Of all the cattle trapped aboard the Rogue Trader's voidship, there were so very few that earned Marazhai's greatest attentions. Fewer than few that deserved them.
One such that he had never anticipated. Not under any will or blackest fate.
The Inquisitor? Really?
Von Valancius had found their shared investigation... acceptable. Narmer IV, the mineworld, was lost and to be rebuilt: that the two had done all they could against a pirate mutiny gouging the already small populous.
Never mind the hue of the blood.
Never mind the thermoplas displaced just slightly on Marazhai's left bicep. Never mind the hole plunging into Heinrix's abdomen- ah, what? No no, Lord Captain. All had gone well on Narmer. The disease was culled and the colony ready for new stock.
At the time, in a moment of strain (Marazhai would find this to be the first of many moments), they were bound to one another. By carnage and revelry? By their shared likeness to one another?
By Loyalty?
He suspected the former, of course. He would say no more to no one. The pleasure and thrill brought to him on Narmer IV was... exquisite.
Almost enough to sate him through the next jump. The Inquisitor's mad presence alone simply starved him again and he frustrated himself in craving the presence. It coloured the Drukhari pale in a make of disbelief entirely too self-aware when he was... eager.
To go with Heinrix.
It was he after all that allowed Marazhai his play. His hunts. His satisfaction. The Inquisitor a judge that released him mercifully from binds, he found; Marazhai's eyes piercing in bliss when they partook together.
Did his God Emperor look upon them in their blissful murder? Did he enjoy it also?
It pleased him for some time as von Valancius charted their course from Narmer and away again. Where he would have them venture together enough that him and Heinrix became acquainted. Hmph. So much that the same slavering, sardonic panting became a delight; the laughing and the sneering overhead of the Inquisitor a precursor to slaughter.
He set claws on him in eager anticipation of what always came next.
--
It was a revelry that did not last so long. Mon-keigh and their ways.
They returned from a mission injured and Marazhai was blamed; the Drukhari bound by von Valancius in punishment. He must have lost himself in a bloodlust despite their bond.
It was no more a punishment at first- but he was disallowed from leaving the voidship and confined to its quietest chambers. The inner walls of this tub a resenting prison in time. There would be no hunt for him. No sex or satisfaction from Valancius.
Not even when he begged. Not to the Rogue Trader.
Would the Inquisitor question him or hear Marazhai? No. He knew not the whys or the hows. It was not important either. Not for Heinrix to know. He was no more than prey; a fascination who knew not his own instincts.
That they had hunted with one another meant almost nothing.
Panting and snarling became desperate, degenerate, alone, after time. The whispers replaced the engines.
They gripped his soul in moments alone and he would be grasped by shocking sincerity. The fear. Terror basal.
He was not prepared for Her. How could he be? So soon? When forced to contend with realspace and the screaming Warp through the walls?
--
On the bridge, the crackle of the vox is a squall. The Rogue Trader, alone with van Calox, presided over the starmap and it was as though the sound itself rendered the ship silent.
He regards it with eyes on Heinrix, his brow stiff suddenly. The timing uncanny.
The consequences of this jump unheard and nothing reported by the crew and so it had been deemed fine. In the Warp even now, it must have been some non-issue. Perhaps a problem with the shields or the deep engines. Or the lower deck..?
"Lord Captain, there is an... an emergency at the officers' deck."
The vox crackles, warbled, as Vigdis keys up.
Her voice shuddered. Valancius licked his lips nervously in an instant and made a face.
"Numerous victims, loss of communication... the voidsmen report warp-voices filling the compartments... but this is not a warp breach. This is... the xenos you took aboard. He has gone mad."
All was a still static as Vigdis recalled the accounts, the circumstances. The bridge itself was cold in icy dread suddenly.
The air was viscous for it. The Drukhari was maltrained, mad, untrustworthy. He had already damaged goods and crew in his time roaming the ship and the Lord Captain's orders. Now left to roam somewhere nebulous where the Warp could be beckoned to all their very forms.
Valancius' lips tighten as he stares at Heinrix, paler for the news.
"-What will your orders be?"
Marazhai had made Heinrix feel like a dam under duress. Electricity rising like a tide in his spine every time they spoke at one another.
He told himself that the blunting of his fury was by means of simple exposure. All the better to carry out the Lord Captain's will, even if it meant cooperation with a creature whose existence was anathema to everything Heinrix believed.
And they did-cooperate, that is-to his displeasure.
After Narmer IV, their efficacy saw Valancius assign them further tasks and Heinrix, at first begrudgingly, proceeded with each and every one. It was soon a pretense.
Their most recent foray? Pleasant. He would admit that to himself only.
And they did cooperate. To his initial displeasure, their efficacy was undeniable. After the ash-wastes of Narmer IV, where the Drukhari’s vicious speed had saved their hides, Valancius assigned them further tasks. The begrudging acceptance soon became a grim, functional routine. Heinrix found himself almost looking forward to their forays—they were a sharp, clean antidote to the cloying politics of the Rogue Trader’s court. In the bloody simplicity of a hunt, there was a terrible honesty he had come to appreciate. Marazhai, for his part, had ceased his constant, petty barbs, replacing them with a focused, predatory stillness that Heinrix found almost... familiar.
