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Chapter 42 - Duel

Gallius Anwar and Lanto Sven matched my pace from the front, while Massino Varnus kept up from behind. I had spent ample time with all three to form near-instinctual bonds in that regard, Varnus having masterfully crafted a literal appendage for me, as well as the armor within which I then and now gird myself. He had made a helmet for me, though I did not wear it then; humanizing myself with the sight of my face was the one small courtesy I intended to give to the nobles that had brought me from the skies.

Anwar and Sven, meanwhile, were two Crusaders of House Trion. Unlike the Houses that had put on a sham trial of my Agents, Trion was actually of some use. The Crusader pair were each covered head-to-toe in carapace armor, donning more of it, even, than Silas would in full gearing. Not an inch of their skin was exposed to the world, all being hidden behind silver plate, red robes, and stygian Inquisitorial garb. They were my personal vanguard—something I was reluctant to accept but have since come to appreciate in the business of exterminating traitors to my ilk—and wielded large suppressor shields and electrified power swords to keep even the most violent and abhorrent opponents at bay.

In any event, the four of us marched from the Bird to the courtroom we had besieged, finding its original occupants shellshocked. I surveyed the scene of destruction for a moment before being thrust back into my role of Inquisitor to the situation by a hand gently falling upon my shoulder. I had unintentionally stopped in my stride next to Lucene, who nodded to me from behind her Sabbat-pattern helmet but otherwise said nothing. I nodded in return, then looked back toward the wanting and waiting nobles. +Wait here,+ I instructed my Crusaders, Varnus, and Lucene. The pair of shields in front of me split apart, revealing a path of a bloodstained red carpet for me to take through the room, kneeling Sisters on either side. I walked further along that path, and as I passed the Sisters, they bowed their heads to me. I thought it was a bit much, personally, but I also knew I had the extreme honor of possessing their absolute faith, that they believed my prosecution of the heretic to be divine judgment. Who is to say it is not?

“You’re Blackgar at last, then?” Severant Gronheim asked as I descended deeper into the room. His name was at the forefront of his mind, carried by his ego. That much was similar for the entire host of nobles before me. “There has been conflicting information on your presence in Ixaniad, Inquisitor.”

“By design, Severant,” I growled. “I understand some of my Agents have fallen in service to the Throne in this operation, is that correct?”

“It is,” an Arbites officer reported to me. Unlike the nobles, I did not then know his name; his ego was more reserved. Nevertheless, his armor bore signs of his rank—Regulator. “There was a shootout—” he began, but I held up a hand. It was not my augmetic hand, but it was heavily armored all the same. Much of my armor, save for my arms, remained obscured beneath stygian robes.

“I know the details. I address those on their hands and knees in this room, now: You pray for repentance, and I intend to offer it. Able men and women are of great value to the Imperium. Those who believe they possess the mettle for the Inquisition and wish to serve the Throne anew, rise to your feet,” I declared. Anger mounted as the forefront emotion of the nobles as almost the entirety of their private armies stood up at once, and all eventually rose in time, again motivated by their peers. “Harakoni, escort these volunteers out of the room for processing and screening.”

“You intend to rob us, then, Inquisitor?” Vrun Ethrael asked. An unwise question that tried my already limited patience, and I must have evidenced that, as almost as soon as he asked the question he seemed to slump back in his chair.

“If I am to rob you of anything, Vrun, it will be your life. Your assets are yours only until they are of direct use to the Inquisition. I have decided to reappropriate them. I expect they will be put to better use in my charge, anyways. Worry not—most will not pass screening. Those will be returned to you. No, Vrun, I will not rob you. Not as your lot has robbed me of mine,” I growled in reply. “Speaking of which,” I started, and stepped closer to the court. Most fell away from me, slinking back into their chairs as Ethrael had. But they were not yet my quarry. Instead, I turned to a small, swollen, quivering being who could barely be called a man, especially given the smell of urine emanating from him. “You’re the boy?”

“Whatever you intend to ask my son, you can ask of me, Inquisitor,” Severant Gronheim objected, standing to his feet. I turned to face him, and one look at my face was enough to shut him up and force him down into his chair. I looked back to Scodd Gronheim, who was nodding eagerly and worriedly.

“Was she worth all this?” I asked him, referring to Carmichael.

“N-no sir,” he shook his head, still quivering.

