'Hurry. Up/ it said, as if annoyed with me.
I reached the trap.
There wasn't time to get us all through. Gustine hurled himself in, headlong, and I followed, shouting to the others to stay back and stay together.
The last thing I heard was a loud, liquid impact that must have been the ogryn finally obeying the law of gravity.
The trap blinked shut.
I felt a sickening twist of translation. I landed on top of the sprawled Gustine in a dim, boxy space that smelled musty.
'Ow!' he complained.
I got to my feet. That in itself was ridiculously hard. I was sweating freely by the time I was vertical.
'You okay?' Gustine asked.
'Yes,' I snapped. I wasn't really. My head was throbbing, and the pain in my legs was beginning to overcome the power of the drugs that were self-administering from a dispenser Crezia had fitted to my hip.
'You had better not expect me to carry you/ Cherubael whispered behind me.
'Don't worry. Your dignity isn't in danger/
I drew Barbarisater, holding it in my right hand, and gripped my runestaff in my left.
I stomped forward. Darkness. A wall. I turned. Another wall.
'Gustine?'
He'd switched on a lamp pack, but it was showing him nothing but black walls. There was no sign of a ceiling.
'How far can you see?' I asked Cherubael.
'Forever/ it said, floating alongside me.
'Fine. In practical terms, how far can you see?'
'Not far in here. I can see that the wall ends there. There is a gap beyond it/
Very well/ I plodded ahead. My back really hurt now where the implants went in and my nose was bleeding. Gustine clipped the lamp pack to the bayonet lug of his las.
He tried to reach Nayl on the vox. Dead and silent.
I made an effort to reach Ravenor with my mind. Nothing.
Heavy footed, I moved through the darkness with my odd companions. The runestaff was trembling, sniffing some focus of power.
'You feel that?' I asked the daemon.
It nodded.
I decided we would follow it.
'Have you noticed we can breathe in here too?' Gustine remarked a few minutes later.
'Gosh, I wouldn't have picked up on that/
He frowned at me, put-upon. 'I mean, the air's right, inside and out/
'It's so the enemy can breathe/ Cherubael said.
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'They got here first. They got inside. Ghiil made the atmosphere appropriate for them as soon as Ghiil sensed they were there/
'You're talking like Ghiil is alive/
'Ghiil has never been alive/ it said.
'It's never been dead, either/ it added a moment later.
I was about to ask it to expand a little on that alarming notion, but Cherubael suddenly surged forward in the blackness ahead of us. I saw the flash of its light, a laser discharge.