Visions of Darkness

by SFaccountant

Chapters

The Soldier
The Berserker
The Merchant
The Engineer
The Magus
The Tactician
The Driver

The Soldier

Author's Note

It was a lot harder to inject some soothing humor into this than the last one. Pinkie is like a comedy crutch, I swear.

This interlude takes place sometime after Book 3, Chapter 6.

The Soldier

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Soldier

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Apple Bloom looked up at the door to her bedroom as someone knocked on the durasteel surface.

"C'mon in!" the filly shouted, turning back toward her project.

The doors slid open, and Daniels leaned in through the doorway. "Dinner's on, kiddo. Time to wash your hooves. Or face. Or whatever it is you eat with. I'm really not clear on the subject."

"Alright, Mister Daniels. Ah'll be ready in a minute." The redheaded pony was fumbling with something in the corner of her room, and Daniels stepped in to see what it was.

It was a glass terrarium, almost a meter long, filled with wood scraps and flowers. And wasps. Lots of wasps.

"Whatcha got there, Bloom?" the mercenary asked. "I didn't know ya kept bugs."

"It's new," Apple Bloom explained as she opened the lid a crack and dropped a cup inside.

A single one of the yellow and black insects zipped up out of the opening, and Daniels quickly took a step back.

Apple Bloom remained unperturbed. "Hey now, you get back inside," the filly said sternly, tapping a hoof against the lid of the glass tank. The wasp quickly dipped back into its container, apparently chastised, and Apple Bloom closed it again.

"... So is this a Nurgle thing, a pony thing, or a Nurgle pony thing?" Daniels asked as he watched the young earth pony secure the terrarium lid again. He supposed that he really should have been more of an authority on Chaos than Apple Bloom, but until the filly had been marked he had always gone to great lengths to avoid Nurglites.

"Ah think it's a Nurgle thing," Apple Bloom replied, although she didn't seem all that sure herself, "Ah mean, Ah didn't get a bug cutie mark, right?"

"I've never been real clear on how that cutie mark thing works, actually, but Nurgle certainly has his way with certain insects." Then he paused. "So what was in the cup?"

"Sugar nectar, mostly," the filly answered, "plus a big spider Ah found out behind the barn earlier!"

Daniels stared silently through the glass as he watched the aforementioned spider scramble over the edge of the cup, soaked with sugar water and apparently quite perturbed by the dangerous insects hovering above it.

"Hey, do you know how these wasps make babies? It's really interestin'!" Apple Bloom insisted, smiling brightly.

"Not before dinner, Bloom. Let's head downstairs."

****

"Solid eats as always, AJ," Daniels said as he started piling dishes into a stack to take into the kitchen.

"Eeyup," Big Mac agreed around the can in his mouth. The stallion was cleaning and oiling his augmetic foreleg while Apple Bloom watched in fascination.

"Well, thank ya kindly," Applejack said happily, "spent most o'the day cookin', in fact. Kinda nice to have most of each day free rather than bustin' mah rump from sunup to sundown."

"Now don't gimme that, AJ!" Granny Smith snapped from her rocking chair. "Ah ain't lettin' one o' mah grandchildren get lazy! This here apple farm ain't dead yet!"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "No Granny, it ain't. But Miss Duster has only begun to start takin' the scrap away to her museum or warehouse or whatnot, and Ah still have no clue what to do about the space ship sittin' in the orchard. Them historic society types're pretty iffy about takin' it, mostly 'cause of the price Delgan set."

"You could always detonate it," Daniels pointed out, "scatter the hulk and then just fill in the crater."

Applejack thought that over. "Probably best to wait. If us ponies can't get rid of it, then maybe the Company can. We've got our books in the black, fer once. No sense in causin' more explosions than necessary."

"Eeyup."

Apple Bloom was helping clean Big Mac's bionics with an oily rag now, and apparently liking the task a lot judging by the grin on her face. "Hey, Sis! What're we gonna do before bed time?"

Applejack smiled. When they had an early dinner and didn't have any more chores to do before bed, the Apple siblings often spent the evening playing a board game, reading a story, or hearing one of Twilight or Applejack's adventures as the Elements of Harmony.

"Well, how about story time?" Applejack said as she mussed up her little sister's mane.

"Ooh! Ah know! Ah wanna hear the story of how ya earned yer silver bolt!" Apple Bloom pointed excitedly at the heavy bolter round hanging around her sister's neck.

The orange pony considered that for several seconds, and then glanced over to the bipedal figure washing dishes. "Well, shucks Bloom, Ah guess Ah could, but Ah can tell ya that any old time." She grinned and pointed a hoof at Daniels. "But tonight we got a jen-yoo-ein space pirate as a dinner guest! Wouldn't ya rather hear a story about adventures on another planet?"

Daniels looked startled at suddenly being the center of attention, and he turned away from the sink. "Me? Well, sure, I guess." He pursed his lips as he glanced at Apple Bloom. "Not sure how appropriate my stories are for younglings, though. Lots of blood and guts and whatnot."

"Ah'm okay with that," Apple Bloom said quickly, "Ah mean, shucks, Ah've already seen three alien attacks. And Tellis."

"Fair enough!" Daniels agreed as he put up the last plate to dry.

The mercenary thought over his options as the Apple family retired to their den. Big Mac settled in the middle of the floor, and his sisters sat down in front of him before leaning back into his side.

"Big brother! Turn around! This side's all metal!" Apple Bloom complained.

Macintosh rolled his eyes as he stood up and reversed positions, giving his sisters a big red pillow to rest on.

"So, anything in particular you want to hear about? Fighting Tau? Orks? Other humans?" Daniels asked as he sat down on a cushion next to Granny Smith's rocking chair.

Apple Bloom looked confused. "Why would ya fight other humans?"

"Because a lot of humans are jerks like that," Daniels replied, "the galaxy would be a much nicer place if humanity could at least agree to kill everything EXCEPT it's own kind, but that's not how it works."

Applejack put a hoof to her chin. "How's about yer home world?"

Daniels' smile evaporated. "Gossan IV?"

"Yeah, that one. Ya told me what happened to it, but not how," Applejack reminded him, "Ah mean, Ah don't even know what 'Exterminatus' means, anyhow. Or who the 'Alpha Legion' is."

Daniels grimaced. "Well, all right. That's not a happy story, though."

"Do ya got any happy stories?" Apple Bloom asked.

Daniels considered that for several seconds. "Well... whether or not a given operation ends happily depends on which side of the barricades you're hiding, actually." He shook his head. "Never mind. Gossan IV it is. Plenty interesting, at least."

He leaned back, resting his arms on his knees. "I was young at the time. Thirteen. I had two brothers, and both my parents worked for the planetary administratum. Low-level positions, meager pay, pitiful benefits. We weren't happy, but we weren't miserable either. An average family full of average blokes on an average Imperial world."

Daniels sighed and scrubbed at his hair. "Me and Tim, my older bro, used to ditch classes some days and explore the underhive slums, just to remind ourselves that things could be a lot worse. All sorts of interesting and questionable things down there: drugs, weapons, heretical books, mutants, contraband... just about every Imperial hive city sits on top of a bloody rainbow of scum and villainy." He paused to wet his lips. "But even in those dark places, Chaos is taboo. I don't mean just, like, worshiping Chaos. Merely exhibiting knowledge of Chaos cults or drawing a Chaos symbol can lead to death penalties. Just knowing Khorne's name - one of them, that is - would earn you an appointment with a firing squad. It's said that Chaos worship extends to every dark corner of human civilization, but even for a couple young lads obliviously wandering around one of the nastier parts of the planet, you don't just stumble upon evidence of a Chaos incursion."

Apple Bloom gulped, already feeling the weight of the setting Daniels had established. "So, what happened?"

"We stumbled upon evidence of a Chaos incursion."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City underhive

"Is that what I think it is?"

I almost tripped over all the bullet casings littering the ground as I caught up with Tim.

"Emperor above, this is a right mess here," I grunted as I climbed over a mound of shattered ferrocrete, "what's the matter?"

I reached Tim, who was standing on the other side of a pylon. It was pretty obvious what was the matter.

Nearly a dozen corpses were piled up against a wall, all of them stripped down to the shorts and riddled with bullets. That was pretty bad. Dead bodies could be found all over the place in the underhive, but usually one or two at a time. This didn't look like a firefight; this looked like an execution.

But that wasn't the worst part.

"Bloody hell... is... that...?"

I couldn't finish the sentence. On the wall behind the bodies was a star with eight points. Drawn in blood from the corpses, naturally. I'd seen a Chaos Star only once before, when a classmate showed me a sketch and told me to stay away from anywhere that the mark is drawn. Claimed they were cursed places.

“Twilight says curses ain't real.”

I'm sure the Princess has a different name for it. Sorcery or magic or Warpcraft. But to the layman, when enough people die and you can't right tell why or how, we call it cursed.

"You seeing this, Wy?" Tim asked, walking up to the bodies. "I think these are Arbites!"

"Tim, I... I think we should go."

"No, serious! Look at these guys!" he pointed to the bodies. "They sure as piss aren't gangers! Clean-shaven, plain hair, no-"

"TIM!" I shouted. "Whoever they were, they've been picked clean! Let's get out of here! I don't feel like playing detective!"

Tim scowled, but turned away. We jogged away from the murder scene.

"I'm not playing, Wy," Tim said.

"What's THAT supposed to mean?"

"I mean that I'm serious. I think those were Adeptus Arbites," he explained.

"I don't care who they were! I care that I'm far enough away from whatever freaks are taking up murder and forbidden lore as a hobby!" I growled.

"Well, maybe you SHOULD care!" Tim snapped.

I halted in my path. "You serious? You see a heap of dead and you want to get involved?"

"This could be big, Wy!" Tim insisted. "I don't WANT to get involved, but... don't we have to? As Imperial citizenry n'all that?"

"Oh, you canNOT be serious..."

"You know that Arbites have been going missing lately! What if this is what's been happening to them?"

“Mister Daniels, what's an 'Ahr-bit-ehs'?”

It's like... well, I guess it's like one of your guards. Only, you know, human.

“Huh. And someone took out a whole group of 'em? Woulda thought human guards would be better'n that.”

Nah. They're pretty useless everywhere you go. Anyway...

"See, the thing is, Tim, the more important this potentially is, the LESS I want to bother with it," I said, jabbing my thumb into my chest, "let's leave it to the Adeptus and keep our nose clean!"

"We should at least TELL someone!" Tim insisted. "What if they don't find the bodies and miss a lead? Whoever did this could keep killing!"

"Why are you so concerned about it?" I asked, turning around to face my brother. "People kill other people all the time down here! Don't see what difference it makes that it was Arbites. At least they can defend themselves."

"That's not the point!" Tim shouted, clearly frustrated. "Look, Wy, you KNOW what that wheel was, don't you?"

I shivered. "I don't know nothing about no wheel. I saw a bunch of dead bodies. That was all. That was ENOUGH."

"Wy-"

"NO!" I cut him off. "Tim, we're going home! We're going home and telling Ma that we were at class, and we're not coming back down here until all this is sorted! I won't be getting involved with serial murderers, and I sure as all Hell won't be messing around with C-"

I was about to shout "Chaos". Luckily for me, I was interrupted by a scream. The scream was followed by a lasblast.

We dropped to the ground. We were up high at the time, on some high path that ran along a big water pipe. Peeking out from under the pipe, we could see into the edge of the slums.

People were scattering like startled birds. You could make out gangers pretty much at a glance; tough, armed thugs with stupid hair and more piercings than brain cells. They were running as fast as anyone else.

When enough people had fled away from the newest underhive crime scene, we got a decent look at who had caused it. It was a figure all in black, with a stylized "I" on its wide-rimmed hat and a coterie of bloody Stormtroopers surrounding it.

When I saw that emblem I was even more scared than when I saw the Chaos Star. Chaos was reputed to be an awful thing, sure, but there was always that naïve, desperate hope that it wasn't real.

The Imperial Inquisition didn't allow for such ambiguity.

"We're leaving," I whispered as I pushed myself up, "NOW."

Tim got up too, but slowly. He didn't say anything. Just followed me back to our home.

I could guess what he was thinking, but I didn't want to acknowledge it. I wanted to pretend my brother wasn't that foolish. Murderous criminals were bad, murderous cultists were worse, but Inquisitors judged entire planets and decided their fates. Just because they do it for the sake of law and order doesn't make them any better.

But we made it home, and I was able to forget about the Inquisitor and the Chaos Star and the mass murder.

For a little while.

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, commercial block 64

A hive world is basically a planet covered in cities. Not a city like Canterlot. Or even a city like Ferrous Dominus. A hive city can have billions of people, all living together in tiny little identical living spaces shunted into huge towers.

“Like a giant... hive?”

There you go, Bloom. Anyway, the daily grind of life takes its toll, but Gossan IV was actually pretty peaceful. We had an in-system agri-world, so we never suffered food shortages, and our planetary administratum wasn't THAT corrupt and oppressive. As long as you keep the general populace content enough, they'd rather endure the known miseries of everyday life than face the unknown risks and challenges of change. That's the equation that the planetary governors count on.

But you can't count on much after Chaos gets involved.

"Bleeding Hell!" I threw myself against a wall as I heard a burst of gunfire.

The commercial center was busy, as it usually was. I was surrounded by people, and the bodies were pressed so thick that the avenue was more a river of humanity than a path. That river turned bloody as the shrieking began; the momentum of bodies walking toward the gunfire bled away, and the pace of people moving away from it quickened.

"What the blazes is going on?!" I shouted. I couldn't see anything past the stampede of people.

More gunfire. Screaming. Shouting. LAUGHING. Everything around me was just booming noise.

Then the people rushing by started to thin out. Some of them were limping or crawling on hands and knees.

I finally got a look at what's driving them: masked men in dark red robes and hoods, covered in Chaos Stars and twisted runes. They're advancing behind the crowd, moving at a casual pace. And gunning down everyone ahead of them.

One such burst cuts across the people in front of me. A woman falls down, and some blood splashes over my legs.

I fall over. I'm not hit, just stunned. I decide to lie still where I fell, hoping that I might be mistaken for a corpse.

The gunmen walk by, exactly as I'd hoped. They're not checking on bodies, which surprises me. The thugs I've seen before would never just kill a person and walk off. It's wasteful. But that's what these bunch are doing. Killing for the sake of it. And apparently enjoying it.

"The new order has arrived, useless lambs!" one of them shouts as he reloads his autogun.

"Death to the Imperium! Death to the False Emperor!" screams another.

Then a laser blast cracks through the air, and one of them falls. Suddenly the cultists are in a rush, ducking down or bolting for cover.

"You dare attack the chosen?"

"Slay the unbelievers, brothers!"

"Chaos comes for you!"

I'm still too afraid to move, so I watch the firefight from the floor. The cultists seemed to have the advantage of numbers and heavier weapons, but whoever was tearing into them was a crack shot with a lasgun, and these thugs were rattled already, not used to shooting at people who shot back. By the time the killers were reloading their rifles, two more were down.

The cultists broke and ran. Three of them turned tail and sprinted in the same direction as all the people running from them. The last one happened to be the fellow closest to me, and he was still fumbling to reload his gun when he realized he was being abandoned.

I felt a sudden surge of anger and fool-headed courage at seeing them run, and as the last one turned on his heel I suddenly reached out and grabbed his leg. He shouted and fell forward onto the floor. I struggled to hold onto him, and that proved to be a mistake; one good flail of his other leg kicked me in the face, and I rolled away while clutching at my head and whimpering.

"The dark gods curse you, fool! Their will be done!"

The cultist didn't bother with me any further, scrambling to his feet.

He didn't make it. Another lasblast took him right in the back of the head, burning through his hood and dropping him.

I watched from the ground as three armed men rushed after them, all of them carrying las weapons. They didn't look like soldiers or Arbites.

"We have three runners!"

"Take one of them alive! We need someone to interrogate!"

Whoever they were, soon they were gone, and I was alone with the dead and wounded. Some people were sobbing or begging for help on the floor, but I ignored them as I stumbled to my feet. My head was bleeding and I could barely see through my right eye, but I could still move just fine.

I probably should have fled home immediately, but instead I rushed to the cultist that had kicked me. His autogun was lying on the floor next to him, and I could see the holster of a pistol tied to the rope around his robes.

I took both weapons. I didn't know how to shoot a gun back then; for all my experience around gangers and underhive thugs, I'd never fought any. Still, it seemed to me that being armed might be important now.

The stub pistol I could hide on me, but the autogun was too large. I found a maintenance hatch and stashed it away in there. Then I raced home.

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Applejack whistled. "That's ugly stuff. Yer folks must've been mighty glad to see you home safe."

Daniels shook his head. "Not particularly. They didn't know what happened. I didn't tell them."

The ponies looked more disturbed at this than at the description of random and wanton violence.

"Now why would ya keep somethin' like that from yer folks?" Applejack demanded.

Daniels scratched the back of his head. "My family... wasn't like yours. We didn't hold each other up or work together. Tim was the only one of them I felt close to, and that was just because we spent a lot of time together wandering in places we shouldn't be. My little brother went to his classes diligently and never wanted to get into trouble. He looked down on me, really. My parents got home late almost every evening and hardly even saw us. It barely occurred to me to tell my folks; what were they going to do about it?"

Applejack frowned. "Well, if ya can't trust yer family, who can ya trust? It don't sound like those Arbites guys're much help, and ya straight-up said ya wouldn't have nothin' to do with those Inquisitors."

"Eeyup," Big Mac added helpfully.

"I didn't trust anyone, really," Daniels admitted, "probably why I'm still alive."

They were silent for a few seconds after that, save the sound of Granny Smith snoring. Apple Bloom leaned further into Applejack, and her elder sister hugged her close.

"So then what happened?" Applejack asked.

"Well, these things follow a surprisingly predictable pattern, apparently. First isolated murders, then outbreaks of open violence, then rebellion. The Inquisition sometimes manages to nip the last stage in the bud, but they had a pretty formidable opponent. It was barely two weeks after the shootout in the commercial sector that the uprising began."

"Uprisin'? How does a few killin's turn into a revolution?" Applejack asked.

"Well, around here they wouldn't," Daniels agreed, "but human populations tend to be more... tense. There are always people who want to overturn the status quo for one reason or another. Some of the reasons are even good ones." Then he wet his lips. "But this wasn't about justice or freedom. There was a darker force at work. Chaos had marked Gossan IV." He cast a meaningful glance at Apple Bloom, "and the Imperium of Man takes Chaos Marks very seriously."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, residential hive 21

"What in the hells is going on here?" I shouted.

Nobody answered me. Least of all the bodies littering the halls.

Melkia City was now caught up in rebellion; people were meeting up to arm themselves and take sides, and those that weren't willing to fight had holed up in the hives. My family was one of the latter groups. They'd sent me out to get water supplies. It took four hours.

