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The technician licked his lips nervously, sweat beading across his brow and trickling down his temples. Trav Kellen had been doing this on the side long enough to know a bad deal when he saw it. This business was bad, really bad, but the guy had offered to pay him what amounted to over a year’s salary for it. He glanced around the interior of the dark cargo locker, wringing an oily rag in his hands and trying to look anywhere but at the cloaked individual standing a few feet away from him,

‘Mm, so this is it?’ Spoke the shrouded man, not looking up from the dataslate in his hand. The technician started at the sound of the other’s voice, finding something about the nature of it deeply disturbing. He licked his lips again and stammered a response,

‘Y-yeah, that’s all you asked for. Flight logs from the Karavessa, should all be there.’ Kellen coughed lightly and clutched the rag in his fists, his nails were beginning to tear bits from the fabric.

‘Splendid.’ Said his cloaked accomplice, casually tucking the slate into his robes and turning to leave. A shadowed figure moved aside as he neared the edge of the single pool of light filling the room and the technician took a step after him calling out,

‘Hey! What… what about my payment?’ All confidence vanished the moment he began speaking, leaving the question little more than a sniveling appeal. A chill bolted through him as the cloaked one stopped. The technician whimpered and backed towards the rear wall of the locker, knowing he’d just made a big mistake, ‘I’m sorry, I… forget it!’ He cowered against the wall, beginning to weep.

Turian Lebachus simply shook his head, chuckled and continued on his way out, the form in the shadows following after him.

The technician thought himself safe for a moment until he realized the resonance of the other man’s laugher was building rather than subsiding. The hollow, mirthless noise doubled upon itself until it began lashing across his ears. Kellen cried out as the noise continued to grow, clasping hands to his head. A nauseating, icy pain raked across his mind with every echo of that mocking laugh and he could feel something sticky and warm smearing his fingers as they clawed at his ears.

The heavy door slammed slut and Trav Kellen screamed so loud the glowglobe on the ceiling shattered, just seconds before his skull imploded.

‘I believe we’re done here, Mekura.’ Lebachus spoke, his voice breathless and unsteady as the resonance of the technician’s horrid death throes teased his ears. There was a quiet susurration of assent from beside him, even in the light of the hall outside the cargo locker his companion remained wrapped in a cloak of darkness. As the two began to move away someone shouted behind them,

‘Hey! You two, hold it right there.’ A pair of enforcers had emerged from an adjoining corridor, no doubt having heard the technician’s screams. Both carried auto pistols, drawn and aimed, but the sorcerer and his shadow ignored the command without missing a step. One of the enforcers moved forward then and reached out to grab the inky garb of Mekura

‘I said stop, are you fething deaf ?’ The man bellowed. As his hand sought purchase he gasped in alarm. The darkness surrounding Mekura’s form melted away before his eyes. Like liquid, cold between his fingertips the shadowy substance cascaded to the floor and the creature came about to face him. It was porcelain white and hairless with obviously feminine anatomy; a sinuous form wrapped about the limbs and midriff in straps of leather and cord. Blackened fingers elongated and curved into fine blades over a foot long each and her bare feet were fashioned with hooked talons like those of a raptor. The enforcer looked in utter shock upon an elegant face which bore neither eyes nor a mouth.

‘No, just blind and mute.’ Said Lebachus without turning around. Mekura’s head tilted as the other enforcer, backing off, began to reach for his com bead.

In flash of motion she was upon him, a forearm cloven effortlessly. The enforcer’s hand fell away as his fresh stump began pumping a spray of bright crimson. His eyes fixated upon the gushing wound, features quickly growing pale. When he attempted to refocus and raise his weapon another glint of black liberated that hand as well. Mekura swayed before the man as he slumped down to his knees, both arms pouring a pool of blood out onto the floor. Her foot lashed around savagely, hooked talons ripping out the enforcer’s throat in a spatter of torn sinew and arterial red. The motion brought the lethal creature smoothly around to face the other man just as his weapon discharged.

The bullet punched through one cheek and out the other, scattering flecks of black blood. Mekura twisted, issuing a noise of mute ecstasy as the dark ichor began dripping down her chin. The enforcer fired again and again, burying more slugs in the perverse creature’s alabaster flesh. Shadowy blood coursed freely from the fresh wounds, writhing in serpentine patterns across near translucent skin. Veins bulged, crisscrossing her flesh like a network of roots, and drank the black liquid in hungrily before the wounds themselves pinched closed and abated its flow.

She paused as the enforcer’s gun clicked empty repeatedly, the man’s face a mask of blank terror. As he was about to open his mouth to speak, a weaving of glinting blades rendered his face to an unrecognizable pulp of shredded flesh and hemorrhage and he simply fell backwards with a damp gurgle,

‘Mm… are you done?’ Lebachus chuckled dryly as Mekura straightened up over her kills. The blood splashed across her form being drawn in directly though her skin just as her own had been. There came a sound something like a giggle though unearthly and detached in its nature as she moved back to her master’s side. The shroud of darkness curled in from the shadows of the hall to enfold her once more,

‘You can play all you like once we reach Eostra, we should not keep the good Captain waiting.’ The sorcerer spoke and, once again silent, his unearthly companion nodded in agreement.

synopsis

 

The planet Eostra is a paradise portrait. A sublime oasis secreted away upon the fringes of Imperial space and largely isolated by unreliable warp currents. To its inhabitants it provides and easy life given to idle pursuits and revelry, detached from political meddling and the threat of war. Never the less, Eostra’s lustrous facade is not without its stains, and there is one which stands to resurface and consume its future.

