Yoon had her elbow on her desk and her head held up by her hand as she struggled not to be lulled to sleep by the drill abess’s endless droning. She could hardly tell what the abess was talking about anymore: saint this, emperor that, heresy here, traitor there, chaos everywhere, it all blended together in a repetitious mush. She had been saying something about the famously well-known primarch of the XIth legionary astartes, but Yoon must have lost track around there; history, especially history from 10,000 years and half a galaxy away, was the subject least likely to hold her interest. This was unfortunate given how much of it there was and how much of the schola progenium loved its history, saying the dead live honored in remembrance.

  She tried to refocus her hearing, but no matter how she tried, nothing intelligible came to her, as if the abbess was speaking through amasec slurring. She tried to focus her vision on the abbess’s moving lips, but her vision was blurring by the minute, like an oil painting that was melting with every motion into a mess that just kept getting worse. She turned to look around the room, but the portrait of the lecturing abbes chased her vision to meld with the colors of the sister trainees who sat in rapt attention at their desks, that mess spilled onto the writhing wooden walls and burning, flickering lumen sconces and undulating mosaic roof tiles and—

  A crop snap on her desk came to her ears crisp and wiped clean the smudge from her vision. The abbess was close, with a mouth but not the rest of her face. The trainees all turned in their desks to look at Yoon, with bulging eyes and nothing else, except for one who had green lenses in place of retinas.

  “Well, Yoon Si-nae?” the faceless mouth beckoned, expectant and impatient. Yoon had not heard what she said, and the abbess was not one to repeat herself.

  “I’m sorry, my mistress,” said Yoon, “I must have been distracted by the… enrapturing majesty of His legions. I was thinking how I might study them in my own time.” Yoon learned to make it about the Emperor when she needed to divert attention.

  “His angels are important to all, but the patron saint is our responsibility. The manuscript, your transcription, where is it?”

  Clue obtained, Yoon set her satchel on the table and rummaged through the general spot where she stuffed assignments. She felt the least crumpled paper and brought it out; manuscript title at the top, yes, with her signature notarizing it, but the rest of the page was splotched with ink, islands of black that spared the words between them but otherwise rendered the page illegible. Even in her panic, as she looked out at dozens of half-formed faces seated across rows of desks, she could read the satisfied expression of the one pair of green lenses and infer what had happened. But the Progenium brooked no failure, excuse, and especially no accusation. That it was damaged under her care is her fault regardless, but to accuse a daughter of a renowned house was a craven failing worse than the technical one.

  Manacles clamped down around Yoon’s wrist and pulled her up on chains that disappeared up into the darkness. All around her was void, stripped and condemned to purgatory. Then a neural whip lit up, raised, and then lashed across her chest. Electricity stabbed into the heart and conducted through her arteries. The wound welled like a lump of raw sausage. The whips kept lashing from all angles without rest, each impact only a blink, but the electricity dragged them out far longer. Yoon shook and screamed and jerked and cried and thrashed and strained and begged to an empty void that had no ears and no voice, only instruments of pain. Soon, they were striking her multiple times at a time, their cracks overwhelming her screams. Her voice rasped into choked gasps, and her body lost strength, only moved by the spasms from the impacts and jolts.

  When it finally ended, she was shivering, tears mixing with blood and drool, welts across her body bulging if not already burst and leaking. Then someone stepped forward. She had no face, and her hair was covered by her wimple, yet that chaplet aquila and burner were unmistakable.

  “You have failed too many times,” Hae Nyeo said without lips or compassion, “Your sins are my sins. I uplifted and, now, I redeem us both.”

  The burner spewed ignited promethium. Sticky oil stuck to her skin as it seared and boiled and melted flesh. Her body found strength to thrash in death throes, her injured vocal cords strung to their limit in death cries.

  Then she was ash.

  Then she woke up.

  It was cold and dark. That was all she could make out as her senses returned to her. She was suspended off the floor with her back to something. Something held her at her neck, her wrists, her ankles. Something prickly, like teeth that sank into her flesh but barely held back from closing the bite.