When I got back, the residential hive was a charnel house.

“What's a "charnel house, Sis?”

“It's like a cemetery, but even creepier. Boy howdy, Ah do NOT envy mortician ponies! 'Sides the job, they have the most disturbin' cutie marks ya can imagine!”

“Eeyup.”

"Hello? Is... Is anyone alive?" My voice cracked as I spoke, and my hand reached into my coat pocket where I had the stub pistol concealed.

I slowly crept through the hall, water carried along my back and the pistol in my hand. There were bodies and bloodstains everywhere. Creepy symbols painted on the wall in blood. And not much in the way of ammunition casings. A lot of this killing had been done by hand.

Almost every living quarter had been forced open, the doors smashed free or the locks cut through. In the time it took me to run my errand, the rebels and cultists had torn through the residential blocks and murdered everyone here.

“Wait, ya mean...”

Yeah.

I got back to my living quarters. My parents and little brother were all there. Cut open.

The gun fell from my hands, and I collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. Like I said, I wasn't close to my family. I can't honestly say I loved them. But they were still my family, and they had been butchered. They were all I had.

I don't know how much time I wasted crying, but eventually I came to my senses and started figuring things out. Tim wasn't here. I didn't know where he was. The second thing I figured out was that all the intruders had done was break in, kill everyone, and then leave. It looked like they barely searched the place. That meant there should have been plenty of supplies for me.

“Why would anyone do somethin' like that? Ya'll are Chaos too, and ya don't kill fer no reason!”

Well, not to defend all the killing we ARE responsible for, but different Chaos forces have different goals and methods. Iron Warriors are efficient. Methodical. If you're not fighting them, they'd usually rather not waste time and ammo on you. The goal of these types were to spread carnage far and wide. Get people to panic and disrupt the orderly functioning of the planet. And they accomplished that in spades.

"C'mon, there's got to be something useful here!" I rummaged through the pantry, taking what little nutrient paste I could find. There was hardly any food, and that surprised me. What were we supposed to be eating while barricading ourselves indoors and waiting out a civil war?

"I've got to find Tim. If we can just get out of Melkia, we'll be okay," I mumbled as I stepped into my parents' room, "Emperor's bones, those sods didn't even take a quick look around, did they? What's this, then?"

There was a thick metal suitcase on the bed, looking for all the world like it might hold something very important and valuable. Untouched, apparently, because it didn't bleed.

I tried to open the case, but it was gene-locked. That might have deterred me normally, but the two most likely keys to opening that lock were lying in the next room.

"What were you hiding, Pa?" I whispered as I carried the case over and ran his dead hand over the reader.

“Boy, ya sure adjusted right quick ta bein' orphaned.”

In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, you get jaded pretty fast. And seeing my butchered family when I was still young set a pretty high bar for psychologically crippling trauma experienced later on in life fighting terrifying aliens and monsters. So, you know, silver linings.

"Bloody hell," I breathed as I looked into the case, "where the hell was Pa keeping all this money?"

I was staring into a case packed tight with thrones. That's the coin version of credits, by the way. Very high-value stuff, which is why void trash like me usually don't use them. My parents shouldn't have been able to scrounge up many either, but here they were, packed tight enough so that they didn't even jingle.

"What is this? This doesn't make sense," I mumbled to myself as I wandered around the blood-spattered room, holding my head, "where'd the old man get this kind of money? No way it's just savings." I froze. "Did he... steal it?"

I didn't want to cast accusations on the recently deceased, but it made sense. My pa had access to a big chunk of the Administratum budget, and could have siphoned it off for himself. Of course, he'd get caught easily if he were doing that. Provided there wasn't a bloody rebellion going on to distract everyone.

"But why would he? If he was going to steal something, why not food, or a... a ship..."

I had an idea. Tapping into cash that wasn't his made PERFECT sense if he was planning to use that cash to leave the planet. There would be millions dead, and assets destroyed beyond counting in the conflict. If he could buy passage on a ship out, there was no way the money or he would be missed.

“Still don't make it right, though.”

I wasn't at a point any longer where I could afford to worry about morals. Whether or not that was my Pa's idea, it was a good one. I reconfigured the lock and started putting the case into my pack.

"Hello? Anybody still alive in here?"

"Shit, they got everyone! Just... butchered them in their rooms, like livestock!"

"Bloody fanatics! Emperor strike you freaks down!"

I barely managed to get the coins stashed in my pack before I heard footsteps behind me. My heart leapt into my throat.

"No sudden movements, lad," said a deep voice from the door. My hand trembled as it crept toward the pistol.

"Over here! Found a scavenger!"

More footsteps. I let my hand fall away from the gun. One man I could plausibly stop if I was lucky and he was careless. But several? There was no way.

"You serve the Emperor, boy? Or are you one of those heretic mongrels?" a woman's voice demanded.

I slowly raised my hands up as I turned around. Sure enough, there were four people in my family's living quarters aiming guns at me. Clearly not Arbites; their weapons were different, and they didn't have uniforms. No Chaos symbols either.

I forced myself to talk, although it felt like I was choking.

"Th-This is my family's l-living unit," I said, my voice shaking.

"That doesn't answer the QUESTION, boy!" the woman snapped.

"Blimey Clara, would you calm down?" one of the men said, lowering his rifle. "You can see the lad's folks gutted right behind him! Cut him some slack!"

"We don't know if he's telling the truth!" she insisted. "He could be looting the place!"

Another of the men glanced at the wall and pulled down a pict-capture. "Seems legit to me." He showed the others a picture of my family together, probably the only such image we have.

The woman finally deflated, lowering her weapon. "I... I, uh... sorry."

"I'm real sorry for what happened here, kid. By the time anyone contacted us it was already too late," said one of the others.

"Who are you?" I asked. I felt slightly more confident now that these people had accepted I had a right to be here, but I was still cautious.

"We're militia, son," said the woman, apparently named Clara, "sworn to fight the rebel scum trying to turn our planet against the Emperor's will. Are you with us?"

"I'm just trying to get out of here before looters or more murderers come," I explained nervously.

"Get out of here? And go where?" laughed one of the men. "Melkia's a war zone now, lad. Most of the hive cities are, I hear. If the heretics have their way, all of Gossan will be the same."

"If you can hold a gun, you're with us," Clara said decisively, "the planet, and your Emperor, is counting on you! We'll get the bastards that offed your folks!"

I cringed. I wanted no part of this. Nice as it would have been to see the killers brought to justice, there was hardly much chance of that as opposed to me getting my fool self killed. I wasn't about to go swearing an oath of revenge.

"You got any supplies, kid?" one of the militiamen asked me, gesturing to my pack.

"I have water, some food, and-" I bit my own tongue before I told him about the money. They noticed.

"And WHAT?" Clara demanded, her eyes narrowing.

I looked at the floor. "I have... an autogun," I said it like I was guilty about it, "I stripped it off a dead body and stashed it away."

"Good thinking, lad! You just might be cut out for this sort of thing! We'll escort you to wherever you hid it. Jonah, you get the water. Let's go!"

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

"So that was my first experience with warfare: being dragged into the front lines of a civil war. They gave me a crash course in using the weapons I'd looted from the cultists, some ridiculously shabby body armor, and then had me guiding assault teams that went into the underhive."

"Wait, Ah don't get it," Apple Bloom said, shaking her head, "don't ya fight fer Chaos?"

"Well, sure, now I do," Daniels admitted.

"But they killed yer family!" Apple Bloom said, clearly distressed. She glanced back at her flank, staring at the green Chaos mark with rather overstated guilt.

It was all Daniels could do to keep from scooping the filly up and squeezing her like a plush toy. Instead he chuckled wryly. "Well, for what it's worth, Chaos isn't a unified force. The 38th Company had nothing to do with that war. They've had plenty to do with lots of others, but not that one." Then he shrugged. "But that doesn't really matter to me. I don't hold grudges. I'm not interested in revenge. And trying to find out which faction hiring human mercenaries is the least 'evil' is a useless exercise if I've ever seen one."

The ponies were frowning at this, and he snorted and looked away.

"There are no 'good guys' in the Imperium's wars. There's just your guys, and everyone else. And most of everyone else wants you dead by default."

Applejack glanced down at her little sister, wondering if she should send Apple Bloom to bed. This tale had certainly turned out more gruesome than she had expected.

The youngest Apple sibling looked intensely interested, though, and Applejack decided that the rest of the story wasn't likely to traumatize her; Apple Bloom had seen plenty of awful things of late.

"So what happened with the war? Ya were fightin' to save the planet, right?" the orange mare asked.

"Well, logistically speaking, we had it in the bag," Daniels said, his tone shifting back to "story teller" mode. "We had the advantage of numbers, organization, the support of the Adeptus Arbites, the Planetary Defense Force, most underhive gangs, and the support of the general populace, who helped keep us supplied and housed. Despite the odd monster that the cultists managed to to let loose, they simply didn't have enough weapons and bodies, their leadership was insane, and any support they got was out of fear and desperation."

Applejack nodded hesitantly.

"But we were losing," Daniels admitted, "despite winning almost every major battle, entire units would go missing without a trace, our supplies would vanish, explode, or end up poisoned, and our leaders kept turning up dead, along with their bodyguards. Nobody knew what was happening. Many suspected treachery within the ranks - it's not like there was much of a background check before they handed you a gun - but soon it was happening so often and leaving so many guards dead that it became pretty implausible that it was one of us. It was as if some force was just ducking into our territory whenever it pleased, taking out its target, and then slipping out before we realized what happened. And whatever it was wasn't deterred by a half-dozen armed guards."

Applejack tilted her head to the side. "Well, Ah'd guess Astartes, but there's no way you'd miss them. Those guys're about as subtle as a minotaur wailin' on a bagpipe."

"The Iron Warriors are," Daniels corrected, "but there are others. There's even a group that specializes in infiltration and sabotage tactics."

"Yer tellin' me that there's an army of giant, power-armored, daemon-infested, super-soldier SPAHS?" Applejack asked, looking appropriately horrified by the idea.

"Yeah. And it's exactly as terrifying and implausible as you imagine," Daniels grunted, "of course, none of us imagined at the time that there were Space Marines involved in the conflict, and most supposed that if there were, they'd be on our side."

"Yer side back then, or yer side now?" Apple Bloom asked in confusion.

"Back then," the human answered.

"So back then Space Marines fought against Chaos?" Applejack asked.

"Let's not have me recount the entire Horus Heresy, all right? All you need to know is that when the militia was trying to keep all of Gossan IV from turning into one big blood sacrifice, we weren't expecting to fight any Space Marines. Which made my biggest - and last - mission quite an unpleasant surprise."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, underhive slums

"This is a bad idea," I mumbled as I crawled on my hands and knees under a veritable labyrinth of water pipes.

A full nineteen fighters were crawling along behind me. None of them were professional soldiers or enforcers, but all had a firefight or two under their belts, at least. Clara was there. I even thought she was beginning to warm up to me. More than I'd warmed up to her, at least.

"This is a very bad idea," I reminded my squad again as I reached the end of the pipelines and stood up.

"Would you shut your yap?" snapped one of the men as he emerged behind me. "This is the only idea we've got!"

That wasn't strictly true, since I had an idea that involved ditching this entire world with a suitcase of stolen cash. But that wasn't the sort of thing you share with a bunch of militiamen bravely putting their lives on the line to save their home.

"You don't seriously think the Inquisition is going to help us, do you?" I growled. Surely I couldn't be the only one who heard the stories about them.

"You don't seriously think we can let an Inquisitor alone, do you?" Clara replied as she got to her feet. "I can't believe you knew there was an Inquisitor on-planet the whole time! While the planet is rebelling, yet! If they don't realize that there's people banding together against the cultist scum, our entire world could be roasted!"

"What makes you think that the Inquisitor doesn't know that already?" I demanded as I led the way out of the claustrophobic maintenance tunnels. "The militia isn't a secretive group. The Inquisitor has to know that someone's been fighting the rebels and heretics besides the useless Arbites."

"Not the point, Wyatt," another man said.

"Don't call me Wyatt!" I snapped. I didn't like strangers using my first name.

"The Inquisition is our only link to off-world forces, which we may need if these heretic freaks keep pecking away at us," Clara explained, "Daryn would have sought the Inquisitor out a lot sooner if he'd known there was one operating here."

"Yeah, yeah, me and my big mouth..."

I led the unit into a section of high scaffolding that ran over the slums. It offered an excellent view of the little city of tents and shacks below, most of which had been torn up by now.

I grimaced. Metal poles capped with Chaos Stars had been sunk into the ground around the slums, many of them decorated with bodies or parts of bodies.

"I thought this territory was friendly!" one of the men hissed.

"Yeah. 'Was'," I replied wearily, kneeling at the edge of the scaffolding and pointing down. "Check out those corpses. Gangers. The ones that used to run this slum."

"Well, at least they didn't go down without a fight," Clara mumbled. Then her gaze hardened. "I see a cluster of the rebel bastards down there! Spread out and mark targets!"

My blood almost froze in my veins. "What are you doing?! We can sneak right over their heads!"

"And leave another handful of cultists alive to slaughter more families? No. We have the advantage of surprise and high ground. We kill them all."

"The scaffolding isn't too sturdy! If they fire back it could drop us all to our deaths!"

"Then don't give them the chance to fire back," Clara advised as she aimed a lasrifle down at the cluster of reddish figures, "Emperor guide my aim! OPEN FIRE!!"

The other militiamen did exactly that, and my unit cut into the surprised cultists below.

Me, I ran for the alcove at the end of the scaffolding, sure that the firefight was going to rip it away from its flimsy ceiling mountings. I had my autogun out, but I never took a shot; I just kept my head down until the shouting and gunshots stopped.

"Blast! Only got about half of the bastards. The rest ran away," Clara grumbled as she put up her rifle. The scaffolding had held, and none of our team had been hit.

"And now they all know we're here!" I snapped. "Are you daft or something?"

"We killed a few of the heretic dogs and lost no one," Clara reasoned, "I regret nothing."

Well, that bloody jinxed us right there. A pounding noise came from down below, and before I knew it a pair of struts supporting the scaffolding were shredded to pieces.

The sections of walkway below the damaged struts folded immediately, and four men screamed while they dropped thirty meters or so to the ground.

The others were scrambling toward me now, FINALLY understanding that they were in a rather precarious spot to be inviting a gunfight. I was on more solid ground, and I finally aimed my own gun down into the slums.

I saw a hint of green for a moment, and then nothing. There were no targets down there.

"Where is he?!" Clara growled after she reached me, aiming her lasrifle into the shredded hovels below. "He couldn't have ducked away that quickly while carrying a heavy weapon!"

"Heavy weapon?"

"Sounded like a heavy stubber to me!"

It wasn't. But none of us had seen or heard an Astartes boltgun before, so we couldn't recognize the noise.

We made good progress through the underhive after that, and Clara didn't feel like hunting down more cultists.

Every stretch of rubble and run-down gathering place had been reduced to a battlefield. Up in the hives the rebels couldn't sustain attacks or hold territory for very long before the militia or PDF got its act together and pushed them back. Down in the underhive, though, there were only gangers and victims. Gangers could be plenty vicious, but they weren't equipped very well; a much better fight for the cultists, who were much the same.

"I'm grateful that the rodents and freaks down here are fighting against the rebel scum," Clara muttered, "but they seem to be making a hash of it."

"Gangers have more combat experience than our militia, though," one man pointed out, "shouldn't they be doing just as well as us, at least?"

I wasn't paying any attention to the dead bodies; I was alert for the living. The corpses seemed to fascinate the rest of the unit, though, and soon one of them pointed something out.

"Kiln is right. Look at the bodies here," someone mumbled, "both the cultists and the gangers left their dead lying about, but there are way more dead gangers in every area. How are the damned rebels doing so well down here? They never manage this kind of victory when they attack the hive."

"Maybe they just attack in overwhelming numbers?"

"If they outnumber the gangers that badly, then they could probably get away with doing the same thing to us."

"Look at these bodies. A lot of them look like they were hit with explosive shot. Most of them, even."

"So they have a nasty gun or two?"

"A nasty gun that we haven't seen in any of the battles top side. As far as I've seen, the rebels are lucky to have a proper lasgun among a dozen of them."

I sighed, turning toward the others. "All right detectives, what do all these clues add up to?"

Clara seemed unimpressed by my sarcasm. "If I had to guess, I'd say the rebels have help. Help from someone who knows what they're doing."

"You mean, like... traitor PDF?" one man asked nervously.

"Maybe. Or maybe something worse. Like traitor Stormtroopers, or witches."

I snorted. "Or maybe all that 'Dark God' claptrap they keep squealing about is real."

My quip was answered by the report of a bolt pistol behind me.

I spun around to see one of the guys falling to the ground, missing most of his upper body. Everyone else was already fumbling to aim their weapons.

He came from behind a wooden shack, practically swooping over the ground. Massive and stupidly fast, wrapped in sea green armor trimmed in silver. To this day I will never understand how the Alpha Legionnaires move so quietly in full power armor. Not even the other Astartes understand it.

Before anyone could fire a shot he opened up another man with his sword - not a chainsword, since I suppose those are too noisy for the Alphas - and then crushed another man's skull with an elbow strike.

We got in a few shots after that, but we may as well have been shooting at a ferrocrete wall; lasers and bullets and shot spattered off of the ceramite like nothing, and all the while he tore through my unit like he was cutting down wheat stalks.

Clara ditched her rifle and drew a knife, because apparently firing lasbursts at point-blank range into a Space Marine's face isn't suicidal enough for her taste. He didn't bother to let her use it, and removed her spine with a bolt round.

“Aww, are ya serious? Ah thought she was gonna make it! Wasn't she yer love interest?”

No. No, not even close. Why would you even think that?

“Well, she's the only lady whose name ya seemed to remember, sugarcube. It's kinda misleadin'.”

This is a story about my descent into a life of piracy and the destruction of my roots. There is no romantic sub-plot.

“Eesh. As if it ain't depressin' enough.”

Anyway. The Astartes was cutting through my unit. There were only two men left between me and him, and they were already turning to run. The only reason I wasn't moving to do the same thing was because I had started late and was still in the "desperately spraying bullets" phase of panic.

Then a ball of plasma took the Alpha Legionnaire in the side, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks.

My autogun shook in my hands and I stared straight ahead at the smoldering body. I could barely register what had just happened, I was so scared.

The other two stumbled to a halt, gasping at whatever had intervened.

"These traitor Marines are like rats," snipped a female voice off to the side, "they won't crawl out of their hiding place without bait."

I finally regained my senses far enough to look at who had saved my life. It was a woman in black, with a wide-rimmed, flat-topped hat that had a stylized "I" in the front.

