Are you, a good person?

“Are you,” said the grinding, bassy voice, “a good person?”
Scartherac writhed in the Beast’s grip, as hydraulics and actuators creaked and groaned with machine agony.
They’d been deliberately left like that, he knew. They could have made the joints purr, but the sound of slow metal screaming had a primal way of unsettling the cattle.
The thought didn’t help him, now that he was the cattle to it.

“What?” He managed to eak out, past his compressed ribs.
He'd thought, frankly, to kill the Beast, when it had summoned him.
Sure he owed a lot to the Beast. They all did. When the previous Archon of their little gang had gone and got himself killed on a raid, and every other potential heir had devolved to infighting, it’d been the Beast, of all things, that had bought order back. That had consolidated their forces, targeted smaller gangs and rival groups, and grown both their ranks and possessions until the Kabal of the Sorrow Screams was worthy of the name Kabal.
But, for all the Beast had done well by them, for all the successes it had admittedly wrought, it wasn’t fit to lead a Kabal.
It was still a Monkeigh.
A pit beast. A dog. An insane, violent, deluded brute. Just as likely to end them with its insane delusions and petty obsessions as bring them power.
It was a Monkeigh.
And it was time that someone with a brain reminded the Kabal of the proper way of things.

“Are you, a good person?”
Again, it offered its inane question, ponderous voice quite clearly that of a man utterly mad. Scartherac would voice his thoughts, were he not in the grip of the mad idiot thing’s titanic metal gauntlet. He’d thought of many ways to kill the Beast, in his giant machine or not.
But he hadn’t made a plan of how to get out of its grip. He hadn’t thought he’d need to. But then, he found himself in it all the same, somehow.
His armour squealed, and the twin lights of its optical camera’s, mounted in an armoured head as big as he was, blazed into Scartherac like the gaze of the one who thirsts.
He considered the question.
And immediately settled on the fact that it was an incredibly stupid one. Which only made the fact that the metal giant, cloaked in gloom, would almost definitely kill him if he gave the ‘wrong’ one.
Which made his heart race.
What in the hells was ‘a good person’ supposed to mean? He wasn’t an appalling person, right? He reported psykers, outwardly obeyed his masters, cracked the whip on his lessers, and only engaged in moderate murder and backstabbing. The tortures he inflicted were a necessary cause, and a monkeigh just wasn’t worth an eldar. Not at all.
He considered the guard he’d killed when coming here. A new blood, who’d given him lip.
He wanted the door open. The guard wanted him to say please. So he walked over, stabbed him eighteen times with a knife coated in a drug to heighten pain. Had that been an appropriate display of power?
Was he a good person?

He wasn’t sure of the literal answer. But he could figure the answer the Beast wanted. The one answer, to say he was a good person, was obvious. Anyone would say they were a good person. It was sensible, straightforward, and predictable.
Which meant it was exactly not what he should say, if he wanted to walk out of the room today.
“No.”
The Beast’s armoured faux-head tilted, harsh speaker burbling.
“No?”
“I, am not a good person.” Scartherac asserted.

“Hmm. Good.”
Suddenly he was falling. The drop was not something worrysome to an Eldar, much less one of Scartherac’s calibre. But it was undignified.
How did the Wych’s do it?
“You should not be a good person, Scartherac.”

Well that made no sense at all to the ambitious Kabalite.
“And why should that be,” he asked, before adding, “my Archon” hastily.
The Beast, now a looming giant, shifted into the singular pool of light. It bore the weapons of his kin, and the armour. But its skeleton, its basic chassis, was still as primitive as all its other Monkeigh walker robots. Knights, they called them.
Though he did have to admit. They were powerful things.
“This world, this galaxy, should not be met with goodness.” It boomed. “Your kind torture the screams of countless souls from their bodies to exchange another minute of your existances with a dark god of your own making.  My kind rape and enslave each other for ideologies and causes of men who do not care. Orks hurt others for amusement, and the Tyranids wipe out everything and anything in their path, to name but a few.”
Tubes from added technologies of Eldar origions speared the machine’s chest, and he watched as they dispensed their toxic payloads into the beast. Into the machine, or the monkeigh. He didn't know.
“This galaxy,” it continued, “is a monstrous place, with terrible rules, horrid realities, populated only by the cruel, and the naïve. The Evil, and the ones too stupid to realize they should be evil. This galaxy, is not a galaxy you should be good in. It is fair! It is right! To meet its false offers of clemency with a knife behind your back. To take everything you can from it, with no shame, for it conspires against you. It’s why I like your kind so much. Your kind know this truth. You know it. You’re the only ones I can trust like this, you know that right?”

“Yes Archon.” He lied.
Scartherac figured his Archon’s ramblings may have held some truth. But he also knew by now that the Beast, though mad and deluded, was wiley. An idiot is may be, but it’d managed to remain on top. It didn’t trust him. Not in the ways that mattered.

“Good. Now prepare the raiding craft.”
“Where too, my Archon?” He hissed, bowing.
He already knew the answer. But he didn’t like to hear it either.
“The Interex system, in the Halo stars. Our contacts on the craftworld hint that my old master is there.”
As he had, on the last three worlds. They’d seen mutant monkeigh, alien murderbeasts, and vaguely interesting stellar phenomena, sure. But no Inquisitor.
“Are you sur…” he stopped, as the titanic head swung around at him. He bowed, and tried to still his heart as the Morningstar came around.
“I will find him! He conspired against me, turning upon me even as he turned others! He taught me this truth! I shall teach him in turn. The student shall become the master, and the master shall be made to suffer. So it shall be.”
The crash of metal into polished stone made him flinch.
“Or do you doubt my word, as Archon?”
“No, my Archon.” He whispered, eyes on the floor.
“Then make ready the raiders. I shall have him, Scartherac. I shall have my old master. I shall have Von Corvin.”