For much of my life, I have strived to lead by example. I led the 8th on the Pyrran front over a century ago, among the frontlines to engage our enemies. I have, to the disappointment of my peers, often placed myself at the forefront of our battles even as an Inquisitor. I do this, partly, to rally my allies, and that has proven effective—perhaps too much so. As Lucene hinted at near to my medicae, many of my current retinue beheld me with heroic reverence, which I did not desire. Some Commissars, such as Cain, may be rightful Heroes of the Imperium, but that is not a title I have any intention of wielding. And now, as an Inquisitor, the predilection of my appointment regards heroism as being too overt.

Alas, I must confess I also seek the frontlines due to my own personal desire for a good battle and worthy end. One’s duty only ends in death, and I have no intention of my duty ending with the soles of my feet being anywhere but against the ground. I am displeased by the existence of my foes and the costs that come with putting them down, but I do enjoy the process to do so all the same. I believe this to be fine—if one enjoys their service to the Throne, they will be less inclined to waver from it. I had enjoyed, to some extent, the testing nature of the battles posed to me by the Phaenonite, which again is not to say I am glad to have shared a galaxy with such a foe and needed to slay them in the first place.

I can confidently say, however, that I did not enjoy my time in the Arctoros 5 fortress. My displeasure was not due to the fact that I stood behind the frontlines, letting those with larger armaments than my own do all the shooting. My displeasure was not due to the fact that our foe showed little capacity for resistance once we had breached their walls.

My displeasure, rather, stemmed from the fact that my mind felt free in ways it had not been ever before, to my recollection. Within the walls of the fortress, I felt raw and unbridled. Dangerous. And that possibility for danger frightened me—I knew, to the point of mortification, what my mind was capable of. I did not feel, necessarily, that I was out of control, so to speak. Rather, I felt like I was drawing in more power from my surroundings than I usually controlled, and that the level of my control was not increasing in parallel.

For instance, as we plunged deeper into the winding—and not at all familiar, not-Schola-like—halls of the fortress, I served as a psychic scout for our unit, probing for assailants as yet unencountered. I had done this plenty of times before, offering predictions, warnings, and orders for the future to my allies. But as we spent more time in the fortress, when my mind reached out and found our foes, the mere presence of my gaze began to tamper with our opposition. I made them paranoid, that they—rightfully—felt like they were being watched. I exerted such power with my psychic presence, unintentionally, and the lack of that intention coupled with the growth of that power made me more and more reluctant to wield it. Likewise, I grew less inclined to offer psychic, speechless advice to my allies, lest I force my mind upon them with greater might than they could handle.

I very much wanted to leave the fortress as soon as possible.

My allies, however, felt in their prime. I suspected our foes did, too, but those non-psykers around me found themselves filled with youthful vigor they had not possessed in some time. Reflexes snapped to the near-lightning speeds of those with something to prove, without coming at the cost of the battle-hardened experience my allies wielded. They were more in tune with themselves, more in sync with their minds and bodies. Notably, I observed no such change in Bliss’s skillset; perhaps whatever was happening to the others had already been trained into her from the Callidus Temple. Would this change for the others be a permanent one? I hoped not, due to what I was beginning to understand.

We were in the Warp itself.

Immaterial though the Warp was oft-considered, wherever we were was surely not Arctoros 5, nor was it an ordinary plane of the Materium. Here, the power of the mind reigned supreme. Here, the effects of time on the bodies of those present were less significant. Strain did not exist. Physical boundaries were more easily pushed beyond their limits. I had besieged the fortress from the outside with the greatest mortal killing force I had ever laid eyes on, but once inside its twisted walls, among halls of reflective, colorless, coiled metals, the efficacy of my allies elevated well beyond what I assumed they were capable of.

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I may have been proud of them, were I not horrified. I wanted to ask what they felt of themselves and their abilities, but that would need to be a conversation for later. I neither wanted to waste time in the fortress to sit, chat, and worsen our physical stability nor to distract them from the carnage they were unleashing.