"The Inquisitor!" breathed one of the survivors behind me. "We did it!"

"I am Inquisitor Locus, of the Ordo Hereticus, yes. As for what you 'did', if you were referring to anything besides drawing out this rebellious filth, you'll have to enlighten me." She walked up to the dead Legionnaire and gave him a kick in the helmet.

I had to admit, it took a lot of gall to talk about an Astartes like that, even after he was dead.

“So is this Locus gal yer love-”

NO. Seriously. Quit that. There's no love story here!

Anyway, there were Stormtroopers piling in behind the Inquisitor now; heavily-armed and armored humans with special training and lots of combat experience. They still couldn't measure up to Space Marines man-to-man, but they were close enough that the Inquisitor could reasonably expect to survive a jaunt through Chaos-held territory.

"We've come to find you and request your aid!" said one of the other guys. "The militia has been holding back the rebels since they started mobilizing, keeping them from making headway into Melkia City," the other survivor explained, "but somehow they keep striking at us where we're vulnerable! We're losing soldiers, weapons, and supplies faster than we can recover them, and the rebels only seem to get stronger!"

Locus snorted. "Yes. That would be thanks to THESE pests," she grunted, planting a boot on the dead Marine's throat, "they've been keeping a low profile, as usual, but this rebellion would have gotten nowhere without their assistance."

"I don't understand," I practically choked out, "why are Space Marines aiding the heretics and rebels?"

Her eyes narrowed at me. "You are young, boy, so you may be forgiven this one misstep. But when speaking to an Inquisitor you do not ask questions, you answer them."

I gulped. This was pretty much as I expected. My unit must have been a bunch of idiots to expect help from the Inquisition.

Locus turned away toward the other two. "Tell me of your militia," she demanded.

While the other survivors practically tripped over each other to feed her information, I started to walk off, searching for any clue as to more enemies.

As such, I noticed more Stormtroopers arriving, and with them were non-Stormtroopers. Most of the 'civilians' following the retinue were gangers; heavily pierced, covered from top to bottom with tattoos, and carrying scavenged weapons. But some of them weren't. And one of them...

"Tim! TIM!! You're alive!" I saw my brother clustered with some gangers, carrying a dirty laspistol. He was at least as surprised to see me as I was him.

We embraced, laughing despite the horrors of warfare that surrounded us. The laughter soon died down, however.

"Tim... Ma and Pa. And Cellus too, they're..." I trailed off.

Tim shook his head sadly. "I figured that. I even thought they'd gotten you too, Wy." His eyes burned. "But we're going to get them! We'll push out the traitors, and get our home back!"

I looked around. The Stormtroopers had taken up firing positions around the Inquisitor and the militia boys. They were still busy answering questions. None of them were paying attention to us.

I lowered my voice and leaned in. "No, Tim. We won't. Listen. I think I might have a way out."

Tim blinked. "A way out? A way out of what?"

"Of this planet. This war," I whispered, "ever since I joined up with the militia I've divided my time between looking for you and looking for smugglers. I know how we can get passage out of here."

Tim was still confused. "Why would we do that? We can win, Wy! We can stop the rebellion!"

"And how long will that take?" I hissed. "What are the chances that we'll be alive to enjoy the end of it? What will happen after that?" I pounded a fist against my chest. "I'm not going to stay here to wait for the dice to fall if I don't have to. I'm leaving, Tim. And you can come with me. We can start over! It's not like there's anything tying us here anymore!"

Tim was thinking about it. I could see the gears in his head turning. But they were turning in the wrong direction.

"No," he said darkly, "I'm not doing that." He stood up straighter, looking down on me. "This is about more than just our survival, Wyatt. We can't just run from the enemy. We can't let rebellion and heretics run rampant, fleeing at the first sign of trouble. We have to fight back. We have to maintain and preserve the Imperium against the Chaos threat."

"I'm not fleeing at the first sign of trouble, I'm fleeing after trouble has painted our fragging HOME with bits of our family!" my voice rose a little too high, and I quickly toned it down. "I'm fleeing because there are cultists and monsters and Inquisitors and EVIL SPACE MARINES running about the place. This is beyond us, Tim! We're a pair of nobodies, and it's time you acted like one instead of strutting about with a bloody executioner like you're some kind of hero!"

He set his jaw, backing up. "Well, maybe I WANT to be a hero. Maybe I want to be somebody!"

"You're going to get yourself killed! And if I stick around, then I'm liable to join you!"

"It's worth the risk to take on these bastards!"

Tim was immovable. I wasn't sure what had gotten into him; he had apparently been following Inquisitor Locus while I was searching for him, and I wasn't all too familiar with how Inquisitors handle their informants and lackeys.

Before our argument could get loud again, Inquisitor Locus spoke up.

"I have heard enough!" she said. Her voice carried no anger or annoyance; it was merely a declaration. "I have compared your testimonies to that of other citizens, prisoners, and my own observations. I am ready to pass judgment upon Gossan IV."

Those individuals from this planet practically seized up in anticipation. The Stormtroopers didn't budge. A servitor among her retinue started writing down the edict with an auto-scribe.

"It is my opinion that the world of Gossan IV, despite the recent outbreak of rebellion, is NOT irredeemably corrupt," Locus pronounced. There was a palpable gasp of relief from many of the men, including Tim.

As for me, I was slowly breaking off from the group, my eye on an escape route out of the line of sight of the Stormtroopers. Call me pessimistic, but I wasn't ready to celebrate yet.

"Despite the evidence of heresy, the rebellious elements represent an insubstantial portion of the population, which by and large has risen to resist the seditious elements. Those heretics captured and interrogated do not show an advanced understanding of their blasphemous allegiance. It is obvious that the success of this revolution hinges entirely on the activities and success of its instigators, the traitorous Alpha Legion. This is less an uprising and more an infestation."

She paused. I slipped behind a durasteel wall, out of line of sight of the others but close enough to hear.

"An Imperial fleet is passing near this system to assist in the war for Nallaxis, a forge world that has been under attack by Chaos elements for some months now. The forge world is of critical importance, but I cannot leave the Gossan system's rebellion to fester and spread, especially with proof of traitor Astartes at work. I have already diverted the fleet here."

Some of the quiet gasps had turned to cheers. I felt ice settle in my stomach.

"The fleet has sufficient ground forces to drive out the Chaos elements and put down the rebellion, but I believe that is exactly what the Alpha Legion hopes to achieve by corrupting this world: to delay reinforcements to Nallaxis. There is no other apparent reason for their intervention here, and their timing is otherwise too convenient."

I knew what the next line was going to be. Frankly, I don't know how none of the others didn't. I broke and ran as fast as I could.

The last thing I heard was: "It is for this reason that I am having the fleet perform Exterminatus upon this world..."

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City primary hive

I barely paused to catch my breath all the way back to the militia headquarters. I didn't bother with any hidden paths or safe routes; a few bands of rebels actually spotted me as I was fleeing and opened fire. None of them got me, though, and I think most of them were pretty confused as to why there was a lone militia recruit sprinting through the underhive.

When I got back to base I told the guards that I had very important news that had to relay to Commander Daryn as soon as possible. They let me through right away.

I went straight to my bunk instead.

I opened up the locker with my money case inside, bundled it into my pack, and then told a different set of guards that I had a message to relay to my team as they met with the Inquisitor.

Then I made for the space ports. It took two days, since the rails were out. By the time I got there, I could see the shadows of Imperial battleships across the sun as they settled into orbit. The fleet was here.

****

Gossan IV - Melkia City, docking bridge 96

"Let me on, please!"

"We have to get out! I have a family!"

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

In every conflict, there are those who fight, those who suffer, and those who profit.

When rebellion breaks out in a star system, smugglers descend on it like flies to a dung heap. Lost territory and exploding infrastructure disrupt the normal flow of trade and production, and that means that people can't get what they want. That's a need that the humble smuggler can happily address.

"Power cells! I'm looking for high-capacity thorium power cells!"

"Empty your pockets and we'll see what I can do, old man."

At the beginning it's usually weapons that people are looking for. Then medical supplies. Then more common things that we take for granted. And on every planet with a conflict, there's always money to be made in shipping people somewhere else... ANYWHERE else.

"If you can't pay, then bugger off!"

I watched as a man with a bionic arm kicked a woman away from the docking platform, spilling her belongings across the floor as she sobbed.

"We've got water, food, and the space that those supplies used to occupy!" shouted a woman in carapace armor. All these smugglers were armed to the teeth, and looking very happy. Business was good, it seemed.

"Don't you have any weapons?!" demanded a burly dock worker.

"You don't keep up with the news?" snapped a smuggler. "An Imperial fleet just dropped into the system this morning! Come tomorrow you'll have all the firepower you'd never wish for!"

He was laughing. I couldn't help but wonder if he knew what was coming.

News of our "salvation" spread quickly among the crowd, but it didn't much lessen demand for spots on the ship. By the time the crowd had thinned enough for me to get to the front, the smugglers were backing up to entry ramp of their freighter, rifles held forward.

"Wait! I want to buy passage off-planet!" I shouted.

One of them laughed. "Sure you do! But we're full up, lad! If you survive the month, we might be able to help you out on the next trip!"

I clenched my teeth. I would NOT survive the month on Gossan IV.

"I can pay!" I shouted.

The woman shrugged. "All our passengers already paid, hon. Tough luck."

I took a deep breath. "I can pay MORE."

They stopped backing away.

I stepped away from the few civilians still hanging around - probably getting ready to search the docks for dropped supplies or useful parts - and dropped my pack. I pulled out the case and swiped my hand over the gene-reader.

The case cracked open. I immediately glared behind me and clutched my autogun in case any of the other desperate fools tried to jump me for my money.

The smugglers took a moment appraising my payment. Then the woman spoke. "What's your name, kid?"

"You can call me Daniels," I said coldly. I cast a dangerous glance over to them, too. If they wanted to, there wasn't a whole lot stopping them from shooting me and taking the money without giving anything up.

But that's contrary to their business model, apparently.

"I like the way you think, Daniels," the armored woman said. Then she glanced down at the augmented smuggler. "Kirl! Go get a passenger and refund his payment. His spot has just been sold to a higher bidder."

The man looked surprised, then hesitant. "Anyone in... uh... in particular?"

"Choose someone whose face you don't like, for all I care. But do it fast."

She turned back toward me. "Welcome aboard, Daniels. I do hope you'll excuse our rapid departure, but not everybody is so thrilled to see Imperial battle fleets translating in when we're trying to keep a low profile."

I snapped the case closed and held it out for her. "The more rapid, the better."

****

Gossan System - high orbit around Gossan IV

"It's actually not that packed in here. I expected to be short on breathing room."

I nodded a silent agreement as I took in the interior of the ship. I'd never been in a void craft before. I'd never had cause to be.

There were two dozen people besides me and the smugglers, and as the rather nervous-looking fellow next to me had pointed out, the accommodations were actually quite spacious. More than I'd expected, anyway. They could have packed us in like power cells and we wouldn't have had much scope to complain.

The smuggler keeping an eye on us in the cargo bay chuckled. "We're professionals, pal. Believe me, we've tried packing this place to the gills before, and it just gets unpleasant for everyone. Setting a strict occupancy limit works best, we've found." He cast a meaningful glance at me.

I cringed away from the attention. Out of all the things I did on Gossan IV to get out alive, somehow that was the one act that I truly felt guilty about; getting some poor sod tossed out onto the docking bridge to get slagged after he or she had already thought they were safe.

"How long do you think we'll be en route to Unil?" asked a woman. She looked high-class; she was probably a noble, albeit a relatively poor or desperate one to turn to smugglers.

"Oh, it'll be two weeks or so," the smuggler replied with a shrug, "first we have to refuel at the orbital sub-"

The door to the main deck slid open, and another man staggered in.

"Change of plans! Everybody get comfy, because we're making a break for Warp space!"

None of us passengers seemed especially perturbed by this, but our guard stood up.

"Why? I know fuel is pricey right now, but we'll be cutting it awful close if we head out now, Gerril!" the other smuggler protested. "Is this about the Imperial fleet? Are they searching craft?"

"This is about the fleet," growled the second smuggler, "but they're not searching anyone." He moved to a monitor on the wall and then activated a feed leading to the primary auger array.

"The fleet isn't forming a blockade or dropping landers. They've taken up bombardment position."

We stared at the images of dark, baroque shapes looming over the planet's surface.

"But... the rebels... the rebels are under the hive city," mumbled one bright spark, "how are they going to get them with a bombardment?"

The looks he got from the smugglers made his face go white. His wasn't the only one.

"No. No, they wouldn't," the noblewoman insisted.

"I would hope not," the smuggler guard said, "I've seen the Imperium put down much worse rebellions than this with a proper counter-invasion. But..."

As if in response to his faltering, unspoken statement, the first battleships opened fire. Huge spears of energy were stabbing into the planet.

I blinked my eyes. There were tears streaming down my face, but I managed to hold back from sobbing openly. Not everyone in that ship did.

I rubbed my sleeve against my eyes to clear them. And then I sat back and watched the Imperium kill my homeworld.

****

Sweet Apple Acres - farmstead

Granny Smith's snoring was the only sound in the room as Daniels finished his tale. The Apple siblings stared at him silently and intently, having long ago stopped interrupting with their own thoughts.

"... So there you have it," Daniels said with a sigh, "the story of Wyatt Daniels and Gossan IV. A grand tale of cowardice, cruelty, and pointless loss." He chuckled wryly. "Billions dead. All just a little footnote in some Chaos Lord's grand plan. A diversion! But Inquisitor Locus was too clever for the Alpha Legion! Nallaxis was saved, I hear!"

The older Apple siblings shared a doubtful glance, unnerved by the mercenary's tone.

Apple Bloom tilted her head to the side. "So did anythin' happen 'tween you and the smuggler lady?"

"Oh, for the love of-" Daniels grunted in exasperation. "If you MUST know, yes. Kind of. But that happened way later, after I ended up joining the smugglers."

Apple Bloom brightened. "Ooh! Let's hear about that part!"

"No," the human said decisively, "for one thing, that's even less appropriate for little 'uns than this story, albeit for different reasons. For another, it would completely ruin the bleak and consistently tragic tone I've established already."

His eyes caught Applejack's gaze. The orange pony was looking at him with... concern? Judgment? Doubt? He couldn't tell offhand.

"This story doesn't have a moral, but it does have a point," Daniels continued, "throughout my whole experience over the course of the rebellion, none of the institutions that were supposed to protect me actually helped." His tone was bitter now, if not resentful. "The Emperor, the Arbites, the Planetary Defense Forces, the Inquisition, the Astartes, the militia... my friends. My family. My... my brother. Every one of them failed, or turned their guns on the rest of us. The only thing that made a difference - the only reason I'm still alive - is because of quick wits and a case full of money."

He leaned back. "So that's the lesson. You can't count on anything in this galaxy except cash. And the addendum is that every faction gunning for each other in these wars are just as bad and willing to kill you off as the others; so you might as well shop around when you're working out who to fight for."

"Bloom, why don't ya head on up to bed?" Applejack said. "Ah think story time is over."

"All right, Sis," Apple Bloom said as Big Mac shifted behind her. She stood up and trotted upstairs, and her older brother followed after her.

After a few more seconds, Daniels was alone with Applejack. If one didn't count Granny Smith, which they did not.

"Sorry about that," the mercenary mumbled, "I warned you that story was dark. I didn't mention how cynical it was."

"That's all right, Daniels. I'm glad ya told me," Applejack said quietly, "not so sure it was a good idea for Apple Bloom to hear it, but she seems all right."

The orange mare stared up at him pensively and approached, sitting down right next to the depressed human.

"Do ya... Do ya still think like that? That family and friends are useless compared to money?"

Daniels gave her a sidelong glance, as if wondering if he should give an honest answer. "My life experiences have tended to reinforce that theory. Although I suppose my family could have impressed me had they lived longer."

Applejack looked nervous. "It's just... Ah can't imagine workin' fer Chaos after they killed yer folks. Ah almost lost Big Mac to the Tau, and if he'd died, Ah would NEVER have forgiven them. Ah couldn't possibly let that go. Probably woulda marched right into the badlands and got mah fool head shot off."

"Cold, calculating apathy has its advantages," Daniels grunted, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

Once again, Granny's snores filled an uncomfortable silence.

"Ah wanna prove ya wrong," Applejack said finally, placing a hoof on the man's leg.

"Say what?"

"Ah wanna show ya that family's better'n that. That money can't replace the people ya love," Applejack continued.

"My point was actually more along the lines that people can't measure up to money, whether I love them or not," Daniels admitted, "but anyway, I don't know how you're supposed to disprove that when I'm all out of family members to have faith in."

"Yer not, Danny. Ya got us, now," Applejack said with grim seriousness, "ya may not be an Apple - hay, ya ain't even a pony - but all the same Ah'd put mah life in yer hands and return the favor."

"Can't say I know why," Daniels mumbled, "I'm not big on self-loathing or wallowing in regret, but I don't have a good record for taking care of me mates."

The orange pony smirked. "Yer stronger than ya think, Daniels. And while ya may be a lousy hero, you've been a real good friend. Ya mean a lot to me."

Daniels pursed his lips, shifting on his cushion. He wasn't as awkward with friendship as most of the space pirates on the planet, but he still wasn't used to such a genuine outpour of sentiment. And he was quite certain he didn't deserve it.

"Hey, uh..." Applejack chewed her lip briefly, something boiling in her mind. "Do ya think Ah could call ya by yer first name from now on? Ah mean, we're pretty far from strangers, right?"

Daniels couldn't keep a smile off his face, and he suddenly pulled the pony over against his side, hugging her to him. "You can call me whatever you want, AJ. Although since you've decided to make me family, I've always been partial to 'Wy' as a nickname."

"Well, then Wy it is!" Applejack chuckled as she nuzzled the man's chin.

"Eugh! At least lemme get outta the room before you two start smoochin' each other!"

Daniels and Applejack looked quite bemused as they watched Granny Smith suddenly hop out of her rocking chair and head for the stairs.

"Granny, Ah told ya. We ain't like that," Applejack scowled.

"Filly, Ah ain't judgin' you. But just 'cause Ah'll accept it don't mean Ah want to see it!" the geriatric pony hobbled upstairs with surprising swiftness, leaving the man and mare to glare at her backside.

"... Why do people keep thinking we're a couple?" Daniels grumbled.

"Ah reckon some folks're PERVERTS, is all," Applejack said, emphasizing the key word loudly enough so that her grandmother could pick it up.

Then she snorted. "Well, guess Ah might as well turn in mahself."

"Want a belly rub before you head up?"

"Would Ah ever!"

