And yet the great majority of psykers were reviled, shunned by all right-thinking people. For it was through the psyker that the Fell Powers could work their corruption in the physical universe. Thanks to the psyker, daemonic creatures, born of base unchecked human emotions, could break through into the material realm. It was they who could bring the Imperium to the very edge of destruction and then take it over into the abyss.

The astropath looked down at the cards with her astral vision. Even the intricate illuminations decorating the backs of the crystal slivers appeared more vibrant and alive with a spectrum of colours that could only exist within the warp, lit by the eerie light of non-existent stars.

Through her psychic sight she could see other darting images superimposed on the mundane world that existed within the reclusium. Creatures that looked like disc-shaped sharks swam through the ether, circling her visitor, who was totally unaware of their presence.

In contrast to the uselessness of her crippled body, the warp-seer's soul-fire burned so brightly that it would normally obliterate the faint flickers of those nearby. But the cloaked figure's aura shone brightly too. Fate obviously had a purpose in mind for him as well.

The warp predators circled both her and the magos, drawn to the lustrous brilliance of their souls, frondlike feelers waving in the unknowable currents of the immaterium, snapping at their glowing outlines with horribly fanged jaws.

The astropath returned her attention to the cards placed with machine precision on the marble plinth top in front of her.

'We stand alone facing the universe and seek the path of wisdom.’ she said, using the accepted form of the Prayer of Enlightened Insight. 'Each card has its cosmic meaning - for humanity, for this world and for those present here.

'I invoke thee, beloved Emperor. Infuse these cards that I might attain true insight of things hidden, to thy greater glory and the salvation of humanity.'

She turned over the first card.

The snarling face of a fire and brimstone preaching missionary looked back at her from the card, but the image was upside down. As the astropath focused on the tarot card the picture on its liquid crystal surface swam but seemed unable to fix itself in one form. The Preacher's face continued to change from one arrangement of features to another in an unending cycle.

The Preacher inverted. A blasphemer who preaches a message of death and destruction, a creed contrary to the will of the Emperor.'

In the back of her mind a shape began to coalesce in the darkness of her subconscious.

The warp-seer turned over the second card. The double-headed turncoat Traitor. She gasped involuntarily, the fan-pump that fed her lungs whining at double speed to compensate.

'Adjacent to the Preacher the Traitor is someone other than the blasphemer, but one who would aid the malignant agitator's cause, knowingly or otherwise.'

Emerging from her subconscious, like a leviathan monster rising from the depths of a black ocean to the sunlit surface, the image became clearer.