Captain Jorais Valder of the Emperor’s Children has arrived in orbit aboard the grand cruiser Dirge of Malice under the guidance of the foul sorcerer Lebachus. His company are not typical warriors but noise marines, devotees of sonic excess and the minstrels of death and destruction. These are savage and ruthless fighters capable of tearing men to pieces and warping reality with the insanity of their twisted musics.

They come to Eostra seeking what the locals refer to as the world-harp, an ancient artifact of unholy origins. Though the playing of the harp now sustains life on the planet it was never intended as such. Centuries ago the instrument was fashioned by a cabal of crazed artisans, its impossible songs meant to draw in the fabric of the empyrean to envelop the planet and drag it from material space into the realm of chaos.

A number of vessels bearing Imperial Guard regiments bound for deployment elsewhere have been separated from the rest of their flotilla by the violent warp currents surrounding Eostra. They immediately head planetside at the first signs of the chaos attack to reinforce the megre defenses at the planetary capitol, Avalaun. This is unexpected but of no account to Valder, simply more blood to spill on the path to his prize.

Valder presses the attack in earnest, his forces split to assault the capitol from two sides. The ferocity of his noise marines along with the infernal magics of the sorcerer Lebachus visit ruin upon the Imperial troops. With only minimal losses they battle to the shrine of the world-harp in short order. Ever-increasing warp interference has all but cut off battlefield communications but Valder knows his men will do their job and proceeds with the rites to bring the world-harp back to its original purpose without pause.

After a brief while there is an urgent call outside the shrine and Valder returns to the tainted daylight to behold an unbelievable scene. The rain has picked up, thick and heavy now and Valder realizes with rising fury as he looks towards the south where his second strike force should be, it is not rain at all.

Mycetic spores fall from the sky in droves and where his men should have been advancing to the south he sees only an oncoming mass of indistinct forms. The Tyranids are upon them, utterly undetected until now amidst the disturbance of local warp activity.

Valder spits a curse and orders the remainder of his men to fall back in a defensive cordon. Let the alien filth come, he will take them to the warp with him. The infernal rites continue unabated, the contorting song of the harp struggling to rise above the chatter of chitinous limbs rushing up the stairs towards the shrine.

‘By the warp, cease your sniveling you worthless toad.’ A voice laced with silver and venom whipped smoothly across the ship’s command deck. There was a cultist, his horribly malformed body hunched over an auspex, pattering away in the most loathsome fashion. He squealed at the rebuke and redoubled his agitated drivel as a great section of the command bridge’s shadowed rear wall seemed to come to life and approach him.

‘Heed the Sibylite’s words, wretch! Silence yourself!’ The harshly-filtered voice of a giant cased in twisted plates of black and green bellowed, a bolter raised in armored hands for emphasis. It was a hopeless cause, for with every admonishment the creature’s piteous mewling only grew worse. He attempted to curl himself around the auspex console, burying his face against it as the traitor marine glowered over him.

The woman had risen from her seat and began to approach the anxious cultist, her sinuous form all but naked. A belt around her hips draped plates of armor down her thighs and there was a translucent shroud of black which clung upon her limbs. The meager garb flowed about her body like a gentle breeze, breathing libidinous whispers into the air as it gilded across the grotesque tapestry of her flesh. Wicked scars wove incomprehensible patterns across nearly every inch of her pale skin save for half a head of black hair which hung down limply across one shoulder.

With an almost imperceptible touch, she raised a hand to the massive chest of the damned Astartes accosting the frightened whelp. The black slits of fierce violet eyes contracted sharply as they turned upon the marine and the giant warrior lowered his weapon and silently drew back to his shadowed post as if he’d never been there at all. Free from the threat of an eminent and painful death, the cultist looked up though still cringed visibly as the woman’s hand settled down upon the crook of his neck,

‘M-Mistress Veshna. There is Sssomething… there is…’ The frightened creature lisped raggedly with lips that were little more than flayed flaps of skin. He stammered, unable to find the presence of mind to explain and simply jabbed a crooked finger at the auspex screen.

‘Something, you say. What sort of “something”?’ Veshna’s voice was sultry croon and she felt another quake ripple through the seated heretic as her hands cradled his head back against her stomach. Putrescent eyes glazed over and rolled back as she tilted the cultist’s tattered face up to look at her, ‘Survivors?’ She queried gently, tracing the point of an elongated black fingernail along the side of the man’s neck.’ The attention sparked the return of his accursed sniveling mewls,

‘N-No, my mistress. A machine, perhapsss… s-surely no one could have sssurvived.’ He trailed off with a pitiful whimper.

‘Surely not.’ The witch purred as she curled her hand around the man’s upturned jaw, holding his head back to her. The cultist’s body began to tremble fiercely as dark, sickly blood gushed down over his bare chest. His eyes hung wide and enraptured with Vashne’s black nails embeded deep within the side of his throat. The time had finally come, she thought, feeling the delicious warmth seeping freely across the backs of her fingers, ‘Unless the great power deemed it so.’

With an abrupt, moist sundering Veshna’s claws tore across the man’s neck, dashing nearby consoles with flecks of gore and bathing his torso in a rush of his own putrid ichor. As she stepped back, the cultist’s head flopped limply over the back of his chair, his mangled face wrought in a rapturous expression while his limbs continued to quiver uncontrollably.

She turned away from the twitching body, slitted pupils struck wide with some sublime sense of arousal which brought a delicate laughter to her lips. The Sybilite’s bloodied hand lifted up to her face and one black nail, like a scriptor’s quill, began composing in bloody ink. The scar patterns across her cheek siphoned away the sanguine etchings like a networks of parched roots, leaving radiant likenesses of profane symbols burning upon her skin. With a pleasant sigh the witch’s eyes fell closed and she placed one bloodied nail across her lips thoughtfully,

‘Arashi, my sweet, it has been far too long.’ The lurid whisper roiled out upon air and empyrean alike