Every light in the Cathedral has gone dark.

Menials scrabble through the dark, hand over hand as they pick their way through metal and rust. They listen for the rumbling sounds of tracked servitors making their way blindly down the corridors, mechanical arms heavy with crates and boxes. Around the great central awning of Central Receiving Station boxes continue to be stacked on trains too overburdened to move even if the Motive Force had allowed them to do so. Amidst the twisting network of rail tracks runs another twisting network of pipes, groaning with the weight of unpumped prometheum and its ten thousand different refined products. Here and there amidst the grand dark come the weak flashes of personal flashlights - on and off quickly, then gone again, just enough time to get your bearings. Nobody knows when recharge will be available and so every drop of electricity is hoarded.

The Noosphere continues to buzz. Invisible, inaudible, but crackling against your skin like a living thing. It cannot be accessed - every terminal or transmitter which might receive or project it into the temporal world is offline - but even in the cold dark of a dead machine it hums close enough to touch. Now and then you can feel it run through your hair with electrical fingertips, feel it slither through your weaponry like a snake into a burrow, feel it ache against your eyes until the muscles spasm, impossible knowledge attempting to inflict itself on those unprepared to receive it.

Here in the grave you lie, Protomaga Secunda Toros. You have learned much already. First and foremost, you have learned that you did indeed die. You remember the theory, flash-sculpted into your mind, that your death and resurrection would be acknowledged by the Machine as a continuation of a single being and you would arise with full control of the Isohedron and its systems. The Machine [glory glory to it], unfortunately, has disagreed. You are a discrete entity, similar to but not the same as Magos Toros. This is not your rebirth but your birth, here amidst this vat of slime and glass.

It would have been sufficient to learn this. Sadly, that is not all that death has to teach you. Its second lesson is one of hubris: Your predecessor thought an independent power generator on an isolated circuit would be sufficient to ensure you were decanted from your cloning vat upon awakening. The Isohedron, again, disagreed. When it shut down it dragged down your laboratory despite your preparations, as though to rebuke you for your guesswork. Now you are trapped here in the slime, kept alive with a rebreather, organic fingers scrabbling against perfectly smooth glass. You have learned for next time to include a bolt pistol inside the vat so that you might have an easier egress.

A hell. You might well simply starve to death here. The nutrient slime that has sustained your generation will intoxicate as you wait for hours in the dark, in this hidden sanctum that nobody knows or can rescue you from. The Machine's cruelty when it comes to those who have underestimated it can be infinite, and now you writhe in the dark, paying the price for cheating death.

And then, a red light in the dark. A small thing. A dangerous thing. It traces its line gently across the room, scanning notebooks and tracing up and down cloning tanks. It stops over Toros Tertius, illuminating her desperate face in the dimmest of light.

Then it fires. Crack -SMASH-BLAM. A bolt round. It shatters the tank, plunges through the nutrient-gel, and blows out the brains of your sister-clone. Green slime, stained red, oozes from the broken vat.

You cannot see the shape of your twice-killer. The dim light of its laser sight does not reflect against its sleek, dark armour. The only clue you can discern is that, given the height of the gun from the ground, it is a giant. The stature of an Astartes, given how high it is as it raises its weapon and - BLAM BLAM. It guns down Toros Quadranis. Slime and blood washes thick across the floor, muffling the metallic tread of the assassin's footsteps. That was the last of your sisters. You are next. An hour ago you would have considered a quick death to be a mercy. Now, with your unaugmented human adrenal system screaming terror into your spine, it seems like anything but.

Sister Kota - you saw it in the dim light of its muzzle flash. The terrible mass of the Beast. It hunches in the dark like a nightmare. You see the dull gunmetal gleam of a bolter muzzle. You see smooth, black-painted ceramite panels that perversely echo your own powered armour. If you were to have seen a pict of this shape in daylight you might have thought it to be a crude image of one of the Emperor's Angels of Death. Here in the dark and wet, watching the way it moves, your heart tells you that this is nothing of His.

Your armour agrees. The Noosphere lashes through it, the powered systems whirring to full combat potential. You can feel the muscular microfibers twitch the sound of a hymn against your skin, you can feel the silenced weight of the cathedral drumming against your power pack, you hear a subtle hiss as your bolter readies itself to fire.

