The driver, one of Urien’s men, swore as he wrestled with the controls. The aircar was wobbling southward toward the Church of Saint Tenebrac the Blind, which apparently doubled as the residence of Cardinal Molmenieu. His Eminence was famously reclusive, though his theological opinions carried almost as much weight as the late and lamented Ratsini.
 
“Problem?” Hadrian demanded as our erratic progress continued, lifter plates crackling audibly.
 
“Ez aye civilian model, nay set up tae carrae yon hefty bint,” the driver replied without taking his eyes from the controls.
 
“Did he just call me fat?” I asked a trifle incredulously. Hadrian nodded in apparent comprehension.


 “It is the several hundred pound of wardrobe,” he explained, nodding to the power armor. I folded my arms with the gentle whine of servos and moved into the middle of the back seat, doing my best to even out the load on the lifter plates. The air car steadied, though it obviously still handled poorly.
 
We flew out over one of the innumerable turreted walls and over a bleak expanse of rocky wilderness studded with occasional white bones. The Holy Round was a tradition, where pilgrims attempted to circle the city 999 times barefoot and eating only what they found on the trail. The pilgrimage could take over a year depending on conditions and it was forbidden to aid a fallen worshiper, as death in such a pursuit was considered to be favorable in the Emperor’s eyes. There were hundreds of people down there now, the numbers swollen by the Jubilee and the election. I wondered how many of them would survive to complete the pilgrimage.
 
We reached the coast and turned north, passing over dark purple seas being traversed by brightly painted barges in long lines, taking pilgrims too and from various island shrines in the off shore archipelagos. The sun was setting but the craft were brilliantly visible due to the luminescent algae disturbed by their bows and the sun struck slicks of promethium byproducts they left behind. Each barge was decked out with lanterns of painted paper and plastec in a variety of soft pastel colors. Doubtless they had some religious significance beyond their pleasant aspect. 
 
The Church of Saint Tenebrac the blind completely covered the largest of a trio of islands that reared up out of the sea ahead. Thousands of lumen globes and votive candles glimmered across its battlements and along the bridges which connected it to the smaller islands where lesser shrines and other services appeared to be concentrated. The vox squawked as we closed in.
 
“They wan clayrence kades,” the driver said, sounding a little nervous.
 
“Broadcast that we are from Primate Fulstes on official Ministorum business,” Hadrian directed. The driver did as he was told, speaking tersely into the vox set as we drew closer.
 
“The sae we cannae land at the church, securitae they sae,” the driver said after a few moments. I felt the touch of a foreign mind brush against us like a wet leaf. Hadrian stiffened too, his talents were less subtle than mine, but he had the benefit of Ordos training to detect mental intrusion. The foreign mind crystallized into hostility in a moment, moving from curious to hostile in the blink of an eye.  
 
“Smoke!” Hadrian shouted and I was aware of the glowing trail of a missile launch on the battlements. I felt the engines of the aircar roar into overdrive but I was already slumping, my mind leaving my body and soaring out to meet our unseen attacker. My thought form was that of my own body rendered in golden light, held aloft by nebulous wings. The hostile psyker was a dark serpentine shape, snapping fangs of darkness at us. I surged in to meet him, and I could tell from the taste of his energy that it was a him, smashing aside his attack on the car. My thought form burned away chunks of his dark pshycoplasm as I tore into him with my mind, exploiting his surprise to the utmost. The hostile presence shrieked in his mind at the unexpected attack and lashed out at me, hurling me away. I dived down towards the surface of the ocean, and he came after me, jaws agape. I hit the water a moment before his fangs could close, bursting outwards in all directions in the shimmer of the promethium residues. My mind split into dozens of Emmaline’s moving up and outwards in dozens of separate directions. The serpent like thought form became that of a hydra, each head attempting to chase a different fragment of my consciousness. The streaks of golden light merged above the hydra into a single form and my whole mind drove downwards at his fragmented attention like a golden harpoon. I punched through his mind form and felt him scream in rage and pain. The word? The name? Ciscus, formed in my mind as I hit the surface of the water. A great geyser of steam shot skyward having no apparent origin to anyone that happened to be watching. I split my mind again trying to escape in the refracted light of the steam, but he wasn’t to be fooled the same way twice. His thought form spread into a sheet above me and began to close at the edges like vast dark jaws. Mental nets began to snatch up individual fragments and I hastily pulled them together to avoid being annihilated piece meal, my psyche burning as though scalded with hot steam. I pulled my mind together around my core identity, forging protruding spines out of the individual fragments of consciousness. Ciscus screamed as his thought form closed around my thorny mind, and I spurted away through the first spine to break free, exploding outwards like a directional charge. 