He had to admit two truths he kept locked away from his reports. One: he enjoyed the violence they wrought together—a measured, purposeful violence that mirrored the cold satisfaction of his own duties. Yet, he would not speak it. Not yet. And he had scant plans to do so. Ever. And two: the Drukhari was not loyal, not in any human sense, but he was dependable. His self-interest was a predictable constant, a foundation upon which Heinrix could build tactical trust. Marazhai needed the Rogue Trader's protection or resources, and that made him, for now, a reliable blade.
--
Time passed with merciful few appearances from Marazhai.
Time passed with few excuses to venture with him and... Feel free for doing so. Something about his candid interest and attention was welcome. With the Rogue Trader it was, in essence, many ways the same thing he'd come to expect from answering to the High Inquisitor.
He was willing to admit that it had all become rather automatic for him again.
It was, in fact, he and Marazhai's outings that had become the colour of thrill he thinks was precisely what was missing--If he spent some time to reflect. (And he did, many nights since Narmer IV.)
He had, to his disbelief, even been rolling an exchange he'd overheard around in his head.
First, Marazhai's insistence that his diabolism was necessity. Second, his frequent and impassioned pleas for 'hunting grounds.'
In the beginning, hearing Valancius deny him filled Heinrix with deep relief. That he was not so lost to the villainous charisma that had convinced him of its use at all.
But that voice.
Marazhai truly believed he needed this thing. Heinrix knew a truth when he heard it. The same as knowing a lie.
It was the first time he considered how miserable the creature was to be here in fact. And that was the measure of his loyalty.
That understanding led to the most dangerous feeling of all: an upsetting sympathy. Heinrix recognized the Drukhari’s ceaseless pleas for 'hunting grounds' for what they were—the desperate need of a soul staving off a slow, psychic decay. He understood that Marazhai’s entire flamboyant existence was a cage of constant motion, a frantic flight from a doom Heinrix could only begin to comprehend. She Who Thirsts.
...
He stood, wrist clasped behind himself as he awaited the Rogue Trader's pleasures in discussing whatever mystery revealed itself to his interest.
Perhaps another expedition with--
Heinrix felt a chill at the edge of the warp. Minutes from projected emergence into realspace. Travelling through the warp was not easy for him either. It required his full attention. But this was like a ribbon's ripple in the air behind his nape. He shuddered, but it passed. This was ordinary for him and paid it no further mind. Not until the vox crackled minutes later.
He drops his hands and peers into the dark chasm near as he listened.
Warp breach? Idira?
He knew she was one neurosis from being a--
-the xenos you took aboard. He has gone mad.
Heinrix' brows harden and he felt his blood chill. His thoughts raced now, when just moments ago he was drifting. Concentrating on shutting all out.
What will your orders be?
Heinrix looks at his Lordship for moments, eyes wider than was usual. Expectant? He thinks?
"Lordship? You want me to--?" His eyes narrow. "I might be able to-- There's no time." He almost breathes.
Valancius spoke, "Tell those you can contact to keep away from the area. I'll see to this madness myself."
Heinrix, ever pleased with his lordship's hurry when it mattered, turns on his heel and they both proceed apace.
At the lift, he is alone.
Abelard, Emperor love him, stood in front of Valancius and was surely advising him against this. It was foolish.
"Send a damned firing squad, then--!" Heinrix heard Valancius snarl as the lift doors closed, leaving Heinrix to his solitary, rapid descent. His own body moved on instinct, his mind already fraying as he reached out, trying to feel the shape of the corruption ahead.
He arrived to a charnel house. The stench of blood and ozone was thick enough to taste. He stepped on a severed arm, noting with grim detachment how it rolled under his boot. Ahead, a few voidsmen stood frozen, their faces masks of pure terror. Yrliet, taller than the rest, was a still point in the chaos, her expression unreadable. And beyond her, Marazhai, a whirlwind of bloody motion, was tearing an officer apart.
Heinrix watches, swallows. Doesn't panic. But how does one quell this? This was, he knows, not simply Marazhai having had enough. This was a warp madness madder than any he'd seen.
The panting was laden with blood and saliva and a labour uncharacteristic of the creature's "hunts."
Yrliet's winnowing song pauses as the Drukhari had come to watch her, eyes reflecting the colour of insanity. Emptiness. Oh, terror.
Something in her words gave pause to the madness.
She regards Heinrix and speaks quickly.
"You know what has taken place, alayshari."
He does.
"I know that you and he have a bond." He doesn't question it in the moment. "Please, alayshari. We can drive back the servants of She Who Thirsts."
He feels as though Yrliet was giving him far too much credit in her hazy provisions of information. But he did know one thing. She Who Thirsts. Even killing Marazhai now during a breach would spare them little.
Marazhai moves.
Yrliet looks to him again in a hurry and spoke in rushed tones.
Heinrix knew she was right. Killing the host now would do nothing but release the entity. He had to reach into the storm.
And winces. There were claws here. Instantly, Yrliet's wailing and Marazhai's baying frayed into broken shards. Then nothing again. The sounds rush back in clarity, like the very forces assailing them wanted no distraction from their prize. The soul they so desired.
He realized only a second had passed and Marazhai, pure instinct, approached in a haze with claws drawn.
"Alayshari, please!"
