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The bottle of Flame of Purity wine exploded in a cloud of dark glass shards and amber liquid against the far wall of the Rogue Trader’s quarters. The pieces of glass and liquid tumbled down the rich burgundy wall and collected in a depression in a cluster of diseased pinkish flesh that gently pulsed in the low flickering candlelight.
The Rogue Trader snarled and gripped her hair, digging her fingers into her scalp, her nails catching on the metallic forms that wove their way over the crest of her skull.
She whirled on her feet and her eyes landed on her Regicide board. She seized it with both hands and threw it to the floor, scattering the pieces in every direction. A few were swept up by the tendrils of another patch of growth.
Her quarters were streaked with inky black shadows, their edges flickering along with the firelight of wickedly pointed sconces.
One of the shadows moved in opposition to the flame, and Marazhai stepped out into the light, his grin like razor wire stretched across his pale face.
“I thought I heard you in here, grunting like the beast you are, mon’keigh.” He said, and a flicker of annoyance appeared on his face when the woman before him didn’t turn to give him the attention he rightly deserved. “Mycandra.” He said, each syllable like the point of a dagger.
“Enough!” She exploded in anger, lashing out to kick over the table that had held the regicide board. The unfathomably expensive wooden table splintered from the force of it. Several soars of the wood sunk into the patch of flesh on the ground, causing it to expel a foul smelling gas, sweet like corpse rot, and hiss in agony, then deflate, weeping a tacky yellowish fluid.
The Rogue Trader stepped away before the gunk could reach her fine shoes. She finally regarded Marazhai, her expression dark, face drawn and eyes follow, betraying a ghastly fury,
“Am I to surmise that your meeting with the Inquisitor did not go as intended?” He sneered.
She lashed out quicker than he could see, a black blade sung past his face, catching on his cheek. The smell of blood hit the air and a shiver ran down his spine.
“They left me!” She wailed, stomping past him. She went to the words of house Valancius where they were fixed to a pillar and tore it from the wall. “Traitors! Faithless bastards!” The wax seals from the ancient document clattered to the floor. She pulled apart the parchment like a furious bird, plucking at it with her nails, rending it to tatters.
“As amusing as this is-“ Marazhai watched her begin to pull books from the shelves. She found a particularly ornate volume and hurled it into the flames of a brazier, sending up a spray of sparks. “- plentiful prey abounds on the lower decks, slate your thirst for destruction that way.”
The Rogue Trader stalked across the room to her desk and threw herself into her chair, gripping the arms tightly, the lines of her arms tense, her shoulders squared.
“No.” She grumbled, and reached up to push off her psyker’s hood. Her pitch black hair was damp with sweat and clung to her skin. She pushed the hair off of her forehead and reached out, knocking the vox caster off of the desk. The machine spirit within the device fled its broken shell with a shriek that finally seemed to break her out of her destructive reverie.
“I have no desire to indulge in slaughter.” She said, glaring at him. He didn’t reply, and after a moment she could no longer meet his eyes. She turned her stony gaze down to the desk, which was littered with the trappings of her office, documents and a dish containing rings and slender needles, the shimmering opalescence of the Warp clinging to all of it like mildew or maggots.
“How many of your useless retinue have left us?” Marazhai asked, telling himself he only wished to know so that he could learn how to inspire this mood in the future.
“Four.” The Rogue Trader said. “Sister Argenta-“
“-hardly surprising-“ He said.
“Silence.” She snapped, “Do you bear my mark or not? If I want your opinion, I will command you to speak.”
Marazhai parted his lips to reply, but paused. She was looking at him again, her eyes fixed on the place on his neck beneath his armor where she had carved the symbol of her dynasty into his skin. The brand had long healed, but he felt a surge of heat beneath it as twin pinpricks of magma red appeared in the very center of her pupils.
He wondered how long it would take fire separate his head from his neck, whether she would burn him from within, whether the flames would have a taste on his tongue. Then the heat disappeared.
She sat back in her chair with her elbow leaned on one arm, pressing her temples with the fingers of one hand.
“The sister, Ulfar the space wolf, Yrliet…”
“Ungrateful.” Marazhai murmured. It was surprising. His kin’s admiration for the mon’keigh had run deep, after Mycandra had gone out of her way to try and retrieve her wayward craftworld’s people, and the frankly inscrutable forgiveness she had shown in Commorragh, in the end. Of course, a higher being had no need to show loyalty to a lesser one even if it had proved useful, but he had thought Yrliet had begun to feel differently.
“-and Inquisitor van Calox.” She said finally, one hand curling into a fist on the desk.
Marazhai’s eyebrows rose, ever so slightly. The Rogue Trader’s despair filtered through the air between them, sinking into his skin and slating his hunger with her suffering, ever so slightly.
