Upon being teleported into the hangars of Eutophoria, where Luciene and her crew had first met Zet, the angel found herself in a period of emotional tumult and confusion. It had been here where Zaer had tried to prevent Zet from joining the crew, here were Luciene’s closest friend across the millennia had fought against her wishes so as to save her life from a potential-foe she had not then understood. Yet it was here, then, that Luciene realized Zet was taking Zaer’s place as her Number 2, so to speak.

  Luciene’s momentary disarray met its end at the hands of her newest allies’ protests. “Infernal Xenos contraption!” Bliss hissed, shaking her extremities as though to disperse some lingering heresies that clutched at her form—though there were none.

  “Not far off from my first time being teleported,” Kane said, attempting to relate to the synskin-clad assassin near to him. Such attempts failed.

  “It is not my first time being teleported,” Bliss said, a hint of pain on her voice. Known only to Zha, she took a moment to reflect on her personal failings aboard the Finality, and her resultant extraction thereof via her lover's psykana. She had, more recently, been transported to the ground of Ranéla through the mechanisms of my mind as well. “But a Xenos toy is of far less comfort than the workings of allied psykana.”

  “It is no mere toy—” Zet protested, but was silenced by a shake of Luciene’s head.

  “Regardless, I elect we keep from its overuse,” Zha decided, met with assent from Bliss. “You lot might be willing to cast aside the sanctity of the Golden Throne to bask beneath the heels of Xenos, but we are less enthused by that prospect.”

  “Enough bickering,” Luciene said, flatly, and drew attention to herself from everyone present—which was to say, everyone but Galen, who had returned to the Inquisitorial fleet, slower as it was than Zet’s Katabasis, to ensure it followed in the Xenos’s footsteps. All eyes on her, Luciene turned her face skyward, toward the black hole that hung astronomically far away. “Eutophoria has changed. Be alert.”

  “Changed? Changed how?” Zet asked, stepping nearer to Luciene. “My sensors do not detect—”

  “They wouldn’t. You are not attuned to the Warp. I am,” Luciene answered before setting off for the streets of the city. As she departed, one of her hands fell to the hilt of her Eviscerator while the other clenched into a fist. “Hell has spilled into our sanctuary in our absence,” she muttered as she left.

  “Stay close,” Zha muttered to Bliss. “But out of sight.” Bliss nodded but otherwise said nothing before departing perpendicularly from Luciene’s angle of exit. Zha joined the rest of Luciene’s crew in following after the angel. Yet, despite being surrounded by—temporary—allies, Zha thought herself alone again. Under twisted skies and artificial lights, the savant was far from home and without her family. Oh Blackgar, Zha wondered to herself. Where have I gone, and where am I going?

  Zha received no answer to her thoughts, much as she wished to hear my voice in her head as often she had in ages past. But I had not used my psykana to communicate with her in years, and Zha began to fear she may never hear me so again. Despite her vast and potent memory, she did not recall what my last telepathic message to her was, and that bothered her more than being surrounded by the comingling Xenos and humans that propagated throughout Eutophoria.

  Zha wanted to hang back and follow the group to observe how they carried themselves along, and because she knew they knew the way to their destination better than she did. But she was denied such observations by the human pair that had fallen in with Luciene, for they thought to flank the Inquisitor between themselves and the Xenos pair ahead. Was it distrust, Zha thought, or curiosity? Perhaps both. Or perhaps, Zha realized, they feared Zha might finally snap from being surrounded by so many Xenos, draw her weapon, and start blasting, and they did not want to be dead-ahead of the Inquisitor when that happened.

  There was no small temptation to delve down that route, Zha admitted to herself. But needs must, and for now, the existence of Xenos was a minor infraction to her life compared to the continued torment of the daemon she sought to destroy. To that end, and for as long as the Xenos could prove useful, she could tolerate them. Other Inquisitors might have her head for that later, but that was later, and not then.

  Zha’s journey through crowded streets came to an end eventually, as the group arrived at their destination: a bar or a club, recently renovated. Luciene paused at its entrance and waved Zha forward. “What?” Zha asked as she stepped near to the angel.

  “He’s your Agent, isn’t he?” Luciene suggested.

  “No, I thought I made that clear. This ‘Cornelius’ may work for the Inquisition, but that doesn’t make him mine,” Zha answered, eyes squinting. “Your crew has had more contact with him than I have.”

