But then there was something else. A smell, perhaps, or a feeling. Conducted through his tastebuds and his nasal orifice, seeping into his ears and eyes. Not like any sense at all; just a certainty that built from the core of his bones outwards into his skin that somewhere, somewhere nearby, was someone important.
He remembered feeling peace, once. He could feel it again now: the first tentative echoes of that great focus he’d known, if only he could remember when and why. He could feel the glimmerings of serenity, unnaturally imposed but embraced nonetheless. He’d felt the peace and the awe and the security before, when for a few short raik’ors he’d been in the presence of...
Of...
“Ko’vash!”
The sound of his own voice startled him, chasing away the delirium and fatigue that the smoggy air draped across his senses and convincing him, somehow, that Aun’el T’au Ko’vash was nearby.
His mind cleared, as fresh water rushing across a muck-encrusted jewel, and he squared his shoulders and set off in the direction in which he guessed — no, that he knew — he’d find the ethereal.
Severus glared at the pale figure and snarled. “Alien!”
It didn’t respond, deeply ensconced in whatever trance or meditation it was mumbling. Severus wrinkled his nose, troubled by something he couldn’t quite put into words, and tried again.
“Alien! What are you doing?”
Again, nothing. Briefly, Severus considered the possibility of some hitherto unknown psychic ability possessed by the tau, but he reassured himself with a sneer. As the minutes counted away to the moment of Tarkh’ax’s release, the governor found his control over the dark powers growing ever stronger. An aura of crackling energy, a shifting halo of smoke and shadow, had formed around him, and now he could see into the coiling realm of the warp with as much ease as opening his eyes. This xenogen morsel hanging in the air was no psyker; no warp-sighted mutant that could cry out to its comrades for help. In fact, Severus was rapidly coming to the conclusion that the ethereal was of very little value whatsoever. The possibility of tainting a high-ranking tau had been worth exploring at least, he reassured himself: that it had failed merely assured their utter annihilation. Chaos had little time for incorruptibility.
Pursing his lips thoughtfully, and absent-mindedly waving away an exotic scent that briefly teased against his nostrils, he glared at the alien and slipped his jewelled dagger from its scabbard.
The Mont’au devil was scrambling Kais’s brains, an insidious whisper from within his own blood. Focus was the key. He remembered that from another time. He remembered the scent and presence of the ethereal.
Focus.
Unity.
Be one with the tau’va.
There was always something else to kill, as he descended further and further into the earth. Always something else to attack him, driving a wedge of despair and fury further into his brain.
There was no use in the sio’t, now. No use in parroting the empty promises and propaganda of the por’hui media. No use in meditations and chants and lessons. No hope of rediscovering the path — the One Path — into the light and serenity of the tau’va. He’d strayed too far. He’d lost his way.
He thought: I’ve failed.
The Trial by Fire was intended to separate the elite from the adequate. There was no shame in missing out on a progression of rank. It was all a question of niche. Pass the trial and advance to the next rank. Don’t pass it and be content with your place.
Kais had no niche.
He killed with too much skill, he realised with a jolt, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of the paradox. He gloried in devastation and violence where no excess of emotion was encouraged or allowed. He was too good at what he did.
The grizzled shas’vre from his youth in the battle-dome had seen it, all those long tau’cyrs ago. Even at that early age, Kais realised, his future had been set in stone:
“Given to tempers...” the instructor had said, stammering on his words in the face of O’Shi’ur’s unforgiving glare. “Changes in mood and focus.”
Flawed. Useless. Inefficient.
He remembered the shame, burning in his cheeks and brain. The shas’vre’s damning words were all the more dreadful for the inescapable truth they contained.
Kais’s didactic memories told him that the gue’la, innumerable populations smeared like a great plague across the galaxy, made full use of the insane and the volatile amongst them: presenting them with weapons, forming them into asylum legions and hurling them, like expendable human chaff, into the jaws of an enemy. They might die. It wouldn’t matter.
But maybe, the gue’la philosophy went, maybe one or two would prove so unhinged, so insane and unattainable, that they’d turn the tide of a war.
Using the deranged as sacrificial weapons: Kais could think of few uglier and more exploitative concepts. Except... Except hadn’t his commanders relied upon him? Hadn’t El’Lusha told him he was the only one who could do this?
Weren’t the tau just as bad?
A new bubble of bitterness and resentment welled up in his mind and burst obscenely, splattering his consciousness with its acid. They’d used him. They’d known he was damned, known he’d self-destruct, known he was lost to the guiding beacon of the tau’va...
And they’d used him nonetheless.
The Mont’au rage gobbled up the bitterness with relish and hunted hungrily for something to kill. Anything.
The desert rushed past, every grav-leap a colossal stride into the air. Sand became shale; a desolate wash of crumbled earth and stone pouring like a desiccated sea from the foothills.
Lusha landed and leaped in one motion, clouds of dust rising around his suit’s chassis then falling away within moments.
“Shas’el...” one of the team commed, voice exhausted. “We’re falling behind!”
Lusha ignored them, paying little attention to the three icons receding into the distance behind him on his HUD, unwilling to waste any time. A bright blue light, pulsing unnaturally, writhing like some luminous tentacle, hung immobile over the hills: a jagged pillar of energy. He stared at it in bewilderment, wondering what malefic event the beacon’s presence presaged.
Returning his mind to the journey, he fed every last scrap of energy he could muster into the suit’s motors and leaped again. Kais was in there, somewhere. Alone.
The sun began to set behind him.
Someone moaned nearby, a drawn-out groan of fear and pain that echoed airily throughout the moist catacomb. Kais racked the railgun with a metal-on-metal snarl and twisted to face the sound, feet splashing in the muck of the chamber’s floor.
It was the grey-haired admiral from the gue’la ship, and, as plain as the nose on his face, he was mad.
“Little... nn... little tau...” he giggled, spotting Kais through the drifting murk-haze. “Come here. Mm. Come close.”
That the human had been twisted by his ordeal was beyond doubt. His naval robes were stained and torn, damp with clotted blood and Chaos sludge. Half his hair was gone, a ragged patchwork of burns and cuts riddling the bald scalp beneath. He rolled on the floor and chuckled and muttered to himself, clawing at his eyes every few moments. Behind him a valve-like doorway clenched shut, circular muscles contracting wetly.
The human pulled himself into a half-upright crouch and coughed thickly.
Kais circled cautiously, fighting the desire to open fire regardless of what the scrawny creature had to say. The railgun seemed to warm in his hands, straining at his trigger finger slyly.
“Where is the Aun?” he said, quivering with the effort of restraint.