Zara groaned, wakefulness brushing against the edges of her mind and starting to creep in as the gentle rays of the sun warmed her cheeks. She stayed like that for a few short moments, just wishing for another sed of this fortable rest, but then she remembered … she remembered.

  She shouldn’t be this fortable, her metallic colr as thick as a man’s wrist never allowed her to y so fortably. Worse, she remembered the feeling of her mind going numb, feeling her grasp ohoughts ay slip as the vile drugs flowed into her veins.

  Zara sat up with a start, her eyes wide open and skittering across her surroundings as her fiips brushed against her bare neck where there should have been at least a scabbed wound from the syringes poking through her skin. There was nothing, but the world around her made her frehoughts ground to a halt.

  Her fingers registered the silky grass underh her, brushing against her skily while her eyes stared at how blue they were. Zara had rarely seen nature before — having grown up in a Hive City and then shipped off to the Scho Psykana at an early age before being dumped into Inquisitor Thrace’s p — but she knew grass rgely teo be green.

  Her gaze roamed over her surroundings, over the little valley between two grass-covered hills and the forest c them from half. The rustle of their leaves in the gentle breeze caressed her ears with the softness of the grass underh her. Still, everything was some eye-catg vibrant colour, only the sky had the decy to be blue while trees had their s in the colour of the rainbow from pink to yellow to even purple.

  “What do you think?” ahereal voice, like a whisper on the wind brushed against her ears. “I think I’ve done quite well in decorating the pce … but maybe the colours are a bit much?”

  Zara jumped up, whirling around to catch sight of the interloper and surprised even herself when her powers reached out to feel for any nearby minds almost instinctively. Only then, did it fully register to her that there was no colr on her ned no psychic hood around her head. Even the es, the ports were gone and her body was reduced to its fully anic state without a si of Meicus additions.

  “W-what have you doo me?” Zara asked, her voice quivering as she thought of the only clusion she could e to: She’d been drugged up to the gills and was currently having the rgest halluogen-irip of her life.

  Likely, her real body was currently drooling with a vat expression on her face as Thrace shackled it to his operating table. The thought made her tremble, and she looked around at her colourful surroundings with a hint of suspi.

  She knew halluations, at least she thought she did, but they shouldn’t have felt this real. No, she shouldn’t have been lucid enough to think about doubting them. That put her in a bit of a slump, until the voiswered her panicked question, “I just cleared the nasty things out of your body. Ns, colrs or metallic additions to cloud your thoughts. Ain’t that nice?”

  “Why?” Zara asked, trying her damo recall what’d happened before she’d gone under, but all she could dredge up were fragments. The pain in her neck, hope, terrlee and a pair of predatreen eyes holding her in their grasp.

  “To talk,” the voice said, and then Zara stumbled back as those very same pair of green eyes appeared inches away from her face. She saw the smile on her peripheral vision, but those emerald orbs didn’t allow her to move her gaze even as she tried to scramble away. “I have questions, so many questions and you’ll have to ahem if you don’t want to die.”

  Zara swallowed the lump f ihroat, finally managing to tear her gaze away from the eyes of the being in front of her a wander down her body. She looked human, eerily so. Is she? She could be … I heard the Tau have some humans who betrayed the Imperium serving uhem, but to have a Psyker as strong as her …

  “W-why?” Zara asked, the question ing to her unbidden, demanding to be answered.

  “Why what?” The strange woman asked, quirking a snow-white eyebrow.

  “Why am I alive?” Zara asked, a hint of irritation seeping into her voice as she remembered the lug her name right out of her mind with the casual ease of someone pig a flower. There was no way she didn’t know what Zara’s question was.

  “Because I haven’t decided whether to kill you yet,” the woman said, huffing in modignation. “So, first question. Do you think this much colour in the fauna is a bit much? I was thinking of dialling it back down a bit.“

  “Eh?” Zara took a moment to roll the woman’s question around in her mind, then did so again to make sure she hadn’t missed something crucial. Maybe another meaning hidden just beh a metaphor, a veiled threat, or perhaps a test of some kind? Well, if it was the first, she was missing it and if it was the st, she was failing at it utterly. With a defeated sigh, she shrugged and looked around before warily gng at the woman to try a a grip on her personality. Even if she was just asking about the eye-strainingly colourful pnts, Zara had to decide whether the woman wanted ass-kissing with that question or an ho opinion. After a moment, she decided to go with that tter on a hunch. “The colours are a bit much … almost straining on the eye.”

  The woman nodded, rubbing at her as she turo watch the line of trees expanding just beyond the grassy blue hill. Zara blinked, not believing her own eyes as the sery before her shifted, its entire colour palette ging.

  “Is that an illusion?” Zara mumbled, too awestruck for a moment to keep her tongue in check. Life with Thrace had taught her not to let her hohoughts show, or even a hint of emotion, but she now felt so … free. The womao her absolutely sughtered Thrace, pying with him like he was a mere child. Zara had no hope of esg, no hope of running or surviving with the woman around.

  That utter helplessness calmed her, like it always did. There was nothing she could do.

  “No,” the woman said, a slight smile in her voice. “This is an illusion.”

  Before Zara knew what was happening, she was weightless, floating in the zero gravity of space with stars and nebue floating around her in the vast dark void. She gasped, but unlike how she’d expected, air rushed into her lungs and then she was ba the colourful hill, fingers clutg at the tufts of blue grass like a lifeline.

  When she gnced up , the whole world seemed to have taken on an e-ish tinge, like every leaf was just a sun-dried illustration of itself drawn onto aged part. It sent Zara for another spin, but her instincts told her this wasn’t an illusion. Whily made it all the weirder.

