Hydragyrum watches as the four cardinal elements begin to turn again. The psykers will be wakened and ready within seconds, but he does not have seconds. Out beyond the Titan’s eyes, the daemon tide is deepening as bodies scramble and pile over one another, like wasps crowding a queen.
Something is bulging beneath the carpet of horrors.
‘Aetherica,’ he intones, and power lashes through the Titan. He flushes it to the turbo lasers and void shields.
The rearing carpet of daemons peels back. The creature beneath is a sculpture cut in darkness, outlined in furnace glow. Its form swells, billowing up to fill the curve of the tunnel. Jaws yawn wide, fire framing the night-filled mouth within. Its shape changes as it grows: shadows of wings, hints of muscle and quills, glimpses of blisters and burning eyes trapped in a serrated shadow.
Hydragyrum cannot see this daemon. His mind offers it no mirror of fear.
Darkness – the blind governor of the Titan’s sensors – can see the creature, though. Its image uncoils in the crucible’s holo-projections. The monstrous shape flickers, looming, a vast blister of abomination forced through the skin of sanity.
The elements of the control crucible spin faster. Borealis Thoon’s psychic might is ascending, but it cannot be brought into alignment yet. Hydragyrum smiles. The daemon before him has waited until just this moment to manifest. While the fresh psykers mesh with the spirit of Borealis Thoon, it is just a Titan like any other.
‘Clever,’ he says to himself, and fires the turbo lasers.
Spears of sun-bright fire stab at the daemon. It changes, flowing forwards like a flock of carrion birds. Borealis Thoon turns, weapons pivoted, slicing fire after the creature.
It is faster.
It passes through the Titan’s void shields with a rippling boom. Curtains of light flash into being and vanish. Hydragyrum steps the machine back, but the daemon is rising, its scattered form gathering into a serpentine body. Its substance is blurring, dust and shadow spilling behind it as pushes against the presence of the Psi-Titan. Lesser creatures would be destroyed by the close presence of Borealis Thoon – but this beast is an exalted thing of Chaos, and the warp pours into its being faster than it can be unmade.
A long head of scales and teeth forms at the end of its body as it coils around the Titan. Hydragyrum can see only darkness beyond the Titan’s eyes. In the holo-projection, the daemon’s mouth opens again with a scream of burning cities.
‘What you are proposing is–’
‘It is the will of the Omnissiah,’ snapped Agates-Gamma. The tech-priest’s eyes whirred, and the green lenses snapped to red.
Hydragyrum turned his gaze on the man. ‘The Emperor wills and Borealis obeys. The ordo obeys. All obey,’ he said, voice flat and level. ‘But you are not His voice, nor is your will His.’
Agates-Gamma bridled. Chrome and brass mechadendrites coiled over his shoulders.
‘Prefect Hydragyrum–’ Tual began, the Custodian’s voice a smooth rumble.
Hydragyrum decided instead to clarify his point.
‘The Emperor’s will is that the war in the tunnels beyond the dungeon be won,’ he said. ‘You are correct in that. Our ordo and the Chamber Borealis has served in that endeavour. We knew then that He willed that we walk the labyrinth. But that does not mean that He wills us to take this place in it now. The past is not the future. If He wished it otherwise, He would command us.’
Tual held Hydragyrum’s gaze. The Custodian did not flinch. They rarely did, even when Hydragyrum focused his entire attention on them.
‘If your chamber will not agree,’ said Tual, ‘then the proposition can be made to one of the others.’
Hydragyrum shrugged.
‘You may approach them,’ he said.
You believe that they would refuse? Varna asked the question with quick movements of her fingers. Hydragyrum turned his palms face up on the tabletop.
‘They may or they may not,’ he said. ‘Your plan is to relieve pressure on the main transits of the webway that we still hold. You intend your unifier artisans to shore up and extend the sections behind. You also hope to annihilate as much of the daemonic incursion as you can, so sapping their strength for a time.’
‘You believe that the scheme is flawed?’ hissed Agates-Gamma.
‘You are proposing provoking a large-scale incursion of the neverborn into the webway, and then channelling it into a single location where its energy and substance can be nullified. At best, it is a temporary relieving of the pressure that they are exerting on our forces in the tunnels. Like bleeding a fever victim, or letting fire consume the forest it feeds on. It is not a cure.’
Tual turned his head and reached for the helm clamped to his armour. The gesture had the finality of a falling blade.
‘Very well,’ said the Custodian. ‘You have our thanks for attending, prefect. We will explore other options.’
‘I did not say that we would not comply with your request,’ said Hydragyrum.
Tual looked at him, a frown creasing the Custodian’s face. Agates-Gamma stirred and shifted, his servos and gears clicking in puzzlement.
‘Your previous statements held a contradictory implication to what you have just stated.’
‘I stated facts. I did not offer a denial,’ said Hydragyrum, tilting his head to look at the tech-priest. ‘I would hope that one of your caste could appreciate that.’
So you will walk with us? Varna signed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We will not walk with you. I will walk alone. When the tide comes I will face it, while you do what you need to.’
‘But–’ began the tech-priest.
‘All of your forces will have their parts to play – the beasts must be driven to the killing ground. But I shall be the reaper.’
Why? asked Varna.
‘Why have I agreed, or why do I say that I walk alone?’
Both.
‘I agreed because no other can do what you need, because you were not created for annihilation no matter what use our master puts you to, because the Ordo Sinister exists to face such foes. And I agreed because He would wish it even if He has not ordered it.’
Silence followed his words. The null-maiden, Custodian and tech-priest were watching him with unblinking intensity. One after another, they nodded acknowledgement.
‘The Ordo Sinister shall walk,’ he added.
Fire cloaks Borealis Thoon. Black lacquer blisters on its skin. The daemon serpent vomits flame as it spirals around the Titan. The tide of lesser daemons surges forward like plains-jackals and carrion feeders made bold by the bleeding lion.
Inside the Titan’s skull, Hydragyrum feels scorching heat spread over his skin. He is a psychic void, but he is linked to the Borealis Thoon by neural interface, and its damage is his pain. The air is vibrating as the crucible rotates in a blur.
He needs time. He slams two of the cardinal elements of the crucible into sympathy with the thirty-fourth hexagrammatic resonance, and the fire in Borealis Thoon’s bones cools. Its heat-blistered skin shimmers, damage vanishing as though it had never been. The daemon serpent hisses, and the fire pours from its throat, so hot that its core is blue, its edges white. Ice forms where the flames wash the Titan’s skin.
The Lychway is quaking. Alien pillars shatter and fall, splinters shattering and burning in the psychic gale. Lesser daemons circle in the air and on the tunnel walls, eyes bright with fear and thirst. Bolt-shells and las-blasts rain down from Borealis Thoon, cutting a circle through the waves of creatures boiling around it.