  “So you say,” Luciene shrugged, then opened and stepped through the establishment’s entrance. Zha followed. The building was dark and empty, clearly not yet ready for customers or guests. Chairs were still placed upon tables, despite it being midday and there being plenty of potential patrons just beyond the building’s walls. Upon entry, Zha’s eyes immediately glanced to her left, toward the bar at one end of the room. It seemed, at first, to be the natural place to look, but as her gaze turned toward the bar, Zha noted to herself that she would have felt it more prudent to fully examine the space around her. She did not even check her corners as she had been taught to. No, her gaze was not hers to control.

  Her eyes, thusly, ignored the rest of the room to fall upon the large creature sitting atop two stools at the bar. In the lightlessness of the scene, Zha was only barely able to make out the creature’s purple flesh and general visage, but the size of the beast was undeniably massive; taller than Luciene, or an Astartes. Dwarfing even Zet, and this was while sitting. On its feet, it would have towered over even a Custodes. Despite all of her training, Zha was, for a moment, awestruck.

  “Greetings, Angel,” the creature spoke. Its voice was smooth and slick, and garnered ever greater attention upon its speaker. “I have wondered if and when we’d meet, you and I.”

  “And you are?” Luciene asked the beast, stepping beyond Zha’s side to advance nearer to the monster ahead.

  “The brother to your master,” the creature replied, and at last turned to face Luciene and her allies. Its head was of a shape Zha could not quite decide on. At first glance, it looked like a horned serpent. With a blink, it looked more like a goat or ram. Yet despite the myriad of animalistic features it possessed, it ever remained vaguely humanlike.

  “I know no master,” Luciene denied, fists clenching tighter, the knuckles that gripped her Eviscerator whitening in the process.

  The creature grinned widely, revealing an array of fangs and a forked tongue between them. “Is that so? My, how the years rob us of our origins, hm? It has been so long since Vaktez, myself.”

  “You are of the Warp,” Luciene declared, partly a question but mostly an assertion.

  “Not as much as you mean,” the creature shook its head while wagging its tail behind its back and around its head—its tail! Yes, Zha finally noted, it possessed a serpentine tail to accompany its chimeric visage. “As I just said, I hail from Vaktez, though I admit it is odd to claim I hail from a world I took part in wiping from the cosmos. You may call me Lunacius, once-mortal heir to and ascendant scion of Loesh.”

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  “And to what do I owe the pleasure, daemon?” Luciene seethed.

  “Are you hard of hearing, Angel? I am no daemon,” Lunacius insisted, and rose to hoofed feet. For as tall as she was, Luciene barely stood to the creature’s belly. In the rear of the room, while he—like everyone else—was utterly entranced by Lunacius’s form, Kane did have the wherewithal to note that the ceiling of Cornelius’s establishment should not have been high enough to hold this beast within its walls. And yet, space seemed to defy itself to let the creature move freely about. “At least not yet. I am human, ascendant. Can’t you tell?” Lunacius said with a laugh. “I will answer your question in a moment, Angel, but answer me this first: are you aware of what sets mankind apart from the other species in the cosmos?”

  “Their capacity for wanton destruction?” Luciene suggested, and was met with a barking laugh from the towering beast in the room.

  “They have that capacity, yes, but admittedly many in this galaxy do. No, it is mankind’s endless ambition and room for growth! And, as you and your comrades have beheld, I have so-grown to perfection,” Lunacius explained.

  “There is nothing perfect in what the Warp offers,” Luciene shook her head.

  “Does it not offer you to me?” Lunacius smirked, flicking its tongue between its teeth like a snake. “I have, after all, always wished to taste an Angel’s blood.” At that, Luciene at last drew her Eviscerator forth and leveled it to the creature, its chain-teeth revving loudly. “Ah-ha, not yet, my dear. We should at least check with the owner of this establishment before we tear it to shreds with our mutual adoration for one another,” Lunacius said, and pointed a claw-like hand past Luciene, to the other side of the room.

  That sufficed to snap most from the allure of Lunacius’s aura, and their gaze—including Luciene’s—traced the path that Lunacius’s claw had pointed out. In so doing, stomachs lurched as eyes beheld a display of gore unlike any other, veins and arteries stretching out across the far wall of the room, connecting at nodes of organs in the vast spread of what was once a human being. Such a vision was equal parts horrifying and disgusting to behold, until such a time as it became infinitely more horrifying when the heart pumped, and blood flowed through the bodiless being’s now-outward innards.

  It was still alive.

  And it, Luciene realized after just a moment, was what remained of Cornelius.

  In a flash, Luciene leapt for Lunacius’s neck. In as swift a response, just as the Angel got off the ground, Lunacius buried a hoof in the Angel’s belly and punted her into the ground. While Lunacius stomped toward Luciene, Zha dove to the side as Luciene’s Xenos allies, in Zet and Kor’Kassan, opened fire upon Lunacius with weapons Zha did not wish to comprehend. In the process, however, Zha reached to her collar and squeezed at a vox dial, sending a single, dull tone to the nearest vox receiver. All Hell had broken loose, she thought.

