Her eyes rolled in the dark wells of their sockets. Tears of blood dripped down her face. She was raving now, her mind broken, her soul condemned for all eternity.

The magos observed the warp-seer with the same unflinching gaze that he had worn ever since he had set foot inside the prison of her reclusium chamber. Flecks of spittle flew from the woman's lips. Her gums bled.

The organic part of the tech-priest's nose twitched. The acrid foundry smell of hot metal assailed his nostrils and implanted artificial olfactory sensors. He glanced away from the crippled psyker to see that the platinum, gold and silver that picked out the warding patterns set into the marble floor had liquefied, smoky vapour welling up from the molten metal.

'The Arch-Fiend comes! Terror shall rain upon the border worlds. Drach'nyen thirsts and shall never be sated until it gorges itself upon the husk that lies bound to the Golden Throne. The stars shall be stained red with blood. All shall be darkness!'

The voice was not hers; she was possessed, he knew. Her reading of the tarot had opened the way for other things to cross over from the immaterium. She had seen things that no mortal being should ever have to see. And now she had paid the ultimate price, the one that every astropath risked every time they tried to read the shifting tides of the warp, despite all the warding precautions.

He realised that the astropath was lost but he was not done with her yet. She had become a conduit for entities that had no place in the temporal universe, and would have to be destroyed, but there was still much that could be learnt from such creatures. Knowledge was life, after all. In their desperation to be unleashed upon the physical world of the senses, the things manifested from man's most primal emotions would readily reveal the secrets of the future to those who knew how to listen.

Calmly, the tech-priest withdrew an exotic-looking firearm from within the folds of his robes.

The ranting continued but the magos remained impassive. He checked the load of his pistol. He raised the gun. Then the warp-seer uttered one word that stayed his hand.

'Araken will awaken! But the key to the prize that lies within the crucible of war shall be found upon the remaining guardian worlds. The keepers of the faith shall open the way to enlightenment, the way to the immortality of death. All shall bow before the lost gods, believer" and unbeliever alike.'

The life-support cradle rattled and shook as the astropath's body thrashed within it. Then her voice became a gargling wail as epileptic seizures gripped her.

The magos levelled his pistol again. There was nothing more that the warp-seer could offer him and so he would put an end to the possession, and her suffering.

The weapon fired with a discharge of matter-rending emerald energy and summary execution was carried out.

She was running through the grass meadows again, only now the sky was haemorrhaging all-consuming darkness like an open wound spouting blood. And she was running for her life, for her very soul. The fabric of her dream-world was rapidly being consumed by the spreading infection of Chaos. The flocktail grass withered and died.