings and examined it, pointing it off to one side, into the darkness. A bolt of laser shot out from the ring and drew sparks from the metal deckplates.
He realised he was aboard a ship.
The terminator then pressed one side of the ring with a fingertip and the top flipped up to reveal a seal. The terminator nodded and carefully set the ring upon the table, the exposed icon facing his captive.
The inquisitorial seal.
“The game -as they say- is up. Ordo...?”
The captive raised his head, defiantly. No longer the weak trader, eager to prove his innocence, his faith. The casting off of his guise appeared to invigorate him. Restore him.
“Hereticus.”
The terminator nodded to himself once more, pacing behind the table. “I expected as much. Or Malleus.” He turned to face the inquisitor. “You have been trailing us since our retreat from Fulcrum.”
The inquisitor shook his blood-matted blonde hair. “I was there. I was part of the infiltration team before the Templars struck. Paved the way for them. I saw what you did to your people. What you unleashed.”
“Your name?”
“Loheran Darkmane, at your service, chapter master Sophusar of the Stygian Guard...or should I saw lord Sophusar, maestro, conductor of the spheres, the great harlequin of the Psychopomps.”
The terminator cocked an eyebrow and looked to the man’s golden locks.
“My father chased skirt. Fell for a blonde. Broke centuries of family tradition.”
The terminator regarded the man with suspicion for the first time since the interrogation had begun.
“You are most verbose for a member of the Ordos, inquisitor Darkmane. And what caused you to place yourself into my hands? Let us dally no longer with the fallacy that we captured you.”
“To discover why. Why you fell.”
“You know of our mission to Cyprius III?”
The inquisitor nodded. Over a century earlier the majority of the first company of the Stygian Guard astartes chapter lead by captain Viphic, along with an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor by the name of Tobias Fen had been dispatched to the planet Cyprius III to investigate rumours of corruption. That the chapter had been ordered to send so many of its veterans on what was overly an escort...
“Ships which visited the planet after you left found scenes of mass butchery.”
“The majority of which was committed by captain Viphic and his men, driven to bloodlust.”
“How? How could this happen?”
Lord Sophusar looked from the iconography on his armour to the larger one forming the blade of his scythe. “You of all should know the import of this mark.”
“She who thirsts.”
Sophusar arched an eyebrow. “A translation of the Eldar term, but yes. And you know of her nemesis.”
The inquisitor nodded.
“We believe Viphic and his men fell to worshipping the Lord of Skulls. When I and the rest of the chapter arrived, having heard nothing from them, we found them blood-raged barbarians, butchering the Cyprius populace.”
“And what happened to you?”
Sophusar’s eyes narrowed as he remembered his shock at the change which had come over captain Viphic, his most trusted lieutenant, and his crack troops. The rest of the chapter had joined the war against the clearly corrupted populace, fighting on as they always had: emotionless, cold, calculating. And yet the hordes of cultists came on. It had been Angra - of all people - who had suggested having the scouts infiltrate the cult dens. Bring them down from within. And so they had. The scouts clad themselves in the garb of the cultists, adorning themselves with the markings, tattoos and jewellery typical of their practices. And as the war went on, the trend spread. Not only the infiltrators but assault squads, tactical squads. Bearing trophies of their victories to strike fear into the enemy. Then came competition between champions. Here came pride.
“And what of the first company?”
“If you were on Fulcrum that day...”
The inquisitor nodded. “I heard reports afterwards. You released the survivors from your fortress’ dungeons. They attacked your own astartes as well as the Templars.”
Sophusar chuckled. “Indeed they did. I shall have to give Viphic a talking to about that.”
“He lives!?”
The chaos lord nodded. “In chains.”
“And you, like he, trod upon your oaths to the Golden Throne, only to shackle yourselves to infernal powers,” the inquisitor spat.
Sophusar appeared as if he was about to reply, but turned and motioned off into the shadows.
Darkmane felt the neural glove’s fibers prick his flesh once more, the prickling soon turning to the sharpness of blades. Though he could see his skin was unblemished, it began to feel as if his own weight were dragging him down into a net of monofilament wire.
“Are you a hard man, inquisitor Loheran Darkmane?”
The suspended human nodded, though a tick started in his cheek and his jaw was set, muscles bunched against the growing pain.
“I don’t doubt that you are,” the fallen astartes nodded slowly, watching him as his breathing quickened, “but you would agree that all men, all things have limits, no?”
The man nodded, his forehead beading with sweat.
“Then I will tell you of our fall. Be sure to let me know when you reach your limit,” he added as an afterthought.
“We were founded centuries ago. Scions of the great Dorn. Inspired by lord Vladimir Pugh of the Fists we sought to excel in asceticism. We felt nothing but our sense of duty. And that was our weakness.”
He was about to go on when a sound escaped his captive’s lips and he turned from his pacing.
“Ext- you took an extreme,” he stammered out the words, his eyes half shut.
“Indeed. Something a member of the inquisition should be familiar with, no? And on Cyprius III we encountered our antithesis. Excess. But you agreed with me earlier that all things have their limits, yes?”
The man nodded determinedly, the motion interrupted by twitches.
“Even the cosmos?”
His captive struggled to control the spasms which began to shake his body. “There is - there issss naught bey- beyond...”
