They took a train across smog-blessed iron landscape to Bukhan, Ulsa’s southernmost city. The Dogmata estolled the virtue of every structure they passed: this manufactorum assembled aircraft from Aquilas to Thunderhawks, that chem-plant produced medicinals, the mine she grew up in was the largest deposit of diamantine. When the Zephyrim told the Dogmata just how interesting she truly found this tour to be, the Dogmata switched to informing about the Novitiate’s experience with the quarry, about its method and its mark.

  They arrived at the mines that were having problems with troublemakers and rabblerousers. Go Soo-Hee would descend the depths taken over by outright cultists. The depths had not been gassed to allow the Zephyrim to lure out her quarry. The novitiates and defense force would guard the higher tunnels to clear out other strikers, root out unionizers, and control all movement. The novitiates were led by their Superiors and battle sisters. The defense force had their own lieutanent and sergeants, but a dogmata such as this one would always be assigned to them to maintain their spiritual wellbeing by carrying the songs of the order into even the thick of battle.

  The dogmata saw her off at the entrance to the shaft as the rest were detaining everyone in sight on suspicion of taint and lethargy. Go Soo-Hee went into the depths thinking about how many times she had done missions like these, not battles against the traitor nation and witch beasts, but against Imperial citizens.

  As a novitiate, she helped see to the end of an underhive gang uprising in Gyeo. The enforcers had been bribed to direct attention away from the smuggling of a certain combat stimulant. Corruption was not an uncommon occurrence, but this stimulant was distributed to sway the tide a larger gangwar, sent to those who pledged fealty to a ramshackle coalition looking to conquer the underhive. The disparate gangs kept themselves in check by killing each over for every hallway of territory, but a united-ish front of drugged up maniacs had no where to spew their violence but up. The anarchy forced the defense force to pull regiments from the militarized zone and made even seraphim shed their wings to stem the tide of lunatics and refugees. Whang Ae-cha had fought alongside her to clear out apartments, room by room, of gangers and other miscreants taking advantage of the chaos. The enforcers were either part of the miscreants or were strung up by the criminals that raided their armories for weapons. It would have been far more disastrous if an Epidemic had occurred at the same time, which is why the Legatine is acting much more decisively to lock down the underhive and root out this obscura-distributing agitator, mortal or otherwise.

  Then there were the heretic faiths, not of the most blasphemous gods, but of those who did not renounce their witch worship even as they prospered under the Imperial Creed. It was regrettable enough that they let tribal villages stand tucked away in forest mountains. Those Namchian mistwalkers that migrated to civilization brought their pagan fetishes and rituals with them. They huddled together in conclaves, passed their teachings unto their children, and made pilgrimage to shrines hidden in the wilds. They could not hide forever, as the stench of their worship drew in the witch beasts. When the battle sisters deployed to a witch hunt, they slew the beasts that lurked in dark thickets as well as the pagans that lurked among the flock. Faithful citizens and redeemable children turned in their heretical neighbors and parents for public execution.

  Here in Ulsa, the citizens had the honor of being chosen to serve in the mines and manufactorums regardless of their previous occupation or skillset. Though the devoted many were grateful for the privilege, there were everpresent protests of ‘press-gangment’, ‘unending hours’, ‘back breaking labor’, and ‘dangerous working conditions’. They refused to do their work, saying that they ‘had not seen their loved one or the sun in years’ or that ‘exposure to noxious gases and smoke was hazardous to their health’. They sometimes actively rebelled by stopping others from working, or by turning their instruments against their machines and masters as was the case now. The Emperor did not ask much of them yet still they fell short, and only came to regret their sloth and failure when the talons of judgement sunk into them, as would be the case this day.

  She had activated the preysight of her lenses to survey the pitch dark mining tunnels. Jakada’s auspex scanned for lifesigns and active machinery. Any signatures would be highlighted for Go Soo-Hee. If either failed, her suit lights would provide illumination.

  Nothing so far.