The Berserker

Author's Note

I know nobody asked for the Tellis chapter, but his was easy and fun, so here it is anyway.
Besides, I have no idea why anyone likes or cares about Sliver. I can never predict what people actually like about my characters.
Hope you all enjoy the amateur philosophy, as filtered through the eyes of genocidal psychotics!
I also decided that this finally kicked up the blood and guts level high enough to warrant a "Gore" tag. It's still not a big focus, and it's still not pony violence, but whatever.
This part takes place immediately after Book 4, Chapter 7.

The Berserker

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Berserker

****

Outside Cloudsdale city limits

"Fighting is an art."

Tellis slashed his lightning claws across an Ork's belly, and stabbed his other set into another Ork's chest.

"Some people will tell you it isn't. The DarkMech, the strategists, even the Warsmith will drone on and on about tactical proficiencies, angles, and distribution."

An Ork lunged for the Iron Warrior, but the Chaos Lord jumped to intercept the foe, slamming his spiked knee against the alien's chin with predictably gory results.

"Like you can really reduce the blood, panic, and skull-pounding fury of combat to a spreadsheet page."

A spinning slash tore a power klaw - as well as its attached arm - away from an Ork Nob before the hulking warrior could make any serious attempt to use it.

"Warfare is a cultural reflection of the species waging it, you see. For Eldar it's a hunt, with them playing the role of slippery prey as much as predator. Tau are cautious and calculating."

Tellis stabbed the Nob over and over again, his arms becoming a crimson blur as they punched at the dying warrior.

"Orks are kind of an exception. They're not about much else BESIDES war, so their military culture is less a reflection of their species rather than a complete picture of it."

Tellis backhanded a choppa that was descending toward his helmet, and then plunged his claws into another foe's head.

"And then we have humans. Varied, certainly, in our methods, and distantly interested in efficiency, if only to make sure we win."

Tellis blasted off from the ground into a high jump, and he aimed at a fleeing Loota after cutting his engine power. He landed on top of the alien scavenger like a meteor, crushing it.

"But for us, war is about the GLORY, you know? We're a race that builds void ships the size of freaking cities and can remake entire planets to suit our tastes, but we still act like the most noble and useful thing you can do is learn to shoot a gun. Think about that."

Tellis cut down two more Orks in short order, and then leapt at the back of another who was already fleeing.

"It's not because war is especially USEFUL, either. Hell, humanity's biggest problem is that we keep turning our weapons on each other. But the glory is instinctive. The nobility of combat is ingrained. Warriors are the artisans of destruction, and they've always had our awe and respect. Violence as an ideal never gets old."

The Ork struggled under the Iron Warrior's grasp, but Tellis held its wrists tightly from behind as he stood up.

"This is my art. The battlefield is my canvas, the enemy is my paint, and my weapons are my brushes. Every decapitation is like a painting. Every mutilated corpse is like a sculpture. Every melee is like a dance. Not ballet, though! It's like the loud, manly kind of dance. Like, with lots of stomping and stuff."

The Ork screamed as Tellis dug his boot into the alien's back, and then tugged sharply on its arms. A loud crack followed as the spine broke.

"Beautiful," Tellis said while he let his last victim slump onto the ground.

The sound of dozens off hooves gently tapping together came from above, and Tellis looked upward.

A full twenty Cloudsdale pegasi were sitting on a low-hanging cloud, overlooking the bloodshed. Some were city guards still clutching their spears in their mouths, while others were wearing high-class suits and dresses and otherwise had the trappings of nobility.

"Quite engaging, isn't it?" mumbled one stallion.

"Oh, yes. And very new-age. Future-age, even!" agreed the mare next to him.

"It speaks to me on a very primal level," sniffed another upper-class pony, "the pegasus warrior culture, long suppressed by decades of peace and Equestrian unification, may not have been so different."

One of the pegasi near the back frowned. "Thought-provoking, perhaps, but I found the presentation far too crass. Especially the aspect of having actual, living creatures killed right in front of me. It gives impact, yes, but does it not obscure the deeper philosophical ponderings with spectacle?"

"I liked when he stabbed the guy in the face," mused one of the guards, "that part was cool."

Satisfied with the critiques, Tellis glanced around him at the twisted metal remains of numerous warkoptas and trukks and the corpses scattered over the ground.

"There will now be a long intermission while we wait for enemy reinforcements to arrive and provide new materials for me to paint the ground with," said the Chaos Marine before he clashed his lightning claws together.

"Is there a refreshment stand open around here?" asked one of the pegasi, raising a wing.

"We're in an open field. There's grass everywhere. You're horses. Go nuts," Tellis replied as he walked away.

Tellis approached one of the downed warkoptas, staring intently at the slowly spinning rotors attached to a smoldering engine.

"I can do something with that, I'll bet," he mumbled to himself, hands on his hips, "like, turn it on, and then fling Orks into the spinning rotor. Yeeeah. But I'll need somebody to fix it, first."

He turned around and tapped his helmet, and his visor display flickered.

The words "active nerd sensor" flashed in front of his eyes, followed by a slowly turning Chaos Star.

Eventually it returned a reading.

"Seriously? The closest DarkMech geek is barely within three kilometers from here? That's just close enough to be useful while still far enough away to be inconvenient!"

Tellis was going to continue griping to himself, but his regional scan had detected two other energy signatures approaching as well. Although his armor systems hadn't classified them as nerds, the Chaos Lord took a moment to look at the locator runes and recognized them immediately.

"Rainbabe! Wassup?!" he hissed into his vox after he connected the link.

"Hey, Tellis! We found you!" came Rainbow Dash's voice over the vox system in his helmet.

In the distance, two gleaming armor suits began a descent toward the Iron Warrior. One curved into a fiery, high-speed dive, while the other merely dropped its thrust to begin a much slower landing.

Rainbow Dash gunned her impulse blasters as she reached the ground, blowing a furrow into the dirt and bringing herself to a shuddering halt.

Tellis raised a hand and made a fist, and Rainbow wasted no time in hopping up and slamming a boot into his gauntlet. "Hey, we missed you at the big battle, man!"

Tellis cocked his head to one side. "Big battle? There was a big battle?"

"Yeah, it... uh..." the pegasus took a moment to look around the area at the wreckage and bodies. "Well, I was about to say you missed all the action, but it looks like you found plenty of your own."

"Yeah, but still, I probably could have saved these chumps for later if I'd known there was a real battle going on nearby," Tellis grumbled while he checked his communications log, "there has to be some way to get my stupid suit systems to relay me all the COOL orders while setting it to ignore all the dumb, boring ones."

"Well, if you figure that out, lemme know. I wanna get in on that!" Rainbow Dash disengaged her helmet, letting the metal shell slide away from her face before she shook her mane out.

The second armored pony finally landed, falling softly onto her greaves with none of the fanfare of the first.

"Hey, Shy. How many kills you get?" Tellis asked immediately.

The other pegasus, who was expecting to be largely ignored, promptly recoiled. "K-Kills? Oh, no, I didn't do any fighting. I mostly helped take care of the wounded, actually."

Tellis considered that for a moment. "I see. So, how many of your patients kicked the bucket while you were trying to patch 'em up?"

Fluttershy cringed behind her helmet. "Uh... th-three of them... didn't make it."

"Well, we'll count that as three kills, then. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows and all," the Iron Warrior said as Fluttershy gaped, "not great, but it's a start. Keep it up."

Leaving Fluttershy with that extremely morbid thought, Tellis turned back to Rainbow Dash. "Anyway, if you wanna grab a cloud or whatever, we're just waiting for more greenskins to show up."

Rainbow arched an eyebrow, and then looked up at the pegasi watching from high above. Many of them were whispering to each other while staring at the new arrivals.

"Er... what's going on, exactly?" Rainbow asked.

"I've been finding new, socially acceptable ways to fetishize my job," Tellis explained with his arms crossed.

"What does THAT mean?"

"It means I do what I always do - kill things with an air of derailing, childish humor - but with an audience. Then I call it 'performance art'."

Rainbow Dash seemed impressed by this rationale. Fluttershy, less so.

"I'm, uhm, pretty sure that sort of thing is against the law, actually," she interjected timidly.

"You'd be surprised at how many of your laws don't apply to me," Tellis countered. Then he pointed up at one of the pegasus guards. "Right, lawpone?"

"You can do whatever you want!" the pegasus shouted back nervously. "Just don't hurt us, please!"

"See? Isn't it great?" Tellis laughed.

Rainbow Dash shrugged, her hefty shoulder pads rolling with the motion. "Well, that's cool, but if you're waiting for Orks you're gonna be here a long time. The main force already broke and ran."

"What?!" Tellis shouted, once again scanning his list of vox network messages. "Damn it! I still have half a show to do! What am I supposed to do for two more hours if there's nothing left to murder?!"

Most of the ponies sitting on the observation cloud started to sweat nervously, but one guard tepidly raised a hoof in front of him.

"Uhm, does that mean we can go home?" he asked.

"NO!" Tellis barked, whirling around and pointing as the pegasi cringed away. "You paid admission, you're getting a show! We're still on intermission time! Pipe down!"

"They paid admission?" Fluttershy asked, being slightly skeptical of the appeal of an extended, improvised gladiatorial match to the average pony.

"Well, not technically. Donations were voluntary," Tellis grumbled, a hand scratching the forehead of his helmet, "I'm new to dealing with currency. But the pegasi were all pretty generous after I told them to meet me here or I would be very disappointed in them. I gotta give them SOMETHING." He idly tapped a large pouch attached to his grenade belt that jingled with money.

"Well, I'm down with that!" Rainbow Dash said brightly. "The victory party doesn't start until six or something anyway. We can help you out!"

Tellis turned to her again. "What, like, as opponents?"

Fluttershy instantly vanished from sight as her cloak engaged.

Rainbow just snorted. "No way, dude. Just to put on a show or something. Like, maybe do some stunt flying?"

"Meh. I don't think so. Unless we turn it into a duel where we try to knock each other down mid-routine."

Rainbow Dash frowned. "Look, Tell, I want to help, but I also want to keep death out of my routines."

"But death is the THEME! This is art, Dash! You can't just go from ripping out the hearts of living, breathing creatures to doing colorful spins through the air! The critics will tear me apart!" the Iron Warrior complained.

"We will, too," said a mare up front with a set of opera glasses, "not to his face, of course, but the written review in the paper will be SCALDING."

"I need something shocking, bloody, entertaining, and LONG," the Raptor said, his flight pack puffing in irritable sympathy.

"Uhm, like, maybe, telling a story?"

Rainbow Dash, Tellis, and every pegasus watching swiftly turned toward Fluttershy. Or rather, the visibly empty spot in the air where Fluttershy's voice came from.

Fluttershy herself didn't even flinch away from the sudden attention, for once, since most of the others were glancing about in confusion and unable to make eye contact. She found the experience somewhat thrilling, actually.

"A story, eh?" Tellis mumbled, scratching at his vox piece. "That's a lot tamer and less active than I'd like, but my stories DO fit all the arbitrary criteria I rattled off just now."

"A story? Ugh, how pedestrian," grumbled one of the snobbier ponies above.

"The guy's an alien space soldier," countered a guard with a raised eyebrow, "I don't think we're going to hear anything 'pedestrian'."

Rainbow Dash sat down, making herself comfortable as she could in her power armor. "Make it a story with lots of action!"

"Yeah, I don't really have any stories WITHOUT a lot of action. That's not gonna be a problem," Tellis admitted.

Then he pointed to the pegasi waiting on the cloud. "All right, this is happening. Lower that thing down here and get comfy."

There were some murmurings of various intensity and disposition among the audience, but the pegasi began flapping their wings and pushing their improvised perch closer to the ground.

Fluttershy de-cloaked, appearing in a ghostly shimmer. "Oh, uhm, is this going to be a scary story?"

"Meh, not really." Tellis said as he boosted his vox volume. "This is a tale of blood, fire, and emotions metaphorically comparable to blood and fire. A tale about hate, anger, personal growth, and a really swell guy called Kharn the Betrayer. And it takes place on a distant planet called Anrose VI."

****

Anrose VI - a really long time ago, seriously you guys

"From iron cometh strength. From strength cometh will. From will cometh faith. From faith cometh darkness. From darkness cometh iron."

My head swam as I clutched the bottom of the gunship, hearing my brothers recite the Unbreakable Litany over the vox.

I didn't join them. I didn't care. The Unbreakable Litany was a tiresome relic of a long-gone era. Old soldiers clinging to a distant past when things were slightly less miserable and dangerous.

The Mark of Khorne shined on my shoulder pad, edged in brass. I could feel it through my armor, like a hot brand against my skin.

THIS was the future. Our future. We belonged to the Dark Gods now. The persisting habits of my Legion were absurd to me. Why cling to forsaken ideals of brotherhood and will? Why waste so much time going over supply manifests and studying engineering?

Khorne had a greater, simpler, and more glorious purpose for us, and my faith surged through me with every heartbeat.

My arm was restless, and every few minutes I would bang it against the gunship hull in frustration. This was taking too long! Where was the enemy?! Where were the targets?!

The gunship shook violently, and I heard the screeching noise of flak scratching across my armor.

Enemies.

My grip shook, but my body shook harder while I searched for the gun below. Gunfire. Attackers. Enemies. Blood.

I spotted the cannon.

Locate. Close. Break. Kill.

I had orders, but for the moment they were forgotten. I kicked off from the gunship and then dove toward the anti-air position. I was practically diving straight toward its mouth while it was shooting toward me, but I didn't care. Khorne didn't care. It was either my life or the lives of the gunners, and it's pretty hard to tell the difference between us after we're ripped up into little flesh chunks.

The ground started rushing up to meet me, and I kicked myself upright and hit the thrusters for a landing. I landed hard, and the shock rumbled up my bones and rattled my teeth. I could already taste blood, and I hadn't even seen my first foe.

Then I did see my first foe, stumbling through the dust wave I had kicked up and holding his laspistol ready.

He didn't get to fire it before I'd hit him. The chainsword wasn't even on, which pretty much made it a spiked metal club. I just straight-up smashed his head in like a cave Astartes.

I saw a second guy, and punched his face in. Literally. Next dude got the chainsword, but this time I remembered to trigger it first. Not sure if that makes it more or less brutal, but at least I was getting into the swing of things.

They were shooting at me now, the usual mix of lasbolts and the odd solid slug, but it was scattered and desperate. I was on top of them already. Six kills turned into twelve. Twelve turned into thirty. I moved from body to body, breaking and slashing and kicking.

"Did you... you know, say anything? While you were killing everyone? You usually say stuff."

Nah. I didn't really do that back then. I just sort of snarled a lot. Lame, I know.

The platform was clear. Everyone that had been manning the forward defensive position was a blood stain. I had to take a moment to get my bearings, feeling the catharsis of killing wash away the haze of anger.

"Command, Tellis here," I growled, "I've found and neutralized a defense gun in sector 24. It was defended. Now it's not."

"Good," barked the voice on the other end, "is the gun functional?"

"Maybe."

"Hmph. Very well. Proceed to your deployment point and engage the enemy."

I snarled something incoherent that had to do with blood, and my jump pack boosted me up into the air. Separated from my gunship - and the rest of the Raptors - I made my way across the battlefield in long hops while searching for more victims.

"Why didn't you just fly?"

I couldn't. Not back then. I didn't have my daemon armor yet. Heck, back when I ran with the 81st Grand Battalion, I didn't even have my own command. I was just a jump trooper with an above-average kill score and anger issues.

"Yeah, you seem pretty... different, now."

I searched the ground for enemies as I crossed the battlefield in long bounds. Anrose VI was a rocky planet, with the ground too hard and stony in most places to support typical plant life. That meant lots of natural hard cover, but not much to obscure vision from above. It made building defensive fortifications easy, though, and there were lots of them mixing it up with our vanguard.

I spotted a Rhino, and my vision went almost blurry with rage. It wasn't one of ours.

Yellow and green colors. Not sure what Chapter it was. But we had Space Marines on the field. I forgot everything else about the battle and leapt for the transport.

The difference was immediate. Two bolts crashed against my chest plate and a third one clipped the edge of my helmet during my approach. Then I was in arms' reach, but here too there's a world of difference between human soldiers and the post-human sort. My chainsword screamed as the teeth chewed through ceramite, spraying sparks and plating shards into the air.

But Space Marines don't just stand around while you kill them. By the time I had finished off the first one, three others were sticking their combat knives into me. I was already plenty angry, and, well, that just made me angrier.

Every swing was faster, stronger, and more furious than the last, bowling over Space Marines and gouging out heavy armor. I spun, kicked, slashed, and shot, moving like a whirlwind through the loyalist defenders.

After shooting out another enemy's throat, I turned just in time to avoid losing half my body to a plasma bolt.

That made me mad.

"You already seemed pretty angry, though."

That's kind of a running theme here, Dash.

There was a Sergeant moving to intercept me, his plasma pistol leaking smoke and a power sword poised to remove something important.

I practically dove for the guy and gave him a metal kiss.

"A what, now?"

Basically a headbutt, but involving more of the vox grille than the forehead. See, some Space Marines think they're bad enough dudes to run around a battlefield without a helmet. Iron Warrior doctrine pretty much forbids this for a lot of boring, practical reasons. Having a helmet on, however, DOES let you make your face into a bludgeoning weapon when the other guy isn't wearing one. That's pretty cool. And those plow-shaped grilles our Legion is so fond of are perfect for ramming someone's nose into their brain stem. But anyway, back to the action.

The Sergeant's sword strike whiffed completely as he reeled back with his face imploded. I took a shot at his leg to get him to stagger forward, and then completed the kill with a decapitation swing.

"And then you said a snarky one-liner, right?"

Nah. I think I snarled something about blood. I did that a lot more back then.

"Huh. You weren't much fun when you were younger, were you?"

I really wasn't.

So I finished up with the Space Marines, who were the most active resistance in the area. The fire teams had already torn down the fixed defenses, and were getting ready to redeploy.

"This is Tellis! Where are my next victims?!" I snarled into the vox.

"Tellis, run escort with Lancer Squadron until-"

"I asked for PREY!" I yelled. "Let some other dog play guard duty! This one wishes to hunt!" I was getting really into it now, and hearing the voice on the other end just made me angrier.

"The enemy forces are retreating to their secondary defensive lines, and they have a super-heavy covering their withdrawal. Lancer Squadron-"

"SILENCE!!" I roared. I was honestly tempted to hunt down that Lieutenant and disembowel him for his nonsense. I needed a distraction.

I set upon the corpses of the fallen, my anger still burning without further enemies to vent on. I hacked away at their heads, severing them and hurling them into a blast crater.

"Tellis, Lancer Squadron is moving to sector 17," snapped a new voice in my ear, "the enemy may launch a counter-attack in-"

I switched off my vox and continued with my work, locating and defiling the corpses of the fallen humans after I was out of Astartes skulls.

