The Novacula Mortis was a considerably larger ship than Heinrix anticipated it to be. Navigating its corridors took… adjustment. It was a difficult surreality to wrap ones mind around after so long feeling trapped in spaces altogether more unwelcoming.

His previous arrangements still weighed heavy on his mind.

Purposeful strolling through the Novacula never lessened its cavernous design to his perception and as he descended into just one of its fourty megatonnes it felt truly like lowering into another world.

He encountered less and less souls in the underworld of von Aurastor’s domain where Marazhai had been mercifully granted his allowances.

Heinrix was stunned by the exchange when he’d witnessed it. He, having expected the Rogue Trader to deny the Drukhari out of hand instead barely required deliberation. Quickly acquiescing to the heinous petition with a dark amusement the Inquisitor was sure could mean nothing short of ruin in the long term.

He considered how he might… offer his services foremost in turn. That Lord von Aurastor might make use of him. His skills. Without appearing too… Eager. In light of Marazhai’s request. It almost inspired him.

A consideration that dissipated like smoke when he saw what the Lord Captain asked in return. Somewhat benign, he realized, yet altogether beyond his ken in the moment.

Beg for it. Came the smooth command.

Marazhai, ever in earnest, wasted no time- and did beg. And what a display.

Heinrix could flush at the words exchanged and recalls the way he looked away in a hurry when Lord Aurastor glanced his way with amusement writ plain. Looking so… expectant of him.

Did he know?

Heinrix felt the warp’s pressure upon his nape. At his collum. Needling his cortex. He wonders how it felt for Marazhai.

In the dim light, he was able to forget himself. The flickering lumens created pools of light ahead and with each he passed under he felt something more melt away. Something he allowed to slough off.

Tacky and tasting of iron.

Smelling of…

Fear.

A terrified whimper turns toward him. A wretched figure surprised to see such a dignified lord of the world above. A final reaper that surprised even himself with the ferocity with which he reaches to claw around the neck, barely guarded.

Heinrix exhales, needing only imagine the fire he set to vein before the inhuman terror split his ears and he, with a tremor, watches from behind his eyes as the pain inspired the most elaborate display of suffering he could have asked for.

He stumbled back in a smooth motion to catch himself on a rail. The Novacula’s blackest guts below even further.

He was in hell. And looks around in realization that he had shattered the lumen-strip above with his excitement.

Sounds of warp-madness caught his ill-fated attention further along the walkway. Steam sputtered in effort from under the grilles that checkered the corridor but he could see.

Prey.

His hands tremble as they release his grip as he pushes himself away from the edge. And approaches the waiting herd.

It would be time before Marazhai was seen again from the inky depths of the Novacula Mortis. This territory was readily larger by comparison, incomprehensibly so, to the von Valancius flagship.

Within, the prey far more willing in their naïve unknowing.

Keening screams were an ecstasy of addiction after so long. Each stripping of sinew from bone savoured as the anguish of it pulled the Warp's very claws from his starved flesh. From where von Valancius had marked him to be bound at all times; when he should misbehave, or when he should want for ought at all.

Given to him after foolishly deciding he could trust the word of a mon-keigh even in debt.

Hunting grounds his own to rule were eventually pulled away, his allowances fewer. His body kept longer in chains and longer in his former stateroom. For days or weeks or however long sufficed enough to break his mind in the stasis of nothingness he was eventually bound. The lower decks no longer his to have.

If he were feral for it, he would be shut away simply and left until von Valancius would hear the howling and complaints be replaced by stillness.

His was an agony to suffer. The Warp itself felt as though it kept him alive for the despair he delivered. The way it must have joyed at the fraying of the wires holding his nerves and brain alive- nerves wrung loose in neglect and the desire for torment unfed.

He came aboard with Heinrix van Calox unwillingly, in owing his basal life to the mon-keigh creature. Starving. Cynical from the blackened, empty cage of one to the palatial stateroom of another. To be here required furious, vengeful willpower sapped by his former keeper and leaving behind the feral rage of one toeing the edge of abyss.

On the flagship of von Valancius, the pleasure of gripping thermoplas and clawing himself against the walls keeping him bore the measure of his desire to survive. And of course. He found his ways to persist.

When the drukhari boarded the Novacula Mortis, it was in expectation of the same. Perhaps his life would finally be scraped away by the daemons overhead and his soul subsumed.

He sensed the way the maw simply waited for a time that he could no longer tolerate the enduring agony of realspace.

And so it was not beneath him to bargain for his life if the Lord von Aurastor would have better use of his machinations, his venomblade and claws.

