I coughed up blood while staring up at Darleah as she applied pressure to the bullet wound in my abdomen. The firelight glistened in her concerned, amber eyes. Above the cultists’ corpses, the rent in reality screamed with millions of voices and bulged with a technicolour glow. The grasping claws of the monster beyond it scratched at our world.
Inquisitor Dredge dropped down beside Darleah.
‘He’s bleeding out!’ She said, trying to hold back panic as well as the deluge of blood.
Dredge scanned my body as if examining a map. We locked eyes as he removed the vellum-bound tome from his coat pocket. The runes seared into its cover made my skin crawl.
I flinched as Dredge dabbed a finger into my wound. He traced a symbol onto my forehead with my blood and chanted in that dark tongue. The blood-drawn symbol boiled my skin, and I shrieked.
‘What are you doing to him?’ Darleah shouted. The concern in her eyes turned to horror.
‘We don’t have much time before that fiend tears into real space. And we don’t have the firepower to slay it. The best we can do at this time is try and capture it.’ He handed Darleah a fistful of incense, ‘Light these.’
‘Don’t…’ I choked through my blood-filled throat.
A strong gust of wind burst through the chamber with an ear-piercing screech. The inquisitor chanted louder while binding my wrists with rope.
My world went dark. My soul convulsed in agony.
The daemon raged through my mind as it sought an escape. When it realised it could not, it scoured every corner of my brain, determined to devour my consciousness. For the first week, I moved my conscious mind constantly, using my inquisitorial training, trying to stay one step ahead of the beast for as long as possible in the darkness. Eventually, I ‘hid’, for lack of a better term, inside the augmetic auxiliary data store the Adeptus Administratum had placed in my brain upon my induction. It proved to be additionally useful as it abutted my auditory cortex, allowing me to hear the outside world.
At first, it was a struggle. For hours on end, the daemon screamed and rattled chains as it fought against its restraints. Based on the muffled tones, I guessed it was being held in one of the armaglass cells on the Inquisitor’s ship.
After what I estimated to be about a month, it finally stopped. Then it began muttering to itself. Describing the innumerable ways it wished to torture Dredge and everyone else aboard the ship. How it craved to devour my soul, cackling at the idea.
I thought I was dreaming when I heard her voice. Darleah asked the daemon simple questions: its name, the name of its master – all the types of questions members of the Ordo Malleus ask when determining the type of daemonic threat they are dealing with. Something she and I had done together countless times. It didn’t matter to me what she was saying; just hearing her voice rallied my flagging resolve.
The beast was less than helpful. It snarled and spat obscenities. It listed off all the ways it desired to harm her body and psyche.
‘This one sobbed like a baby and begged to be spared before I devoured his soul,’ it lied.
‘Who?’
‘The one I am imprisoned in. Caaaasss…tuuusss,’ the daemon hissed my name.
‘Castus?’ Darleah whispered.
A metal door clanged nearby, followed by pounding footsteps. ‘That’s enough games, daemon,’ came Dredge’s stern voice.
My existence was again wracked with pain. My consciousness blurred. My only solace was that the daemon could feel it too. I knew this was one of Dredge’s psychic attacks, one of the few tools at our disposal that could protect us and reliably banish warp denizens. Almost as soon as the pain stopped, it began again like lightning ricocheting around my skull.
I struggled not to faint from the pain. I feared that if I did, it would be my end. An intrusive thought wished I could end my torment. Was that the daemon corrupting me?
The session lasted for several more hours, with the only information the daemon divulged being that it was called Ennath. I did my best to plan while Ennath and I recovered from the first interrogation session. I doubted I could survive that level of abuse again. Then Ennath would have full control over my body. At least if I died this way, my soul had a chance to reach the Golden Throne, as opposed to being devoured by the daemon. But that wouldn’t be good enough.
I needed to contact the inquisitor and Darleah directly. Ennath’s thoughts lingered on how it would feign cooperation with the intention of striking them down as soon as an opening presented itself. I couldn’t let it harm Darleah or even Dredge, despite all he had done to me.
If I exerted my will with enough force, I figured I would be able to momentarily retake control of my body. The only caveat was that it would reveal my hiding place, and I wouldn’t be able to evade Ennath again.
I made my move at the start of the next interrogation, before Dredge could launch a fresh psychic barrage. I exerted my will out of the augmetic, temporarily forcing the daemon to the back of my mind.
Seeing my faint reflection in the armaglass almost stole the words I had prepared. My face leered in a gruesome grin where Ennath had chewed off my lips, black spikes pierced my skin across my body, and pus stained the sores around the restraints.
Seeing Darleah’s face strengthened my will.
‘Darleah! It’s me, Castus,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t believe Ennath. It will only betray and kill you. Destroy us to send the daemon back to the warp!’
‘This is just one of the daemon’s tricks,’ Dredge scoffed.
But Darleah had already unholstered the plasma pistol from her belt, tears welling in her amber eyes.