A squad of Iron Warriors had assaulted a bunker position nearby, and two of their number had fallen in the attempt, left behind on the ground as their brothers marched on to the next bulwark. They might have been dead, or merely wounded. I didn't stop to check.

Their skulls came next.

Blood was pooling in the crater once I had dropped in the final pair of offerings. It reached an unnatural boil, spilling over the edge of the crater.

"I hereby grant these skulls, these paltry lives drowned in terror and blood, to Lord Khorne!" I called out breathlessly, my fury briefly weakening in the face of fanatic devotion. "In your honor, will this world burn! A million skulls, and a million more! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!"

The crater erupted like a geyser, drenching me in boiling crimson. The pain of my wounds were washed away, and a rush of energy stronger and more complete than that of any mere chemical stimulant burned through me.

I turned toward the columns of smoke in the distance. There was still heavy combat going on, and I wasn't going to waste my time "guarding" others. I could see alerts coming up on my visor, but I ignored everything but the markers indicating enemy formations. I gunned my jump pack and leapt toward the fray.

****

Equestria

Tellis sighed, staring at the ground as the ponies around him listened intently.

"I was a different person, then. I ignored orders, abandoned my allies, and made stupid mistakes just to get to a fight more quickly."

Fluttershy bit her lip anxiously, wanting desperately to speak up but terrified to do so.

Rainbow Dash had no such fear. "Dude, you do all that now."

"Well, sure," Tellis agreed, "but now I at least have a good attitude about it. Back then I didn't even enjoy it!"

"I could tell," Rainbow mumbled. What she liked most about Tellis was the way he combined martial grace, a devil-may-care attitude, and a frankly juvenile sense of humor. True, he lacked anything resembling morals and his allegiance to Khorne was rather unpleasant, but the man Tellis described as his past self seemed to be little more than a disturbed animal, constantly enraged and embittered without any apparent reason.

"I fought and killed in the name of Khorne and the Iron Warriors, just like I do now, but it felt... different, back then," Tellis confessed, "I used to think that devotion to Khorne was devotion to death and fury. The death of my enemies, first, but ultimately mine, too. This life was supposed to be just a mad sprint to the end, while taking as many people with me as I could, and any diversion from that was a waste of time at best, and a blasphemy at worst."

Rainbow Dash cocked her head to the side. "So what changed?"

"Well, my outlook had religious fanaticism and genealogy behind it, so it was going to take a real miracle to turn me around." He looked up at the pegasi listening intently above him. "The Iron Warriors weren't the only Chaos troopers on this assault. A pair of Chaos warbands had called the Battalion in to help take down the planetary defenses around a garrison that had been supplying the Anrose system with troops and weapons and was in general making a nuisance of itself. One of the warbands was called the Crimson something-or-other; I don't really know much about them, just some freshly turned goons. I'd give them about a decade before they're wiped out. The other warband, though... they were the real deal. World Eaters. Berserkers devoted to Khorne who lay waste to planets and put cities to the sword just for the sake of killing. They're pretty hardcore. And they were led by the most brutal, savage, and amiable Berserker this galaxy has ever seen."

Fluttershy furrowed her brow. "Uhm, one of those things doesn't really fit," she pointed out.

"Heh, yeah. Let me explain..."

****

Anrose VI

"Blood for the BLOOD GOD!!" I roared, landing on the back of a planetary defense trooper and breaking him in half.

My chainsword roared as it swung back and forth across the fleeing soldiers, driving them on. My pistol bucked wildly in my hands while I put bolts into spine after spine.

Every one of my victims had their backs to me. All of them were running. The COWARDS! Like every other stimuli, this made me angry.

I didn't know how long I spent hacking through the general retreat, but by the time I was out of viable targets I had enough dead bodies to make another little skull shrine.

I was going to go ahead and do that when a voice came from behind me.

"Ah, Tellis. Not one for following orders, but your... passion for your craft leaves an impression."

I turned around, slightly less angry than before. It was Lord Rythus. Not our Grand Battalion's Warsmith, but still a big deal.

"New targets!" I demanded. I gunned my chainsword furiously.

Some Chaos Lords would have gotten all snippy about having anything demanded of them, even orders, but Rythus was pretty cool about it.

"Indeed. There seems to be a problem in sector 9," he explained, his hands resting on the hilt of his power maul, "that's where our artillery division was setting up. They've gone silent. We're not sure how the enemy reached them without our noticing, but you're to head to that area and sweep the sector for targets."

Search and destroy. Not my favorite mission - that would be assault - but it's okay. At least there's a serious presumption of enemy presence.

"That sector is close to where the World Eaters are operating, incidentally," Rythus continued, "do keep an eye out. You know how... unruly they get." He turned around and walked off toward his command transport. I jumped off in the direction of my target.

Devastation was everywhere in the aftermath of the assault. Dead bodies and scorched wreckage were stretched across the battle lines, and trains of Iron Warrior transports moved supplies and wounded back and forth across the rocky landscape. It had been a good battle, and the Battalion had performed admirably. All that concerned me, however, was finding more enemies.

My visor informed me that I had reached the area arbitrarily labeled sector 9. The artillery guns were easy to spot, having rolled up on top of a graded obsidian slope that would have made them an easy target for any anti-armor weapons.

I couldn't see any foes, which kept my mind calm enough to make a basic observation about the artillery tanks: they were still intact, and there was no smoke coming from them. That was odd for something that had been taken out by anti-armor fire. So it then stood to reason that they hadn't been ambushed by a heavy weapons team.

I growled angrily as I landed behind the disabled vehicles. Playing detective made me me mad.

Now that I could observe them closely, it was obvious what had happened to the tanks. Their crew hatch had been ripped open and the crew had been slaughtered while still inside. Two of the vehicles were still in firing position, having apparently been taken out before they realized what was happening. The third looked like it had been making a run for it when it had been caught and disabled in the same way.

I frowned, digging into the rarely-used part of my brain that used and analyzed tactics. Imperial troops had plenty of methods for dealing with enemy armor, but this wasn't one of them. I don't even know what kind of weapon had been used to breach the crew hatch; it kind of resembled chainsword damage, but chainswords couldn't tear through vehicle plating like this.

I growled some more and pounded a fist onto the nearest tank. I was wasting time, and whatever had done this was getting away. I launched myself up into the air, scanning the ground below. It was a crude way of searching for foes, but none of my auger feeds detected anything else nearby.

After several minutes of searching, boredom began to take the edge off my fury, and I started thinking clearly again. There WAS actually a unit nearby, but the IFF signum was clearly friendly. A World Eater.

I grunted irritably, but adjusted my course to intercept. It could have been a trap, which meant that my targets were waiting to ambush me. Or maybe the guy knew what was going on around here. Either way, it was a better use of my time than hopping around and hoping I landed on an opponent.

Granted, I didn't look forward to dealing with a World Eater. The guys are well-known for being twitchy, psychotic lunatics who can barely hold a conversation without hitting something.

"Uhmm..."

Yeah, yeah, I know. People in crystallex facilities shouldn't throw krak grenades. But still, those guys are BAD. Among the Iron Warriors my kind of crazy is an exception. The World Eaters literally jam electric spikes into their brains to make sure that they're too mad to think straight most of the time. They industrialized RAGE. It'd be awe-inspiring if it didn't end up crippling them as a fighting force half the time.

But anyway, I'm coming up on this lone World Eater, bounding through the air, and then I'm noticing that the area around him is covered in wide, sweeping blood stains and bodies.

Not a big deal, pretty much what I expected. That actually cools my head a little bit.

Then I notice something that nearly trips up my next landing: there are shredded power armor suits among the corpses. They're washed over with blood, so at first I think they're World Eaters, who wear red. But there was silver and gold peeking out between the fans of crimson. The helmet types were also quite distinctive.

All my anger returned with a vengeance. Strictly speaking, it didn't matter to me if other Iron Warriors died, and logically, I didn't know at a glance if these ones had been killed by the World Eater or killed by enemies and then painted over by random blood spray. It's not like I could get really indignant after using a few of my own brothers as sacrificial materials, either. But I didn't care. I'd already lost myself to the fury, and something was going to die. It was either going to be me or him, and Khorne didn't care which.

I started a long charge, leaping over the blood-slicked platforms between me and the World Eater Marine. I know he must have heard my jump pack, but he didn't turn around. He just kept walking forward, away from me, leaving crimson footprints behind him.

He was up high, on a partially shattered fortress wall littered with the bodies of defenders. I'm guessing that it probably would have been the artillery's first target, but whatever took out the big guns hadn't saved the chumps manning the wall.

I hit the top of the battlement, and then paused to give my jump pack a moment to breathe. Then I was airborne again.

I jumped over to a wall standing high above the battlement line and started running across it as my pack sputtered. I kicked off the wall a few seconds later, and then hit the pack again before diving at the World Eater, chainsword-first.

He was still facing away from me, leisurely walking along the battlement while twirling his chainaxe in his hand like some kind of cheering baton. I swear he was actually whistling to himself.

He turns at the last second, ducking under the swing before I hit the ground rolling. No biggie; guy's got some skills, but it was ridiculous to think he didn't know I was coming. I jump to my feet, bringing up my pistol.

Then I recognize the guy I just tried to jump. Not that I've ever met him before, but there's only one Space Marine who runs around a battlefield with his right arm in a proper power armor sleeve and his left arm bare except for some chains.

I had just tried to slay Kharn the Betrayer.

"Why's he called 'the Betrayer'?"

Well... you know how I'm considered crazy and dangerous among an entire army of crazy and dangerous people?

"Yeah?"

He was known as "the Betrayer" even among the thousands of other Space Marines that all turned traitor against our master.

"Ooooh..."

Right. He's not what you would call a team player.

So here I am, facing down the most famous Berserker EVER, pistol aimed at his face, and all I can do is gape.

Kharn stared at me for a moment, and then nudged his chin forward.

"'Sup?"

I'm not proud to admit it, but I was a little bit star-struck. I hadn't known at the time that Kharn was leading these World Eaters.

Of course, that meant I was pretty much toast. I was good, but I was pretty poorly armed at the time and Kharn was the best of the best. To him I would be a light work-out after butchering those soldiers and, presumably, our artillery crews.

But that was okay. Khorne cares not from where the blood flows. And dying to Kharn was a goddamn HONOR!

"Betrayer!" I roared, my chainsaw gearing up and my jump pack launching me forward.

He just sort of hopped to the side as I burst past him, slashing the air.

"Yeah? What's up?" he asked. He could have struck me in the back after I had charged past. Hell, he probably could have decapitated me mid-charge. But he didn't. His chainaxe, Gorechild, was still gripped loosely in his hand, held near the ground, as if he wasn't being attacked at all.

I turned my pistol on him, and he turned to keep his exposed arm out of the line of fire as my bolt rounds burst against his arm and shoulder armor.

"Is there a problem, buddy?" he asked. He sounded genuinely concerned.

"FIGHT ME, Berserker!" I bellowed, throwing down my pistol and gripping my chainsword with both hands. It wasn't actually out of ammunition yet, but I was just in that sort of mood at the moment.

"... Why?" Kharn asked, tilting his head to the side. "We're on the same team, pal."

"As were my brothers in iron, Betrayer!" I shouted. I couldn't believe this. What was this guy doing? Was he serious? "How many of our brothers and servants have met their end under your axe?!"

Kharn chuckled. He CHUCKLED at me. "Yeah, okay. You got me there. But you're on team Khorne, buddy! A fellow blood cultist! I don't want to fight you!"

I was floored. Kharn DIDN'T want to fight? He didn't want to kill? This made no sense!

And back then, things that didn't make sense made me angry.

"DIE, Betrayer!" I roared, blasting forward again.

I slashed and swiped and snarled and stabbed, but he hopped around each attack or calmly smacked it away with his axe. I was trying my level best to kill him, and Kharn wasn't losing his cool or even fighting back! This made me angrier.

He noticed, too.

"Are you okay, pal? Your form's sort of slipping up," Kharn asked.

"Hrarghblrg!!" I yelled back at him.

"Look, I get it. The nails are a bitch, right? You just get this out of your system, and then we can talk."

"Nails?"

Yeah, I'll get to that. At the time I was incandescent with rage, so I didn't stop to think about his comment.

It took several more minutes of me trying and failing to hurt Kharn - and sputtering angry nonsense at him - before he finally gave a grunt of irritation and disarmed me. Not, like, ripped off my arm, which would have been a damn TREAT by then, but knocked away my chainsword and then hacked the sword itself away at the hilt. It was just EMBARRASSING. I was that helpless before him.

And yet, he still wasn't KILLING me! Why not?

"Throne's skulls, what did they set your nails to? This isn't normal," Kharn grumbled before he swatted aside a punch and then grabbed one of my arms. My power armor squealed as I tried to overcome him, but it didn't work. Nothing worked.

He kicked out my leg, making me stagger onto one knee, and then twisted my helmet to face away from him so he could see the back of my head.

"... Wait, do you guys do it differently? Where are your psycho-surgical enhancers?" He sounded confused.

I writhed and struggled under his grip. "I bear no such devices!" I proclaimed, angrily. "My hate is pure! Not agitated by some mere machine, like a pit animal spurred on by the prod!" It was true. The Iron Warriors put a lot of stock in clear thinking and tactics, so devices that effectively lobotomize their soldiers aren't very popular.

"... Holy SHIT, man," Kharn said, his voice halfway between awe and disappointment, "I've met Bloodthirsters with a happier disposition than you. You're CRAZY."

"I will undo you, Betrayer! In Khorne's name, one of us shall perish this day!" I screamed, trying to twist out of his grip.

"Seriously. Buddy. This is too much," Kharn explained, suddenly letting go and backing away, "my entire Legion practices jamming hot neuro-reactive spikes in our brains in order to make us that pissed off. And you're this bad normally? That's not healthy."

I sputtered something incoherent as I got to my feet. But I was unarmed, and Kharn still wasn't fighting me.

"So, what's up? Why are you so mad?" he asked.

I gaped behind my helmet. What kind of a question was that?

"I'm filled with the fury of Khorne!" I bellowed.

"Heh, heh... fury of corn..."

YES I GET IT HIS NAME IS A PLANT CAN WE STOP MAKING THAT JOKE NOW?

Anyway, Kharn didn't seem impressed by my explanation.

"Brother, I KNOW the fury of Khorne. Don't try to pin that temper on him," the Berserker chided.

"It is in His name that I slaughter the foe! I glorify the Blood God with my rage as I seek ever more skulls for His throne and lifeblood for His ocean!"

"Okay, fine, but you don't have to be a dick about it," Kharn reasoned.

I didn't really have an answer to that. I just sort of stood there, leaning over as that sentence bounced around in my head.

"I mean, some of us DO," Kharn continued, pointing to his head, "the butcher's nails basically torture us into being enraged killing machines. But I'll let you in on a secret: that doesn't really impress Khorne all that much."

"... Wh-What?" for the first time in a long while, I wasn't angry. Just confused. Usually being confused just made me angrier, but... somehow I knew this was important, and I let my guard down.

"You probably think you're being some kind of religious exemplar by being mad ALL THE TIME, but it actually doesn't work that way," Kharn explained, walking up next to me and slapping his free hand onto my shoulder pad, "Khorne doesn't even care if you or your opponent is the one to die; do you think He hands out extra Chaos Points if you're pissed off all the time?"

"I... I didn't... uh..." all I could do was mumble in confusion. I hadn't thought of it exactly like that, but it kind of sounded right. I DID think I was honoring Khorne by responding to every input with anger.

"You're allowed to actually enjoy yourself!" Kharn said, gesturing with his axe to the bodies littering the battlements behind him. "Yes, you're trying to kill people, but there's no rule that says you can't have fun while you do it! If anything, Khorne might appreciate it!"

I jerked my head back. "He... would?"

"Sure! Do you think He WANTS His cultists to be bitter sad-sacks every hour of every day? You think He doesn't enjoy murder?"

I chewed on my lip as I thought that over. I had probably done more thinking on theology in the last five minutes than in my entire life up until that point. "Well, maybe... but I always thought of it as sort of a mild release from His all-consuming rage."

"So you think a Chaos God spends his timeless eternity completely miserable, seeking small windows of peace with the distractions of intergalactic blood sport?" Kharn chuckled. "Hey, maybe. But it seems like a pretty lousy way to spend immortality."

Kharn turned toward the distant horizon, his hand still on my shoulder pad. We spent a minute in silence: him, staring at the distant columns of smoke, and me, staring at the ground and thinking.

"You know what I like about Khorne?" Kharn said suddenly.

"I like mine popped, with salt and bu-"

I SWEAR ON THE EYE I WILL PUNT YOU RIGHT BACK TO YOUR RIDICULOUS SKY CITY.

"... Sorry."

"He's the only one of the Four that really GETS mortality," Kharn explained.

I once again gave the Betrayer my full attention.

"The other three big Gods may praise and reward martial success, but they only see it as an act of effort devoted to them. Some loser out of trillions dies facing a Slaaneshi champion: who cares? Well, the champion worked hard at it, so might as well give him a daemon orgy or a second phallus or something. I mean, that's just good business sense."

"Wretched whore-sons," I growled.

"Heh, yeah. Those guys suck." Kharn chuckled, and then cleared his throat loudly. "But the point is: the death doesn't really matter to any of the Gods except Khorne. He's the only one who understands what it MEANS to end a life, and risk one's own. That's also why he's the only one that actually enjoys having his servants die for him. To the other Gods, a dead cultist is pretty much a broken toy; they toss it aside and move on to the next one. If they really LIKE the toy, they might even revive him. But none of them care that their devotee just gave up the only existence they've ever known for them. Only Khorne honors the end of the life as well as the life itself. Only the Blood God recognizes that life is valuable BECAUSE it ends. That meaning usually gets kind of lost among the creed of killing as many people as possible in a suicidal frenzy, but still, it's there."

Then Kharn patted my shoulder pad. "To die is to honor the Blood God. But to make it a worthy offering, that death should have meaning. One way to give it meaning is to devote yourself to Khorne and consign your skull to His throne."

"Already done that part," I mumbled.

"Obviously. Another way is to live a life that matters. Nobody benefits from you being a miserable jerk all the time. It doesn't help you out any, Khorne doesn't care, and it doesn't make you any friends in the barracks."

I looked down at the rubble far beneath the fortress wall. More mangled bodies laid there among the debris. Each one of them nothing more than an anonymous victim on some random garrison world. Killed and tallied, and treated by both sides as nothing more than a number on an after-action report.

"How do I live a life that... matters?" I mumbled, still staring down the wall.

"An old question, indeed. But us Khornates have a pretty reliable answer." He took his hand off my shoulder pad. "Kill a lot of motherfuckers. But for Khorne's sake, have FUN doing it."

Then he slashed through my jump pack and kicked me off the wall.