The Beast stops in front of the final tank. It is time to finish this hunt.

This moment has been a long time coming, months of hunting seemingly finally coming to an end.

When Kota agreed to take on the task of hunting this Beast down she had no idea it would take her all the way to the front door of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It had been a long and bloody endeavor, each time she came close to finding the Beast it slipped away from her. It looked familiar, yet not. She could never quite get the idea of what it looked like, but now she sees it for what it is. Something corrupt, unclean in His universe. Something that can't be left alive.

She hadn't been given much information on it this quarry of hers, but never the less she chooses to peruse it to the ends of the universe if she needs to. This has to be it, her test, and she has to pass it.

Kota approaches as sneakily as she can, wiping the dampness off her forehead and salt and pepper hair, her blaster at the bolter at the ready, a smile on her face when she sees that the Beast is cornered.

"The only way out of here is through me. I don't know what unholy abomination you are or what made you but you're not getting away from me this time." Kota aims her blaster at the Beast and fires.

For a first brief moment, Secunda contemplated sorrow. She was the last flicker of the guiding light that was the intellect of Archmagos Toros, surely dead by now, closely followed by the sparks of her backup brethren. All that towering treasury of knowledge, forbidden secrets, uncalled favours - useless, trapped by the Machine, about to be blown away by some brute doubtlessly following the simplistic orders of some two-bit rival. She rejected the emotion.

For another brief moment, Secunda contemplated triumph. Her fresh mind daydreamed of piercing through the armoglass, of reaching into the Noosphere, of having the automated killsystems kick in and riddle the unwanted invader with hypersonic penetrator rounds before dissolving him - slowly - in a xenoacid before her triumphant eyes. She rejected the delusion.

Finally, Secunda contemplated humility. She was just a cog in the outline of the Great Work - a guilded, complicated, ambitious, brilliant cog! - yet a cog nonetheless. Sometimes cogs get replaced. Sometimes you just need to have faith in the art of the Maker, who extracteth the beautiful, complicated, high-functioning parts to enhance the grand whole. She told that to the Draupnir representative once. He did not believe it at the time - she did not either.

Secunda Toros crossed her hands in the final prayer to Omnissiah, begging for forgiveness as she has sinned against the gifted potential, not employing it fully. Against the usual tradition, though, she kept her eyes wide open, refusing to stop observing reality as she was focusing on contemplation.

That way, she managed to observe her personal Godwyn-De'az-issued .998 caliber mass-reactive miracle piercing the dark.

The Beast does not react with supernatural instinct. It would have been less fearsome if it did.

Every round in Sister Kota's initial burst misses. It defies understanding - at this range, with this weapon, with this rate of fire, with the assistance of powered armour, filling a volume with mass-reactive rounds is a matter of mathematics and the possibility of a miss is a rounding error.

And yet the Beast has time to leisurely turn its head and assess the situation as mass-rounds impact around it in a halo of shrapnel.

The Beast does not move with supernatural speed. In fact, its movements are so lethargic as to seem themselves corrupt; an economy of motion that borders on sloth. Without so much as rotating its hips it taps its bolter sideways and dumps the entire mag into Sister Kota. As it empties the magazine, the Beast takes a long step backwards, finally swinging around to face the threat, red eye-lenses gleaming in the dark.

The Beast does not strike with supernatural strength. Instead, it invokes the Machine. It is reaching for its belt where a line of grenades hang on quick release hooks. At the same time it has pressed a large button on its wrist display and currents of eerie green Motive Force trace along its shoulders to its power-pack backpack. The engine there, concealed from sight, roars and vents a gust of noxious black smoke, flecked through with eerie motes of viridian energy.

Sister Kota
Health: Whatever evil fortune shielded the Beast, the God Emperor has seen fit to grant you a miracle to match; take only one point of damage.
Shooting: If the God-Emperor sees fit to grant us a second miracle, we may strike the beast before it reaches that grenade. Roll 1d6+shooting

Secunda Toros
Notice: Pay attention. Everything here so far has been under the aegis of the Omnissiah. The bolter, the armour, the grenades - even through the flicker-light of muzzle flashes you can see the legacy of Mars. But whatever it just activated, whatever that green device was - that is nothing of His. Spend one point to get a good look at it when it activates.