  Her eyes fluttered as they adjusted. Then she blinked them manually. Then she realised the dark she witnessed was no lack of light; it was a miasma, the same breathing unlife she saw on the boat sails, as if interstellar clouds were captured and hung, but for what purpose?

  What light did worm around the clouds was tinted blood red by the aquaria built on either side of the room. The dark shapes of cragged reefs provided structure for the aquatic shadows to swim around. A tall, spindly thing was standing close to the right aquarium, its arms in the subtle movements of tinker work, over a desk perhaps.

  An operating table. She realised she was held upright by a standing operating table. She was strapped to an operating table again. Again, she was strapped to an operating table. She rustled in the bindings, heedless of the teeth tearing into her, for nothing they could do could be worse than the purpose of holding her captive like this. Bleeding to death would be its own form of escape, as long as she was free from these bindings and the threat of their machinations.

  “She’s awake!” came through a woman who sounded like piss hitting a garbage can.

  The spindly thing was still focused on its desk. Instead, a female pushed her way past the miasma. She wore even fewer clothes than the hellions did, without a single plate of armor to hide or hinder her flesh. What was there was dazzling red and green leather meant to catch the eye, no matter how much commotion was around it. Yet she was not gaunt and spindly like the others whose bare skin Yoon had seen, oh no, she was relatively bulky with scarred, rippling muscles from bald head to toe. She had the same empty black eyes and grey skin. Her teeth, exposed by her cheshire smile, were jagged obsidian shards that glinted under the blood lighting.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “We watched you out there, with your fellow sisters,” she leaned in, uncomfortably close, and tilted her head, “you won me a bet,” her breath was cold as mountain breeze, “for that, I had already planned to have my elixicant fix you up. Your hand and your eyes, all better, see?”

  She told the truth. Yoon had been too distracted to notice: the black bar was gone from her vision, and her hand flexed and stretched without pain, besides the inward chewing manacles.

  But that was not all the xeno spoke of.

  “What bet?”

  “I told you, we watched you and your sisters. They sent you alone to deal with the animal. I was the only one who bet in your favor, and my faith was rewarded. Also, when someone helps, it is polite to say thank you.”

  “My sisters would help me; you are investing in your thoroughbred.” The xeno pulled back, still with a rictus grin.

  “Call it what you like. You live because I picked you out. Believe it's a miracle that you were noteworthy, if that's what it takes to process it.”

  “I won’t be grateful to be kidnapped.” The xeno poked an obsidian nail into Yoon’s chest, the sharpness effortlessly puncturing skin like thin, wet parchment. She dug in just enough to draw a bead of blood under her nail.

  “Oh, but you should be,” she scooped out her nail and licked it clean, “the common slaves get sent to the pens en masse, perhaps sold in the market in batches should there be excess. They may be tormented by the whims of the underlings or used as material for the experiments of haemonculi; either way, they are expendable. Compared to that, being a prized thoroughbred is something to give thanks for. There was this one girl who made it big solely because of how popular her fighting blue man was. An inspiration, truly.”

  “And what happens when I’m no longer valuable?” The xeno finally stopped smiling, her expression puzzled as if asked to describe the color blue.

  “Then you would be useless and tossed back aside as another generic slave, if not put down for whatever failure brought you low. Same as anywhere else,” her smile returned, and both her hands, scalding cold, cupped Yoon’s cheeks, “but that’s not going to happen. I see the talent in you, the potential. You’re different. You’re better,” her lips brushed against Yoon’s ear, the hiss of air sucked between teeth resonant in the canal up to Yoon’s brain, “I can’t wait to see you bloom.”

  “None of this is a compliment. I wish Owl Boy had killed me.” She pulled back again.

  “Many wish for the release of death, but you are capable of so much more,” she clasped her hands together beside her head, then rested on them, “Oh, how I now understand what my hekatrix felt when she took me in. Do well, and you may yet earn your place as a debutante.”

  “A heka-huh? A debu- what now?” She unfurled her hands.