“-the sight of the astronomican,” Sophusar finished the rote verse. “And yet some suppose the tyranid menace came from beyond...? And what of the Eye?”
“M-m-m-madness!”
“Now you’re talking my language,” the Chaos lord approached the man once more. “What if I were to tell you there is no limit?”
The man was unable to respond, a froth of bubbles streaming down from his mouth, his eyes rolled back in their orbits.
“There is no limit,” the deep voice, filtered by that brass-grilled mask, woke him. He was still hung from the ceiling, still illuminated in blinding light, surrounded by darkness.
“Our every taste of that which seems most exquisite: every emotion, every drive, every thrill...we have no sooner reached the climax than in a whisper She tells us there is more.”
The man barely heard, his eyes searching over his body for the inevitable scars of the agony he had endured. All he felt was a soreness in his shoulders and back, no doubt from his involuntary thrashing.
Lord Sophusar of the Psychopomps waited for the man to finish examining his body.
“We mastered the ascetic limit and She showed us how weak it made us. She who thirsts showed us a true goal to strive for, and such magnificent experiences.”
The man shook his head. He could feel that his hair was matted with dried sweat. He had been unconscious for some hours.
“For example?” he sneered, lip curled.
“How the mighty have fallen. One of the inquisition’s own agents consorting with xenos,” Sophusar tutted with mock scorn, tapping the shuriken pistol on the tabletop once more.
“How very rich,” spat Darkmane. “I know you and your people consort with far worse.”
“Touche,” Sophusar replied flatly.
“You are no threat to the Imperium?”
“You ask a great many questions most openly, inquisitor,” Sophusar said disparagingly and stepped forward. Darkmane could see that the pale faces dangling on chains from his great pauldrons were in fact the faces of statues, carved in a material as pure as alabaster. Clearly once beautiful they had been roughly hacked from their heads and defaced. “You make a poor spy.”
“What have I to lose?” the other returned. “My life? I would give it willingly for the golden throne.” Spoken like a mantra.
The Chaos lord caressed the suspended man’s cheek with his gauntleted fingers before gripping his jaw tightly and wrenching his head round to bring them face to face. He gazed into Darkmane’s eyes.
“And what of your soul? You have never tasted one I am sure, inquisitor, but I assure you the Eldar...their emotions...their very souls...are an ambrosia. A divine philter.”
The man creased his brow in revulsion and incredulousness. “What do you want?”
The renegade chapter master narrowed his eyes as he explained. “Their consumption. The consumption of their anima, their atman, pneuma...call it what you will, it brings one closer to Slaanesh-“
The suspended man reeled at such indiscreet use of the Chaos god’s name but was unable to pull his face from the marine’s grip, his body swinging in the pain glove.
“-I can hear her birth scream...echoes of it…within their tamashii,” his voice had dropped to a whisper.
“What of the other races? The Greenskin? The Necrons? Tau?”
Sophusar shook off his reverie and backhanded the man, setting the pain glove swaying wildly, and motioned off into the shadows once more. The pain came hot and sharp, increasing more rapidly this time.
The Chaos lord raised a reprimanding finger as he turned back to his prisoner.
“Too quickly. Far too quickly, Darkmane. If that is your true name. We care not for the Ork. Their beastly souls…” he made a spitting sound. “And the withered pissant husks entombed in metal? The upstart Xenos, blind to the Greater Powers of the galaxy? Their realms will fall. Tasteless, compared to this!”
Sophusar snatched up the necklace and held it before the man. Blood ran freely from his mouth and nose, and his right eye began to close from the marine’s casual backhand strike.
The oval red gemstone hung at eye level.
“Whose was it?” Sophusar gazed from the soulstone to the man. “A comrade? A lover?” he spat with relish and his eyes widened with realization at the furious glare the man gave him. “We were responsible for her death, weren’t we?” He motioned off behind him into the shadows, raising his hand. The pain glove responded accordingly and the screaming began.
“A choice. Loheran Darkmane. Gaicorne Joerus. Whoever you are. Tell us where you got this and I will not eat her soul before your very eyes. I may even let you keep this bauble. Teach you how to surpass your limits. Embrace Her. In time…you may come to consume this,” he jangled the necklace and soulstone, “yourself.”
“Never!”
He motioned once again and the power ramped. The man’s bloodshot left eye searched the shadows.
“Enough stalling, mon keigh,” Sophusar spat, “Whoever sent you, they are not coming to rescue you.” He grasped the man’s head once more and with his other hand pulled the mask from his own face before picking up the stone again.
“Where?” one final question before an inhumanly long, serpentile tongue extended from the Chaos lord’s distended mouth and wrapped about the soulstone. Sophusar looked sidelong at the man before he began lowering it into his maw.
“Viarphia!” the man wept.
The stone lowered into the devil’s mouth, needlelike teeth closing in an alligator’s grin about it.
“Noooooo!”
At another gesture the nerve glove was set to level Tertius and the screaming ceased.
Another fallen astartes appeared from the shadows. His armour, under the gaudy shades and lurid patterns, still showed some of the blue of his former station. His four upper limbs and the serpent’s tail which comprised the lower half of his body was an insult to the Emperor’s vision for his angels.
He bowed to the terminator.
“Find this `Viarphia`. I grant you access to all the prisoners.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Who was he?”
“No inquisitor, for sure. A pawn, sire.”
"Indeed. But whose?"
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