“A pity.” He said, and he stepped around the desk to stand at her side, leaning in so that his grinning face was very nearly flush with her cheek. “He seemed so loyal, following you over and back across the Void like a devoted pup.” His breath was cool against her skin, “Even when he learned of our games.”
She turned her head towards him, glaring into his eyes. Despite the fearsome expression on her face, he felt another wave of suffering surge from her.
“I was- mistaken. About the extent of his loyalty.” She whispered, her voice hoarse, ragged, as if she had endured torture rather than the simple loss of her inferior mon’keigh lover.
He had come across them once, intending to invite his mistress on an evening hunt, only to discover that her quarters and indeed her bed were already occupied.
In the dark he could see her perched atop him, straddling his hips, her small breasts bouncing as she rode him. They were both breathing hard and the scent of sweat and sex was in the air, along with the powerful aura of their psychic energies merging around them.
He completed his hunt on his own, and had not thought of it often. Mon’keigh copulation held no allure for him, he might as well have been watching slugs breeding.
Still, he had watched the inquisitor after that, observed the way his gaze softened when it felt on the Rogue Trader, watched when the two of them spoke with their heads bowed, foreheads nearly touching on the bridge.
He recalled the way she had tended to van Calox after freeing him from his torture, how she had held him so tenderly, how he had seen that soft piece of her and wondered now much suffering he could have drawn from her if he had taken the inquisitor rather than his burnt lackey from Dargonus.
“-you wanted?” She said.
“What?”
She inhaled a breath and let it out through clenched teeth.
“Was there something you wanted, Marazhai?” She asked, irritation evident from having to repeat herself. “If you’re seeking my permission to hunt, you know your territory is mapped and there’s no need to bother me about it except to fulfill your degenerate fantasies.”
“Hm.” He straightened, then reached out his metal clawed hand to her cheek, taking the pointed tips across her skin. Her upper lip curled but she didn’t pull away, letting the bright red lines blossom and bleed.
“I’m not in the mood.” She said. “Follow my command and leave me be.”
He took his hand back and licked her blood from the claws of his gauntlet. Around them, the great voidship rumbled as if they were in the belly of some great leviathan, already devoured and soon to be digested. There was also the pained moaning of the captives she kept in her quarters for her amusement and his- in happier times. And besides that, there was the sound of water running in her private bath.
“I have an idea.” He said, and drew back, offering her his hand. She looked down at it suspiciously.
“I told you already, I-“
“Indulge me, mistress. Don’t you trust my good judgment?”
She scoffed and then stood, and took his hand.
“If only to learn what idea your diseased mind would consider worthy of my time.” She said, somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite the nearly meter difference in their heights.
He drew her back to where the bath was running, and left her beside the pool while he went to wrench open the door to the cage containing the captive in that room.
“No, please-!” There was no telling where the mon’keigh had come from. The lower decks? Some colony world of the Rogue Trader’s? Some unfortunate refugee? It didn’t matter. He dragged the captive to the side of the pool and pushed them over the side, then took one of his wicked blades and dragged it across their throat, causing a great bout of blood to spill into the pool. He held the rapidly weakening mon’keigh as they bled until they collapsed forward. Then he stood and excited the bathing room to retrieve the rest of the prisoners from her quarters.
Gradually the water in the pool was tinged pink, then red, then the deep burgundy of venous blood, bled out of half a dozen captives. He hauled the corpses off of the edge of the pool, leaving them in a bleeding heap on the floor, watching with satisfaction as the same deep color poured out of the fountains that continuously fed the pool.
He looked to the Rogue Trader, she was watching him with wide, shining eyes, the corers of her mouth tight, gradually pulling into a rictus grin.
“I never should have doubted you.” She said. She rose to her feet and he undressed her, then they both pulled the plates of his armor off, reopening the puncture wounds across his body.
She was beautifully bruised as well, though it was the green and yellow of mostly healed bruises, rather than the beauty of black, blue, and red that they had once been. He gave her a hand to step into the pool and she sank into the sanguine bath down to her chin, watching him as he took down his hair and then joined her.
“Is this what passes for hygiene in the Dark City?” She asked, her voice low.
“This is an exquisite luxury.” He said, “Though it would be much more decadent if the blood was that of the ones who betrayed you.”
She didn’t respond immediately, instead he watched the vicious idea creep across her thoughts. She leaned back against the edge of the pool and her expression finally relaxed into something softer, almost content.
“Does that please you, mistress?” He asked. “The thought of the traitorous scum returning to the ship to be bled for your pleasure?”
“It does.” She said, and a warm feeling of satisfaction coiled in his gut.
“Then it will be done.”