GW - [ 336 ]

“You should not have come here, fools and unbelievers,” the man said gleefully, his voice echoing through the hall in a manner that was clearly unnatural. Zara felt herself tense up in response, her mind sharpening into a pre-battle focus as she prepared herself for the confrontation. “You have entered the sanctum of the Prince of Pleasure, and he shall have what is his! I must thank you; ascension shall be mine when I deliver your souls to Him!”

“You will pay for debasing the image of our saviour,” spoke Aralyth, the Warlock taking over command from Tandor, her co-leader, at the sight of an imminent violent confrontation. “Repulsive creature. Only an eternity of torment awaits you once we send your soul to your dear Prince. I believe I am going to thoroughly enjoy sending you back to him in pieces.”

The Eldar spread out without a word, getting into formation with the stoic grace characteristic of their kind, and Zara took her own place near the back line. She didn’t draw her weapon yet, but she didn’t need to. She didn’t sense any psykers or daemons among their numbers, so she could handle it without having to draw her new blade. 

Instead she breathed once, then slipped into the Void, that place of utter focus where her thoughts, emotions and physical discomfort all faded away. Zara had long known that her primary talents lay in telekinesis when it came to psyker powers, but Master Val had found that she had a not insignificant talent for divination. 

Sadly, it was the most limited of all the psyker powers when one had their souls within Lady Echidna’s Argent Realm. She couldn’t draw tarots to tell one’s fortune, or predict the future, nor could she use things such as clairvoyance or psychometry overly well, but what she could do was a much smaller application of Divination. Master Val called it ‘combat divination’, it was a localised, much smaller in scale, almost entirely instinctive use of the power, working almost like a supernatural danger sense of sorts just more. It could only see seconds into the future at most, and not clearly at that, and only in her immediate vicinity due to something Lady Echidna called an ‘aura’, but it was immensely useful all the same, perhaps more so than actual prophetic foresight or clairvoyance would have been. 

“You think the upstart witch can escape the Prince’s wrath forever!? She took what was His, and no one steals from Slaanesh!” The apparent cult leader screamed, slamming his cane down on the floor and cracking the tiles as Warp power thrummed in what Zara had taken for a powerless replica of Slaanesh’s mark. The small carving shimmered, its ivory surface almost seeming to writhe as its consistency turned distinctly … fleshy. “Your souls belong to Slaanesh, and He will have His due! Now, or when she devours the wretched Anathema’s soul! Your damnation is just as inevitable as it has always been, foolish Eldar. Attack, my comrades! Slaughter them all!”

The Warp Sorcery snapped out, striking not the Eldar but the cultists lying in wait, readying their weapons. All their eyes flashed a distinct shade of pink that was almost purple, and their veins flashed beneath their skin in the same colour. Nervousness, anxiety and the jitteriness of pre-battle tension vanished from the haphazard cultists, overtaken by a maddened, fervent intent to kill that flooded their bodies. They rushed ahead, las-weapons and stubbers firing while the less armed charged at their foes, brandishing chain-swords and axes and hatchets, and Zara even saw one holding a sharpened pitchfork.

The Eldar were ready for them, their countenance showing nothing, but Zara had the faint impression they were glaring at the cultists under their helmets, having taken great offence at something the cult leader had said. 

The Eldar met the frantic tide of maddened heretics with stoic, if disdainful efficiency. They barely moved, just enough to avoid getting hit by incoming fire directly. Warlock Aralyth moved with a pair of her guards against the cult leader, and Zara against the biggest cluster of cultists on her end of the hall. 

Her heart pounded in her chest as she wove between incoming stubber rounds and las-bolts with a facsimile of the same disdainful grace Master Val’s tried to beat into her body. She couldn’t move quite like an Eldar, but nothing hit her even still. 

Her arm lashed out, a crescent of telekinetic force sharpened like the finest of blades, and tore through the air. It raced ahead of her, invisible and unstoppable, bisecting three cultists at the waist before ripping apart a revolting statue depicting Lady Echidna entwined in a rapturous embrace with a daemonic beast of some kind. Good riddance. 

Zara fought efficiently, which had an elegance of its own; a punch did just enough damage to crater a cultist’s ribcage and send them crashing into the woman behind him. Then her arm lunged ahead like a striking serpent, and a piercing force exploded forth like an invisible lance flying faster than the eye could see. Each blow killed, or disabled more than a single foe, and even as some blows slipped past her guard, they were met by her barriers. 