Shooting roll: 1d6 + 8 = 13 (5+8)

As the bolter fire misses the Beast and another round comes towards her Kota moves out of the way just in time, the blast injury barely slowing her down.

She grunts in frustration as she sees the Beast back away, "Trying to run again. So cowardly." She walks forward, silently thanking the Emperor for giving her just enough time to close some of the distance and corner the Beast further. She hears the hum of its power-pack backpack but from this angle it'd be impossible to hit. Her best chance is to fire before the grenades can be launched thrown.

Her eyes lock with glowing red ones, both of their wills and determinations clashing at that moment. A sworn duty to hunt this Beast down and the Beast's will to live.

"Let's finish this. I have much better, more important places to be." She takes aim and shoots it just as it reaches for the grenades at it's belt.

Secunda, still trapped in the cloning pod, observed the miracles with a degree of stoic resignation. As one venerable Sister Famulous once uttered with merry bitterness in her croaky voice... "When nothing can be done - relax, observe, and let the Emperor sort it out for you, cog-lass".

She denied the optimism of staying alive - the newfound enemy of her enemy has been under no obligation to be her saviour, after all. In fact, that could still be a gambit to win her trust. More convoluted and less likely schemes were planned as cogs spinned within cogs in the Isohedron See-Tertio Bastion.

She denied the rage as the miracle saviour proceeded to smash her laboratory with stray explosions. She had only herself to blame for that - stupid paranoid data-djinni that she put in charge of autodefense systems denied her accesses, while two active trespassers were turning her little sanctum into the battleground. She designed the whole thing, after all, having admitted that she was capable of making sufficient mistakes that would lead to this particular place seeing any activity in the first place.

She even denied the curiosity at this point. Whatever this thing was, whatever foul emerald gizmo it brought into the play - she'll either learn its functions in the immediate future through immediate observation or, in a rare case of a happy ending, through personal interaction after she's done dissecting the frame of the wielder. Gathering Knowledge for its own sake would mean bowing to the God-Machine alone, ignoring the warnings against misguided inquisitiveness streaming from the Omnissiah and neglecting the practical usage of the gathered data to honour the Motive Force. Yet another test from the Godhead Trinity, indubitably.

Secunda could only hope that whatever stray blast or rolling shockwave shatters the armoglass of the decanter pod, she would not be shattered herself as a sad case of collateral damage. She already died three times to direct action - would've been unfortunate to die the fourth and final time on a complete accident.

The Beast does not respond to its body being torn apart with supernatural obliviousness. Even a combat robot would twitch and jerk as mass-reactive rounds exploded inside its body and tore apart its hand. Instead it simply turns its head, raises its ruined arm to cover the neck joint in its armour, accepts bolt after bolt after bolt -

And then with a screech of machinery and a greasy detonation that leaves a twist of green smoke and a fractal distortion in reality, it is gone. A thick, dark red pattern of bloodstains spreads out in an uncanny pattern around where it had been standing.

Secunda Toros
Your vat has cracked. Fluids are draining out rapidly. Soon you will be able to undo your rebreather and escape - though you still might desire some assistance so as to not have to crawl over broken glass to do so.

So you have a moment to consider - and regret. Without augmentic eyes you cannot review the footage of what you saw and need to make do with imperfect memory. There are details you missed, but you witnessed the most important one through the reflections on a polished metal wall: the Beast was equipped with a Displacer Field.

A Displacer Field with unsanctioned modifications. Displacer Fields are almost extinct archaeotech designs, relics from a darker age - they are a combination force field and emergency teleporter; when the aetheric bubble is penetrated by a weapon, it hurls the subject through the Warp to a random nearby destination. Risky, but extremely effective. You yourself possessed one - a gift from ZRK-333.

Because ZRK-333 is one of a vanishingly few Magi who can manufacture entirely new Displacer Fields. Each one must be handcrafted and - between the Magos' other duties and interests - takes around a year to produce. You wore one of her designs as part of your personal defensive panoply, you saw that device every day - you recognize her handcrafted workmanship. And you saw that it had been somehow tampered with. The psychoresonance crystal was exposed, additional power sources were attached, there was a ring of stabilizer beads - someone had cracked that device open and altered it.