****

Anrose VI - command center

"Lord Rythus, all sectors have reported in," said an Iron Warrior Lieutenant after he dropped to one knee, "the Septarius and Cordova defense complexes have fallen. The city is ours, and this system's primary garrison is broken."

"Good," Rythus mumbled as he stared at a number of charts laid out over the center of a strategium table. The bodies of Imperial Guard and Planetary Defense officers laid in crumpled heaps on the floor.

"The warbands have turned to the outlying settlements for plunder and slaughter, Lord."

"That's fine. We've performed our service to them and they are in our debt. Let them be," Rythus commanded.

"Indeed, Lord." The Iron Warrior hesitated, and then stood up.

"Was there something else?" asked the Chaos Lord.

The Lieutenant again paused, but then spoke. "It is nothing of great consequence, but we never did find out what dispatched our artillery squadron in sector 9."

"Ah, yes. Did Tellis ever come back?" Rythus asked, turning to face his subordinate.

"Tellis was found buried in a pile of rubble... alive, but wounded," the other Marine mumbled.

"I see. And this disturbs you?"

The Lieutenant took a long pause while he looked up into the Chaos Lord's visor. "I was there when he was dug out, Lord. He was... laughing. He was laughing the entire time."

"...... What?"

****

Equestria

Fluttershy stared down at the ground after Tellis finished, frowning behind her helmet.

"How did you know about that meeting and what they said if you weren't there?" she asked, looking up at the Iron Warrior.

Tellis made a sound halfway between a groan and nails against a chalkboard. "Creative license, Shy! This is still an art program! Geez!"

Fluttershy quickly ducked and apologized, but Tellis ignored her and wrapped up his tale.

"So that's the story of Anrose VI, and of my growth from an embittered, disturbed shock trooper to a rather happy, disturbing shock trooper!"

There was some polite applause from the pegasi above as they clapped their forehooves together. Rainbow Dash didn't seem satisfied, though.

"Wait, hold on, but how did you get here? Weren't you with that other army?" she asked.

"Yeah, well, that's kind of a funny story. And one without a lot of action, so I'm not going to go into detail, here," Tellis admitted, "it turns out that a lot of the commanders in my Grand Battalion actually LIKED my previous attitude. Or at least, they found it easier to deal with than my new one. It doesn't make sense to me; if I ignore a command because I'm snarling about blood or because I just think the orders are boring, either way the order isn't being carried out. But it makes a difference to the Chaos Lords, I guess. I was actually slated to be executed before my Battalion met up with the 38th Company and decided to sell me, instead. And I've been annoying old man Solon ever since!"

He clapped his hands together, which created a rather obnoxious clanging noise. "All right kids, show's over! Remember to check your seat for any personal belongings before exiting the cloud! Also remember that I'll be debuting my holiday program 'The Skullcracker' in about a month, just in time for Hearth's Warming! Bring the entire family! Or I'll corner you after the show and demand to know why you didn't!"

The spectator pegasi wasted little time in flying off, many of them mumbling to each other about the "performance" they had just been released from. Soon, Tellis was alone with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.

"Well, that was pretty cool," Rainbow Dash said as she jumped up into a hover, "I like you way better as you are now, though."

"Now, don't get all mushy on me," Tellis said with a snort, "I'm still a violent, evil murderer. The difference is that now I enjoy it."

"Well, that's..." Rainbow Dash trailed off, uncertain as to whether that was actually a good thing. Then she shook her head. "Whatever. We've got a party incoming, and we're miles away from the base!"

"Yeah, I'll actually have to give you a rain check on that," Tellis said, sounding disappointed, "I promised Fluttershy I'd help move her things into my place."

"I, uh, don't really remember that," Fluttershy pointed out, "... at all."

"Well, I kind of made the promise in my head. But still. I PROMISED. That's important." Tellis jumped off of the ground, and his flight pack started a slow burn as he too took to the air. Fluttershy followed, still mumbling anxiously underneath the low hum of her flight pack.

"Wait, you two are rooming together in Ferry D? Why?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"I actually didn't know about this until this very moment," Fluttershy admitted timidly, "why AM I living with you, Mister Tellis?"

"Because we're roommates," he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Fluttershy sighed wearily.

"... Sounds legit to me," Rainbow concluded as the trio changed heading toward the fortress, "so anyway, Tellis, I've gotta tell you about this new move I created! I call it the 'Rainbow Buster'..."

The Merchant

Author's Note

Another chapter featuring a backstory nobody asked for, but I figure I have to get the less compelling and interesting characters out of the way first before I cover Gaela.
And that Nurgle guy.

I'm kind of dissatisfied with the ending. That conversation sounded much funnier in my head. But I can't think of a better one, so you get this.

This takes place sometime between Books 4 and 5.

The Merchant

Visions of Darkness

The Merchant

****

Canterlot City - Rose Garden Cafe

"The big problem is warehousing," Delgan decided as he looked over his dataslate, tapping a fork against the marble stone table, "none of your settlements have post-industrial storage facilities to begin with, but installing more buildings in Canterlot is impossible. Which is problematic, as it's Equestria's main commerce center."

He paused, glancing up at the pony across from him. "Not that it makes a very good commerce center, being so hard to get to."

Across the table from the Trademaster, Rarity hummed thoughtfully to herself between bites of her lilac salad.

"Well, we don't take efficiency quite as seriously as you do, Mister Delgan," Rarity pointed out, "you can't make shipments by air when necessary?"

"No, I cannot. Fuel is a strategic resource, and thus it's managed by the Mechanicus at the behest of the Astartes," Delgan groused, "that makes it difficult for me to get for my commercial pursuits, no matter how successful they prove. It might be different if any of those pursuits produced fuel materials, but carbons are not a resource your people can provide me just yet."

Rarity took a moment to dab her lips with a cloth, and then levitated the dataslate over to her. It had a low-detail map of the trade routes Delgan used to get products into Canterlot, as well as prospective routes into the surrounding settlements.

"Why not build some in Ponyville?" Rarity asked, tapping a hoof to the screen. "When the mag-lev is complete, you'll have a rail route directly to the Ponyville train station, which can serve as a hub to Canterlot and the northern territories. There's plenty of empty property on the south side of town you can snap up."

Delgan frowned. "Ponyville seems somewhat... rural for our purposes, don't you think?"

"Darling, compared to what you're used to, all of Equestria is rural," the unicorn smirked, "besides, like you said, you'll never be able to get enough property here in Canterlot. Even if all the city administrators DIDN'T treat you like Public Enemy #1."

"I'm quite used to that sort of attention by now," Delgan assured her as he took up the dataslate again, "I suppose Ponyville could work... it just doesn't sit well with me to locate a storage unit in such an underdeveloped and poorly defended region."

"Security is an easier problem for you to solve than transit and dearth of space," Rarity reasoned while she went back to her salad, "of course, the situation in either Canterlot or Ponyville might look very different a week from now. As awful a prospect as it is, by then Ponyville could be overrun with new residents and Canterlot may have large stretches of land full of rubble instead of buildings."

"Or vice-versa," Delgan remarked, glancing down at his empty bowl. His own fruit salad was long finished; while he had nothing but compliments for equine cooking (at least regarding those foods humans could eat), they tended to be served in portions more appropriate for something a third his body mass.

"So you really didn't bring your power armor with you?" Delgan asked suddenly, shifting the topic to small talk, "you didn't think you could need it up here? Or that it might provide some advantage for you to have it?"

Rarity took a sip of iced tea before she sighed contentedly. "Oh, not at all. I'm quite glad to leave it back at the base, along with the rest of the weapons and wargear." She shifted her empty bowl forward a bit with her magic before she continued. "I'm quite grateful for the Warsmith's gifts, make no mistake, but I don't want to get used to wearing battle armor or toting deadly weapons about, much less actually using them." Rarity leaned back in her seat and turned her gaze toward the city, a small smile on her muzzle. "Some of my friends take pride and even joy in having and using such marvelous tools of destruction - even Twilight isn't nearly so reluctant a warrior as she pretends to be - but I do not. Combat is an awful and terrifying chore to me; something I have to do if I don't want my situation to deteriorate further. I'm a lover, not a fighter."

Delgan smirked slightly. "Are you, now? Is there some lucky equine back home whom I've left pining for your company by taking you into my service?"

Rarity's expression wilted instantly, and her cheeks puffed up as she pouted. "... Not as such, no," the unicorn grumbled. She quickly gulped down the rest of her tea before dropping the glass harshly onto the table surface. "Good stallions are few and far between in Ponyville, I'm afraid."

"From what I've seen, stallions of any quality are few and far between," the Trademaster pointed out, "what about that big red one? He's usually around when your squad deploys."

Rarity chuckled, grinning behind her hoof. "Big Macintosh? Oh, don't misunderstand, he's a wonderful pony, but just not my type."

Delgan nodded absently as he thought over the few male ponies he knew. "I think I met a unicorn stallion in Ferrous Dominus who turned out to be a talented overseer. Prince Blue? It was something like that."

Rarity's grin vanished. "And in that one we have the opposite problem. Why does love have to be so elusive?" she sighed, slumping in her chair. "I fear my prospects haven't improved in the 38th Company, either."

"Well, with that kind of luck with love, it's a good thing you have fighting to fall back on," Delgan mused as a unicorn waitress floated over the check.

Five minutes later, Delgan and Rarity were engrossed in a different conversation as they strolled through Canterlot's commercial district toward the Iron Chest.

"I'm just saying that you have no need to be stingy," Rarity said, shaking her head, "if you're paying for lunch, why should it always be up to me to cover the tip?"

"Because I'm the merchant lord and you're the Element of Generosity," Delgan replied without hesitation, "it's part of why our partnership works so well; you compensate for my societal misconduct, and I compensate for your morals and sense of fairness."

Rarity's eyes narrowed. "That isn't really something that needs to be compensated for."

"There. See what you did there? You couldn't get away with that if I wasn't on your side. You'd be eaten alive on most starbases. Perhaps literally."

The snow-colored mare huffed quietly to herself as she walked alongside her employer.

Then she suddenly turned on the corner of the plaza, heading toward the park.

"Miss Rarity?" Delgan asked, halting and pointing along their previous course. "The shop is that way."

"I know where the shop is, Mister Delgan," she said dismissively as she kept heading through the plaza, "I was just thinking that it's a lovely day, and for once I don't have to spend it in a sterile metal room sheltering from a heavy fog of poison, or on a scorched battlefield surrounded by howling aliens. Let's enjoy it a little longer before we return to business, shall we?"

Delgan seemed uncertain at first, but eventually he shrugged and submitted himself to the mare's reasoning. He found himself doing that a lot around her, he noticed.

As he caught up with Rarity, they entered the park. The area was clearly constructed entirely from imported soils and vegetation, no doubt aided by the application of equine sorcery and the limitless resources of the nation's social elite. It was sparsely occupied on this particular afternoon, perhaps because of the Dark Mechanicus constructors at work next to the palace and the new additions to the royal statue garden drawing tourists and gawking residents away from the more mundane areas.

"Oh dear, they still haven't fixed that?" Rarity asked, looking up at a statue of Celestia that dominated the upper tier of the park. It was currently missing its horn, had a dark stain over much of its head, and numerous gouges and scorch marks from errant pulse gun fire slashed across its wings and body.

"They'll probably need to commission a new one," Delgan admitted, "it will be near impossible to fix all the impact marks. And vespid ichor stains are COMPLETELY impossible to remove with anything less than a flamer and a broom. I know from experience."

"Perhaps you should buy a statue for the city, then," Rarity mused, "it would reflect well upon your reputation with the nobles - and aggravate the local bureaucrats to no end - if you had lasting, highly visible symbols of your wealth and 'generosity' scattered about the public spaces."

The Trademaster raised an eyebrow, running a finger along his augmented cheek. "That's... not a bad idea, actually. Hmmm."

After a few more seconds of walking silently, Rarity tilted her gaze up toward her employer. "So, Mister Delgan, earlier you got to hear of my dreadful fortune with romance. What about you?"

The Trademaster halted in place, which was about as close as the man ever came to stumbling over himself in surprise. "Pardon?"

"Do you have a family?" Rarity asked more bluntly. "You know a great deal about me, but I know very little of your personal life. I don't even know if there is a Mrs. Delgan."

"There isn't," he replied simply, looking up at the statue again.

"Ah, I see. You probably have a similar problem to mine," Rarity sighed, "there aren't too many human females in the Company, are there? The mercenary corp is overwhelmingly male, and the Iron Warriors completely so."

"Actually, that isn't a problem for me," Delgan admitted, "my tastes run the other way."

There was a very long lull in their conversation as he kept staring up at the statue, imagining the sort of piece he might commission to replace it.

Rarity's mouth opened and closed like a gasping fish, but the only words that managed to come out were hesitant and refused to form a sentence. "You... You're... You like... You mean..."

"I'm a homosexual, yes," Delgan said, his eyebrow arched.

Rarity's jaw snapped shut, and she blinked repeatedly before she spoke again. "I... never would have guessed," she mumbled.

"It doesn't come up often," the Trademaster deadpanned, "I don't have anything so asinine as a spouse or lover, and I've never had much taste for romance when there's work to be done. And there's ALWAYS work to be done."

He moved on from the statue, and Rarity trotted after him.

"Well, that's a juicy little tidbit," she said happily, "what else?"

"What do you mean, 'what else'?" Delgan replied.

"Well, knowing which gender you prefer is a start, but by your own admission it's actually quite unimportant," the white unicorn said, walking closer to her employer, "tell me something else about you."

"Why?" Delgan had a decidedly defensive edge to his voice as he stared down at Rarity.

"Because I want to know you, Norris," she said with an exasperated sigh, "because I think we're close enough that we can tell each other personal details about our lives. Because if somepony asks me what Norris Delgan is like, I should have more to say about you than 'the Trademaster of the fleet, a clever businessman, and oh, it turns out he's actually gay'."

"I don't see the point," Delgan insisted as he reached a stretch of railing that blocked off the edge of the city's mountainside platform, "I'm just a merchant. I'm about money, and little else."

"Oh, rubbish," Rarity scoffed, "you're a merchant attached to a fleet of evil super-soldiers and cultists with an agenda to overthrow a vast intergalactic empire. Alien or not, Chaos or not, you can't possibly tell me there's nothing strange about that."

Delgan frowned as he looked down from the railing.

"You're different, Delgan," the unicorn continued, "Gaela fits in quite well with the Iron Warriors as she is. Mercenaries like Daniels don't, but they're still soldiers, and they're tightly controlled and have an obvious role. But you? You're not like them. You pay lip service to Dark Gods and the Iron Warriors while rummaging through their supplies and doing as you please. You have little to do with dark worship or Chaos magic, and hold together a small enclave of disciplined lackeys that perform refreshingly mundane commercial tasks as the other legs of the fleet destroy and plunder other planets. You're an island of genuine equinity - or, I suppose, humanity - surrounded by madness and monsters."

She smirked up at the man. "In an army of the insane, it's the sane person who stands out. I want to know more."

Delgan leaned against the railing, still staring at the vast forests far below the city. "... I don't understand it, really. Chaos, that is. Oh, sure, you can reap some impressive short-term gains through proper worship, but there's that very substantial chance of being eviscerated, eaten, dismembered, mind-blasted, soul-scorched, or becoming some other sort of exotic casualty of daemonic powers." He shook his head. "I'm a businessman, and as such, I know how to judge risk. And the immortality lottery that the Dark Gods are running is NOT a good investment."

Rarity stood up to place her forelegs on the railing. "Then why are you with them? What is Chaos to you?"

Delgan sighed. "To me, Chaos is a faction, that's all. Merely another force struggling for supremacy in the great intergalactic rat race. And not the best one, not by a long shot." He snorted. "This does not leave this balcony, but I have rather severe doubts as to the ability of the Dark Gods to overcome the myriad secular challenges of this galaxy. And if they should 'win'? What kind of wretched future can we look forward to as the playthings of Gods and daemons? No, Miss Rarity. I do not have any great faith in the darker powers. I ally with them out of fear."

"Well, I can hardly judge you for that," the unicorn said, "Gaela, too, said she converted at gunpoint."

Delgan chuckled. "You misunderstand. While I have a healthy fear of the dark sorceries and daemonic powers of Chaos, that isn't what drove me to serve them. Horrifying as those things are, I am no less terrified of a simple lasbolt to the forehead. THAT is the fear that drove me into the arms of Chaos reavers."

Rarity blinked up at him. "So, it wasn't Chaos that forced you into the 38th Company..."

"No. It was the Imperium of Man. And an Inquisitor by the name of Locus."

****

Altima V, Delgan Estate orbital platform

"An Inquisitor? Here? I don't understand. What could the Inquisition want with us?"

I was merely fifteen at the time. The third child of the Delgan clan. Wealthy, to say the least, my family's commercial empire spanned four star systems and utterly dominated the local planetary economies. We had an Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos at our beck and call, thoroughly indebted to us. Fleets of starships plied the void for our corporations and protected our freighters. A family of merchant kings.

"You and your family are simply important people, Master Norris," said Harrel, my seneschal, "it is the prerogative of the Inquisition to know as much as possible about the regions they investigate, and the Delgan family exercises considerable power in the region. They would be remiss and negligent NOT to speak to your father."

I nodded slowly. "So they are merely performing their due diligence. They do not suspect US of heresy."

Harrel hesitated. "The Inquisitors... do not place you or your kin above suspicion," he admitted, "this, too, is a crucial aspect of their duty to us."

I stopped walking and frowned up at the man. "But we are NOT heretics. We perform our duties in the name of, and with sanction from, the holy Emperor, do we not?"

"That is why you need not fear the Inquisitor, Master Norris," Harrel assured me, "suspicion is the watchword of the Inquisition. But your father, your siblings, and your servants are pure. She will see this."

I nodded curtly in agreement, and continued walking through the brightly lit hall. Harrel was right, of course. We had no dealings with traitors or blasphemers, and funded the Imperial Cult generously. We would be swiftly vindicated and cleared of doubt.

"What horrific irony."

It must seem so now, yes.

As we approached the observatory, I noticed that Harrel was becoming visibly nervous, and my seneschal wiped at his forehead with a cloth.

"Master Norris, there are some matters of conduct I should relay to you before you meet with the Inquisitor," he said, clearly trying to project confidence into his tone.

"Speak," I commanded, hands clasped behind my back. Etiquette was important, and I knew what kind of power Inquisitors held. Whether or not they thought us heretics, it simply would not do to offend such a powerful individual.

"Answer her questions directly and honestly. Do not attempt any half-truths or misdirections, and do not judge the relevance of her questions. Inquisitors are unimpressed by ignorance, but are incensed by lies and resistance. Finally, do not ask her ANY questions. She will tell you everything she thinks you need to know, from who to investigate to whether or not she would like something to drink, and you are not to presume that she has made a mistake."