  The remaining equipment was cold from disuse. Empty mining carts that should be ferrying ore were now disembowled corpses left to rot. She traced along the stone wall surface and over the wooden support beams, interrupted by the occasional crevice and carved smile that was the quarry’s calling card.

  The only sound was the whir of Jakada’s grav-motor and the drum of her powerpack. Such silence was fertile soil for doubt and heresy, as these dissidents proved. She filled her head with a hum, The Imperial Covenant, to keep out the silence of being alone in lightless, winding tunnels. An open and empty mind was the prey of heresy; with her quarry being what it was, that was more true than ever.

  In the void, faith is the light. That! Is His promise.

  The way behind her was sealed as the report had warned her. She was in its sights now. She pressed onwards. She only felt the ground she walked on as darkness consumed all. Neither she nor Jakada could find the walls or the roof. It brought her to its realm where it would let panic rake openings in her armor.

  In doubt, hatred is the shield. That! Is his gift.

  There was no opening in her contempt for the neverborn. No doubt in her duty to the Emperor. The rat needed outside intervention to free her. A zephyrim relied upon no such thing: she would drag the wretch from this realm or die here if He willed it. The enemy would have been better off sealing her under real rubble, for the limits of her mortal body might give out long before her limitless immortal soul would.

  “In fear, duty is the salve. That! Is His shelter,” sang her husband. His blue eyes pierced through the red of her lenses. Through ceramite gauntlets, she cupped his cheeks and felt her fingers melt into their warmth and softness. He brought her wrist down so that he could hold her hands and kiss his forehead upon her visor. “In solitude, the Imperium endures. That! Is his love. But our love will never leave you.”

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  She raised her head, as lost in his eyes as she was in his words. Their son came running to them for all to hug each other as family. She had been cold for so long that she forgot what warmth felt like, like the spring sun after a long winter. Now that they were together, there was so much to catch up on.

  They walked, under the fall of cherry blossoms, through the gardens of house Go. An honored Zephyrim now, she should have no fear of bringing her family in the open. It was her turn now to speak and his turn now to smile and listen. She spoke of all he had missed over the years. She spoke of labors that took her from the depths of the hive to the peaks of mountains. Of life and death battle that sculpted her into the woman she now was. Of friends and rivals, old, new, and late. Of suitors with not near enough generosity or beauty to replace him in her heart. Of cold lonely nights where song alleviated earthly wounds but not the pain of his absence. They passed over an arched bridge over an artificial brooke when he slowed down to separate a flower from its stem. Before she noticed, he silenced her with a pink rose stuffed into her mouth. He hugged her from behind, his arms around her waist, his heartbeat upon her back, his breath upon her nape. He promised he would never leave again.

  The balcony was built around the artificial waterfall that fed the brooke running across the garden beneath. Here, together, Father and Son sang in harmony. The father gently guided his son when he strayed or stumbled but left enough room for his voice to stand on its own. This moment was something she never thought to dream of. Not here, not all together. Surreal as it was, she wished it would go on forever.

  Of course nothing ever did.

  Despite her honor unparalleled in her house, despite decades of devotion in His name, the politicking of the Incheo nobility turned against her. The whispers of the chatelains severed connections that took generations to build and her family all but disowned her to stymie the gangrene she spread. A childhood of laughter and love lost to a family that saw her only use as their accolade and brokering chip, now severed like an albatross. The sisters she had spent her life alongside, sisters that she struggled and celebrated and fought and bled and grieved and prayed alongside, turned their backs on her. A lifetime of killing and suffering without question or objection, of memorizing scripture and song to the letter and note, of living under the spectre of Arabella whose example demanded no less than perfection and unwavering obedience.

  None of it mattered. Why? Because he was born to the wrong mother? Because she wanted to be happy.

  Because she, finally, found Joy?