Yrliet's earnest pleas reach him. Resolved, he stepped forward to meet the charge, throwing the full weight of his sanctioned will against the psychic hurricane.
He winced as psychic claws raked across his mental defenses. He felt the entity's presence—a shriek of raw want, an abyss of endless, gluttonous desire. Marazhai’s physical claws tore at his coat as they met, but that pain was distant. Heinrix roared with effort, sending them both to the deck, his mind no longer perceiving the plasteel corridor but a roiling sea of purple and pink madness. He searched through the chaos, his brain feeling as if it were growing teeth. He had to find the core of the possession, the anchor point.
He was within the storm now, and in its aetheric thrashing, he knew with cold certainty that he would not survive this. Better me than Valancius, was his last coherent thought, before he committed his soul entirely to the abyss.
The descent was not a gracile, dignified, slow thing. It was methodical- and then chaos. A knife from the dark at a jugular. A screaming talon from the blackness in all of its horrendous ways. Purest terror.
Blood. In his peripherals somewhere. He could smell it; taste it. Cold steel.
Marazhai had not been prepared- was it possible to be? In the throes of starvation? In some awareness of himself and yet not present at all, his soul writhed and roared in efforts beyond his strength. Exhausted. Any breath stolen was as though gasping in ash.
All, subsumed. He did not even know where he was. The physical no longer a concern.
Had he known- he would have laughed. The vaunted von Valancius- would kill him. He would have been certain.
Valancius. Van Calox. The voidship. The artisan watched these things, slithering around them at the edges of sleep and wakefulness. It cared not what they were. It would take them too.
The maw of the Prince welcomed him with open, wailing horror more overwhelming than anything. Whispers now screams and claws. So many. So hungry. He could only struggle with no body to fight.
Man's screams did not reach him at all, locked in agonised primal fervour. Look at you. Look at you, child. Look at me. Follow my voice.
The deck, a massacre, warned plain any who dared step near the creature's feast.
The innards of one officer lay under claws frozen in agonising tension, the Drukhari transfixed. His blade, across the floor. At some point it had been thrown or tossed there. Perhaps in effort to restrain him.
A look closer at the crouching beast would see that he was far away. If the body had ever been a sapient, living creature- it was no longer.
Darkness eclipsed both eyes in a perfect mirror of the void.
Metal. Steel? Blood. So much blood. He smelled it and the scent reached nothing. A distant memory fraying quickly under duress of the Prince's horrors.
Heinrix, Yrliet- others too- would see Marazhai's body crouched, ready to pounce, with claws bared and his body as a statue in recoiled terror.
Marazhai himself was not here as his body panted, rabid and fighting to remain. claws and teeth and tongue were drenched in fresh blood and saliva stringing to the floor in exhaustion- in horror beyond imagining for such a trapped soul.
A song in the dark offers an alternative. Clarity, deep in his mind.
His malignance fights to keep him enclosed within as he was tempted deeper into the warp.
"At last... look at him..." A voice from beyond. It was seductive and chilling at once and piercing in any near body's mind. An omnipresent horror.
The tongue it used was as nothing ever spoken by man or aeldari and yet its clarity was clear. It was horrendous.
When it chuckles and hisses it was through the skulls of all present as a distant ripple in the warp. Shrill and piercing and entirely seductive.
"Look at how he yearns for all of my Prince's torments. Look at how he rejects. A stubborn child."
Even still- even as Yrliet speaks- it looks at her. He looks at her. His head snaps towards the Aeldari and a guttural, loud hiss rips itself from his throat. Unworldly and without form.
He did not see her. Not truly. The creature did- and watched. Lurching over itself and its annihilated prey in desperation.
The form did not crack until another meets eyes with it. Then, it stops.
The body's head winces in agony as it turns towards Heinrix, poising. Within, the Warp annihilated. There would surely be no inclination left of a soul at all.
When the Inquisitor steps near...
"And you..."
The growl that follows is an unholy, vicious thing from the Drukhari's bloody maw.
Then Marazhai's body thrashes and bares teeth, unsteady on its feet. It raises its claws to him with a face as pale as ice; ice that touched the floor. The walls and beams of the corridor were coated in some thin layer of it.
The voice speaks again in sultry indifference as Heinrix approaches.
"My prince will grant him all the bliss he desires to his soul... already owned. It was only a matter of time."
Marazhai reciprocates through the wailing and he meets the Inquisitor's white-hot body with a thud, thrown back. It makes the Drukhari hiss in agony and he clutches the gilded uniform with a guttural, piercing scream.
Then the claws appear.
They grab, struggling, piercing through the thick jacket in long moments as the body holds him.
The artisan writhes through Heinrix's mind with a chilling, impossible resonance. In darkness it finds his beacon so easily and yet- it could not devour him. Not yet. Why?
"The lost child belongs to my Prince. You need only surrender him." It sings. It recognises the colours instantly. It recognises the intruder. By his soul and the vibrancy of his mind. Degenerate. "And you will be next. All bliss will be yours. My master will grant you your inhibitions."
The omnipresence was sickening. Overloud.
Not a voice at all- but sensation deep within. Like a shrill cackling that pierced through the veil of the mind and shattered the glass shielding sanity.
"And all bliss and torment in this universe will be yours."
Marazhai wails in agony in the same chord. His jaw, slack and speechless, forming nothing but hissing and growling so animalistic drowning under his own blood and saliva.
