“Are you sure you know what you are doing?” Hadrian asked.

“Well I haven’t had alot of training, but I will struggle through,” I replied and then we jumped from the moving speeder. At the last moment something black and monstrous struck the flier, the jolt sending us spinning into the air. I caught a glimpse of something black an immense, some kind of flying lizard from Demick’s homeworld or his nightmares. The jet pack fired several short bursts correcting our spin as the train seemed to slide out beneath us in slow motion. The landscape below us was a nightmare of decay and madness. The train line seemed to ripple as unseen waves passed through the landscape, the lowering clouds were filled with snapping mouths, the bit flying lizards in two, showering the snow below with blood. A tunnel in the distance had the appearance of a sucking chest wound, opening and closing as though the mountain itself was bleeding.

“Where are we…” Hadrian’s voice crackled over the link but there was no time to speak. We hit the shattered window of the pool car like a cannon ball, crashing down into the water. The jetpack guttered as it went under boiling water around us and filled the air with the smell of the chlorine the trainstaff used. I slapped the release studs and it tore off my shoulders, careening away into a stand of palm trees, smashing several flat before shattering on the wall. We came up gasping for air. Something long and tentacular wrapped around my leg, and I squawked as I was pulled under, I turned in time to see a vast luminous eye that split into thousands of dagger sharp teeth. The tentacle dragged me down, an impossible depth in the real pool. Bolter rounds hissed through the water and burst among the teeth, obscuring the horror in a mist of dark blood. Hadrian’s strong hands grabbed me and hauled me up onto the beach, soaked and gasping for air.

Emmaline stood over the body of the Imperial General just as she had done in reality. Despite the chaos all around her she seemed completely oblivious to us. I hauled myself to my feet. Around us the car was rusting to dust, great holes appearing as the wind whipped the flaking metal away to expose it to the elements. The sand beneath our feet became tomb dust, sticky and coating us like flour.

“Run!” I yelled and pulled Hadrian with me as I sprinted towards Emmaline. She turned towards us with tears in her blue eyes. They widened for a moment and then we were tumbling through. Suddenly we were back in the Ecclesiarchy court room. Emmaline-who-heals things was kneeling over Demick’s mind form, furiously pumping his chest to keep his heart beating. The starched white wimple of her medicare outfit flapping like stubby wings. Arcanemmaline in her long ritual robes was knocking other Emmaline’s back with a long ivory staff. Demick’s body was running, like ink dispersing in water, black and viscous. He was screaming in terror his eyes wide as teacups. Several of the more inquisitive Emmalines were connected to him, their own substance flowing into his, their own screams adding to the sonic assault which broke over us. Arcanemmaline screamed a word of power the moment she saw us and slammed her staff down. A circle of dazzling energy sprung up around Demick, severing the inky tendrils attaching him to the other Emmalines, leaving herself and Emmaline-who-heals things the only ones inside the circle.

“Out! Out! Out!” Arcanemmaline shouted, her voice booming with authority. Hands grabbed Hadrian and lifted him, passing him hand over hand like a crowd surfer at a juvie rave. He passed upwards impossibly lifted into the air, lifting up towards the great stained glass window of the ambiguously uncertain stained glass window representing the Emperor of Mankind, the luminous portrait growing until it filled the entire universe. Hadrian twisted in time to see Arcanemmaline’s staff driving towards Demick’s throat in a death stroke, a sea of Emmaline’s screaming in terror below him, then the gripping hands pitched him straight into the stern and disapproving face of He On Terra.


I gasped with psychic backlash as Hadrian and I snapped back into the physical world. A terrible stench filled my nostrils and tendrils of smoke choked the air. A ten foot circle of expensive carpet had been blackened and burned, the embers of it still smoldering angrily. Every clock in the place was ticking a furious pace, the hands never advancing. Books and papers were scattered everywhere as though flung by a blast wave. Several vases of flowers were wilted, the water inside them boiling. Plasmic residue, a slick slime that combined the smells of the void and deep ocean coated everything inside the circle including the two of us. It was fair to say my white shift was ruined. Nor had I emerged unscathed, blood ran from both my nostrils and was welling up from my pores, a familiar side effect of psykanna over reach. I tasted almonds in the back of my throat, the bitter aftertaste of the poison that had killed Demick. I had pushed myself close to his death in order to keep the mind link going as long as I had, I had pushed it further than I should have. I felt weak and my body trembled with exhaustion. Any minute now the smoke would trigger the fire suppression systems but I didn’t have the energy in me to use my psy to snuff the smouldering carpet.


“That went well,” I said weekly, then vomited black bile over my lap and collapsed.