With the Storm Ward, she barely needed to focus on conjuring them. Whenever she felt an incoming blow with her Divination that’d be troublesome to evade, she just conjured a barrier over her armour, just large enough to do what needed to be done. She kept the foes on their toes, never letting it be known whether she would dodge, block with a barrier, and more importantly, what type of barrier she would use. Some absorbed the kinetic force of blows, some acted like simple steel plates, while some redirected the force elsewhere. Sometimes to the side, sometimes bouncing straight back with twice the force of the initial blow. That was always amusing, and she managed to kill three idiots with their own blades like that. 

Not half a minute after the battle began, Zara felt the oppressive, yet cloying scent of the Slaaneshi Warpcraft that hung thick in the air quake. It was as if a central pillar had been kicked out from under a tall building, reminding it that it stood in defiance of gravity. In the same manner, the psychic working that suffused the cultists and likely attempted to do something to the invaders’ minds collapsed inwards, having lost its supporting pillar.

A glance showed Warlock Aralyth yank her Witchblade free of the cult leader’s eviscerated form, snapping it to the side with a sneer she could feel radiating off of her. From there, the cultists were slaughtered, some even snapping free of their sorcerous compulsion and trying to beg for mercy, or to escape through side tunnels, but one and all they died. Some were run down, some received silent needles that passed through their skulls without a sound, or shrieking shurikens that tore through their bodies. 

It would have been an even swifter battle had the Blackstone Pylons scattered around the planet not suppressed psyker powers across the globe, but then again, maybe that was also why the cult leader was such a pushover, and it was almost certainly why there were no daemons to contend with yet. It would have taken a massive ritual, or a terrorist attack disrupting the Pylon network, to manage an actual daemon summoning on Spite. With that in mind, it wasn’t so bad to fight under its effect. 

Half an hour later, the contingent stood before the smouldering wreck of the building, watching as the whole tainted edifice of corruption and excess sank into the subterranean lake of bio-plasma. Zara felt her heart sing with satisfaction, though she couldn’t help but tense at the thought of what was to come.

This might have been the largest gathering of cultists on the planet, but there would certainly be splinter groups or sleeper agents, maybe even some converts lying in wait to spread ‘the word’ again once the enforcers left. They would all need to be hunted down and exterminated, which would surely be a long, strenuous and challenging task, especially since they had to do it right. They couldn’t just kill anyone who ever talked to the known cultists; Lady Echidna would make sure this was their final mission if they went about their task so callously.

After all, every mission undertaken by the Lady Echidna’s Enforcers were followed up by a personal debrief given to her. In person. Where she reviewed everything they’d done and judged whether they would remain her trusted enforcers or be cast aside for overreach or failure. 

In some ways, they were like Inquisitors in that they wielded the Silver Lady’s limitless authority as they fulfilled their tasks, but unlike the Inquisition, they were all under extremely strict oversight. After all, unlike the God-Emperor, Lady Echidna was very much alive, present, and able to make sure her servants didn’t do anything with the power invested in them that she disliked. 

Despite the fact that this sizable gathering of heretics numbered in the hundreds — maybe even reaching the four digits when all the inhabitants of all six subterranean floors and the six above-ground ones were added together — it had been laughably easy to find, to the point where it was suspicious; it might have been a ‘red herring’ as Lady Echidna called it. 

What if the real Slaaneshi cult remained hidden, wanting to wait out this inevitable hunt while the Enforcers contented themselves by hunting down the idiots who didn’t even try to hide what they were. Or maybe this entire cult was a message, just a way for the Prince of Pleasure to deride Lady Echidna by building a hedonistic cult around her image. If so, they could be running around for months looking for clues of a more hidden cabal while there was none.

Zara breathed a soft sigh, mentally preparing herself for chasing around clues and trails for the upcoming months. It would be worth it in the end. These cretins thought they could ruin the miracle that Lady Echidna was building here. Not that Zara wouldn’t have done anything for the woman who’d saved her from her own personal hell. This was the least she could do, and she would do it to the best of her abilities … even if the task was dreadfully boring.