As Heinrix held his body so tightly he dissents with hissing- ripping and tearing. His head snaps sidelong in desperation to bite at the offered- clothed- throat.
"If you let me get close to him..."
The pleas and chanting- lost on him- no. They reach him for moments. Distant. Gnawing. He sees the light offered so deep in the dark and breaks the maw's fang for just one moment.
The presence would find Heinrix. It pushes back with an otherworldly wailing in an instant as all ran cold- veins, steel, skin, and a voice unfindable squirms and digs deep into the Inquisitor's head with the most viscous laughter.
Marazhai blinks dryly and clutches harder in an instant as he rakes the Inquisitor's back in an effort to escape, twisting and thrashing against the wider form. Anything heard was found, heard, lost. In waves and ripples between the terror of the Prince.
Through all, he was frozen. His muscles corded tight as he tears Heinrix's body but his face a gaunt canvas of deepest terror unblinking. Heinrix would feel his chest heaving and his breath frozen against himself if he stilled.
He roars and pants as he claws over flesh and muscle and leans to bite- to kill. As the artisan fights to get the man off.
A flicker in those black eyes wavers.
This... This was all-consuming. Heinrix knew, even as he flitted between instinct and highest awareness, that their bodies lay somewhere on a sheet of hoarfrost, blood speckling the ice with each passing moment. Time had vanished. There was only the battleground invisible to all others, and the voice—a susurrus that licked at the edges of his mind before it bit down hard.
It was in these moments that he could find himself in the whorl and reaches without a hand for the presence within the aether that he sought. His heart, so far below him now, threatens to burst in mounting fear as he screams into the dark. Without a voice of his own.
It was-- His body panted-- Overwhelming. Aware of him acutely. Many formless wills danced in this mindspace and he can't recall, in the short space of a pin's width- a time he'd had to fight this hard through a breach.
He'd never had to fight a servant of chaos for it's ambrosia. No.
Was this worth it? His soul, unwilling, part of the battle now. Beckoned by a voice so... If it took form it would be a snake within his veins.
The lost child belongs to my Prince.
Heinrix's mind wavers in recognition.
Not only that releasing Marazhai was all it would take to make this suffering end, but that it knew him. Their psyches locking jaws in an instant and it, stronger than he, effortlessly plumbs his brain.
"You need only surrender him," the voice sang in his mind, not a sound but a sensation like sweet, cold poison filling his veins.
He wails in pain.
"No." He manages, tiring quickly and considering that he could save himself. Unhinge his mind and fall back beneath the mirrors and into his aware body and cleave Marazhai's head from his shoulders.
"No!" Heinrix projected, a thought as sharp and hard as a shard of glass. He felt the daemonette's amusement, its power coiling around his own psyche. It was stronger than him. Effortlessly, it plumbed his mind, showing him visions of his own failure, his body cold on a frosted deck... Yet it relented the final blow, seeming to watch with a pleased curiosity as he struggled. It wanted to savour the despair.
That small victory was enough. He mentally lunged for Marazhai, trying to find him behind the curtain of mirror-warp. "Not alone... Behind cold walls," he struggled to think, the thought a weak beacon against the storm. He lacked the psychic fortitude to project feelings with any real strength against a force like this. "Reach out, damn you," he snarled through gritted mental teeth.
If you let me get close to him.
He felt a psychic echo of derisive laughter, a thought not his own. Curse the stubborn will of men.
Emboldened by the contact, however hostile, Heinrix briefly opened his awareness back to the material world. As his eyes unrolled, a chord of pure agony wailed through him. He could ordinarily dull his own pain, but this was different. Something in his ribs felt severed, branded with empyric fire. He needed a greater hold, a physical connection. Proximity was essential. He could hear shouting now—Yrliet's yowling just above Valancius's answering roar.
"Give m-- Give me--" Time. It was all he could manage.
Acting on pure, desperate instinct, he sank his teeth into the flesh of Marazhai's neck, the taste of alien blood coppery and strange. He ignored his own spine screaming in protest as he curled his arms around the Drukhari's thrashing shoulders, locking them together. Then, he submerged his mind again, using the raw physical anchor to plunge back into the abyss.
So close to deepest abyssal bliss, this drukhari need only lean in and allow it.
It smiled in broken shadows and voided whispers at him. At his shuddering soul- at-
It would see Heinrix in moments. Feel his soul and aether cracking through. Its attentions and bargains flittered into him in an instant as he broke through the ceiling of the storm and it grinned at him.
"You cannot resist forever..." It reminds, mocking. Cold.
The artisan writhes in the presence so supple and strong as it tries its demands then, following his pounding heart effortlessly through the whorl. It pursues him into the despairing maelstrom supping both souls; and when he denies it...
The jaw trapping Heinrix tightens and bites down as a presence shatters around him in a formless, discordant shriek. Cold enough to shatter ice and glass. It traps them both insatiably and wails in fury.
Marazhai's body, in some instinct or recognition, holds himself against the Inquisitor's bloody body. Footfalls unheard. The drukhari claws and tears through the flesh they found; his panting rabid, loud. Unrelenting desperation and terror. It was ceaseless.