I nodded again, and then stepped toward the door.

The observatory was a large, sealed dome that stood at the tip of the orbital hab, giving a wide and largely unobstructed view of the stars. A statue of the Emperor stood sentinel in the middle of the room, a reminder of whom we had to thank for our dominance of the stars.

"I'm hearing a lot about this 'Emperor' fellow. You speak of him like he's some sort of god, rather than just the leader of your government."

The Emperor is many things. An icon, an ideal, and a leader. In more practical, literal terms, however, he's an undying corpse wired into a giant life-support chair to act as a glorified Warp lighthouse.

"And you humans call OUR government strange."

Quite.

Beneath the statue was the Inquisitor. An aged woman, hardened by her career and station, with short, silvery gray hair spilling out from her wide-rimmed hat and a vibrant black cloak. There was a ring of Stormtroopers lining the observatory dome; a rather severe breach of protocol, to bring armed guards to such a meeting, but obviously we didn't get to make the rules for this encounter. My father and elder sister were already there, seated on a carved wooden bench and looking as disinterested and calm as possible while surrounded by armed, masked men in their own home.

My father was speaking as I entered, but I didn't catch what he said before he finished. The Inquisitor turned toward me, and I stopped and bowed.

"Greetings, Inquisitor. I am Norris Delgan, reporting as requested." I might have added an innocent query, something petty and complimentary like "how may I assist you?", but Harrel's words had stuck with me. No questions meant no questions, even the polite ones.

"Good," the Inquisitor said, "I am Inquisitor Locus, and I am conducting an investigation of possible heretical activity in the Altima system," she explained immediately. Not one for pleasantries, apparently. "The Delgan family has considerable influence in local economic activity, and as such you are all suspects and possible accessories."

My sister's expression tightened, but she held her tongue. She's never been especially impulsive, and always devout, but these circumstances were clearly trying her patience.

I said nothing, staring at the Inquisitor expectantly. Her head tilted slightly to one side as she regarded me. I think she might have been impressed by my restraint.

"There is one more child, is there not?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes, Inquisitor," my father, Tyell Delgan answered. He was quite upset by the intrusion and accusations, but you couldn't tell from looking at him. "However, Qarren departed from the orbital before we received word of your investigation."

"Why?" Locus asked with an arched eyebrow.

"I can't say precisely, but the boy frequently goes planetside for recreation and some discrete entertainment," my father explained, some exasperation in his voice, "I generally let him be, but I can locate him for you if it is absolutely necessary."

Locus considered the offer for a few seconds. "No. That will not be needed." She nodded to a Stormtrooper, and he nodded back and left the room without exchanging a word with anyone.

The Inquisitor launched right back into her questions as the door slid shut.

"So, then. Norris."

I straightened up and raised an eyebrow.

"Do you know what this is?" Locus withdrew a small, beaten leather booklet, and held it open for me. On the pages she had revealed was an ink sketch of a wheel with eight pointed spokes. My sister shuddered, and my father inhaled a breath slightly sharper than normal.

"That's a forbidden symbol," I answered calmly.

"Oh? Why is it forbidden?" asked Locus.

"Because the Imperial Cult and our laws say it is," I replied.

It seemed simple enough, and straightforward, but the Inquisitor was unsatisfied.

She leaned down closer to me. "But what IS it, Norris? What does it mean? What might it do? Why are you meant to fear a mere symbol?"

I frowned as I considered the question. "I don't know what it is, or what it does," I admitted, "but I am meant to fear it because it is a symbol of heresy, and to behold it may somehow endanger my faith in the Holy Emperor and compromise His protection. And if for no other reason, I would fear it because to behold such things may lead to... well, this." I gestured at the surrounding Stormtroopers.

Locus snapped the book shut. "Good answer," she mumbled, glancing over at my father, "you could learn from your son's attitude, Tyell. He's better at this than you or your daughter."

"Better at convincing you of his purity, perhaps," father answered, "but no better at serving the Emperor faithfully than every other one of my children and servants. You'll find no traitors here, Inquisitor Locus."

"I'll be the judge of that," she replied dryly, turning back to me. "Norris, it is my understanding that you have had several passionate trysts with servant boys and your tutors."

"Oh HO! Juicy!"

Oh, stop it. I was young.

At her comment, every shred of stoic composure I'd managed up until then boiled away in an instant. My father groaned, but he was fully aware of my proclivities. My sister was not, and she started sputtering in shock.

"I have no particular interest in such affairs," Locus drawled, "but this means you may possess a closer and less formal relationship with the workers than the rest of your family or the overseers. As you might imagine, I do not have the time to interview each of the menials on your station one-by-one."

I quivered angrily in place, my face burning red.

"Are there any servants you may consider suspicious, or less than devout?" Locus asked me bluntly. "Or perhaps an educator that has tried to sow knowledge skeptical of or contrary to that of the Imperial Cult?"

"No, Inquisitor," I said tightly, "I would not... associate... with anyone of questionable faith."

"Then was there anything odd that the servants have noticed recently? Unusual orders, or suspicious shipments?"

"No," I said again. I started speaking again, but then I hesitated.

There was something. Sarandus, one of the servants, had been idle just the other day and had wanted to fool around. I didn't really think anything of it, and I didn't particularly want to tell the Inquisitor of it.

But she had noticed it already. "What is it?"

"... A servant, Sarandus," I said reluctantly, "Qarren sent him away from his usual duties without explanation four standard solar periods ago. And then Qarren skipped his supper that evening, and said he didn't want it taken to his room."

"And this is evidence of what, exactly?" Locus drawled.

"Nothing of relevance, Inquisitor," I said with a shrug, "merely a noble wishing for some solitude. But you asked if there was anything at all amiss, and I have answered."

"Good," she replied, "then let's move on. I have some questions about recent shipments to the orbital..."

****

Canterlot City

"That encounter went quite well. The Inquisitor was hardly polite, but nor was she hostile. In time she finished her questions, none of them leading anywhere interesting, and then she and her soldiers left the observatory."

"Oh, dear, that sounded quite stressful," Rarity offered, her eyes gleaming, "so, tell me more about this Sarandus fellow."

"No," Delgan gave the unicorn a withering glance, "I keep such encounters PRIVATE, Miss Rarity. And it has little to do with the rest of the story." He pointed to a set of small stone seats standing in the shade. "Let's sit down for the rest of this, shall we?"

Rarity pouted as she followed the man across the grass. "No details?"

"No details," he confirmed, "I don't tell this story to titillate. It's a tragedy, you know."

Rarity blinked repeatedly as she took her seat. "I see. My apologies, Mister Delgan. That was quite inappropriate of me." Then she placed a hoof to her chin. "So then, it seems that this Inquisitor was the root of your problems. I can't imagine being driven from my home and family on a false accusation. That must have been terrible."

"It was terrible," Delgan admitted as he sat next to the fashionista, "though the circumstances were more complex and dangerous than you're probably imagining. It wasn't long before I met the Inquisitor again."

****

Altima V, Delgan Estate orbital platform

I was in my study brooding. Although I had weathered the Inquisitor's interrogation quite gracefully, on the inside I felt humiliated. My sister Sharen had tried to corner me after the questioning was over, no doubt to perform an interrogation of her own, but I had shut myself in my room and insisted that no one was to bother me.

Obviously, on an orbital hab owned by the Delgan family, a Delgan's word was law. Which was why I was fairly stunned to hear my bedroom door open.

I was expecting my father. In part because he might wish to talk to me after the interrogation about what was said there, but mostly because he was the only one who should have been able to get to me.

Then Inquisitor Locus walked into the room.

I spent a good fifteen or so seconds gaping as she walked in and started looking around, as if she had wandered into my bedroom by accident while simply exploring the station.

I didn't say anything, caught between anger and fear. My first instinct was to demand the privacy of my own room, but the words died on my tongue. One cannot demand anything of an Inquisitor, least of all privacy, and she literally had the right to shoot me then and there if she thought of a reason. I kept waiting, my hands balled into fists.

Locus stepped over to my bookshelf, reading over the spines.

"Business manuals. Accounting laws. Scriptoria..." she mumbled aloud as she looked over my shelf. "There's nothing here that isn't part of your lesson plan. Don't you have any hobbies?"

"I think you know plenty about what I do for fun," I snapped.

Locus tilted her head to the side to stare at me. "Does it embarrass you?" she asked. "I don't see why. Your passions are quite normal and reasonable. Citizens of your wealth and influence are often party to great depravities and abuses of their power."

"I wouldn't know about that," I growled, turning away from her.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't," the Inquisitor mumbled, "of that much I'm convinced. But others of your family may not be so pure."

I looked up at her, my eyes narrowed. Again, angry words and heated demands caught in my throat as I refused to give voice to my emotions.

"I had the Techpriests check the departure log for the orbital," she said suddenly, "it turns out it's been tampered with. Your elder brother, Qarren, went planetside AFTER you were informed of my visit, not before."

A chill crawled down my spine.

"Trying to evade an Inquisitor is not a good way to divert suspicion from one's family," Locus drawled, "your brother is now of prime interest in my investigation. Furthermore, as I cannot determine who, exactly, altered the log at the void docks, your father is suspected of aiding him."

I kept staring up at her silently as she crossed her arms under her breastplate. "You, however, I trust."

"If only she could see you now."

I'd rather she didn't. My career largely vindicates hers.

"You're innocent, but not naive. I'm going to give you the chance to clear your family of my charges."

"I'll do it," I said immediately, standing up, "the sooner we finish with this nonsense, the sooner you can get out of our way and go back to tracking down REAL heretics."

It was perhaps a bit too much to say, but Locus merely raised an eyebrow. "... I don't dislike your attitude. You have a decent reign on your emotions, Norris, and a keen mind, at that." She turned to look at the bookcase again. "As you might suppose, I have already searched your brother's room."

"How-" I cut myself off, quickly lowering my head.

"... That's better," Locus said after a moment, "although there were some suspicious books and journal entries, I did not find any substantial evidence of heresy. Nor did I find the item that brought my attentions to the Altima system. However, a heretic living among the pure and righteous servants of the Emperor would not leave obvious evidence lying within their sleeping chambers; it is, naturally, the first place investigators look. Is there somewhere else? Somewhere on this station, nominally used for commercial endeavors and your housing, that neither your servants or your family normally go?"

I wanted to say no, that there was no such place. I should have said no, and let her judge my falsehood.

But she gave me the chance to clear my family from suspicion, to show her that there was nothing on this station to justify holding a blade over our heads. I wasn't going to lie and take the easy way out.

Nowadays I know better.

"There is a place," I said with a sigh, "there is... was... a garden deck that my mother maintained before she died. After she passed, Father had it sealed off out of grief. I don't think anyone's been in there in four years."

"Your mother died? I'm so sorry, Delgan."

My entire family is dead now, Miss Rarity.

"Oh. But it sounds like your mother didn't even pass during a series of highly dramatic and life-altering circumstances. Nobody should have to live through that when they're so young."

"You don't think anyone has been there?" Locus mused as she turned on her heel. "Well. Let's find out."

****

Altima V, Delgan Estate orbital platform - garden block

The garden block hadn't been abandoned for so long that it had fallen into disrepair, but approaching it still provided a stark contrast to the rest of the orbital hab. The floors were grimy, and there was the odd tool or part lying against the bulkheads. If my father had seen such things, he would see the workers responsible sacked and left to rot in the slums on the planet surface. But my father had not seen these things. He treated this entire section of the station like it was cursed.

"I don't know if we'll be able to get inside," I said as we approached the main access doors, "as I said, Father had the area sealed off."

"Did he, now?" Locus asked, raising an arm to point at the doors. "Then I doubt he'd need a thing like that."

Much to my confusion, there was a machine attached to the side of the access doors, where the control panel should be. Unlike the rest of the area, it was clean and in good working order.

"That's... a gene-lock?" I mumbled in confusion. "I don't understand. Father doesn't use this area."

"Let's find out," Locus mumbled, removing a device from her coat pocket.

I couldn't get a good look at it, but after fiddling with it for a second, she held it up to the gene lock panel.

It flashed red and buzzed harshly at her.

"Lord Tyell Delgan is not allowed past this lock. Interesting," she mumbled, fiddling with the device again.

My eyes bulged. What the Inquisitor was fooling with was some kind of genetic lockpick. I didn't know how, but evidently she had acquired my father's gene-print for that machine.

She held it up to the scanner again, and this time it flashed green and the doors slowly slid open.

"Qarren," Locus said, answering my unspoken question, "I have quite a case by now for having your eldest sibling detained, Norris. But there's one final piece to the puzzle that's missing." The door finished opening. "Let's go find it."

The air in the garden was stale and dusty, as the ventilation systems in this part of the station had been inactive for some time. Desiccated bushes and dead, dry vines crawled over the garden interior. At one time, there had been large armorglass panes to let in sunlight, and the rotation of the station had been set so that the gardens always received it from our distant star. No longer; metal sheeting had been put up over the windows to block out the sun and shield the garden deck from any outside observation. This room was dead.

Inquisitor Locus didn't wait, ask any questions, or give any orders. She walked in and started searching the area. It wasn't a sprawling labyrinth, as some of our cargo docks were, but it was still big enough and had enough side rooms that it would take at least an hour to search with care.

I split off from Locus and went to see the statues that decorated the gardens. It had been a long time since I'd last been here, after all. There was quite a collection of art work that had been locked in here, and four years would have hardly degraded them much.

A cherub, a giant hawk, an enormous cat... there was even a statue of a pony, come to think of it.

"How delightful! What kind? A unicorn?"

The real kind.

"... What does that mean?"

Never you mind.

As I made it toward the rear of the deck, I saw that there was a statue of a Sororitas Hospitaler kneeling in prayer near the back. The detail on her armor was exquisite, although the artist didn't include any weaponry.

Which made it quite startling to see a black dagger clasped between the statue's palms.

I stared at it. The blade was wavy, and serrated on one side to resemble teeth. There was a symbol on it too, but I had not been extensively schooled in heretical glyphs. I could recognize the Star of Chaos, but not the Mark of Slaanesh.

"Ah, that's the one the Iron Warriors hate, yes?"

It is. And for good reason.

I started to reach for the dagger, but my fingers stopped short, trembling.

"Inquisitor?" I said. I had meant to shout to call her, but my voice emerged in a hoarse whimper.

"Take it."

I jumped, whirling around. Inquisitor Locus was standing right behind me. For someone wearing plate metal, she could be shockingly quiet.

"I didn't touch it!" I said, my heart thundering in my chest. "I don't know what that is! I don't know what it's doing here!"

"I know, Norris," she said, "I hardly think you'd have led me straight to an extremely suspicious item if you had anything to do with it." Her eyes moved from me to the blade. "Now. Take it. Remove the blade and hold it for me."

I opened my mouth to protest, but then noticed that the Inquisitor already had one hand resting on the handle of her power sword. Well, okay then.

Holding my breath, I wrapped my fingers around the dagger's handle and pulled it free of the stone palms that held it in place. There was no dramatic flash of light or voice in my head, but the weapon felt strangely warm, and my skin tingled where it touched the metal.

I held it in my hand, and looked up at Locus helplessly. "Inquisitor," I croaked, my throat feeling impossibly dry, "may I ask a question?"

"Follow," she commanded, turning on her heel and heading toward the hall, "you may ask one question, Norris. A... reward, of sorts, for aiding me here."

"What... What is this blade?" I asked. My voice trembled as I clutched the dagger with both hands.

"That question has many answers, Norris. The dagger is a daemon weapon. It is the final piece of the puzzle missing from my investigation," she replied, shutting the door behind them, "but most importantly, that blade is a death sentence."

****

Altima V, Delgan Estate orbital platform - receiving hall

"I... I don't understand," mumbled Tyell Delgan as he stared down at the dagger I was holding, "you found this where?"

"Delgan, I tire of reminding you of our respective stations," Locus sighed, "YOU do not ask questions. I am being most generous in showing you the evidence of heresy that is to be used to complete my investigation here and condemn your son. I hardly expect thanks for this particular service, but you will not insult me further by thinking to interrogate me."

The Inquisitor was meeting with my father, my sister, and about a dozen aides in the main hall. She had summoned four Stormtroopers to her side, all of them very obviously trying not to stare at me and the object I still held.

One of the Inquisitorial Stormtroopers handed her several sheets of parchment, and she started writing on them with a stylus.

"There has to be a mistake, Inquisitor," Tyell said tightly, his voice faltering, "this... this thing is not even obviously heretical. Qarren didn't know what he was doing!"

"You'll brook no argument from me on that point," Locus drawled, "but heresy rarely stems from great foresight and deep understanding, nor is it necessarily the product of willful rebellion against the Emperor's teachings." She finished with one sheet and handed it to a guard before starting on another.

"He can be redeemed!" Tyell said desperately, clasping his hands together as tears threatened to crawl from his eyes. "This is surely nothing more than a curiosity in an exotic trinket! I can punish him! Bring him back to the Emperor's light! Let him see the folly of his path and learn the truth, please, I beg of you! Just don't kill him!" This caused some of his retinue to recoil. Tyell Delgan didn't BEG anything of anyone.

"He knows well the folly of his path," Locus replied, moving on to the last sheet of parchment, "else he would not have fled once my arrival was announced."

As my father groped for something else to say, Locus finished with the last of the papers. "There. The death warrant for Qarren Delgan has been completed. He is to be captured alive if possible, so that he may have the opportunity to recant his heresy before his execution." She held up the sheet of paper for the stunned room to see. It was surprisingly short and simple, with the stylized "I" of the Inquisition stamped on the bottom. My sister turned away with a gasp, hiding her face under her hands.

I myself hiccupped as tears started streaming down my face. Qarren and I weren't the closest siblings, but we got along fine and for all I knew he had been a perfectly good person. Father had often been exasperated that he was more interested in spending money than making it, but until now he had never caused us any great embarrassment or legal trouble.

But now he was declared heretic. An outcast to all of the Imperium, and soon to be added the pile of bodies heaped in an Inquisitor's wake.

And yet, even while trying to hold back sobs, still clutching the damned weapon that had sealed his fate, I couldn't help but notice something strange.

"Inquisitor, you had four papers," I pointed out, my voice hitching at the end.

She smiled at me. "Observant as ever, Norris."

Then she drew her plasma pistol and shot my father.

Tyell Delgan's death was quick as could be, and probably quite painless. The plasma bolt incinerated his upper torso completely. By the time our aides and guards were drawing their own weapons, his disembodied legs had tumbled onto the floor.

"Oh, Norris..."

Our men hesitated, though. Their first reflexes were to side with their paymasters, but nobody crosses the Inquisition lightly.