“Hmph. Would have been crudely humorous had you said yes,” I grunted, then clapped a mechanized hand on his shoulder and felt his heart skip a beat. “You’re concerned because you felled some men and women loyal to the Inquisition. You worry of what I will do to you for that. Ease up, kid. It is the risk of subterfuge; a risk they took and paid the price for. They did so knowingly. I will not fault you for defending your place in the universe,” I told him, and then took a step away. I felt his emotions ease behind me, thinking that he might yet get away from the horror of my existence. “Of course, there’s the matter of your flect trade, which I will not forgive,” I started, and at that the kid’s terror finally overpowered him—he passed out in his chair. +Castecael. Lucene, accompany her,+ I ordered the pair.

I then walked up to Severant Gronheim and dropped the flect that Carmichael had given me onto the table between us. I stared silently at him for a few moments. He, meanwhile, contributed to raising the humidity in the room with the rivers of sweat pouring from his backside. “Do we d-discuss this here?” he finally asked, voice sounding more like his son’s.

“I am here, am I not?” I returned.

“I-I think it best if-if-if we speak p-privately, In-Inquisitor,” Severant suggested.

“I don’t agree, Severant,” I sighed. “But as you wish,” I shrugged, then thrust a hand forward and grabbed the senior Gronheim by his collar, pulling him over the table. +He’s here, isn’t he?+ I asked his mind.

“What are you—”

+Are you as dense as you appear, Gronheim? I’m in your head. Think your thoughts, do not say them aloud,+ I frowned.

Yes, yes he is. He has such power, such connections.

+I have more.+

You may think you do, but he wields terror itself beneath his cloak.

+We are alike in that regard, then.+ I then thrust Gronheim back into his chair, having gotten what I needed from him, and picked the flect back up; I would destroy it later. Cloak. Most of the nobles were dressed in robes, but only one could be described as possessing a cloak. “Ms. Trantos, take Gronheim and his son to interrogation. Get everything from them, particularly to do with their flect enterprise,” I declared. “Sister, do continue to assist her. And Lucene, escort Castecael from the room for the time being.” Zha, her accompanying Sister, Lucene, and Castecael all nodded to me, then gestured for Severant to follow them. Scodd had just managed to come to, but went white again as I uttered the word ‘interrogation’ and things did not improve for him with the rest of my orders. I then turned to the eight other Sisters. +Cover the windows.+ They accepted the order silently, and moved across the room as a single unit while Zha and her Sister departed with the Gronheims. The Sisters then knelt before each of the now-shattered windows, Bolters trained laterally across the courtroom. I then looked to the singular entrance of the room, where Zha was departing through and my other comrades resided. “No one leaves,” I instructed them when Zha had gone.

“What is this, Inquisitor?” Zeng Janion and the Regulator asked me in unison, though Janion was more appalled in contrast to the deadpan tone of the Arbites. Both of their queries were partially masked by the clanging of two suppressor shields being slammed together in front of the exit, my Crusaders blocking the way like a tank. Lucene, meanwhile, decided to sheath her Eviscerator and draw her Bolt Rifle. Varnus did nothing out of the ordinary, though his bionics and augmetics were ever moving and observing the world around him. I did not doubt he could respond as needed at a moment’s notice.

I ignored the noble and replied to the Regulator. “You should stand away. You’re not trained for this, Regulator,” I warned him. He heeded my warning, moving out of the line of fire of the Sisters by the window.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Vrun Ethrael asked, and I followed his gaze across the court to a cloaked man indeed. Ethrael was a step later to understanding than the Phaenonite was, as the Phaenonite had already risen to his feet and begun eyeing me in a deep, purple gaze.

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“I don’t know, Blackgar, is it me?” the Phaenonite asked.

“I invite you to come quietly, without making a mess. I will consider that before your execution,” I told him. I scanned his surface-level thoughts, not wanting to venture too deeply into the mind of one such as his; I had had intimate enough exposure to Gale Ryke’s mind to know that such a thing was unfathomably dangerous. Nevertheless, I found this Phaenonite’s identity: Gerhart Heirene, Ordo Malleus.

“You’re not that foolish, are you, Blackgar? Or perhaps you are, if you believe I’m intimidated by Bolt or Chain,” Heirene shook his head. “A wonder, then, that you slew Ryke and Silverman. Must not have been their day.”

“Not yours either,” I assured him. “Houses will remain seated where they are,” I ordered the nobles. “Easier to protect you that way.”

“Oh, and here I was going to offer that they be left out of this altogether,” Heirene admitted. “I have little interest in harming the merchandise.”

“Merchandise?” Ethrael growled, as offended as he should have been. The nature of that comment would need to be a topic for a later interrogation. Heirene and I ignored his objection.