Though this manifestation had no bearing on their forms, it would cleave the aeldari soul from his broken body. It decides in a timeless instant that it would take Heinrix too. For them both to be devoured amidst the truest pleasures of this universe.
No!
No? Impossible.
It fights him. Surrounds him in abyss and void to drown his prayers to abeyance. Where none could save him.
The prince would have this drukhari's forsaken soul. And then it would return for the Inquisitor's too. None would hide in the void from She Who Thirsts for so long. It wordlessly gouges him with the fantasy and agony of it.
Not enough to dissuade. Marazhai's claws tighten in its fury and then release as quickly; the presence uncoiling like an unwilling cobra enough to relent just slightly.
Marazhai's soul wandered and struggled and fought against the presence he felt. He did not recognise the shouting in the black. Only that he must get out- lest he be devoured. He could sense the teeth crawling up his spine and biting down on his neck.
"Your soul yearns for this adoration," the voice laughs; cackling and broken. Beginning to fray just slightly. "Unknowing child. Let my master bless you. The xenos is a smallest price to pay."
The laughing and scolding sex becomes shrieking fury and cracking ice when split by the intrusion. When Heinrix resisted. The Inquisitor's declarations denied.
Marazhai's mouth gasps as he parts his fangs from him covered in blood and saliva.
Walls. Where? Where is he? If he reaches, what will grab him?
And- no- and is this a trick? An illusion? Why was Heinrix there? It knew him? It knew everything. It was foul.
In a primal, splitting moment- all becomes ice and the wailing is static. Marazhai hears him behin the walls and reaches in an instant through shadow and fire with clarity of memory. He plunges and plunges and sees him there and shouts in silence for his attention.
Mirrors shatter around him from nothing and all was bare memory. The illusions? Expunged by the beacon. It was unistakeable in its design. He would have questioned him and laughed in fury if he had been able.
His body clutches desperately in overwhelming fear and his hips roll against the Inquisitor's own, flush and earnest and horrified- not denying his presence.
Footfalls unheard surrounded them amidst shouting.
"Let him go! Let him closer. Let him closer to my master." It shrieks and thrums over all else- in desperation. It was losing them both.
Marazhai's soul leaps at the teeth clenching around his neck and he shouts in utter, ecstatic, terrified clarity of himself for moments.
He is suddenly thrown back into his own body amidst screeching that dazed him and blacked out the corridor; ensconced in void.
Such acute awareness of his self- the scents, the blood- the way his claws latched onto Heinrix and ripped.
The teeth are firm and painful enough to make him rack himself against the Inquisitor's form and, rolling his hips against the other's own so urgently- without resistance- wails in orgasm.
It racked him in such shock that it staves away the daemonette with a scream.
It was a wakefulness enough to be brought some sanctity by Yrliet. All for seconds. Pulled back away by a fate not quite meant for him. He was suddenly entirely too aware of Heinrix's arms wrapped around him and pinning him in place and their bodies flush completely. He couldn't escape the grasp.
He listens again to Yrliet.
Marazhai's still-beating form writhes and he glances that way with his eyes. She gestured at something. All shapes. Valancius. She was with Valancius.
She spoke in Low Gothic. She tells the Rogue Trader that this was the process. Hah.
The sound escapes. The sights too after so little time. The artisan fights against them both, constant and furious.
Its sound was an omnipresent, disgusting hiss that reverberates through their minds. It was without place. Without comparison. It intended to break them and simply could not in its seductive rage.
It shrieks and laughs all around the corridor's darkest corners in black fury.
Marazhai, aware suddenly, blinks hard and hisses at the intrusion splitting his mind. The void in his eyes waver and curl. In formless agony he thrashes and fights the influence away with blades and mind. He searched for Heinrix.
Heinrix's words, now throbbing in the forefront of his mind, draw a deep breath from his slavering body as it clung to the Inquisitor and ravaged. Weakening. Wavering. The claws numb to pawing.
"Let us- let us finish this..!" He thinks in growing agony. At himself and Heinrix… Heinrix. Who was here in the crevices of insanity. He wonders how and doesn't ask in less than seconds. Instead: growing, overwhelming desire. A lust like nothing else erupted in his mind and blossomed. In clarity in the void, formlessness yearned for spectral delight. A conquest that he and Heinrix would both return from.
He could almost hear himself panting through the alloy corridor if he could but focus. The light, suddenly so vibrant. He hears her- the aeldari- and he feels hands clutching him. An impossible and reprehensible warmth flush to his body like wildfire.
Their escape was enough to ripple the air around them. Blackness bleeds into pink and violet and most pitch abyssal black surrounding them.
"You cannot resist forever," the daemonette's voice sang in his mind, not a sound but a sensation like sweet, cold poison. That much was true. His strength was failing.
It showed him an illusion: their lifeless bodies, already cold and displayed in a delicate frost on the deck. He saw the vision and knew it for the lie it was, a cheap trick to inspire despair. But the truth beneath it was real—if he failed now, his heart felt as if it would simply burst from the strain. The two were connected, his physical form and the eternal soul now at war.
He persisted, searching through the psychic storm, and found him—Marazhai's writhing ghost, a flickering anima in the unholy darkness. Heinrix dragged his own will towards him like an anchor. His soul is not so foreign, the thought came, a moment of grim clarity. As he did, he felt his own body, distant and weak, roil against the Drukhari's, a desperate exhalation tearing past his teeth. The hoarfrost spread around them both and the inquisitor's eyelids frenzy.