  But, unbeknownst to anyone but Lunacius, there was far more Hell still to arrive.

  “Your kind bore me,” Lunacius sighed as T’au Ion blasts and Necron Disintegrator beams bounced harmlessly from his Warp-infused flesh. “Neither of you are present enough.”

  “And what about my presence?” Luciene hissed, diving into the air for Lunacius’s throat once more. As before, she did not get close, and was smacked from the skies as swiftly as she had entered them.

  “You have yet to truly spread your wings, but I am confident I can make you do so,” Lunacius declared as Luciene bounced along the ground before coming to a stop. “And when you do, I suspect breaking you shall taste divine.”

  As Luciene rose to her feet once more, Lunacius paused in his movements to instead nod toward the live-dissection in the room. Luciene turned her head just in time to see Kane’s shaking hands pull the trigger to the stub pistol that Cornelius had given the former-guardsman months prior out of some semblance of mercy. As the significance of that mercy dawned on her, time seemed to slow down for Luciene as she beheld the Warp’s presence in the room coalesce upon the bullet that emerged from the stub pistol. Mercy, once given from Cornelius to Ishmael Kane. Now, mercy was given from Ishmael Kane to Cornelius, and the vessel of that murderous mercy was the same.

  The Warp loved its symbolism and parallelism. And as the bullet sailed across the room, bearing in on Cornelius’s bare heart, Lunacius’s smile grew wider than ever it had. The moment the bullet punctured the heart, reality broke asunder. The back wall of the room shattered, exploding outward while Cornelius’s extended flesh and blood collapsed upon itself. Space and time yawned and folded upon each other, and the Warp power that Lunacius and Luciene passively emanated swirled out unto a vast and grotesque tear in the skies over Eutophoria not unlike the Great Rift itself, albeit much smaller and terribly more localized.

  Luciene rose to her feet not to confront Lunacius a third time, but to behold immaterial, mouthed tentacles plunge into Eutophoria, one of the few safe bastions untouched by Chaos in the cosmos. She beheld the skies explode into vibrant, nefarious hues of purple and gold, and she felt the engines that kept the city from falling within the black hole beyond begin to give way. And to seal the deal on the place she once called home, she beheld a veritable legion of Daemonettes spill out of the rift in the sky and plunge their claws into the streets below. “Thinking about how to save your city?” Lunacius taunted the Angel, towering over her from behind her view. “You should be thinking on how to save yourself from me.”

  Lunacius thrust a barbed, lobster-like claw down upon Luciene, but faster than even he could perceive, the teeth of Luciene’s Eviscerator met it. The two contested each other’s strength for a moment, and Lunacius finally saw what he wanted from her: the Angel’s gaze faded completely to gold, the white of her sclera and the black of her pupils being consumed by her raw power. Lunacius grinned, eager to taste the ripened flesh of the Angel, but was denied that opportunity as a great force struck the back of one of his knees, forcing him to the ground. He turned, briefly, to face his unseen assailant, and was punished for his lack of focus by the teeth of an Eviscerator gnawing across his chest.

  While Bliss spun around the monster, Lunacius recoiled away from Luciene, cursing aloud, “Imperial runt! Your might was given, not earned!”

  “Its source matters not, merely how it’s used,” Bliss replied, then dove for Zha and scooped the smaller Inquisitor into the air. “We have to get you out of here,” she said, stating the obvious to Zha while paying no mind to the battle Luciene waged with Lunacius.

  “With your consent, allow me,” Zet suggested, suddenly looming over the duo. Bliss looked across the scene and noted that none of Luciene’s allies remained in the room; Zet had already transported them all back to the Katabasis.

  “Bliss, that thing—” Zha started, but Bliss cut her off.

  “It might have info about Cronos. I know. I’ll beat what it knows out of its mouth,” Bliss agreed, and then turned back to Zet. “Take her away from here.”

  “You intend to stay?” Zet asked.

  “You do too, I gather,” Bliss suggested with a nod, which Zet met in turn, and with a whisk of the Necron’s hand, the trio became a duo. Briefly. They returned to being a trio shortly after Zha’s extraction, when a Daemonette leapt for them from behind. Its skull was pierced by a Phase-scythe and its belly by a synskin fist, however, before it faded from reality. “Fought something like this before?” Bliss asked Zet.

  “You’d be surprised. Yourself?”

  “Once or twice,” Bliss shrugged, leaping forward to rejoin the battle of Angel and Daemon.