It would not be beneath him to owe his life to another. Thought in black rage kept from all others. If von Aurastor would but allow him the hunting grounds he required.

He. Would.

To Marazhai's surprise. His hair stood on end instantly and he almost believed it to be a trick of the Warp itself but.

Beg for it.

Gaunt fangs showed themselves in a brutal, malnourished display of sublimity.

Ohhnnn, of course, your grace...

Said with a shudder and cold on the tip of his tongue. The dread familiar and amplified somehow. The Warp's presence never so far.

Oh, he would. Each and every time required of him. He would willingly beg for any modicum of bliss that did not trap his senses.

He recalled the Inquisitor's face from brow to jaw in all of its pleasurable regiment.

Marazhai would ask nothing of the Inquisitor with them. Not aboard a mon-keigh vessel that he did not recognise. Not in the presence of one not privy to their little agreement.

He would not speak to him again, in fact, after absconding for the lower decks.

The way of things was that he would simply beg whensoever he felt his needs arise. Agreed upon with cynicism and desperate elation.

At the hands of mon-keigh again. So be it.

He would fully indulge his time across the gargantuan lower decks. Nor were those terms agreed- the limits of his hunts. Until gluttonous on excess and his blades spent, perhaps.

Over machinery and steam this far into the Novacula, wails like hellfire enliven Marazhai's attention from the black dark as night-eyes flicker down the direction of a long, dark hall burned out of its light. The display at his feet invisible to man's eyes in the dark.

Visible to he who assails the dark with a vicious chuckle, long legs on thorned heels stepping effortlessly- hungrily- over bodies and flesh torn asunder. Not so long ago a patrol of mon-keigh labourers. Prey while in his territory.

Any wanderer would find none of the bodies recognisable beyond flesh torn madly asunder and the corridor sprayed dark in blood and raw meat.

Marazhai moves serpentine through the lower decks at a new, much more interesting thing. A fight, or an intruder in his hunting grounds, perhaps. Did the Lord von Aurastor himself hunt down here?

He would be. Thrilled. To kill him. If so.

Thrilled by the ice that gathered at his nape when speaking to the Lord. From where? From the black, gnawing dark.

Blood and flesh eventually overwhelm his senses through smog and distant lumens even while afar. A level up but. The sensation recognisable instantly.

Whispers of abyss dangerously close and far at once above Marazhai's head as his steps picked up in the dark- Drukhari not known for weight or noise. Their souls noisy and screaming to Sai'lanthresh even still.

Marazhai's excitement hisses through the pitch darkness and prey between them. Evisceration. Too fast for man's eyes until agony already touched them.

Chaos and massacre in moments as Marazhai rushes through the herding animals and the massacre sings for Heinrix.

None killed. Some bled out in collateral while others screamed and sprawled over the edge. Marazhai, coiling serpent thorned in the dark, turns with wild eyes to meet the glowing intrusion and rushed him- blades poised instantly.

He stops so close over Heinrix, the panting cold and wild. The wave of blood sensational as he laughs first, madly, the venomblade raised in disrupted, cacophonic madness.

"Ohhhnnn, mon-keigh…"

He cackles, and then hisses.

"You are in my territory..."

Marazhai's breath rasps as he takes a fervent, convulsing breath of predatory pleasure.

He wouldn’t be able to do that again.

A pounding headache crashed into him as the high released him and he stumbled. Not while they were drowning in the warp.

Heinrix palmed his own forehead with a focused pressure as his mismatched eyes fix upon the throng, noticing him one-by-one. He drops his hand to the handle of his blade and felt his soul lurch in anticipation as he released it from its cage.

And myself. I release. He thinks, wishing so much to entomb these bodies in flame. Righteous. Not sick.

He raises his blade in expectation of catharsis only for motion barely discernible in the unsteady darkness to rob his prey’s attention. Their brief surprise erupted into genuine horror of—

Of course. The terror in the lower decks. Von Aurastor’s new pet. A ravenously familiar moniker that put them both in dark places.

Heinrix was paused in mid-motion as Marazhai came into focus. He didn’t lower his blade, not after hearing the way his voice scraped over the metal of the walls here. Over his own brain like the belly of a serpent chilling his veins.

Some things- they do not change.

Heinrix stayed his blade as Marazhai stayed his own bloody pair and they met near. Oh, but there was a danger. He could taste it in the air, still in motion between them although they managed this moment’s posturing.

Heinrix swallows quietly when the beast cackles overhead. He narrows his eyes.

It was clear Marazhai was in a mania. Elevated to ecstasy as he only could be after lengths of time in famine. Heinrix came come to learn this of him.