Yrliet gasps, ice gripping her boot as she was forced to take a step back, a hand extending a useless barrier over one of many firearms trained on Heinrix and Marazhai's heads.
Idira was screaming somewhere nearby.
"Wait." She barks, seeing a glitter of clarity in Marazhai's dazed expression. His pleasure a revolting relief.
She imparts some assurances to the Rogue Trader who looked on in unabating attention. This was not a brawl; it was an exorcism.
Heinrix was sweating, his body far past the point of harmless warmth. His blood was never meant for this.
Yrliet spoke in their tongue above Idira's weakening, tiring shrieking.
"Kin, what of the alayshari?"
Her answer was their renewed writhing. It was not over yet and it was a terrible sight.
The alayshari's body was dying and though it was clear his mind was obstinate and nigh indomitable, his flesh was under no such protection while his soul lay it in vacancy while in the depths of warp madness.
Marazhai, she notes, was returned.
Heinrix manages to bay for Idira somewhere in the dark, sensing her as soon as he could relent his mind's jaws from Marazhai as their tormenter's formless screech lay burned into his brain. Marazhai's will returns to his awareness and he clutches him.
Emperor protect, he thinks to himself in cosmic suffering.
Back in the abyss, Heinrix gathered himself for one final assault. Let us finish this, came Marazhai's will. Yes, he answered-the thought was a psychic roar. He directed his entire being outward, a spear of sanctioned will aimed at the formless emptiness that held them. For a moment, he felt the torture of his mind abate, and in that vacuum, a phantom sensation—his torn back arching in a spasm of something beyond pain.
His body was panting and rivulets of sweat mixed with blood and torn skin. Torn flesh.
Heinrix moans- slow to accept the return of his consciousness as his tongue drags over the bruised throat. And again.
He felt the return to his body as a cataclysm. A moan tore from his throat as consciousness flooded back, bringing with it a pain so tremendous he wasn't sure he could contain it. His pulmonary artery had burst. Each whisper of his own weak pulse sent a fresh wave of agony through his senses. He fought to seal the internal hemorrhaging, his sight darkening with each ragged breath. He was dimly aware of the state of his body—the sweat, the blood, the torn flesh—and a grim wetness that spoke of a total loss of control.
His vision blurred. Can I remain conscious? His heart barely murmured.
"Kin?" Yrliet’s voice was a distant echo, sharp with concern.
Elation returns to Marazhai's soul and body slowly at first. It was a tide of ruling triumph over tremendous fear that wept back into his blood and bones and renewed him; a most agonising, savouring poison.
That was exactly what he wanted. His design- that which would keep away She Who Thirsts. It was granted to him.
He would have been shocked if lucid and would have demanded to indulge further. In his desperation. He had been starving for so long.
His body growls as he, subsumed in frost and warp, takes Heinrix's anima for his own and grips his soul close. In the void, he reaches formlessly for him.
This torture...it was eye-rolling in its severity. The pain and suffering amidst screams not their own. He would soon feel that they were freezing.
Marazhai continues to clamour in the dark for Heinrix's suffering and it becomes his overwhelming binding anchor- his own body trembling for breath as he climaxes, claws tightening around the Inquisitor's body as they both stiffened and then froze again.
The sound of suffering in another so distantly when he awoke for moments. He realises as he sinks back into his mind that he could not even breathe. Divine.
Enlivening. Strong, even.
He does not hear Yrliet or feel the weapons on them. Distant, Marazhai's body racks and rolls against Heinrix's as he shudders on him.
He could laugh. He would. He would any other time. What happened to them was faceless. Basal. Terrifying beyond measure. His heart pounded violently in his chest at it all.
The intrusion was gone in a moment. The windows and deceptions all shattered and gave way to the raw warp. An abyss. Marazhai blinking hard several times curtailed the end.
When he awoke, it was in suffering ecstasy. He moans so short of breath and felt himself gripping Heinrix. Long arms wrapped the man's torso and had clawed him even still.
He grips him and pulls him close in desperation to be satisfied as they roil and squirm on each other, holding their hips together in feral earnest.
He was panting and groaning when he awoke properly; they both were. It was rabid. His return was as unceremonious as any and he was keen to bite away the last of Sai'lanthresh's presence with a gasp for air.
Blood overwhelms his senses and over the bruised throat, he admires the brands he left with wide eyes over the man's shoulders.
His gaze lids instantly as he blinks the last of the dark away. The brilliant, raging turquoise returns and yet a little more tired than before. Hyper-focused on Heinrix for so many long moments. He would notice the afterglow on them both- the pain. The torment and scars. The wounds threatening to put the Inquisitor to death.
It was still them for sobering moments so Marazhai pulls away from him to clasp Heinrix's jaw between his hands. He offers a rabid, panting kiss squarely over the other's mouth and bites hard. His eyes roll.
Theirs was cosmic suffering as it was a necessity.
The memories come flooding back then.
He almost shoves Heinrix away but...the lapping and nipping was irresistible. It was orgasmic--
"Inquisitor..." Marazhai growls. His breath was rasping and cold and exhausted.