Through my waking eyes I was cognizant of Hadrian screaming at the driver as our car plunged towards the surface of the sea. Something was on fire and I could see holes in the side paneling. The taste of burning insulation burned in my throat.  I pulled my full attention back to the mental struggle, leaving my physical well being to Hadrian. I had the impression that I was as strong as Ciscus, perhaps stronger, but my gifts had always been those of subterfuge and enchantment, rather than the violence we were currently wreaking on each other. He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with this kind of battle.


I sped away from the air car, my mind form becoming that of a golden bird flitting low across the wave tops. I arrowed toward the main island and the Church, quite sure that somewhere in that ancient edifice my adversary lay as helpless as I was while we waged our mental duel. He followed me in the form of a hunting wyvern composed of animate shadow. I swept around the base of the island, votive candles flaring as my spirit passed. The dragon snapped at my heels, forcing me to weave and dodge, flying under the long slender bridges that connected the smaller islands to the Church. Although we were invisible, our presence was not unremarked. Milk soured in the glass, time pieces stopped or spun crazily in reverse, games of chance went haywire in improbable strings of good or bad luck, lumens flared or dimmed unexpectedly. 


Round and round we went, circling the island at phenomenal speed. He was the hunter now, his greater experience giving him confidence that I was prey. Moment by moment he gained on me, closing the psychic distance as he moved in for the kill. Our speed was phenomenal, circling the island dozens of times each second, the shallow water of the channel dimpling and forming whirlpools as we whipped overhead. He was nearly on me, the hate and smug sense of victory pouring off him like the heat of a furnace. His jaws closed around me, blotting out the fading light as the snapped shut, diving mental fangs down on… nothing. He had less than a second to realize his mistake, before my entire essence came roaring out of one of the votive candles. Each time I circled I had squirreled a tiny fragment of myself away in the flickering light, until the thing that he chased was nothing but a hollow construct. 


There was no time for him to appreciate my trick. I hit him as a spear of golden light, with all of our combined metaphysical momentum. I punched into him like a pike spitting a charging horse. His thought form shattered into a thousand shards as every votive candle in the church exploded in a fireball of burning wax. I clawed at the shards, going for the kill, but he fled to the refuge of his body. I had a momentary vision of the chapel where he lay upon the stone floor, its expensive tapestries burning from the candle detonation. Someone, Vorn, seized the unconscious psyker by the shoulders and shouted something at him.
 
Then I was back in my body. I opened my eyes and gasped. Hadrian’s lips were on mine, in the act of resuscitating me. I had been so focused on the mental struggle that I had apparently forgotten to breathe.  I pushed Hadrian away by instinct, nearly driving him through the back of the car seat with my power armor augmented strength. If it bothered him he didn’t show it. I became aware of the screaming of overloading engines and the vertiginous drop of the air car.
 
“We need to... !” Hadrian shouted, but the words were cut off as the aircar struck the ocean with a tremendous sound, like a giant stone skipping on ice. The pilot had brought us in a flat angle and we bounced once, twice, three times, the car entering an uncontrolled spin. We hit the beach on a bow wave of spray, sliding to a halt at the edge of the water, sand scraping the underside of the wreck as we slid ashore on one of the small connecting islands.
 
“I need to ask whoreson Urien for meer monae,” the driver muttered, pulling his shaking hands away from the steering yolk.