  They fled to the Witch’s Isle while they could. She didn’t need the trappings of the Imperium. All her accolades and prestige were secondary to service. All the treasure and privileges from politcking and business paled to the richness of love. But she better than most, understood that, for the Imperium, it was not enough to spurn, but a necessity to scorn the enemy with vehemence, especially those who have turned from His Light. That she struck back after they tracked her family down was all the more proof of her damnation. Just as the fabulous were slighted by her choosing of a commoner outside their web-weaving, the Adepta Sororitas as whole would put more ferocity toward exterminating the taint of a fallen sister than they would toward fighting Sinui or Witch Beasts. Her family would know no rest even in the Witch’s Isle so long as her former sisters dogged them.

  So she would strike back.

  Without her efforts, especially with their focus spent hunting her, the lands of Incheo were in disarray. Without her, the daemon’s cults flourished in cities across the south and the manufactorums of Ulsa were sabatoged by its inhabitants, cutting off the fuel line of Incheo. The Sinui launched their offense; the northern province, Hanyang, fell and, with the defense force stretched thin dealing with the cults, the militarized zone collapsed line by line.

  Even with such catastrophe on their doorstep, her sisters wasted their lives prioritizing her. Fine then. The neverborn distracted the army. She could handle her sisters. The novitiates were rigid and inexperienced, all that training and devotion would be crushed before they amounted to anything. The non-militant orders had bluster when they only had to shout from the safety of the backlines, which made it all the more satisfying to have them choke on their own entrails. The wingless battle sisters were always inferior; they were helplessly frantic in their attempts to keep up with a target that danced around them, and they died as pathetically as any other incompetent. The seraphim were inelegant novices who only knew how to hop and skip around hapless targets, completely unprepared to be out-maneuvered, to have their wings clipped and left to flail until they were a wreck of gore and ceramite.

  Her sister zephyrim thought themselves her peers, or her betters. They thought the Emperor was with them. They thought they walked with the grace of Saint Arabella. Saint Arabella watched as blood filled her sanctum. The Legatine was made into a hydra with all her servo skulls impaled upon her. The Palatine’s corpse was laid in prayer at the foot of the statue. The Canoness was devoured by her cherubim: tiny hands gripped her intestines while deciduous teeth tore out arteries. Go Soo-Hee did not stop until Kim Min-Ji had her own blade sunk down her sternum and the fire that spilled from her visor was snuffed out. That scorched chamber was cold and quiet. The corpses of choristers a reminder of the fate that would have befallen her son.

  “Thank you mama,” her son said, “you saved me. Now we can be a family forever. Now we can have peace and joy.”

  “There you are,” said Go Soo-Hee.

  Ceramite talons gripped her son’s throat. She lifted him for his face to meet her then crushed the meat and bones within his neck. He sputtered and spat and drooled and gurgled and cursed and spasmed as the illusion on him and the surroundings cracked and tessellated and fragmented. They returned to dark mines and all that remained in her grip was a Sugilite snake with a forked purple tongue, just as the Underhive Rat described. It lashed its tongue at her, which she grabbed and tore out with her spare hand, rewarded with its screams of anguish.

  +I have peered into your heart,+ it spat with a new tongue, +I reach into the deepest recesses of your mind that you turn away from. All I know is what you truly feel. All I show you is what you truly desire. All I offer is the chance to attain it. Turn me down now, and be damned to fate.+

  “You have been tricked by your own perception, arrogant that you know the ocean when all you’ve seen is the bottom of a well. My strength is not mine alone: His will is greater than my heart, His design is greater than my mind. Where I fail, He is infallible. Where I would doubt, He provides the answer. In following His will, my soul is invincible. Hide in the muck whispering your false promise to apostates, for you will never turn the truly faithful.”

  +Then rot by His will, here or in the spire, for you have chosen slavery over hope.+

  She choked it quiet again. That it had not already been killed from having its throat crushed meant that it would take a bit more to banish this daemon. A promethium bath perhaps?. A chorus to sing its profane essence apart? A target dummy for novitiates?

  Such possibilities.