Oh, he was in danger. But the beast could be reasoned with. Even if he himself was grappling with his own reason for being here at all. Heinrix lowers his blade carefully with a furrowed brow.

“Yes.” He admits with a barely suppressed sigh from his nose. For a moment, he considers merely obfuscating his reason for being so. He supposed it would be a grave insult to both their intelligence when the evidence of his own mania lay not body lengths from the backs of his heels in blistering ash, rattled by the Novacula’s effort to see them through to the other side of warp’s madness.

“I was,“ He could feel Marazhai’s widened attention upon him even if he didn’t look to confirm, “contending with the needles in my own flesh.” He provides, a tone suggesting a measure of disbelief in his own words. Disgust in his own actions.

It was an analogue he’d offered to Marazhai once before. Between just the two of them. Needles in his veins. Catching and piercing now and then. Happy to live in his bloodstream for a time until…

“I could not…” A sigh. “Withhold myself.”

When von Aurastor laughed like an old friend and touched your head with that look of nonpartisan interest. Impartial but acquiescing.

I could not bring myself to beg for the same. Not after-

The flames of the warp prickled unnervingly at the edges of Marazhai's mind as he prowled closer; as the warp and its creatures brayed all around him, as he rushed into darkness in pleasure transcendent. The collective songs of terror enough to bide his satisfaction for moments.

He had lived in some torture close to warp madness for. Some time. This he knew in furious shame.

Cathartic beyond any black claws that could ever touch upon his soul. Away, daemons.

Oh, but the light was proffered just a little here-- the lumens not quite destroyed between him and his trespasser. Enough with the scent of the living for him to be guided to the other easily. The deliverer of his doom amongst the souls this way, or awaiting to share in his hunting grounds at the ends of his venomblades or otherwise.

Marazhai himself was faster than might be perceived until in front of his visitor, blades and fanged bared in bloody euphoria and in fury. All became basal, beyond the senses and into the ephemeral entire.

Yet he was present all at once. Narrowed eyes stared into the screaming glare and the grin silenced by mad pleasure. By the screaming and wailing all around them of the forsaken.

There could be no contemplation between them in front of the dying. The cackling of the Drukhari's bliss and their gazes between one another stimulating.

Overwhelming to the senses, was this feast.

If he were to savour it for longer. His eyes lap the edges of van Calox's blade and he wonders madly if the inquisitor intended to use it. The sight of the gilded aquila enough to stake him in some fear that his territory may be taken from him again. In some sudden terror that he may be consumed after all.

In clarity, he hisses deeply and loudly at the shimmering aquila.

He would not lower his blades until Heinrix did. In wary mirror him.

Will you join this chorus, van Calox? Or become a part of it for not leaving sooner?

Marazhai awaits the admission with furious, predatory pleasure. Leaning closer without words but hissing at him in warning. Though he sensed the blood on him so near and did wonder, instantly satisfied. He could not hide from Marazhai's senses, after all: not from the night-eyes that saw the blood and the distant body just out of sight.

The blade lowers. And his own pair of fangs retreat to his waist.

Yes.

Heinrix would find him a long step closer, attention severe as he does. His neck cranes impatiently.

"Go on..?" He growls quickly, prowling.

I was--

It was an ecstasy remembered and spoken of once before. It could have made him laugh. It could have surprised him. It could have drawn out his fangs for Heinrix saying it. And it does.
He desired to satisfy the needles as they plucked at his veins-- to release them as they barbed him. To release all vengeance and pleasure and perils of the Warp and von Valancius and be bound only by his own pleasures. It was... exhilarating.

It does make Marazhai howl. He wails in euphoria of the admission.

I could not...--

"Yes, yesnnhnnh!" He intakes a sharp breath. "Oho, my pet..! It is the very tides of this bloodshed that offer the satisfaction to this world's agony. I have always sensed your cravings to sate your rage... And."

Said with mad laughter in possession plain. He could convulse in the pleasure and towers eagerly over Heinrix with eyes on his, Marazhai's eyes drop then and he hisses.

"And I have offered this feast to you before... and you did not accept." Fangs fall to a frown and then a smirk in mad, spinning moments of an absent mind. He grins as clarity curls around his neck and holds him lucid.

Marazhai's head lilts, the smirk vile. Triumphant or sickly.

"Ohhnnhnn... You will beg to share in my hunting grounds, inquisitor. You will beg to claim the souls of my slaughters. As I have suffered to claim these decks..." He recalls with a face suddenly tight in pain and wide-eyed fury.

