Zara felt jittery from the anxiety, her nerves tense and her stomach feeling like it was twisting into a knot. This was it. Her first mission … Well, not quite, but it was close enough that she couldn’t dampen either her nerves or the kernel of exhilaration beneath from showing. If her squadmates felt, or sensed her dichotomy of emotions — which they most certainly did — they did not show it, or care enough to react.
She wasn’t stupid enough to not notice the envious glances that even these aloof, arrogant Eldar couldn’t help but throw her way when they thought she wasn’t looking. It was understandable; Zara had what they’d most desired and been denied, and yet here they were, stuck escorting her.
Master Valenith finally deemed her ready to be field-tested properly, without the guardrails of his presence this time. Maybe if she did well, she wouldn’t have to tag-along with the Eldar that’d come under the Silver Lady’s aegis. They were powerful, certainly, but far from pleasant company, and that wasn’t even due to their species. Fae, and even Master Val to a lesser extent, were pleasant company when they wanted to be, but these new Eldar practically radiated doom and gloom wherever they went, and that was on top of them acting so haughty and aloof.
That, at least, was the least of the things that kept Zara anxious. She was finally going to be given a chance at proving herself against actual enemies of Lady Echidna, not just against dim-witted Orks that thought to test the laws that bound them. In the pre-mission briefing, they’d been informed that a new cult ostensibly worshipping the Silver Lady had been warped by daemonic forces. It was growing too swiftly, and it had the telltale signs that Zara had long learned to recognise as having been in the employ of an Inquisitor. The briefing had been pretty informative, but it refused to speculate.
Not that it was needed. If Zara could recognise the signs of a nascent Slaaneshi cult masquerading as something else, then the Eldar she was tagging along with would surely could as well. The orders were clear at least: no mercy. Lady Echidna was merciful, but the only mercy she had for the worshippers of the Ruinous Powers was death. The orders were clear: minimise collateral damage and don’t kill uncorrupted citizens. But once they knew for certain someone was touched by Chaos, execution was the only recourse.
It pleased Zara. She’d learned that Xenos influence, or even the Xenos themselves, weren’t unilaterally detrimental to human society. The Tau and the Eldar could both be fearsome enemies, but they were also mighty allies. The Tyranids were all horrible, however. There was nuance there that her erstwhile Inquisitorial superior would have denied to his dying breath.
It wasn’t so for the manner of things usually dealt with by the Ordo Malleus. She’d discarded many commandments from her teachings in the Imperium, but ‘Thou shalt not suffer the daemon to live’ was not one of them; if anything, it’d been ratified by what she’d been taught since by Master Val. Her understanding of heresy had changed as well, narrowing down only to the worshippers of the Ruinous Powers, but her ingrained hatred for them wasn’t diminished. If anything, the added understanding gave her hatred a sharper edge.
The Eldar didn’t speak, sitting calmly, arms on their knees and eyes closed or staring into space. Zara had been in a few more awkward shuttle rides, but this one was still up there, so she turned her thoughts inward, trying to distract herself from what was to come. She was as prepared as she was ever going to be; Master Val had seen to that, and the only way she would mess up was if she let her nerves get to her.
It was silent. Lady Echidna’s ships were all so eerily silent. Even when the shuttle broke into the atmosphere and the thick viewing ports were covered in flames, she couldn’t hear a thing, and while the shuttle probably shook hard enough to knock someone’s teeth out, she felt not a hint of it in the small room they were in. Zara doubted even planetary governors had shuttles this luxurious; maybe theirs was better furnished, more full of golden garnishes and mini-fridges for snacks and alcohol, but even theirs would undoubtedly shake and jostle around.
The thought pleased her immensely. Her, little dirty Zara, Zara the witch, the psyker, the one everyone in the Imperium treated as an eyesore at best and a heretic just barely useful enough to stay her execution at worst. Here she was, riding in a shuttle that no amount of fortune, noble pedigree, political power or supposed unlimited authority would be able to acquire for anyone who didn’t swear themselves to the Lady of Silver.
It was only minutes later that she felt the shuttle land, but it still did no more than send a slight vibration through the hull. The doors opened in the back, the ramp descending, and the Eldar made their way out in short order. Zara followed in their wake, hand resting on the pommel of her bio-sword while the other subconsciously crept up to brush the Storm Ward embedded in her chestplate right where her collarbones met. Both of those were gifts from Lady Echidna, since she apparently considered earning Master Val’s grudging admittance that she was now a ‘halfway decent battle psyker’ a considerable enough milestone that it was worth rewarding.
The blade was strange, able to channel psychic power to become sharper like Tyranid bone-swords but it also worked as a focus for her psyker powers. The Lady said it was an experiment, that she was to test one of her newest prototype designs fashioned after the Witch Blades of the Aeldari Warlocks.
She would have thought it a great honour and a sign of trust, but then she overheard the Lady muttering about hoping this prototype ‘not exploding for a change’. It was still an honour, don’t get her wrong, but she was distinctly more wary of actually drawing it in combat. An unreliable weapon was worse than no weapon at all, according to Master Val. It had survived moderately rough testing yesterday though, so perhaps it would be fine. Actually, even if it exploded, she should be able to sense it a moment ahead of time with her Divination, and then she would just have to chuck it at the nearest heretic.
Like a plasma pistol. Zara mused while casting her curious gaze about, examining the towering, oppressive architecture of the Fortress World. Spite, the greatest Fortress World of the Canis Salient, once the seat of power of Sebasticor Ebongrave, Lord Commander of this third of the Achilus Crusade. The entire world, its people, its architecture and even the air she breathed was a monument to one loathesome, paranoid man’s legacy.