Marazhai's claws grip him more easily where he wasn't gouged through as the tongue, boiling, rakes his skin. He knew he would be bruised. He gasps and feels the struggle for breath beneath it.
"Oh, brave mon-keigh… how do you hear and tolerate the whispers?" He cackles, exhausted.
It was suicidal in notion. The warp jumping to find the most distant stars...it racked Marazhai's body to exhaustion. It was so very suicidal. So painfully tormenting. So human.
He asks the question in sardonic disbelief, panting and feral. Marazhai considered it after he spoke. His brows furrow.
It was somewhat sincere... oh.
Blood, on his chestplate. On the both of them.
Marazhai senses the wrongness in an instant and his eyes narrow, rolling gently.
They were lucid. Even through terror and rage. They were alive. He felt life on the other man. Heinrix recovered. He agonised... his innards destroying themselves to save him.
This he recognises instantly. It was...
Troubling.
Kin?
Marazhai does not answer for what feels like minutes. His panting was ragged and his breaths shallow. He clutches the Inquisitor in orgasmic afterglow.
When he blinks, he sees down the barrel of Valancius' pistol far away.
"They're gone. I... I forgot myself." He rasps. Another hard blink. To assure himself.
The drukhari stares forwards with some sincere terror overlong, his eyes burning into Heinrix's bloody front.
He looks over the length of Heinrix's body and his face contorts into a snarl of shared agony. Pleasure to him- but dangerous.
"I still hear their whispers... but they are sated."
He exhales triumphantly between clenched fangs as he turns to Yrliet and wipes his mouth of the blood and spit. The last of it.
"Your alayshari has stolen me out from the grasp of Sai'lanthresh. It seems." He mutters. "For now."
A bitter eye is directed at von Valancius in deepest confusion; loathing; hunger. Then he notices the guns across the hoarfrost.
His blood stops in purest ice. Warms then. Fury.
He would..? After all...-
"Cease this madness!" He growls. Of course he would not hesitate to kill them both. His heart shrivels and he thinks he... should have expected this, somehow.
"Such paltry cattle that do not know their place."
Marazhai chuckles furiously and bitterly. Gives a collective simper in uttermost fury at the realisation. The recognition. That van Calox would abscond him from the warp? At risk of life and limb. Look at him.
Marazhai reaches and clutches him and makes some effort to absorb the pain for himself- even if only in pleasure. He cannot resist.
He did not question his loyalty in this moment. His... rescue.
Valancius crosses his mind once more in renewed, depraved fury. Then he is gone. Marazhai's eyes widen in observation of the man in his hands.
He looks back at Yrliet quickly with hard eyes.
"He is dying, cousin. His body betrays his efforts." He declares coldly and quickly.
Marazhai's fingers are ice on his molten skin but he moans openly into the offered mouth. It's a tourniquet on his weeping misery, even the bite. His eyes roll weakly the same.
At first, he was unable to remove himself from Marazhai's body, his strength not only enervated but what remained was focused entirely on repairing the burst artery.
Inquisitor...
A flicker of recognition in Heinrix' eyes saw both colours focus out from under his eyelids- body unable to stop heaving tersely. As if each breath were a terrible demand on spent flesh.
His chest would be flowered in fresh blood beneath his skin. Trapped and on the correct side, at least.
Oh, brave mon-keigh...
Heinrix convulses in his grip and makes a sound.
His arms stiffen, tremble, in efforts to lift off of him. He could feel his brain begging, pleading for shutdown. If he conceded, he would surely die. Marazhai's voice was a hook in his skull. Propping him to wakeful, necessary suffering.
He hears the voices but doesn't listen overlong. He was deep within himself in focus, staying upright on his knees only through the mercy of locked joints and the favour of gravity.
Marazhai gripped him and he, stemming his internal bleeding moment-by-moment, relents one hand in a quick grip over the Drukhari's wrist as he looks at him. His eyes, yet, were distant but alert all the same. The first indication he was aware of their predicament was in slowly rolling his eyes sidelong with a choke in his throat.
The guns were no surprise. Lord Valancius reacted much the same the last time Idira found it a struggle to prevent a breach. If they failed, he would shut the door by killing the frame. He didn't blame him.
He listens to the eldar speak, not registering the cogitator in the distance somewhere trying to translate them. He notes the stillness of the warp-- It was distant. Perhaps they were free of it now.
Heinrix's eyes flicker back to peer at Marazhai as he began to stabilize the bleeding.
Still hot.
Marazhai still cold.
He wanted to put his forehead onto the neck he'd bruised but-- To his relief, his will remains his own and he merely folds away from him instead. He curls his fingers into the ice. Some relief. He could come back from this and repair whatever damage it had done, given a few days.
Cease this madness!
The Rogue Trader does lift his pistol with a level relaxation.
"Indeed. You seem to be of right mind." His disarmingly gentle voice belied some fear and yet...
He nods at those around them. Some relax their weapons less readily than others.
Lord Valancius rolls his jaw thoughtfully, recognizing Marazhai was displeased with him, though all peered at Heinrix.
A psyker trembling on the ground was a sight that could freeze any man's heart. Not with sympathy. With fear.
"Is he... Lucid?" Valancius' hand twitched, finger silently slipping back behind the guard and over the trigger.
He is dying, cousin.
Yrliet looks around. Didn't they have... Medicine? She's not sure her song could stitch the crude sinew of men's bodies together.
