Ahriman pulled his senses back and the vision drained from his sight. Menkaura was looking down at him from the other side of the turning orbs and discs. The eyeless seer had his head cocked to the side, and Ahriman could feel the mind behind the empty sockets regarding him.

+It is a cruel thing to return home and find it changed, but not as changed as we are.+ Menkaura’s words lingered as an echo in Ahriman’s skull as he let his disc sink through the opening in the chamber wall.

Ahriman pulled the helm from his head as soon as he was outside the solatarium. Around him, the Ankhtowe hummed with the familiar sounds of a ship under power: the buzz of power conduits, and the rumble of distant engines. It felt reassuringly real. He took a breath and reached out with his mind, skimming over the thoughts of his brothers and crew. All was well. Their small fleet was still on course and unseen. They had left the great flock of Abaddon’s armada and the Mechanicum fleet far behind. Now they were few again, all but alone in the night, heading for a distant speck of light. He sent a brief thought to touch the psychic bonds between him and the Word Bearers that rode at their sides. He did not linger over the contact, and he came away with the taste of ashes on his tongue.

He shivered, and lowered his thoughts into the lesser enumerations.

‘You do not… like this,’ said Ignis from behind him. Somehow his thoughts had been disturbed enough that he had not noticed his Legion brother at his shoulder.

‘No,’ replied Ahriman, still tasting ashes in his mouth as he spoke. ‘No, I do not like it.’

‘I know,’ said Ignis, looking at him with an utterly unchanged expression. ‘I have already made and stated that observation.’

Ahriman turned away.

‘The question that attends the observation is why you perceive our circumstances as you do?’ asked Ignis.

Ahriman let out a breath and looked back at the Master of the Order of Ruin.

‘I do not like what we are doing for every reason,’ he said. ‘For every reason, brother.’

Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Gulf

Door slamming open.

There was a metallic taste in Mersadie’s mouth.

Heavy metal-on-metal footsteps.

Vengeful Spirit…

She was on the Vengeful Spirit. There were… there were bodies heaped on the deck. Limbs tangled. Flesh ripped. Blood pooling. Something rose from the gore. Slicked fur. Red muzzle. Dripping-fang grin.

‘Mersadie…’

She knew it was a Space Marine even before the impossibly huge shadow fell over her.

‘Mersadie, wake up…’

A moon high in the winter sky. Its face a curve of silver, now a dividing line of light and dark.

‘Mersadie, wake up! Wake up now!’

She turned to see a shadow form behind her.

The Warmaster’s equerry…