Vex Chronicles 4: Zeal

Missing agents

Codra Minor, unknown location

"The ritual failed!" Breygor hollered and grabbed the tech priest by his charred robe.

Breygor was larger and bulkier. But the rough-handled man wasn't fazed in the slightest. He pushed the furred hands aside with a gargoyle-headed metal tendrils. The mechandrite's maw spewed a puff of flames as a warning.

"We will not allow such mistreatment to our form." The man's voice sounded like a rusty door hinge, transmitted by a crackling speaker. "You failed, not I. You let the pontifex slip out of your grasp. After all the efforts we went through to liberate him."

"Are you mad?" Breygor bleated angrily. "What could I have done? I can't hunt after him looking like this! And I have no authority of the creature's cultists either."

Breygor looked at the men that stood beside him. They had the same stringy fur as him. But some had begun to show the first stages of chaos mutation. Purple twirls in their fur and deformed limbs – the 'gift' for their services.

"We can't go out looking like this. And Tymiclast's cultists are ravaging mad. The twisted thing will be angry." Breygor shuddered and his hoofs scratched over the concrete floor. "He will demand blood."

Flickering orange flames appeared in the eye sockets of the polished metal skull helmet and old machines screeched. A sound that Breygor had learned to identify as the burnt one's amusement. "The tail doesn't wag with the dog. This Tymiclast came to Codra without a power base. His presence drew attention to our plans. We offered helped so that his ascension would not get in our way. And it still did..."

The mechanical voice turned low and brimmed with anger. "Their failure risks our operation. So they will pay, not we. Deliver Tymiclast a message. Tell him that he is now in our debt. And I expect repayment."

Breygor stared in disbelieve at the flickering flames of the heretek's eyes. How could he remain so calm? How could he even believe to demand reparation from that beast of a chaos creature? But Breygor had learned how painful it was to question the heretic tech priest's authority.

"I will tell him." Breygor signaled his herd to stay back. "I will go alone. And maybe I will return still in one piece..."

Aes Cognis, Vex's laboratory

Inquisitor Vex balled his right hand. The surgeon had done exceptional work. The flesh was still pinker than he was used to. And the scars clearly marked where the old forearm ended and the newly cloned body part begun. The finger tips still itched. But that was just a temporary side effect of the rejuvenation process mending injured nerve endings to the new ones.

"Expensive but effective."

In the encounter on the necron starkiller fort, the dark eldar had claimed the inquisitor's arm and burned his eyes. Vex's eyesight had mostly recovered and his arm was back. But the scars would forever remind Vex of the mission that had cost him a good friend.

"Ak Kressman, you will be missed..." Vex reached for the desk-mounted comm unit. "Captain Feh, still no update on the parking permissions?"

"Negative," was the moody reply from the bridge. The icy woman was as annoyed as Vex.

Vex put the auto quill to the side and again flexed his prickling fingers. When the inquisitor closed the lid of the book, he managed a weak grin as he read the "title". Sill had scrawled the words "Vex Chronicles" on the leather. And below was her "lifelike" sketch of Vex and retinue.

Vex had repeatedly told the half-ogryn that this wasn't his chronicles but a collection of what little necron knowledge still resided in his memory implants. But Sill had rejected Vex's choice of "Liber Necroferrum". And then she had ended the discussion by writing the title herself.