Slaughter protected him from the Warp this moment and he let himself recoil in the rage that made him roar; the grip of Sai'lanthresh around his heart at all times at the whim of von Valancius, their torturer.

It was the very release of it at the mercy of von Aurastor's truth that gave him no mind of their former keeper- for he would kill this one sooner than suffer the same again.

He would savour that which was finally his own for now.

"Submit to me, van Calox, and I will willingly be claimant over your cattle." Marazhai orders first, madly. Rasping in breathless abandon at the pleasure of his relief.

A venomblade redraws from Marazhai's side and he holds the threat towards him, the envenomed blade whining as it reveals itself slaked in blood and concoction.

A moment of something sees him waver the blade but not lower it. A strange expression veiled by a grin.

"Be it that this Lord Captain betrays us also... I would split him in twain for it..." He adds quickly on a low breath, eyes darting upwards and around them in mania for moments before his gaze was intent on his companion again, eyes flickering. Feral.

Trusting him. Against all of his wailing, thrashing instincts shrieking not to do so.

Yes, yesnnhnnh!

Heinrix knew as soon as he was about to speak the words that Marazhai would find the sickest and most immediate pleasure in the admittance. Was this cruel fate or… Was it mercy?

The Eldar’s pleasured convulsions could make him writhe. His brain turns over in protest to witness such bare ecstasy.

I have always sensed-

Heinrix turns away his face, just an inch. So close to his inner world here, with so few barriers between them. The very battlements of his mind crumbled from their turmoiled crossing through hell’s tumult.

And I have offered this feast to you before…

He knew this. And he knew that Marazhai was not one to allow such a detail to slip from the bars of any conversation that held him in place. Not after… all.

“You’re right.* He answers quietly. And mutually allows moments to pass. In truth he was not considering how they might proceed but rather had receded within to his deep thoughts. That he was sick and Marazhai, demon, shared this sickness.

Too eager to drag him deeper but, throne, when the suffering was simmering beneath his skin. Skin he could burn himself free of. Valancius’s blood had awoken something.

And Heinrix fixes a quiet look of surprise to his taller counterpart.

You will beg to share in my hunting grounds, inquisitor.

Of course. As he has suffered.

Submit to me, van Calox, and-

Gentle realization dawns that this was a mercy. In Marazhai’s way. Even as the blade hisses into view. Yet still, Heinrix couldn’t stop the step he took onto his heel in unease. There was something both unreadable and familiar in the look Marazhai bore into him.

Now- how to contend with what was asked?

“What you ask is…” He pauses, eyes flickering upward to the wild look. Heredity feral encapsulated in one creature. Even still, Heinrix had come to know something of him. That within the pure evil rested a sinuous mirror held up to his own sleepless eyes. He frowns.

“…reasonable.” He observes, deciding what this meant for himself in an instant.

Heinrix lowers himself to a knee in a deliberate motion, trusting him with the display. Surprising the last remaining part of himself that could grimace in shame.

He lowers his head, eyes pinched momentarily shut while his hand loosens his grip upon his own blade, setting the hilt somewhere between their feet in submission.

“I beg.” He gasps, swallows. Opens his eyes blurry to the sight of the grille under their feet. Humid. Cloying.

“Grant me permission to… to indulge myself in the space granted you. I haven’t the strength to ask for such a thing to be my own.”

He couldn’t bear to look up, keeping his eyes on the other’s heels, the empty promise and loaded trust between them. A long hesitation follows.

“Please.”

Marazhai's eyes follow Heinrix through the dark with every aching inch of writhing, ill desire drawn raw between the two of them.

The two of them were changed since von Valancius, entwined in oblivion with one another. A cruel fate. Mocking. He would have once thought.

Marazhai saw the colour of the inquisitor's tortured soul, and had bared himself in turn. Heinrix had marched through the Warp itself to steal him back from hell eternal.

This inner world, raw in terror and suffering, was known to them both.

Despairs that did not reach Marazhai now, apex of domain. Where the chorus of suffering not long behind them lifted the Drukhari into a song of deepest black ecstasy.

Slaked in the blood of the suffering, he would let nothing slip from the cage they shared.

You're right.

He was. Right. Lingering over him in feral, wild mutualism. Shared silence was a torment and Heinrix would see this in the long limbs that writhed and fought with their very selves overhead. Closeness a violence to him. Suffering. How he sensed Heinrix's disquiet when so near and, oh, his blood froze to ice.

The grin deranged hides nothing. He could kill him.

In wretched, agonising, melodic suffering-- he desired this. To kill him.