"Why does no one move?"
"They're waiting." The Rogue Trader sounded terse. "His kind are unstable." He offers in explanation as several junior officers step back.
Heinrix feels claws on him. And he quickly reaches up to grab the first part of the Drukhari he could reach. Grounding, even if once foul. The colour of his soul not so far removed.
"Moment." He finally manages. "Need a-- Only time." He assures.
Though he finally had the steel to hold himself up, the pain was immense. Fire rivered his back. Pain was bearable- what he was trying to do was stabilize his blood. Cool it. So he was not robbed of every breath he attempted to take. Once he could do that, he would attempt to stand.
For now, he remains planted ineffectually, hand releasing Marazhai in favour of shaking somewhere in front of his face as he turned the palm to his eyes, trying to make sense of something there.
"What... Wretched..." His pulse strengthens. His blood directed back where it was meant. His hands were freezing now- the boiling having abated. A good sign, albiet unpleasant.
"Don't... Don't look at me. None of you." He felt weak. Not at all gathered into the shape of a proper servant of the Imperium. A proper anything.
Not that a proper Inquisitor would chase a Drukhari into the abyss.
"Nnnhhh--" He moans.
He was often left to heal himself. Medical staff didn't often treat psykers. Least of all the ones they didn't need to if they could simply re-stitch themselves. Of course. Why risk it?
His eyes regain some focus and he swallows, finally able to breath from his nose again.
Lord Valancius' clicks his tongue. "How do we... avoid this in the future? This won't do if we need to padlock you every war--"
"He's... Told you." Heinrix bares his teeth and hears a scoff. Long moments pass, presumably in thought as Valancius considers those memories he deemed necessary.
"I had no idea it was so desperate- acute a need. I--" A pause. "Well, go on, clean this up!"
Bodies erupt into motion now that the threat of living bomb psyker was no longer so imminent a threat.
"You." Valancius points at Marazhai. A sigh. His tone a little softer. "We'll talk. In my office."
Though both were returned, it would be minutes before the air warmed, the frost receding as if in reluctance.
Cold and ice clawed at the surfaces of the corridor and stained all in a wretched layer. Marazhai only aware of this when he regards Heinrix down his nose, gaunt features returning to him in his sickly hues.
He would feel the Inquisitor's suffering, yes. A palpable and conscious delight of the deepest pain. And something deeper that gouged him through and sent him to the void again in despairing confusion.
He realises it not overlong in shared exhaustion; no grin reaching him. Thinks about it in a hurry and denial as guns face them and the malignance begins to return.
Sinking terror is all in ego. All in- that others had seen this.
The terrible, raking vulnerability makes him regret in such immense ruin.
Even still, he allows the gripping and the Inquisitor's eyes on him. He could not possess himself to help him or to touch him and turns his fury to von Valancius for all unsureity of doing anything else.
You seem to be of the right mind.
Marazhai's face tightens and contorts into a pointed snarl.
He- looks ready to tear at him for moments in purest instinct. Heedless of the psyker pulling his attention elsewhere. The air was still a calming static and Marazhai's nape stood on end. How dare?
The drukhari's back stiffens as he asserts Yrliet's attention instead.
He could not colour his concern. Not really. In some dark design, hoping Yrliet might elucidate the esteemed Rogue Trader and all his drudges.
Marazhai, for trying, is enlivened by the suffering in elucidating pleasure. He resists a grin or true delight for trying to comprehend the man holding him.
He was robbed of no breath. His insides, he thinks, intact. He had avoided all misfortune of the destruction that he should have been made to gorge on. He, like all other times, should be dead.
He knows that he would have been killed without Heinrix. He, he hates- he despises-
The vulnerability is washed away in an instant as the colour returns and Marazhai's lip curls. It's then, as he straightens and focuses hard on Valancius, that he realises just how hot the Inquisitor's body was.
How do we...-
Marazhai could bite and bark in retaliation and is stunned to a horrid, abyssal silence.
Even as von Valancius admits his concern out of hand. He was used to that. No, no, this was...Heinrix. His rage was at Heinrix. Rage? Stunned silence. He had heard? He- why would he-
The proud Dracon was so used to raking and climbing through the throats of mocking enemies. His right. His conquests.
Alone.
Was the admission too raw? Too weak for you, Dracon? Do you fear your death, drukhari? Do you fear the end?
Of course. Too much. It makes Marazhai cord up with rage.
He cannot stand to look at von Calox. But does navigate his eyes to the alloy flooring once. To the last of the hoarfrost weeping back into the warp.
It left a shimmering, wet surface behind. Cold. But no harm. None at all.
You.
Marazhai blinks at the swathe and narrows his eyes at the Rogue Trader. His form poises just slightly that it would hardly be so hard to lunge at him, shoulders and hackles raising as he considers...
He hisses furiously; fangs grinding.
"I will not be taken by Sai'lanthresh while your paltry kind play through the veil with your crude walls and bucket on your suicidal voyages. You will see to it that I have the sustenance and strength required to suffer your expeditions."
If any stirred at his eruption- he regards them with a predator's starving eyes.
"Beginning with your oafish playthings."
A sigh is met with a disdaining glance, Marazhai's chin lifting proudly.
We'll talk. In my office.