*******

I took a moment to absorb the data-packets I received from my two mind-cores as I welcomed ‘Enforcer Squad Beta’ — the second 12 person Enforcer squad I had, the first one being commanded by Kaylith and yes, it was just a placeholder name until I came up with a better one, or abolished the enforcer system to replace it with something better — into my office on Vallia Prime. I ran my gaze over them while inwardly reviewing the two packets of information. One came from the mind-core I’d tasked with keeping watch on Zara from within my Realm, since her soul being there made casting a scrying spell simple enough, and the other came from the mind-core that’d compiled everything I’d received from my surveillance network on the world of Spite while this squad was there. 

With the two put together, I didn’t even need to read their minds to make a proper judgement of whether they’d retain my trust going forward. I could see everything they’d done from an outside perspective, and my passive empathy would be enough to judge whether their emotions were in the right place while they made their decisions; I just had to order them to give me an in-depth retelling of their mission.

If something fishy popped up, I could resort to mucking about in their minds then. Mind-diving was much less troublesome when the target wasn’t actively trying to resist — and they wouldn’t, not if they had nothing to hide — but it was still uncomfortable and a severe breach of privacy I wouldn’t resort to unless I had very good reason to. Trust went both ways, and unless I suspected they broke mine I wouldn’t do something that I knew people found extremely invasive and uncomfortable just to soothe my paranoia.

Of course it wasn’t paranoia if there was reasonable cause for suspicion, but- … I’m going around in circles now. Stop. Focus.

Tandor, that one Eldar I’d resurrected way back when, stepped forward while his squad stayed a step behind him. His posture was straight, spine stiffer than a broomhandle and face stoic, though I caught whiffs of satisfaction and some anxiety coming from him. He was content with how the mission went but was nonetheless anxious about disappointing me, was my guess. 

I leaned back in my chair — I’d spent an ungodly amount of time experimenting with trying to make the most sinfully comfortable office chair possible, but it was oh-so worth it — and took on my ‘Leisurely Empress Pose #5 ’, which I fashioned after the great Jarl Balgruuf of Whiterun (from Skyrim) and gave him a small nod. Before you ask, yes, I did spend some time practising my poses, and Selene rated this one pretty high, so it went into the primary pool of cool poses I could do to amuse myself. 

Tandor nodded to my nod as the sign to begin speaking, and he gave me a detailed account of the mission, trying to keep things concise without leaving out anything important. It still took almost half an hour, which wasn’t a surprise considering they’d spent the last five months hunting down a cabal of Slaaneshi cultists that’d remained embedded in Spite’s society from Ebongrave’s time.

I was sure the old Lord Commander would be rolling in his grave if he wasn’t presently a cloud of space dust scattered across half a dozen light-years. He’d spent so much time and effort hunting down Tau sympathisers, real or not, that he somehow let a Chaos cult grow right underneath his nose. 

Maybe that cloud of space dust is swirling around angrily. Who knows. 

Even as my thoughts inevitably wandered as they always did when my primary task failed to fully tie down my ever-growing mental processing power, I paid attention. I listened, I watched, absorbing data from every shift in tone, every minute twitch of the muscles, expressions, body language, auric signatures and prevalent emotions. 

 I was already mentally evaluating everything I heard, cross-examining the report with the data-packets I’d gotten earlier for any barefaced lies or smaller attempts at deception. After all, they might know that I could tell if they lied to me, but would I be able to tell if their retelling of some choice facts and events was a bit creative? … Yes, yes, I fucking could. Not only did I have those data packets telling me the unbiased truth, but I could also sense intent to deceive whenever people, even centuries-old Eldar, tried to do that. Only a few people were good enough liars and had robust enough mental defences that I couldn’t. 

Unsurprisingly, Tandor kept things honest and as unbiased as it was physically possible for an Eldar. Which meant that there were more than a few places where ingrained xenophobia, arrogance and disdain slipped through, but he tried his best to limit them, which I appreciated. 

I listened till the end before I said anything, and when I did, I quickly went over the main points. I praised their decisions or valour where it was deserved, and noted where their decisions were much more iffy. Luckily, at no point did they make any egregious mistakes, so I didn’t have to chastise them, berate them or actually dismiss any of them from my service. 

“Good work,” I said in the end, meeting each of their eyes. “All of you have more to learn, more experience to gain, but I am satisfied with your progress, and also with the way you’ve gone about accomplishing your mission. None of you will be censored or dismissed from my service. Unless there are any other questions, that will be it for today. Oh, and Zara, Val’s waiting for you in his tower. … No questions? Very well, you are dismissed. I’ll send for you when I have a new mission for you.”