The Divine Fratery, as I have learned, find it particularly easy to identify in their prospects others who have dabbled in farseeing and clairvoyance. It is as if such individuals somehow illuminate their life courses by toying with the future. The bright track of one has attracted their particular attention. It is through him, and the men and women around him, that the prospect of the manifestation has come to light.

He will cause it. Him, or one of those close to him.

That is why I have taken it upon myself to warn him.

For he is my friend. My pupil. My interrogator.

Kys hadn’t seen or even sensed the cultists behind the next archway. Ravenor, gliding forwards without hesitation, pulped all four of them with his chair’s built-in psycannons.

Kys followed him, striding through lakes of leaking blood and mashed tissue. She was worn out. The constant screams were getting to her.

They heard footfalls behind them. Kara Swole ran into view. Kys lowered her weapon.

‘You called for me?’

+Indeed I did, Kara. I can’t get up there.+

Kara looked up into the gloomy rafters and beams above them.

‘No problem.’ She took off her coat. Beneath it, she was dressed in a simple matt-green bodyglove.

‘Hey, Kar. Luck,’ called Kys.

Kara smiled.

She limbered up for a moment, and then leapt up into the rafters, gripping the mouldering wood, and gaining momentum.

Rapidly, all her acrobat skills coming back to her, she ascended, hand over hand, leaping from beam to beam, defying the dreadful gulf beneath her.

She was getting increasingly close to the flitting source of the screamlight. Her pulse raced. Grunting, she somersaulted again, and landed on her feet on a crossmember.

Kara stood for a moment, feeling the streaming rain slick down over her from the tower’s exposed roof. She stuck out her hands for balance, the assault weapon tightly cinched under her bosom.

There was a light above her, shining out from a stairless doorway in the shell of the tower. Faint artificial light, illuminating the millions of raindrops as they hurtled down the empty tower shaft towards her.

‘Seeing this?’ she asked.

+Yes, Kara.+

‘What you expected?’

+I have no idea.+

‘Here goes,’ she said, and jumped into space, into rainfall, into air. A hesitation, on the brink, dark depths below her. Then she seized a rotting timber beam, and swung, her fingers biting deep into the damp, flaking wood.

She pivoted in the air, and flew up into the doorway, feet first.

She landed firmly, balanced, arms wide.

A figure stood before her in the ruined tower room, illuminated by a single hovering glow-globe.

‘Hello, Kara,’ the figure said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

She gasped. ‘Oh God-Emperor… my master…’

The man was tall, shrouded in a dark leather coat that did not quite conceal the crude augmetics supporting his frame. His head was bald, his eyes dark-rimmed. He leaned heavily on a metal staff.