The result? Instead of functioning as it should, teleporting the Beast a few meters when the bubble was penetrated, it activated it deliberately with a button and is gone altogether. A personal teleportation device - mad. Mad! Even the elite warriors of the Astartes clad in tactical dreadnaught armour only teleport from specialized chambers aboard their starships. To do so in combat conditions passes beyond the boundaries of sanctioned knowledge.

Kota lets out a sigh, relived that her enemy is seemingly gone for now. With her gun still raised she walked forward with extreme caution, her footsteps echoing on the steel floor. There doesn't seem to be any trace left of the Beast except for the blood splatter it left behind. If she were less experienced she would have thought she won and that her hunt was over.

However that "death" didn't look like the death of any enemy she ever fought. It could be possible that this was a trick and that the Beast was still lurking around here somewhere so she was still on her guard as she surveyed the area around her.

The place was dim and seemed to be in a state of disrepair as it was and she didn't exactly want to be trapped here if something were to break and fall down on her. She took out a light and shined it across the room, trying to see if the wretched Beast might be hiding somewhere around her. Her breathing slows, she hones in on any sound that might mean the Beast was near. Nothing. It really does look like it was gone, at least for now.

When she reaches the spot where the Beast vanished from, she kneels down to investigate the blood splatter to see if she can perhaps recognize any marks of footprints it left behind, or find any clue as to the real nature of this Beast.

Toros shortly considered playing dead.

Her longevity has been, at least partially, secured by not attracting attention from bolter-wielding trespassers. She could reasonably stay in the decanter until this enemy-of-an-enemy leaves the premises and start figuring it all out all on her own. In fact, that one was, perhaps, the most reasonable course of action. Thought of the day: "Trust in your fear".

Secunda bit the inside of her lip, enhancing her connection with the Godhead with the metal taste on her tongue. Choosing the reasonable course of action time after time was exactly the path she would have expected from herself. She wouldn't be here if that one worked out perfectly. The path was generally clear - gently knock on the glass so that the interloper doesn't recognize her as another ambusher, work her way through the locking mechanism and through the hard conversation. After all, that won't be the first time Archmagos silver tongue sliced her way out of mortal danger.

She opened her mouth a split second before realizing the trappings of the flesh she had failed to account for. Silver-tongued approach had to give way for a violent fit of coughing and retching against the flat surface, the lungs switching to a disgustingly natural way to clear themselves from the liquid. Secunda tried to comfort herself with the thought that at least she was not looking remotely dangerous in this miserable state.

Somehow, that exact thought made her want to die again.

Sister Kota!

[Forensic Pathology] The blood on the floor is beyond recovery - it has landed in a complex slurry of broken glass, nutrient fluids and blood from the two slain clones. You are ankle deep in the stuff and every time you lift your armoured boot it leaves an impression like you have stepped in gelatin.

You might still find a sample splashed into a wall, but that itself is no easy matter. Bolt rounds are mass-reactive explosive projectiles, meaning any splatter has been thrown in wild directions and potentially mixed with the blood of the clones who died to the same manner of weapon. Spend one point to obtain a clean sample.

[Military Science] That is the tread of a power armoured boot all right, but Emperor help you if you can figure out the mark of the armour from that alone. Maybe if you could somehow preserve the impression before the sludge loses cohesion you could reference it later but fuck knows how you'd do that.

[Research] Though - when in doubt, you can always do worse than asking a Tech Priest.

Secunda dropped out of the vat on her knees as the lid gave in, still viciously coughing. Biology might have saved her life, but did little to save her dignity. The usual, almost subconscious routine of "deep breaths" was backfiring in a quite spectacular manner. Finally, she managed to slowly raise her hands and lift her corporal prison from the ground in at least somewhat non-pitiful way.

Armed people tend to reserve the right to ask questions for themselves. This, of course, puts every unarmed tech-priest in a precarious state where following the natural instinct to seek knowledge makes things difficult when communicating with people from the wrong side of the barrel. That, by the way, was the core reason why the unofficial motto of Explorator Division was "You get more with curiosity and a gun than with curiosity alone".

