Through the eyepiece of his helmet, Nolan studied Utak's face.
He had not expected those words from a captured alien. Persuasion. Genuine concern, or something that wore its shape convincingly. For a Dark Eldar, either possibility was extraordinary.
"Utak," Nolan said, his voice low and unhurried, "whether you mean that sincerely or not, my answer does not change. As long as you don't betray us, I will let you live once we have the artifact back. That holds."
He turned his gaze back to the spiral palace rising ahead of them, its architecture coiling upward like something grown rather than built.
Utak studied the set of the Primarch's shoulders for a moment, then shook his head quietly. He had said what he could. He gestured for the group to follow and led them in silence toward the outer perimeter, keeping low, keeping to the shadows.
They found the secret passage exactly where Utak had said it would be, known only to a handful of the Archon's inner conspirators. The hunting team moved through it in single file, armor scraping stone, the air inside close and smelling of old metal and something else, something chemical and faintly sweet in the way that Dark Eldar spaces often were.
They emerged into the palace proper.
"Going deeper in that direction leads to the Archon's chambers," Utak murmured, crouching at the junction, his voice barely above a breath. He pointed the other way. "That direction leads to his private treasury."
He turned his head toward Nolan. "My lord Primarch, we have only two choices. Either the artifact you seek is locked away in the treasury, or it remains in the Archon's own rooms. We have no way to know which."
Nolan stood still for a moment, head slightly bowed, working through it.
Then he moved toward the Archon's chambers without hesitation.
If the Archon himself was in hand, the treasury could be opened at leisure. Control the man, and everything he owned followed.
The hunting team fell in behind him, and now they stopped pretending. Boots came down with weight. Power armor moved at combat pace. The team shed concealment like a skin they no longer needed and pushed forward through the palace's winding corridors, passage folding into passage, each turn revealing more of the same extravagant decoration: lacquered bone-inlay panels, hanging trophy clusters, lighting that pulsed in slow rhythm like something breathing.
They reached the Archon's chambers.
The doors were open. The room beyond was vast, ornate, and completely empty. Not disturbed, not hastily abandoned. Simply empty, as if it had been prepared that way.
There was not a single person inside. Not a guard. Not a servant. Not so much as a sound.
The silence pressed in from all sides.
"I have a very ominous feeling about this." Nolan turned, the vibranium helmet sweeping the room one more time through the eyepiece before locking onto Utak. "Do you want to explain something to me?"
Utak's expression had shifted. Suspicion first, working through the implications, and then, arriving somewhere much worse: understanding. His face went the color of old ash.
"My lord Primarch." The words came out unsteady. "I believe there is a flaw in our plan. We should not have sent word of your arrival ahead to an Archon of the Pierced Rose. Not to one like Ilu Limnu." He swallowed. "Unpicking a conspiracy is as natural to a Dark Eldar as breathing. We handed him the thread. He pulled it."
"The Hungry One." Utak's voice dropped further. "That old creature knew the moment he received the message. He knew exactly what my little scheme looked like. He would have made new plans before we even entered the gate."
His voice cracked at the edges. "We walked into the jar. We are the ones who were trapped."
The wall to Nolan's left exploded inward.
Then the right wall. Then the far end of the corridor behind them. Stone and lacquer and trophy-bone showered across the floor as Kabalite agents of the Pierced Rose poured through every breach at once, black Kabalite armor catching the pulsing light, crystal splinter rifles and crushers already leveled and firing.
Poison crystal rounds filled the air in a glittering haze. Monofilament nets, razor-edged and near-invisible, sliced outward in arcing throws toward the hunting team.
Nolan's hand was already moving.
The Ten Rings answered instantly, rising from where they orbited and spinning outward in a rapid expanding spiral. Metal crashed against metal, the rings locking into formation and stretching into a curved barrier broad enough to wrap around the entire team. Crystal impacts rang off the surface in a rapid staccato. A net slapped against the barrier and fell away in halves.
At the same moment the air dropped sharply in temperature, frost crystallizing along the corridor walls in a spreading starburst pattern. Te Kahurangi stepped forward with a ferocious set to his face, power scepter raised, and a second layer of psychic shielding bloomed into place ahead of the Ten Rings' barrier, absorbing the next volley.
"Change targets!" Nolan shouted, already turning. "Follow me and kill!"
He pulled the Warscythe from the magnetic mount on his back with one hand. The Heart of the Furnace came off his hip with the other. He did not slow down. He hit the Kabalite line like a colliding freight train, tall and fast, the Warscythe sweeping low across the nearest cluster of agents before they could scatter.
Green light traced the arc of each cut. The Warscythe did not need a second pass. Kabalite armor, crystal weapons, and the flesh beneath parted at the same angle, falling in sections. The Heart of the Furnace spoke in the other hand, each plasma sphere a small contained sun, and where the spheres hit, nothing remained to obstruct the path.
Behind him, Kahurangi's psychic lightning cracked out in looping arcs, the kind of discharge that bypassed armor entirely and simply ended what was inside it. The hunting team's bolt guns added their own grinding percussion to the chaos, deafening in the confined palace corridors.
Utak pressed himself flat against the wall. He found the mortal mother and son in the crush and pulled them close, letting the armored giants form a moving wall of steel around them as the fight pushed forward.
The green light of the Warscythe rose and fell. It rose and fell again. No Kabalite agent that came into range held together long enough to matter.
The team carved forward, yard by yard, and then the corridor opened and they were close to the palace's outer exit. An exit that was no longer an option. More Kabalite poured in through the entrance behind the first wave, a fresh tide of black armor and glittering splinter fire, crystal rounds now coming in dense enough to sound like heavy rain against a metal roof.
The exit was blocked in every direction except one.
Nolan checked the angles without breaking stride and changed course. They moved toward the private treasury.
The treasury doors were reinforced, heavy plate with locking bars that had not been designed for anything short of a siege. The Warscythe opened them with one swing, metal shearing along the cut edge with a sharp clean sound.
Nolan stepped through into the treasury beyond and stopped.
In the center of the room, surrounded by the Archon's collected prizes and trophies and sealed containers, stood a device he recognized immediately.
A webway portal. Active-capable, its surface already faintly iridescent with potential.
"Utak." His voice carried across the treasury. "Where does this lead?"
Utak was already running toward it. "My lord Primarch, I do not know. But I do not think we are in a position to negotiate with uncertainty right now." He glanced back, wide-eyed and committed. "If the Archon takes me alive, knowing that I betrayed him, the manner of my death will make yours look peaceful. We are on the same boat, you and I."
His hands were already moving through the activation sequence, fingers folding through gestures in precise and rapid order. The portal surface stirred, shifted, and opened. A smooth mirror of slowly rotating webway light expanded from the device's frame, stable and ready.
From somewhere behind them in the palace, the sound of armored boots grew louder.
"Follow me." Nolan said it once, to the team, already moving. "Utak chose this with us. He will not betray us here."
Every head nodded. Every boot moved.
They ran together through the portal and into the webway beyond.