Radimir had needed to interpose himself quickly, before Svet could reach Marjuk and two of Radimir’s most gifted followers could come to blows. From then on, they had worked on opposite sides of the great glyph.

Now the work was nearly complete. Seven sides were ready, and the eighth was almost done. Without the correct triggers it would be nothing more than a corruption of the natural order writ large in Ascension City’s barren topsoil, something to blast the sanity from any that witnessed it. With those triggers, though – Radimir fingered once again the seven hard orbs in his pouch – it could destroy the planet. After he’d killed the most recent Brobantis Navigator he’d turned his attention on the Dukarrs, partly for amusement and partly because Fortuna Bettan had told him about the trade war, and it made sense to set such powerful entities at each other’s throats. The youth he’d slain had been richly dressed even by the standards of Navigators, so he’d presumably been important, at least as such things were measured.

‘Is this hell that you’ve brought us to?’ asked Evelyn Darke through her respirator. She was working alongside Radimir, scratching lines in the ground with a length of twisted metal under his direction while Wanden, another of Eichner’s Children, stood nearby with a luminator.

‘Enlightenment doesn’t come without suffering,’ Radimir told her. It was an easy platitude, used by thousands if not millions of sects across the galaxy, from the most ardent of the Emperor’s fools to the purest worshippers of Chaos, and all in between. Let the chattel think that there was a purpose to their misery, a good reason why you were not providing joy and comfort here and now, and they’d carry blindly on with the grim determination of a person dying of thirst who’s been told that a spring lies just over the next hill.

‘I never asked for enlightenment,’ Darke replied dully, although her implement didn’t stop moving. ‘I just wanted to be accepted.’

‘Chaos accepts us all,’ Radimir told her. He frowned down at her hands, which were starting to glow, ever so slightly. The first hints of a self-taught pyro whose temper was beginning to fray.

That was concerning. Wyrds were always dangerous tools, but a pyro in full flame could be a particular problem for Radimir. Darke could leave him truly isolated, with no place to hide and no easy way to run. He drew in stale, rubber-scented air through his respirator in preparation of saying something soothing, and then walking away until she calmed herself again.

His half-formed sentence evaporated as the choking smog was shaken by a thunderous detonation from somewhere above them. He reached for his powerblade instinctively, already scanning the skies. Darkness might hold no secrets from Radimir Niklau, but he could see through the smog clouds no better than anyone else. He felt suddenly, uncharacteristically blind.