Until he finally relents with an offer that they might both indulge. The desire for destruction sated enough by residual torment that he would speak to him, perhaps. And that the crown of dignity and Empire was, within, held up by bones and blood. That they desired the very same of cattle beneath them.

He did not like to share his prey. Nor allow others into his feasts and territory. Not without immense reason. Not after Valancius.

His was an offer not given lightly.

Moments of reluctance brought Marazhai wildly nearer and he bares his teeth into mismatched eyes, almost unreadable in mon-keigh torment. The suffering sublime but, he thinks, most delectable shared.

Nearness would hear Marazhai's breath in the dark where it rasped and sawed through silence with effortless disdain. The frown narrows the Drukhari's eyes until the ecstasy of the answer given.

...reasonable.

Ohh, mon-keigh...

Marazhai's lips lift in deepest anticipation of it as his head cocks wildly.

The display every moment a triumph. Every moment a moment shared in the heights of ecstatic insanity amplified a thousand times in raw energy when Heinrix falls to his knee, his blade then to the floor. It rattles against the walkway with an elegant little whine steeped in gore from blood flayed.

Marazhai heard the plea in utter clarity and grins down at such sublime abeyance. A heel shifting over the grille and catching with an unpleasant sound.

It would be moments. And then a wild, cackling giggle. A venomblade raised overhead omnipresent before it rests upon a silverine pauldron blackened by ash.
Marazhai lets it drip blood and venom down over him in ecstasy expectant.

His was a despairing, deep elegance; the inquisitor, trapped upon the path, now begging for darkness. Writhing, strained desperation was a song to Marazhai's ears above all things- above the torture left eviscerated behind. He could devour his soul in Commorragh's chambers and be enlivened for uncountable years by his torment.

Please.

Marazhai drags the blade whimpering over a pauldron before it returns to his side in no hesitation, his blood frozen in pleasure.

"What an obedient pet." He finally declares through a sublime laugh, in ecstasy wracking his very sinew--In the same moment reaching to grip Heinrix by his nape where he would pull him up with effort to stand, clasping him around his back and grinning madly into shamed eyes. Saw the torment within them waiting to be let free.

The laugh ebbs through bared fangs as he brings him close then and forces a hard kiss over his mouth in a moment's feral psychosis, clawing down his spine. Caring not to claw through fabric or into muscle.

Marazhai roars into his mouth in pleasure and Heinrix would be forced to indulge it- forced to have the breaths of a mad lord exorcised into his own throat as their mouths part roughly at his behest. Wanting to subsume him in such sublime suffering that he deserved.

He bites his mouth then and pulls away, lapping the blood at his own lip.

He would grant him this. Each and every time in trust and in obsession. To see the inquisitor bring aquila to loyal throat. What dogs.

"Submission suits you, mon-keigh. Your obedience satisfies my judgment." He declares venomously, stepping aside with a wild gaze redirected to his offering in turn. The blade from his hip swinging languidly to its master's side as Marazhai points it slavering towards the bodies.

Towards the group he had run through to get to Heinrix. In parts, some dead-- others squirming. Pupils were pin-pricks in a predatory instant as Marazhai repressed his own desire to reciprocate a lifting hand with fang and blade.

He would be audience to van Calox's slaughter and indulge the claim of it all for him with such black satisfaction.

"Their suffering has fueled enough of me. You may have your way with them."

Heinrix shuddered under his appraisal. The sickened giggling, cackling. The sound of wretched blade stroking him upon his armour. It was felt through his shoulder and to his spine.

What an obedient pet. Came the voice etched, by this point, permanently into obsidian relief within his mind.

He glances up in time for a forearm to dive past his periphery to assault his nape with claws beckoning. Up, he understood. He hesitates to do so but does look into Marazhai’s insanity directly. Trusting but indeed shamed.

It happens almost too quickly for him to prevent the violation, his own forearm raising to tap against the other’s breastplate as their mouths met roughly.

“Hmmh!” Heinrix’s brows furrow, nose wrinkling as he felt teeth pierce his lip, talons hold his back.

There was a moment quick as a blade where he, maddened by something, turns his fingers out to hook at the other’s cuiress to hold him still and- bites back. Heat plucks behind his ears. Needling.

As Marazhai steps away, he shoulders him the same with a heavy sigh, turning away in deep flush to kneel and collect his sword.

Submission suits you-

Heinrix glances over his shoulder as he rose again, expression finally softening again as he shifts in place. Off Marazhai’s look and the motion of the Drukhari’s venomblade, he sees what was left for him.

His mouth parts as if to speak for a long moment. Instead, he licks his bloody lip and took a first, unsteady step toward their prey.