“You know, the room Ryke and Silverman died in looked not terribly unlike this one, Heirene,” I told him, moving to stand in the center of the court. “At least, if one ignores all the casings and weapon damage my forces have caused here. Food for thought.”

“Still not intimidated by the posturing, Blackgar. Lives are fickle things; the claiming of them a simple task. I rather assume my peers overestimate you,” Heirene shrugged.

“Now’s your chance to prove it so,” I offered, extending my augmetic arm in an unassuming hand gesture as I spoke. In reality, however, I was aiming; when I had finished speaking, I launched my augmetic hand across the room, it being tethered on a wire to the rest of my arm. It grappled onto Heirene’s face from afar before I yanked him over the court table, pulling him toward me. He seemed enthused that I was sparing him the walk over to me, and willed blades from his arms not unlike the warp-sorcery I had seen from Ryke and Silverman. Rather than attempt to sever the tether of my hand to my arm—which would have been wise—he instead went along for the ride, and poised to strike at me when he neared.

It must have surprised him, then, when I was able to block such slashes from him with my non-augmetic arm, shielded by the heavy ceramite power armor beneath my cloak. Such surprise was swiftly followed by shock when a ceramite fist buried itself in his face. Empty but armored hands smacked away and deflected any slashing attack the Phaenonite made against me, and from the outside looking in, it may have appeared as though I was merely toying with my prey.

I was.

Demoralization, if it existed then, was the point. Moreover, I was still irate that the Phaenonite’s designs had cost me the lives of some of my operatives and threatened one of my closest friends. I needed a punching bag, and Heirene seemed eager to volunteer at first. That would not last.

I did not then know what the Phaenonite cell had on me. I assumed they knew I was a Psyker. But the details of what I had done to Ryke and Silverman on Hestia Majoris should have been kept under lock and key. Of course, my once-Savant, Zha Trantos, had already identified that the Phaenonites were aware of her ‘enviable’ smiles of the past, so knowledge of the Hestia Majoris operation—after which I first put such a detail about Zha to scriptured permanence—was at least partially leaked.

Regardless, after parrying a literal handful of slices from Heirene’s armblades, he—to his credit as a combatant—managed to force me to a slight backpedal. In dodging under and away from a flurry of warped slashes, each of which whispered heresies through the air rather than creating any typical ‘wooshing’ sound, another weaponized demoralization of mine revealed itself. My black cloak swung wide, revealing my fully-armored form, but more importantly, the weapons I was not using. My Boltpistol; my Powersword; Drepane, my Nemesis Falchion. I could have been wielding these against the Phaenonite at any moment, but I did not need to. And the knowledge of that was a wound that cut deeply in a way that no blade ever could.

Heirene, his pride shattered at the sight of my unused armaments, set upon me more furiously, as I had hoped he would. That provided the opportunity for yet another blow to his ego, though this also struck the body too; as Heirene surged forth in a blinded rage, I but winced a moment and focused roughly on his sternum. With what sounded like a thunderclap, I blasted Heirene across the room, invisible psychic forces slamming him through what was once his seat on the council and into the far wall. He nearly fell to his hands and knees from that hit, but caught himself in a stumble by sinking one of his blades into the floor. Blood, black as my own cloak, fell from his lips. I would need Varnus, or some of his techpriests, to decontaminate the room and collect or eradicate such samples of heresy.

While Heirene gathered his breath from a blow that crushed even his warp-augmented body, I stood mostly still in the center of the courtroom, inviting him to try again. I say mostly still, because I did put one hand atop the hilt of my Nemesis Falchion, not that Heirene would have known what the weapon was from his view of it. I knew, from Ryke and Silverman, that the Phaenonites were capable of warpcraft among their varied heresies and would not chance the presence of such a thing with Heirene. If ever there would be a time for him to rely on whatever vile depravity he had embraced, it would be when his ego was as wounded as his physical form.

And sure enough…

Heirene, with a hiss, decorporealized into a cloud of black and purple smoke, his cloak being the only thing to remain mostly physical in the process, dangling and swinging wildly from the sickly concentration of foul villainy now hovering in the air. Two pinkish eyes compressed to slits of rage, and the whole cloud of his then-existence leapt into the air above the room and plunged down upon me. Cries of witchcraft, mercy, and other Throne-fearing expletives emerged from those of weaker wills in the room—namely, those not under my command. I, however, merely engaged my Nemesis Falchion as the cloud of Gerhart Heirene descended upon me. The moment the cloud neared me and entered my weapon’s aura, it collapsed back upon the humanoid—and thankfully still clothed—form of my adversary, who in his shock proved defenseless from another ceramite fist shielding his face from view. I knocked him to the ground, then, before again obscuring his face behind a ceramite foot as I kicked him away.