That being said, Maga bet that she would be able to ask a single question before being put in her natural, unarmed position of the one giving answers. The holodex of potential things to learn flurried through her mind in a slow, unoptimized manner. Stupidity of "Who are you?", boldness of "What are you doing in my laboratorium?", sheer incompetence of "What was that?"... Toros ascended to Arch-Magos through lifting herself above tactical problems, always focusing on the bigger picture. Until, of course, someone with more focus on tactical problems seemed to kill her and put Secunda in the uncaring arms of an unrecognizing machine spirits. The proper question to ask would've been "Who am I?", yet, Secunda somehow doubted that a complete stranger would give her this particular answer. Specifically because the answer hinged on another important question.

"Who... rules... the Iso... hedron?", vocal cords, soaked in decanter liquid, torn by coughing fits, fought her. She secured her first little victory.

'Archmagos Toros' would be the preferred, if unlikely, answer - she could step into her own shoes, as nobody has yet noticed her demise through the passed days in the vat and uncounted days before activation. "Regency Council" would put her as a "candidate", as she would have to work through the cogs in the cogs in the cogs, spinning on the way to re-secure the Prima Key to the world. Another Archmagos would mean a long time of working her way out of Martian guilded cage or Draupnir's exile.

Even the smartest golden cog would still prefer to know her place in the grand scheme of things before starting to spin things her way.

Upon hearing someone, or something, land against the hard floor Kota trains her bolter on the source of sound. It takes her eyes a while to adjust to the new person in the room, scanning over the seamingly female individual that is seemingly barely holding herself together and having trouble to even stand up on her own. She lowers her bolter but not fully, she was still working off adrenaline as she approached, casting one last look at the blood splatter she left behind when she shot the Beast. "If you're asking about the factory, last I heard there was a murder. That's all I know. That's now why I'm here."

She approaches further, thinking over her options: should she be hostile or merciful?

This individual doesn't seem like a threat, but it also might not be human, that was always a possibility. She already had enough trouble because she underestimated the Beast she was hunting. It could happen again if she's not careful.

Her eyes scan over it's form carefully, "Are you... with the Archmagos? Be careful how you answer. I'm not in a mood for games and you don't exactly look... put together." She glanced at her bolter and then back at the... woman. Should she proves to be hostile she would get rid of her, but if she can be useful then she would let her live.

Cogs in the mind of Secunda Toros whirred into action as she processed the answer while trying to balance looking dignified and unintimidating. The second was not a significant problem for the default flesh configuration fresh out of the decanter tank.

Primo, there has been a murder and the interloper happened to be ignorant of any new Arch-Fabricators coming onto the top of the food chain. Any successor would have made damn sure that everyone remembers who is the new ruler of the Forge. Toros herself spent her first year on highly aggressive prole indoctrination campaign, after all.

Secundo, nobody on Isohedron, especially no servant of the Omnissiah, would dare call it "a factory". This was a reductionist take on what Isohedron was supposed to be, the manufactorums being almost an Olympia-enforced byproduct of the cathedral of knowledge. She was of another faith and walked under different skies, that's for sure.

Tertio et ultimo, only two Adepta would have sent someone clad in power armour and brandishing a bolter. And last time Toros checked, you needed a weapon between your legs before being allowed to wield one for Astartes. Which brought her to the obvious, yet inexplicable conclusion that she has an independent, armed and dangerous Sororitas in the inner sanctum of the Mechanicum facility - and, due to miscellaneous mishaps in the succession protocol, Secunda was NOT the one in a position to ask any of the thousand angry questions in her head.

"Sister, it is a bit complicated, but I am not with Archmagos Toros, for I am Archmagos Toros. You, of all people, should know that 'only in death doth the Duty end' is a luxury not everyone can afford.", Secunda raised her hands and forced out a weak smile as she was desperately trying not to shiver (of course, it was just cold). "And before I eagerly answer any further questions... If I am not mistaken, there should be a robe in the drawer on the wall behind you. I would appreciate being allowed some dignity."

Kota looked over the Archmagos, clocking that there are seemingly no hidden weapons on her person. "So you're not affiliated with the Archmagos then? You're... independent? That's interesting, for you."

She glanced at the drawer close to the wall then back at the Archmagos. It would be awkward interrogating her when she's in such a state, even Kota had to admit that. So she walked over to the drawer and rummaged through it, noting everything else in it, the small cogs, the tools, the mechanical bits that she didn't quite know where there would go.

