Albirte von Shech VII

The two men stride through the mass of mourners. As they approach the ziggurat, one of the black priests holds them up and leads them to a rickety brass elevator set into a deep niche of the shadowy building. The priest’s fingers flick across a tarnished keypad and the cage opens for the acolytes. An interminable, slow descent begins. As always, the acolytes wonder why their master has ordered them to appear. A new mission? A reprimand, perhaps? Drizz thinks uneasily about the dozen red books hidden in a disused power substation, volumes detailing the life cycles, technology and tactics of various xenos races, among them the abominable Hrud. It is, of course, proscribed knowledge. Has he been found out? He knows that her eyes are everywhere.
The brass cage passes empty storage corridors, morgues and tombs. Not a single living thing inhabits these cold and silent halls. Soon, the chants and cries of the mourners and the rattling and hissing of the crematoria fade away, and only the tink-tink-tink of the descending cage can be heard. Finally, the elevator shudders to a halt in the deepest level of mortuarium VII, an ancient dissection theatre, now the lair of the acolytes’ mistress. The elevator opens into a circular room ten paces across. It is a dark and painfully cold place, its iron walls partly frosted over. Most of the ghostly blue light comes from a large observation window facing the elevator, looking out into a monumental hall, its floor covered with the skulls of the imperial dead. Now and then, a robotic manipulator lowers itself from the vaulted ceiling of the hall and picks up a single skull, studies and measures it, and takes it away. In front of this window stands a massive dissection table made from black marble, resting on two bowed, blindfolded caryatids. On its slightly indented surface lie a profusion of musty books bound in unwholesome leathers, strange and sharp instruments from silver and brass, parchments and dataslates.
A willowy figure rests her hands on the black table. She seems at the edge of forty, although the marble-like quality of her skin shows the traces of many rejuvenat treatments. One familiar with the elite of the Imperium would put her age close to a hundred. She wears a black, armored corset and piles her black hair high: a mourning garb passed out of fashion some twenty years on Hive Sibellus. Massive silver rings cover her long fingers, and long needles fasten her hair. Even a fool would notice that these rings and needles are weapons, most likely of xenos manufacture and thus a sign of incomparable wealth and influence. As the doors of the elevator finally open, the woman moves away from the table, getting into full view of the acolytes. Even if this not their first meeting by a long shot, the men shudder when they see the legs of their mistress: Just below the knees, the limbs part into four articulated silver stalks, like the legs of a spider. With low clicking and whirring sounds, they carry the woman across the room, giving her movement an unnatural elegance. She seems to glide like a dancer on ice, a beautiful and effortless motion, as long as you are able to take your eyes from her many silver legs. With a low chuckle, the woman welcomes the acolytes. She is Inquisitor Albirte von Shech VII, of the Ordo Hereticus, scion of an old and noble house and the undisputed master of mortuarium VII.