No wonder it was this world where a hedonistic cult found the most purchase once he was gone. The locals must have even forgotten how to celebrate, what relief and freedom even felt like, it is no wonder they leapt at the chance to finally experience what they were never allowed to before … too bad they went too far.
Even if she understood why so many people fell for the trap, and even though she pitied them a bit, she knew what had to be done. They were tainted, and according to the briefing, it wouldn’t be long before the cult attempted to summon forth a daemon of some sort.
Even if the only mercy she could grant them was death, she knew it was better than the alternative. Zara knew the Silver Lady wouldn’t take these wretched souls once they passed, nor would they end up before the Golden Throne to be judged as the Imperial Cult thought. No, only oblivion awaited them, but wasn’t that better than an eternity of suffering that would be their destiny if the corruption had time to sink in and claim their souls in full for the Ruinous Powers?
The crux of the matter would rest in her ability to ascertain just how tainted someone was. She’d been warned, quite strongly, that this could very easily become a ‘slippery slope’. After all, there were Ordo Malleus Inquisitors whose entire modus operandi was ‘better safe than sorry’, which translated to them nuking entire space stations with thousands of inhabitants when a single daemon was sighted on them. Their reactions usually increased proportionally from that up as the number or power of the daemon sighted crept up. Ordo Malleus, and their attack dogs the Grey Knights, would likely be known as the primary sources of Exterminatus Orders had Inquisitor Kryptman not pushed Ordo Xenos into first place singlehandedly.
Then again, her source for that was a madman’s grumblings who spent his days as a brain in a jar nowadays, so that was probably factually untrue, even if it might hold a kernel of truth.
******
Zara couldn’t help but stare as they walked into the high-end entertainment centre. She would have called it a brothel, as the renting of courtesans was apparently the primary source of revenue for the place, but it was clearly more than a simple whorehouse. The building was a repurposed barracks, but that could barely be noticed once one was inside.
Ranger Tandor, one of the co-leaders of their squad, found the place within an hour of them making landfall. He was their commanding officer until the moment they came under fire, when the other co-leader responsible for leading them into battle would take over. It was a strange system, but it seemed to work for now.
Painting, tapestries, statues, everything so masterful and beautiful. Never in her life had Zara seen such a collection. None of the original walls showed through, covered by works of art or so intricately painted that they looked like masterpieces themselves.
Zara felt like she was in one of those fancy museums nobles frequented to fawn over ancient art pieces, or perhaps in a place of a powerful noble house.
It was insidious. She could sense no Warp taint from the art pieces themselves, but there was something clinging to the entire building. A tiny suggestion, a mental nudge to … loosen inhibitions? Yes, that. It was in the air, a gaseous mixture that was only half-real.
One painting was a life-sized fresco of Lady Echidna, wearing that armour of hers that didn’t really hide anything. It seemed just a bit too thin in the painting, but not egregiously so. Something which changed the deeper in they went, shoving and shouldering aside the terrified employees who implored them to wait and to stay out of the establishment. The way so few of them were sensible enough to jump out of the way of a murderous kill-team on a mission didn’t sit well with Zara; that lack of self-preservation instinct made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Zara’s eyes flickered to a statue of Lady Selene, the Silver Lady’s one and only consort. It wasn’t entirely nude, but she might as well have been with what little the ‘fabric’ on the statue covered. A shiver of something between disgust and dread ran down Zara’s spine when she found herself staring at another statue deeper in, fashioned after Master Val of all people.
He lacked his Aeldari ears, only had a cloth wrap around his hips to maintain some semblance of modesty, and that smile on his face just looked eerie. Master Val was allergic to smiling, or expressing joy … or maybe to joy itself. But this idealised version of him had a roguish grin on his face, and somehow the statue’s eyes seemed to glimmer in a way that anyone who didn’t know him would think was lustful. Zara knew better; that glint was pure sadism and always a prelude to an immensely strenuous day of training.
All three were recurring characters on every art piece, apparently having served as the primary muses of the artists, though they were hardly alone in that. They kept losing clothes the deeper in they went, and the employees grew more insistent. That was, until they reached the stairway leading down to the first subterranean floor and stepped into the first vast hall beneath the surface.
There was no more fabric down here; every painting, every statue, showed their muses entirely in the nude while the tapestries … Zara almost prayed to the Emperor by reflex before she stopped herself. The two tapestries hanging off the walls, stretching on for meters upon meters, showed images of debauchery, going from Lady Echidna and her consort chastely kissing on one end to vistas of such hedonistic debauchery on the other end that Zara had no words to describe it.
Her eyes narrowed, seeing new figures show up there near the end, inhuman things of grotesque beauty as repulsive as they were gorgeous. She tore her gaze away, feeling her Storm Ward vibrate softly against her chest as its energies coated her mind. Daemons. To think they would be this easy to find.
Then again, they weren’t hiding. This was a … a mockery, an insult. This entire building was nothing more than a spit in the Silver Lady’s face by the Prince of Pleasure. Zara dreaded to think what depraved pieces of mockery in the form of ‘art’ any of the halls further down might have held.
They were near the middle of the elongated, hexagon-shaped hall when the obvious trap was sprung. The stairway leading back up to the surface slammed shut as a massive bulkhead that’d been hidden above a ceiling fresco crashed down. Dozens of secret passages that Zara was sure her pointy-eared comrades had sensed opened up, and armed men and women streamed forth from behind paintings, statues and even the high rafters above.
A man wearing a long, purple satin robe and elaborate makeup that made him look like a clown stepped out from the corridor leading to the next hall. His hood fell back, and the eight-pointed star of Chaos sat carved into his skin on his forehead. Not that his allegiance was ever in doubt when his walking staff was tipped in an elaborately carved replica of the mark of Slaanesh.
It seems like we found our cultists.
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