Praise be that the Throne could still see us, then, that it only took perhaps half an hour of brutally-efficient combat before we found a sensorium and data storage room, with a working cogitator. “Varnus, assist Ms. Trantos with the cogitator,” I ordered of them both. “I wish to know everything there is to know about this place, most keenly with who was in charge of its construction and where we can find them. Destroy all information of import as you find it; it cannot leave this facility or the Inquisition. Everyone else, secure that archway, let our thinkers do their thinking in peace.”

“Something is wrong about this place, Callant,” Bliss warned, stepping in front of me. She looked as worried as I felt. “It’s…doing something to us.”

“I know. When Zha finds what we’re after, I’ll order the recall of all units and have our ships remove this entire continent from the planet if that’s what it takes to clear the Warpstorm,” I answered, seething. I was angry. Angry that I had had most of my critical operatives endanger themselves with whatever heretical nonsense the Phaenonites had created here. Angry that the heretics had made this unknown locale of wronged being in the first place. It would be cathartic to see it removed; I only hoped we would each live to see it so.

“Forgive the question, but what if they don’t listen?” Bliss asked. I had not even considered that. We were in a place of temptation, where tantalizing power was made available for field-testing. The possibility that some may not wish to leave was very real, even for Agents of the Throne. By Terra, this may have seduced the Phaenonites in the first place; something made them turn traitor from the Inquisition, after all.

“If they don’t listen, I will need to be a more stereotypical Commissar. So pray they listen, for their sake,” I frowned.

“While I have great faith in your abilities, Callant, we’re not the front with the Knight,” she reminded me, and left my side to let that sit with me. True. If I came to blows with Galen, that would be quite far from ideal. And if, Throne forbid, Gradshi or his psykers opposed me…

If we made it out of here alive, I—or, likely, some other Inquisitors—would need to interrogate each and every Agent I had ordered into this facility. I could only pray my Agents would cooperate. And the paperwork, Throne! Such administrivia might dwarf the mountainous, exterior shell of this Terra-forsaken place.

“Anything?” I asked of Varnus and Zha, though they had only just begun.

“Possibly,” Zha started. “There’s—”

“54.1248, -31.6744,” Varnus interrupted, physically embedded into an input socket for the cogitator.

I understood. Coordinates. “You get those, Mirena?”

“Two hour flight from where we left the Bird,” she answered, nodding.

“Excellent. Pack it up. We move out in sixty seconds, back the way we came,” I ordered.

“Mr. Blackgar, we’ve only just begun to get a grasp on what this facility is,” Zha protested. While her physical abilities had improved like many of the others in our insertion into this vile place, her personality—thankfully—seemed unchanged. She did not wish to remain due to any physical advancements the Warp bequeathed upon her; rather, it was her own natural curiosity that fueled her objection.

But curiosity had damned Sectors in the past. It would not be the end of Ixaniad on my watch. “Ms. Trantos, I respect your inclination for learning and discovery, and admire your willingness to follow my initial order. But the safety of this station is not well-defined, and I do not intend to jeopardize you or any others by staying here long. Please, I implore you, let’s depart,” I told her. My tone betrayed my words, as I was not offering the opportunity to remain. If she wished to stay even still, I would have to shoot her. I plead, then, that her natural curiosity could be abated.

“I…uh…I understand, Mr. Blackgar. Apologies for my hesitation. Let us leave, then,” she agreed, and I silently thanked the Throne for that.

I looked, then, to Varnus, still embedded in the cogitator. “Varnus?”

“I have no inclination to remain among the darker heresies of lesser men,” Varnus answered, and relinquished himself from the cogitator terminal at once. “I have thus far trusted your judgment to not recruit those whose strength of mind may be so weak likewise. Let us pray, then, that neither of us have misjudged.”

“Dear Techsorcist, I have been saying such a prayer since we arrived,” I sighed.