  “No, I’m not feeling this ohe utterly inprehensible woman said with a pout in her voice as she snapped her fingers and this time, the ge was slow enough for Zara to watch it happen. Colour seeped into the bark first, like some celestial painter dipped their ink onto its parts and then it slowly spread to leaves. Last was the grass, the blue leaves of the undergrowth rustling as they turned green, a blessedly familiar sight. “Natural is best after all, hmmm. Now, where were we? … I think you were just about to tell me how you ended up with that shitstain of an Inquisitor, no?”

  “ … I was ordered to join his retinue,” Zara said, saying each word only after careful deliberation and with utmost care. She did not want to e off as demeaning in her answer, even if she thought the question made little sense. Psykers weren’t asked where they wao be deployed or assighey were told. That was on sense, general knowledge to anyone even faintly acquainted with how the Imperium treated their Psykers. Which she’d thought this woman was, up until now. Or maybe this was just aest, Zara really couldn’t tell.

  “Fair enough.” The woman shrugged, then turo gaze into Zara’s eyes with an iy that had her freeze. “Tell you what, for every answer you answer holy, I’ll answer one of your owions. Just to spice things up, or this versation would get dreadfully b real quick. What do you say?”

  “Okay?” Zara said, gulping as the woman gave a nod of apparent self-satisfa.

  “It’s your turn,” she said, then plopped down into a chair of vines and roots that grew out of the soil as she fell. “Ask away.”

  “Who are you?” Zara asked the most obvious and maybe the dumbest question she could ask. Still, she wao know at least the name of the woman who was going to kill her, if she really was going to die here.

  “My name’s Ea as of te,” the strange woman — Ea — said, leaning ba her chair and kig one leg over the other. “Saying any more than that would be … un-fu question: What was your role as a member of Inquisitor Thrace’s retinue?”

  “Whatever he needed of me,” Zara said with a self-depreg shrug. “I’m mainly specialised in Telepathy, so that meant interrogation and sometimes active bat. … where are we?”

  “I don’t think this ball of rock has a name, probably just a randomly assigned number,” Ea said, then with a flick of her wrist made a replica of her own chair grow under Zara, which she gingerly seated herself into after only a moment’s hesitation. “Vallia Prime would be my guess for the Imperial designation, the first moon of the death world of Vallia. My own little domain, which I’d been granted full access to by the blueys now that I bsted that little flotil and the mines on the p you were defending to bits. question: were you enjoying your job? Prying thoughts as out of people’s minds, breaking their psyches, plundering their memories?”

  Zara barely had enough time to think about the answer she’d gotten to her question before her thoughts ground to a halt. Ea seemed easygoing still, her cheek propped up on a fist as she gazed zily at her with her legs crossed, but there was an iy iare that told her the wrong answer here would mean Zara wouldn’t get the ce to ask her own follow up question after answering. Being a bit too dead to do so, and all that.

  Thankfully, it was an easy question … well, easy if the woman wao hear the answer Zara hoped she would.

  “No,” Zara said, her voice clear even as her grasp nervously tightened around the wooden armrest of her chair. At the woman’s suspicious squint, Zara hastily blurted out a crification. “Not how Thrace had me do it! I’ve been taught to be unbiased ahodical as an interrogator … but he e. He enjoyed watg me break people almost as much as he enjoyed watg how much doing so hurt me.”

  After a few breathless moments, Ea gave a slow nod with a plicated look on her eerily perfect face. “Your question?”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Zara asked after a short few moments of thought, thinning her lips into a lio not show much emotion on her face. “If I survive this … test?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Ea shrugged with a carefree smile. “It all depends on your answers … the only thing I’m unwilling to do is to allow you to rush back to the Inquisition with what you’ve learned from me and of me. There are a bunch of pesky little bugs in your Imperium hellbent on making my life miserable and I just ’t have you giving them the edge they need. Optimally, you’d join my crew and forsake the Imperium.”

  Zara had to sciously keep herself from reag, her heartbeat speeding up at the mere suggestion. She’d been ready to die here. Hell, she’d been more than ready to die ba Thrace’s ship, especially if she got the ce to bst the bastard’s mind to bits before she went out … but this was a lifeli would also be treason, high treason at that and heresy on so many different levels Zara didn’t have enough fio t it.

  If she’d been the same woman sitting on the shuttle, heading for Thrace’s ship for the first time, fresh out of the Scho and full of zeal, she wouldn’t have even thought twice about the suggestion. Disdain for heresy and treachery had beeen into her in a thousand different ways, and ingrained into her mind in a way that still made parts of her rebel viciously against the mere thought of eveertaining the thought.

  But that had been a lifetime ago. She’d seen humanity at its worst, she’d seen faith ary be rewarded with a horrible death. Zara had learned; she had been taught anew by the harsh reality and khe Emperor wouldn’t suddenly stand up from his golden throne and smite dowraitorous witch before her. He never did. He never protected anyone. Not from living foes or from the horrors of the after one passed.

  The woman before her had done just that, saving that poor tortured woma at her, embrag her tarnished soul and stealing it out of the maws of the Hellspawn. Saved her from the fate that romised to every Psyker ience, spared her from the end that had kept Zara from just killing herself in a suicidal attempt at murdering Inquisitor Thrace ages ago.

  Would Ea save her too if she mao pass her tests? Would she?

  Because if she did … that was well worth earning the wrath of the Inquisition.

  Fuck … it's worth everything. I would give everything for that. What use is belief in an absent God when he ’t save anyone, when he ’t save me?

  As Ea’s lips parted to ask her question, Zara resolved herself to do her absolute best. Her soul’s eternal salvation was at stake here. She just hoped she’d not be found wanting by the woman whose emerald eyes seemed to be able to peer into her mind and soul with casual ease. There was no use iending … she could only hope her siy would be enough.

  It had to be.

  P3t1