Heirene, now realizing he was perhaps out of his depth, scanned the room frantically, and that was the final straw for any remaining shreds of his ego. The most crushing blow of all was the fact that for every deplorable ability he possessed, my allies had not budged an inch, not in fear of their lives nor in seeing a need to assist me. Those guarding his exits did so in the absolute confidence that I could drive him into the ground on my own. And if they believed it, and if he had been beaten so thoroughly thus far, maybe Heirene should believe it too.

“Gerhart Heirene, Phaenonite Inquisitor, you are Excommunicate Traitoris, and a stain upon the glistening image of the Imperium. By my hands Foxon Silverman was flattened to a paste at the bottom of a crater, and Gale Ryke shredded from the inside out and turned to ash. By my hands, what fate will the Throne choose for you?” I growled, stepping up to my trembling, heresy-adorned foe.

Defying even my expectations, Heirene managed to find it within himself to rise to his feet and vocally defy me further. Instead of answering my question, he deflected to a different, familiar topic. “Your end, Blackgar, awaits you on Amnes Minoris. And it will be well designed,” he sneered, standing about an inch my taller.

“Ryke assured me of my end on Hestia Majoris. I promised him annihilation in return. Only one came to fruition. If by some miracle you do manage to end me, traitor, it will only be so because my service to the Throne is no longer required. His is the only prophecy that matters for those loyal to Him, which you are unabashedly not,” I replied. “I have places to be, vermin, so if you intend to try to kill me yet, I’d ask that you hurry.”

He did try, if getting off a mere single slash of an armblade that was smacked aside in banal futility. Three blows struck his head and torso in reply, which saw him stumble a bit to my left side, losing his footing. In such an orientation, I delivered the finishing blow by launching my augmetic hand for his face and then some, smashing his skull into the ground a short distance from me. The ground cracked asunder, and I imagine the same could have been said of Heirene’s head, but I knew he was still alive. Unconscious at last, thankfully, but alive.

I stared at the defeated Phaenonite for a moment, then uttered a single name. “Varnus.” My ally was near to my side in moments more, whirring of curious electronics accompanying heavier footfalls of the man of metal beneath crimson robes. Two emotionless orbs of green glass looked ever onward toward me. “Dismantle him of his augmetics and, once done, throw him in Interrogation Chamber Sigma. Lucene will assist you however you need. Task a crew to quarantine this room and cleanse it of his impure flesh and blood,” I instructed him.

“It will be done, Inquisitor. Analysis: you fought with an estimated 93.3% tactical accuracy relative to your spacebound training; your surfacelevel acclimation is acceptable,” Varnus explained.

“Acceptable but imperfect,” I nodded in assent. “Thank you for the analysis, my friend.” I then turned to the nobles, who at last seemed to relax after a tense few moments of my duel. That was a good sign; I sensed genuine relief among them that a servant of the Throne emerged victorious. “Your Houses will cooperate in repairing this Hall,” I explained to them, and while some opened mouths to object, I raised a hand and cut them off at once. “The costs will be refunded and paid for by the Gronheim estate, but it will be your manpower that does the deed. Callant Blackgar is dead. To utter otherwise is a heresy of the highest order; do so, and I will visit you for a second and final time. Do you understand?”

The nobles nodded solemnly, and after a tense moment of reluctant agreeing, Ethrael confirmed, “We do, Inquisitor. We thank you for your mercy today.”

“Any mercy today comes from the Throne, for I have little,” I replied. A moment later, the nobles winced from another screetch! which, as occurred previously, made my Sisters turn their heads to the side for a moment before they rose as one and held their Bolters against their chests in a stance of non-combat. Likewise, while Lucene descended deeper into the room to assist Varnus, my Crusaders at last opened the way to the exit by sliding their shields apart. “Goodbye.”

“Inquisitor,” the Regulator spoke up to my side, approaching me from my side. He verbalized a sound, but I interrupted him at once, knowing his thoughts without needing to scan his mind.

“You wish to know whether there is a place for an Arbites among my retinue to repent for his inaccuracy in trying servants of the Inquisition,” I declared without turning to face him. He nodded. “I may have use for you. Join me for a walk, Regulator.”