Even if she didn't know what she did know was that there weren't any weapons there, so she was safe. With a sigh of relief she put her gun away and grabbed the. She looked it over, it wasn't in the best state or quality. Had it been some time since it was put away? If so how long had this woman been here?

Kota walked back towards the woman and tossed the robe at her. "Here. Please, cover up, there's no need to freeze." She crossed her arms over her chest, her stance a bit more relaxed than moments after. "Now for some questions. How long have you been here? What can I call you, Archmagos? And since I'm asking you, I suppose it would be only right to introduce myself as well. You may call me Kota, I'm with the Order of the Sacred Rose."

A lot of the tech-clergy bragged about having no flesh weaknesses. Toros always pitied them as poor souls knew nothing of themselves, their weaknesses always uncovered by the others in ways cruel and dramatic. Fortunately, Toros had tallied up hers pretty well.

Thrumbofur. One of the frontier worlds on the coreward rim has been a natural habitat for a breed of rare, long-living, white-maned beasts. They just so happened to produce some of the gentlest, softest leather known to Toros, something interacting with her skin in a way so right that she had cautiously ordered several biochemical and psyonic investigations into why. After those ended inconclusively, she admitted that, apparently, she happens to be a being of refined tastes. Thrumbofur lines integrated into the most unassuming robes were her personal weakness and she never found a reason to hate herself over it. Especially since she left herself another thread-through robe to calm down after the stress of getting reborn.

It wasn't designed to calm down the level of stress that one experiences after getting trapped for days in decanter pod, watching herself die a couple more times and getting interrogated by a bolter-wielding nun. It did its best, though.

She shook her head, clearing up her thoughts. She bought herself some time and dignity, but that was in no way a safe place to be.

"Independent is an ugly word, Sister. Lady Hollzenstein is maybe the only one truly independent being in the whole Houndclaw and, Omnissiah be my witness, we could use less independence around here. Still, we all have to suffer her for another couple of decades, even going by the most optimistic divinations. I've always thought she was going to leave her mark in the Houndclaw history, never figured out that it would be such a dark one.", Secunda winced as she slowly paced around the laboratory, leaning above the dead bodies. "Here are Tertius and Quadrantis Toros, my third and fourth bodies, backup plans that never quite came into play. The very fact that I am awake means that my first body ceased its functions as well. Pity. A lot of good bionics are going to need some deep cleaning."

She kneeled on one knee against the decapitated Tertia, examining the blood splatters.
"We were reactivated after the data-djinnis registered that the first body suffered a termination of biological functions. Access recognition protocols went haywire - didn't recognize me as Archmagos, tried restoring Archmagos again, activated Tertia, didn't recognize her, activated Quadrantis, didn't recognize him, left us closed in the pods for a couple of days.", Secunda waved her hand unsuredly. "I've had some deep talks with myself using just blinking and gestures. Quadrantis even figured out some jokes. We almost agreed that Tertia should've been the one activated, the other two should've gone into stasis until I had my run in the third subject body. Yet, alas, I, Archmagos Toros, happen to survive in the second body. Subject "Secunda". Good, stable, if unambitious prototype. You can call me that, for the time being, Kora of the Sacred Rose."

A skull upon the wall began to chatter its teeth wildly. The gleaming blue eye lens almost rattled out of its socket, and a thick bundle of white cables spilled out of its mouth like a monster's tongue. "KEYWORD - ARCHMAGOS - TOROS - SECUNDA - ACTIVATED. Greetings, Archmagos. Congratulations upon cheating death. Congratulations. Noospheric uplink established. Noospheric processes prepared: Infocite bomb to delete all reporting of your death. Wide-spectrum broadcast announcing your resurrection. Noospheric uplink to Isohedron Skitarii Marshal. Congratulations. Congratulations. Deploy?"

[Data Recovery]
10> Load HymnOfRegretForWhatWasLost.mpg
20> This machine is damaged.
30> Be very careful in your phrasing.
40> Voice activated machines can be set off by casual or incautiously spoken keywords.

*

[Diagnosis] Whoever spilled this blood is extremely unwell and in need of urgent medical attention!