  “Forgive my manners. I was so excited, I forgot the introductions: Syren Abominatrix of the Strangled Breath. My friends call me Abommy. And you are?”

  “None of your throne-damned business.”

  “Understandable. I suppose this all must be… overwhelming, to take in. I’ll go first then.

  I spent my first century eking out an existence under the shadow of spires in a lightless city. I fought as part of one murder-pack or another until I caught the eye of a hekatrix who was scouting the carnage for talent. She was impressed with how my hellion gang outmaneuvered reaver riders from our skyboards.”

  ‘They actually call themselves hellions?’ thought Yoon.

  “I was taken into the Cult of Pain Eternal. My hekatrix trained me in the image of Hekatii, the mother of strife, and Qa’leh, the mistress of blades. They put me to the test in the arena, in the streets, and in their raids on real space. It was only after a decade as a debutante that I proved myself to be initiated through blood and acid as a full-fledged hekatarii and joined my hekatrix in desecrating the shrine worlds of the lesser races and gods. I’ve fought many mon’keigh sisterhoods before, though they had their own brand of wyches that we enjoyed dueling yet are conspicuously absent here; oh well, the abundance of seraphim makes up for it.”

  Yoon had been taught tales of the repentia as examples of failures who redeemed themselves through martyrdom. As much as the confessors preached the virtues of death, the houses of Incheo were not ones to send their prized daughters to their doom willy-nilly, especially when it involved stripping naked for public appraisal. Perhaps the greater Imperium could spare the man-power for vainglorious acts, but, based on what is taught of past epidemics and hexes, Incheo needed every woman with a bolter and power armor it could get, all the more with xenos like this coming over the horizon.

  “After another couple of centuries, I became a hekatrix myself, invited to the bloodbrides even, then eventually Syren. Then a promising upstart archon requested our patronage. Her kabal was in the business of slave taking, of course, but she offered more: while her men used paralyzing agents to scoop up the slaves, the rest of the planet would be kept as a reservation for aspiring hunters to prey upon greater game or other recreation. My wyches are here for your sisters and the chaos-affiliates, yes, but these dokkaebi are quite the sport, and no doubt attracted the rest of the customer base. Having something to fill our beast pens for the arena frees up more time for raiding.”

  “Happy to hear our lives and mortal enemies are entertainment for you.”

  “I should be thanking you, we wouldn’t be here without sweeties like you,” Abommy made a heart with her fingers.

  The figure at the desk picked something up and made its way toward them. They had a black gown with cloudy grey pattern accents. In their hands seemed to be a mass of eyeballs. The eyeballs were shifting, watering.

  Alive.

  Abommy squealed, took the mass from their arms, and sealed it on her head.

  A helmet.

  “This is my witness mask,” said Abominatrix with a pose: she stood on her toes, one leg crossed over far in front of the other, both hands fanned to the sides of her head. “This way, I always have an audience. I get fresh pairs of eyes so that they may witness the downfall of all they hold dear, whether it be their families, their world, or their gods.”

  Yoon recognized one of those eyes, still sparkling like an emerald, looking to Yoon with mouthless pleading. The gown-wearer bore a necklace with a familiar ecclasiaticus. Abommy lowered onto her heels.

  “Oh, they are not dead. I only needed one of their eyes. The rest are alive and well for shipping to the slave markets. Bulk purchasers won’t be worried about the slightly diminished quality.”

  “Considering we had literal daemons from hell to worry about,” started Yoon, “I did not understand why my abbesses were so concerned about xenos. They were a distant idea compared to the mutants, criminals, and beasts on the doorstep, and the servants of a malevolent god from the underbelly of reality next door. They spoke of the unfathomable horrors that necessitated the emperor to send out his sons and angels to save humanity. I thought, ‘What could possibly be worse about them than anything else I have seen or been warned of?’

  Now I understand. In the short time I have witnessed, and from this brief conversation, your kind are worse than any nightmare imaginable, and I look forward to your inevitable extermination.”

  Abommy placed a hand over where her heart supposedly was.

  “That is the most wonderful compliment anyone has ever given me.”