The sailor licked his dry lips, chancing a look back through the open hatch at the shape beyond, hidden under the rough-hewn blankets. The atmosphere on the little fishing cutter had turned stale and leaden the moment they'd taken the passenger aboard. Wish I could sleep.’ he muttered. 'Men been getting bad dreams since we left port, is what they say. Seeing things. Reckon he's a witchkin, I do.’

The first mate blinked owlishly. He was tired too. 'Don't you be saying what you're thinking. Keep a course and stay silent, lad. Better that way. Get us there quick-like, all be gone and over.’

'Oh aye-' The words died in the sailor's parched throat. Out of the windscreen, across the bow of the cutter, there was a dark shape rising from the ocean.

A razormaw, ugly as Chaos and twice as hungry. He'd never seen a fish so large, not even a deader like in the docker pubs where big stuffed heads and jawbones decorated the walls.

The sailor threw the wheel about in a panic, turning the boat on a hard arc away from the razormaw's grinning mouth. Ice water pooled in his gut. The thing was going to swallow them whole.

You wastrel throwback, what are ye doing?' The first mate smacked him hard about the temple and shoved him away from the helm. Trying to capsize us?'

'But the razor-' he began, stabbing his finger at the sea. 'Do you not see it?'

'See what? There's nothing out there but ocean, boy'

The sailor pressed his face to the window. No razormaw floated, arch-backed and ready to chew the boat apart. There were only the waves, rising and falling. He spun about, glaring at the sleeping man alone on the cot. For a moment, he thought he heard soft, mocking laughter.

"Witchkin.’ repeated the sailor.

As the rituals demanded, each of them surrendered their weapons to a grey-robed novice before they entered the chapel. The noviciates were just girls, barely out of the schola progenium on Ophelia VII, and they sagged beneath the weight of the heavy firearms. As Celestians, and with that rank, privileged, Sister Miriya and her unit were gifted with superior, master-crafted guns that resembled a

votive icon more than a battlefield weapon, but as with all elements of the Adepta Sororitas's equipment, from the power armour that protected them to their chainswords and Exorcist tanks, every piece of the order's machinery was as much a holy shrine as the place in which they now stood.

The convent's chapel was high and wide, encompassing several floors of the building's shell keep design. Up above, where the pipes of the organ ended and biolume pods hovered on suspensors, cherubim moved in lazy circuits, handing notes to one another as they passed, the sapphire of their optic implants glittering in the lamplight.

The four women advanced across the chancel to where their seniors awaited them, falling as one into a kneeling position before the vast stone cross-and-skull that dominated the chapel altar.