Um. Not just because they got shot by a bolter multiple times. Sorry. Let me explain.

So if you spill standard issue human blood then there are a whole set of things that happen, and a whole set of different things that happen if it lands in nutrient sludge. To start with - oh, well, I don't really need to get into it, do I? You've kind of got a lot of control groups all around. They're not doing whatever this stuff is. It looks like the subject's blood is forming this strange condensed clot pattern wherever it hits the nutrient sludge. It's doing something similar where it's hit the wall but way slower scale.

That's what I can tell you for free. I could - oh wait, we're in a medical facility! Oh - the power's out. Look, we're doing this by eye while being lit by a single flashlight; spend a point and I can narrow this down to human, xenos or warp.

"Lady Kora, this call means a world to me - quite literally. Cannot afford the Regency council to steal my position from under my freshly decanted nose, not after being that late in announcing the miraculous salvation of mine.", Secunda massaged her temples, slowly remembering the times when she wasn't immune to the concept of migraine. "Meanwhile, you have some time preparing the answer to some of the obvious questions of mine. Starting with... What exactly are you even doing here, Sister? Aside from saving my life, of course. Deploy."

Secunda did not bother to rise up from the bodies and puddles of blood. Marshall was a strange beast, almost too smart and too old for someone stemming from the Skitarii corps - she never quite figured out what he was, really, but he was most definitely not squeamish. Everyone with two neural pathways figured out that something went wrong, well beyond the reasonable parameters for maneuvering, so outright denying that would be an attempt transparently vain. Let them see the faceless bloody bits and the bolt-riddled machinery.

Let them see her unharmed against the backdrop of violence. Someone shot the devil and missed. Everyone should figure out what is going to come next for them.

The next for her, of course, would be quite simple and pragmatic. Find the culprit and make them vanish. Then find his immediate allies and make a grim example out of them, so that everyone's curiosity about what hell happened to the culprit spawns a wave of rumours slowly refining into some excessively grim legend she'll never confirm or deny.

As she was speaking to the Marshall, she grabbed the nearest dataslate and started jotting down notes for the Kora to see.

"Whoever killed my bodies:
a) Wanted to make a statement and/or steal my tech. Hence a bolter to capture the place and remove witnesses, not a bomb to level it down.
b) Assumed to be an enhanced human baseline. Xenos would not use a bolter. Astartes would kill both of us. Most other things wouldn't leave blood.
c) Had a displacer field jury-rigged for long-distance jumps. Surprisingly advanced level of tech-heresy to just save one life. Damnation in the long run from sheer exposure - guaranteed. Esteemed ZRK-333 would be furious to learn. Nobody goes to these lengths to save a disposable pawn, so that was no servitor or combat automata.

Current assumed profile:
Heretek Militant Majoris. Either on Hollzenstein's leash or with someone mad and ambitious enough to make a shot for my place.

Immediate next steps:
Trace the fragger down - his genes, his bolter casings, his armour."

Her face scrunches up as the Archmagos asks about her mission. She didn't know what to say honestly. "Well... my official mission here is to hunt down the Beast that made this bloody mess you see around your lab. I thought I was successful but if it teleported away it means my hunt is long from over. It's giving me a lot of trouble, but I can't deny it's been fun." A smile tugged on the edges of her lips.

"On a more personal level, I suppose I'm looking for guidance and forgiveness from the Emperor." She mumbles to herself more than to the Archmagos in front of her.

She looks around the lab for anything that may be useful to her. Most of the machinery seems unfamiliar to her but that doesn't meant that the Archmagos over here can't provide her with more information.

"Is there anything here that could be of use to me? I don't know hold long this hunt will last and I'd like to be as prepared as possible. And as long as I'm here, is there anything more I could get for you, in exchange for information?" She didn't feel too good about working with someone from the Archmagos, but this woman seemed to have her own set of troubles to deal with. It would be best that she didn't get too involved.

"Deploy."

Times had changed in Houndclaw. Marshal November was the bleeding edge of that transition. The only thing old about her was that she arrived in less than two minutes from being signaled. She had always been fast.

She first appears as an ultraviolet reflection in mirrorshades. Then she enters simultaneously through every door and window and ventilation shaft - noospherically networked cyborg bodies in perfect synchronicity. She wears skintight synthskin bodygloves and sleek grox leather trenchcoats; showing everything and concealing everything. There is such potential violence in the dancelike coordination of her motion that it seems like she must be armed even though her hands are empty. Once she stood upon the battlefield in armoured plating and fired radium artillery into biotitans so large they blotted out the sky. That memory does not feel a tenth as lethal as she is now.

"Sister Kota," she said. "Good to see you again."

She offered all seven left hands for high fives.

You served alongside her during the Porphyrios Invasion. It was hard not to - she was the striking arm of the Skitarii legions. That meant jumping from dropships on grav-chutes to deliver crates of ammunition, repair components, and salvage teams whenever a unit had become bogged down in heavy fighting. Then she was off again, grinning and saluting as she left you to face the horrors alone. "Professionals do logistics," she'd say as she abandoned you for the third time to face the horrors. Hard not to love her. Hard not to hate her.

"How you been? Last I saw you there was an incoming Ravener hive," she said, as one of her copies placed an ident-scanner against Toros' forehead and got a loud, negative beep. "Is this biotrash bothering you?"

Ah crap. Skitarii are simple. They live in a world of magic, machinery and mystery, and endure it with a studied ignorance. The Machine says that you are not the Archmagos, and so Toros Secunda is nothing more than an unsanctioned clone with no personnel record. Biotrash. Everything that makes her difficult to trick and difficult to bribe is now a problem.

Secunda tilted her head for a second, processing new information and relishing in the sensation of bitter anger burning her throat. She almost missed this adrenaline rush of pure, crystalline hatred against the uncaring universe, that jet drive that propelled her in her station in the first place. That being said, she was curious enough to ingest all the new inputs, not leaning into the emotional channel.

Sister's official mission implied that whoever tried murdering her had a baffling habit of making enemies out of Adepta. It was not easy to become a target for both Sororitas and Mechanicus and survive in the long term, the thing that the greatest Lord Administratum learned first-hand.

Sister's personal search for "guidance" and "forgiveness" was... troubling, to say the least. It would inherently imply that she was being misguided and that she had done something to beg forgiveness for in the first place. Secunda made a mental note to check that deeper in a better time and place. That being said, November inadvertently vouched for Kora - neither recognition nor politeness of Skitarii were not something trivially won. At least Kora was a Sister, at least she was a veteran, at least she fought xeno-scum, and she performed at least to an admirable degree if November cared to remember it.

Speaking of recognition and politeness... The main differentiating factor between Skitarii Corps and the Tech Priesthood has always been the relationship with the unknown. Priesthood has always been a force attacking the unknown by slowly uncovering its true nature, sorting it between known, unknowable, and forbidden. Skitarii complemented them as a force defending against the unknown by swiftly turning it into some sort of molten slag.

And Secunda, right now, just happened to be a thing unknown by and unpredicted for the Marshal. Fortunately, November was a tad bit smarter than her brethren, asking questions before going for the guns. Which is why she made it to her rank in the first place.

Finally, as Secunda collected her wits, she made specific note that at least three things came into her sanctum uninvited within the last hour. Apparently, she was not as smart, secretive and well-defended as Prima believed herself to be. Moron. No wonder she's dead.

"Marshal, this biotrash, unfortunately, is a vital cog in the plan designed by Archmagos Toros, evidenced by the currently propagating message in the noosphere. And I assume that you at least acknowledge my rights to execute her will, otherwise, I am surprised at still alive after deploying an infocyte bomb.", Secunda politely spread her hands. Skitarii had some pride in own lethality, and leaning onto that was never exactly a wrong thing. "Acting as an executor of her will, I would love to report an attack on Archmagos Toros assets, committed by a criminal wanted by Adepta Sororitas, who also happens to be a heretek and a personal affront to Omnissiah. We were just discussing exactly that with Sister Kota. Given that you are expected to be the force ensuring the security of Isohedron, we would love to forge out a cooperation in having this problem permanently solved."

Don't be an unknown factor. Fit yourself into some pre-determined shape in her robust operational parameters. Always paint her a clear target so that she won't herself try searching for things to murder away. Pray that you don't make it to the top of her list before re-securing the throne.