Unfortunately for them, brandishing weapons at an Inquisitor is a capital offense, and the Stormtroopers did not hesitate at all.

As a full firefight started to break out, my sister Sharen grabbed my arm and pulled me toward an exit, screaming and crying the whole time.

"Let it be known that the Delgan family is to be purged so that this corruption and tragedy does not compromise your faith in the holy Emperor and turn you away from His light," Locus announced over the crack of hellguns and the screams of the dying, "you are all presumed innocent of heresy, so you may die quickly, and without the needless complications of recanting false faiths."

"Norris, RUN!!" Sharen shoved me forward as Locus fired again, and I felt a wave of heat wash over my back as I stumbled onto my knees. My sister was dead.

One of the aides managed to reach a security alarm panel, and he activated an emergency lockdown. Turrets slid down from the ceiling, forcing the Inquisitor to turn her weapon elsewhere for a moment while the automated guns were still deploying.

The blast doors were closing too, and I scrambled toward the exit, practically jumping into the connecting corridor.

The doors slid shut. The sounds of the turret guns shooting and exploding bounced through the interior.

And through it all, I still held that damned dagger.

Having your family suddenly murdered in front of you can be a mentally exhausting experience, so I'm not completely sure what happened next, but I recall eventually running into Hine, the head Enginseer for our orbital.

I started blubbering about the Inquisitor and my family, but it was a bit foolish to expect someone of the Cult Mechanicus to sympathize with someone who now had an Inquisitorial death warrant.

I was forced to reflect on this fact as Hine aimed her laspistol at my forehead.

"Wh-What? What are you-?"

"Apologies, Master Delgan. But the current orders registered on the noosphere are to apprehend you and turn you over to the Inquisitor. I must comply," she droned. She didn't seem especially sorry.

"Hine, this is wrong! I'm not a heretic! I'm innocent!" I shouted, tears still soaking my cheeks.

"I believe you," Hine said in a bland monotone, "but innocence proves nothing."

She shifted the laspistol slightly and reached toward me with her servo arm, and as it tightened over my shoulder, I struck.

All my fear, anger, and grief seemed to seep into a single point as I plunged the blade into her arm holding the gun, and Hine released a gibbering wail laced with stuttering binary. The wound shouldn't have been enough to stop her from crushing me with her servo limb, but the machine-arm went slack before she collapsed onto the floor and curled up into a twitching ball.

I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I knew there was no way I could let Hine live if she was ready to hand me over. I drew the dagger from her arm and then plunged it between the respirator tubes in her throat.

I left the blade there. A part of me said I should bring it with me, that it seemed an unusually effective weapon, but at that time I wasn't considering how many more lives I might have to end in order to survive. That damned dagger had gotten my family killed, and could yet see me dead as well. No whispers or temptation could break through my grief and hatred at that moment.

As I stumbled down the halls, the lockdown alarm still blaring, the reality of my situation started to fully dawn on me. I was wanted by the Inquisition, and by extension, the Imperium at large. The orbital was locked down now, but eventually the Inquisitor would talk the surviving security team into releasing the alert or else breach the security control room and do it themselves. How could I escape them?

A ship. I could take a ship. But if a void ship were to leave the station now, it would be obvious that I would be aboard. There were surely planetary defense vessels or Inquisition ships guarding against escape. A shuttle leaving the orbital would be boarded at best, blown out of the void at worst. Probably the latter, with the way this Inquisitor handled things.

A plan began to take shape. I wasn't exactly a high-priority target, but the Inquisition knew I wasn't dead. I no longer had the daemon weapon, so they might collect that on their own, but they wouldn't stop searching so long as they thought I was alive.

So I had to make them think I wasn't.

I spent a few more minutes moving through the station. Luckily, any member of the Delgan family could manually override blast doors during a lockdown with our gene-code, but I was impressed by how long the security team was keeping up the alarm.

At the same time, I hoped they wouldn't push Locus too far. She could order the entire station destroyed if she wanted.

"Why didn't she?"

Too much collateral damage. There were hundreds of people on that orbital that certainly had nothing to do with the evidence of heresy that she'd uncovered. This case wasn't severe enough to kill ALL of them.

"But it was enough to kill you?"

Special case. Some in the Inquisition figure that if our families are killed for heresy, then the survivors are likely to turn to heresy for revenge. Which is exactly what happened in my case, so, you know, they have a point.

In any case, it wasn't long before I reached my first destination, and opened the door to the room adjacent mine. Harrel's room.

"Master Delgan! You're all right! What's happening?" he said, standing up from his bed.

"What's happening is that the Inquisitor's gone mad," I spat, walking up to his desk. I took a dataslate and started encoding a message. "Father's dead. Sharen is dead. I'm next."

Harrel paled. "I... I don't understand! The interview went so well! How could-"

"Harrel!" I shouted, saving my message on the dataslate. "There's no time! Are you still loyal to the house Delgan?"

He hesitated. Not very long, but longer than he really should have.

Harrel was loyal, but he was also smart. I seriously doubted he would willingly give his life for me to be spared.

My plan didn't really rely on any "willing" sacrifices, though.

"What do you want me to do, Master Delgan?" he asked hoarsely.

"We're going to the launch bay. Then you're going planetside." I walked out of the room, holding up the dataslate as I led my seneschal toward the docks. "Find Qarren. Give him this message. No one else is to read it, understood?"

Harrel nodded slowly as he took the message. "What... What of you, Master?"

"I cannot escape," I growled, "if I go with you, they'd kill us both. I'll stay here and submit myself to the Emperor's servants. But YOU need to get that message to Qarren. Do NOT allow yourself to be boarded."

Harrel sucked in a breath. "Is... Is there really no other way? The Delgan family-"

"Is not any kind of authority compared to an Inquisitor," I interrupted, "faster, Harrel."

By the time we reached the docks, the lockdown had ended. I had no idea what had transpired, but the docks were still shuttered; obviously the Inquisition wasn't letting ships leave the station until their warrants had been satisfied.

But ALL the station security was subordinate to the blood of my family. A swipe of my hand, and the dock shutters unlocked. I opened up a small shuttle, and Harrel entered nervously.

"I'll serve your brother as best I can, Master," he said, quivering, clutching the dataslate to himself, "I'm sorry."

I felt a surge of guilt. "No, Harrel. When you find him, deliver the message and then make your own way. You don't serve us any longer." I clasped his hand. "Any association with us can only put you in danger from now on. Now, please, go."

"Farewell, Master Delgan," he said to me as the access doors started to close, "the Emperor protects."

The doors shut, and I backed away as the shuttle's engines started warming up.

"No," I mumbled to myself as I headed for the cargo bays, "He really doesn't."

****

Canterlot City

"... I gathered later that when they contacted the shuttle, Harrel begged for his life to the Imperial frigates and cruisers that made up the Inquisitor's fleet," Delgan said, his attention unfocused as he watched a pair of colts wrestling in the grass, "he swore up and down that I wasn't aboard. But the orbital cogitators clearly showed that I had cleared the shuttle for launch and released the dock lockdown, so they didn't believe him. The shuttle wasn't made for combat; a single small turret volley reduced it to metal vapor."

Rarity didn't have an immediate comment about that, so he sighed and kept speaking. "I hid in our vast cargo houses on the orbital. I had to dodge a few sweeps from Inquisitorial search teams, but they were clearly in a hurry to leave and didn't put too much effort into it. They didn't expect to find anything, and still had one more heretic to hunt planetside. I managed to sneak off the station weeks later, after Qarren had been captured, the Inquisition had left, and the orbital was seized by the planetary governor. I couldn't access my funds or use my family's power, of course, since the entire Delgan family was publicly branded as heretics by our commercial and political rivals."

"How did you ever escape that world?" Rarity asked, suddenly wishing she had a drink. Her mouth had been hanging open for some time now, and her throat was dry.

"I did it the old-fashioned way," Delgan said, "I got myself press-ganged by a Mechanicus crew and worked my way up from deck slave." He chuckled. "From there, it was quite a trip building my personal fortune enough to get away from the Imperium entirely. That eventually led me to join a Rogue Trader fleet, and that fleet had the grievous misfortune to encounter our friends the Iron Warriors. I did not take much convincing to see things the Dark Gods' way."

Rarity pursed her lips, questions bubbling around her mind. She had so much more she wanted to know, but she already felt that she had opened up an old wound. Delgan was not an embittered or broken man; she'd really had no idea that he'd been subjected to such a cruel tragedy.

"Over the years I've carved out a role for myself with ingenuity, business skill, and no small amount of back-stabbing," Delgan continued, "the Iron Warriors, luckily for me, are just about the only Chaos Legion that would judge my skills as useful, rather than the delusions of an uppity slave. Still, you were correct, Miss Rarity: I have no particular devotion to Chaos, or my current masters. My role as Trademaster is merely the convergence of desperation and fortune."

The unicorn sitting across from him took several seconds more to decide what to ask. "It can't just be that, can it? You've worked hard and risked much in service to the 38th Company. What exactly do you hope to achieve, Delgan?"

"'Hope' is such a... fanciful word, Miss Rarity," he replied, "I work each day to survive, and gather resources and power to ensure my future survival and that of my servants. It may not be obvious, looking at my relatively plush lifestyle in the fleet, but if at any time I cease being useful to the Iron Warriors then they'll hand me and my employees lasguns and have us on the front lines in an instant." He paused. "But... if you want to hear a nonsense fantasy of mine, I would like to ply the stars with a corporate fleet of my own some day, perhaps belonging to an independent colony. No more piracy, no more Chaos. The life of a trader and businessman."

He paused again. "Failing that, I'd like to meet Inquisitor Locus again, some day. And then cut her open."

Rarity squirmed. "I'm sorry, Delgan. I shouldn't have pried. I had no idea your past had been so... painful."

He was silent for several long seconds after that, staring up at the clear skies. Rarity could tell he was sorting out his feelings, although she couldn't guess at the moment what those feelings were.

"On the contrary, Miss Rarity. I'm... surprised to admit it, but it felt rather cathartic to tell that story. I have confidants within the fleet, of course, but we heretics tend not delve into each others' pasts. Too depressing. You're the only one I've told about this."

"Well, I'm glad to learn more about you," the unicorn said, smiling again for the first time since they sat down, "you know, when I first met you, I thought you were a smarmy, cheating scoundrel."

Delgan arched an eyebrow. "... And you don't think so anymore?"

"Well, of course I do," the snow-colored pony scoffed, "but now I also see that there's so much MORE to you than that." She stepped off from her bench and tossed her mane to the side. "We've probably whittled away enough time. Shall we get back to business?"

"Gladly," the Trademaster said, standing up and brushing off his coat, "all this talking without the prospect of selling anything is exhausting."

****

Canterlot City - Rose Garden Cafe, the next day

"This is SO cool! I can see the little data displays and everything!"

Rarity quietly sipped her tea as Orchid Flair gushed over Twilight's helmet. The purple alicorn was sitting next to her, in her power armor, and giggling as the shopkeep unicorn tried on her head piece.

"You'll get some rudimentary data from the heads-up display, but most of the helmet functions are inactive without a neural uplink. Well, besides the function of deflecting projectiles away from your face, obviously," Twilight explained.

"Why don't we have stock like this?" Orchid asked as she pulled the helmet off her head. "The Guard Commanders would eat this up!"

Rarity remained silent as Twilight put an armored hoof over the force harmonizer, which was laying flat on the table.

"Centaur-pattern armor isn't a design that's easy to replicate, apparently," Twilight admitted, "it requires a lot of custom design work since all the armor forges are used for bipedal power armor models. The Dark Mechanicus COULD create new forge processors, but they don't really take the prospect of arming ponies seriously. So the only pony power armor available is what Solon personally makes for us."

"Well, that's a shame, because this thing is AWESOME," Orchid said, grinning, "can I take a few pict-captures of you later to hang in the store? This'll be great marketing!"

"Of course!" Twilight agreed, levitating her tea cup.

Rarity looked up from her own tea as Twilight and Orchid each leaned back to take long sips of their drinks.

"Delgan's gay," she said.

"PFFFFSHT!" Perfect double spit-take.

The Engineer

Author's Note

And with Gaela's story we conclude the Mane Six's buddy backstories.
I'll probably finish Iron Hearts before I get back to this. You Sliver fans will just have to wait.

This chapter takes place during Book 5, after Chapter 8.

The Engineer

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Engineer

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4, Dark Mechanicus Temple Primarus

Gaela's new servo arm whirred quietly as she swiveled it back and forth, testing the range of motion of the fresh bearings.

+I still cannot abide the apparent enthusiasm some of our order have for the devices of the Tau,+ grumbled another Dark Techpriest behind her, +where is the pride, the reverence for human achievement? Are we to accept these wretched xenos as our equals?+

+If we take their technology as we like and deny them the use of our own, then we can admit their advantages and are anyway their superiors,+ Gaela answered curtly, +debates about which species provides better technology are academic, and will anyway be irrelevant when the grayskins are extinct and humanity ascendant.+

+I'm not so sure that outcome is an inevitability,+ hissed the other Dark Techpriest, +if we ally with the Tau, it implies that they will share in our research and production. Even now, they labor in a manufactorum that is producing Warp drives, the technology most coveted by their stunted race! It is not inconceivable that the xenos learn how to equip their own ships thusly!+

+Let them take that argument to the Dark Magos, and see how far it gets them.+ Gaela considered it a unique talent of hers to adopt a deadpan tone while speaking Binaric Cant, and she made full use of the skill. +Tau electric systems are simply far more efficient and well-structured than those we normally produce.+

Her new servo arm snapped open and shut rapidly, moving significantly more quickly than her other servo limbs normally did. Unlike her other arms, its case lacked exterior wiring or tubing as well.

The other Dark Techpriest released another stuttering complaint in binary, but this time Gaela cut him off as she slid off the smithing bay.

+If you wanted to persecute tech heresies, then you should have remained with our loyalist kin. Such absurd strictures to not apply to those of us who have been enlightened by the Dark Powers.+

The other cultist made a disapproving noise that sounded a great deal like a metal pipe being pushed through a belt sander. +You speak as if we had any particular choice in the matter.+

Gaela didn't deign to reply as she picked up her power axe and exited the operatus room.

She didn't make it far down the hall before she received a message over the noosphere. It informed her that Spike and a xeno psyker had attempted to reach her and had been denied entry into the temple.

Gaela couldn't help but be exasperated by the conduct of her peers, who all knew very well who Twilight Sparkle was and had no logical reason not to use her name. She didn't consider herself especially open-minded among the Dark Mechanicus Tech-clerics, but she found the attitude of the other Dark Techpriests toward the unicorns and alicorns annoying. Pony magic was clearly stable, and the majority of the equine psykers were weak and harmless. She didn't see any point to their disdain.

Gaela headed for the front entrance, and her helmet slid into place over her features as she stepped into the fouled air of the fortress exterior.

"Ah! Gaela! Hi!" Twilight said brightly, quickly bouncing to her feet. Or boots, as it were, since she was wearing her armor. The alicorn Princess had been lying down next to the steps leading to the temple as she had waited, apparently. And judging by Spike's expression, she had been moping about her inability to get inside the entire time.

"Greetings, Sparkle," Gaela replied in monotone, "what do you want?"

"Well, I WANTED to talk with you inside, along with Spike," the purple pony said, "I'd really prefer not to have this conversation on the street just because I happen to have a horn."

"The particulars of your anatomy have no bearing on your access to the temple premises," Gaela contended, "you may only enter if you are a member of the Dark Mechanicus or escorted by one. You know that."

"But Spike gets in whenever he wants!" Twilight complained, pointing at the young dragon accusingly.

"Affirmative. The other Dark Techpriests are willing to escort him on request, since they do not hate him as they do you," the cyborg explained to the increasingly disgruntled pony, "this does not suggest that our mandates are arbitrarily discriminatory."

Spike sighed as Twilight fumed within her armor. He wasn't used to being the subject of envy, but he decided it wasn't much fun. "Can you act as escort so we can go inside, now?"

"Affirmative," Gaela said simply, turning around and heading up the steps again. Spike followed right behind her, while Twilight proceeded at a pace that better reflected her sulking.

Soon they had settled in an empty side room, and Gaela stood on one side of a projector table while Spike climbed onto a chair opposite her. Twilight hopped up onto a seat between them, and then pulled off her helmet.

"I hope this doesn't have to do with your rejection from the Mechanicus," the Dark Techpriest said as her helmet disengaged again, "I told you it would never happen."

"This isn't about that," Twilight grumbled, annoyed that the subject was persisting, "I wanted to thank you for saving Spike yesterday."

Gaela blinked. "Pardon?"

"From the gretchin that ambushed you. And ultimately the Orks, too. I mean, I suppose I should thank Tellis as well, but I doubt he'd appreciate it," Twilight reasoned, her expression quite serious, "but you saved Spike just to save Spike, and I can't thank you enough for it. I knew it was a bad idea to let him help in a mission near a combat zone! I should have never let him go!"

"I still don't understand," Gaela confessed.

Twilight furrowed her brow. "Didn't we already teach you about displays of basic gratitude? I thought we covered that. No?"

"I understand the concept, yes," the cyborg said, annoyed, "but I don't know why you're thanking me. Spike already did so. And what did you mean you should have never let him go?"

Twilight gave Gaela a strange look. "Well, as his caretaker, I have a responsibility to look out for him. So I shouldn't let him get into trouble. And why wouldn't I thank you for helping him?"

Gaela stared down at the purple pony.

Twilight stared back.

This silent stand-off lasted a full minute until Twilight reared up and slammed her foreleg boots onto the table. "Spike is not a slave!"

"I didn't say that," Gaela noted.

"You were thinking it!"

"Correct. But I know that argument is never productive, so I had hoped to avoid it today." Gaela crossed her arms over her chest. "If he is not a slave, then he can express his gratitude on his own, and needn't seek permission before engaged in potentially dangerous activities."

"He's just a child, Gaela!" Twilight shot back.

"That isn't the relationship implied by the title 'assistant'."

Spike had his face in his hands, and he groaned loudly as the argument got into full swing. For his part, he was on Twilight's side, but apparently his opinion didn't count for much in this particular matter.

"Assistant is JUST a title! I'm his caretaker! I'm practically his mother!"

"Perhaps your responsibilities do extend further than being a mere owner, but his regularly assigned tasks are appropriate for a domestic servant, not a child," Gaela explained calmly, "your people's tendency to label unpaid laborers differently does not make a substantial difference."

Twilight opened her mouth to protest, but Gaela continued before she could.

"Additionally, Spike is but one of three cases of ponies possessing 'assistants' that I am aware of. Neither Trixie or Lieutenant Blade have the excuse of their assistants being dependents."

Twilight scowled. "Dusk Blade is a slave-owning monster, there's no doubt about that. A surprisingly well-read, inquisitive, horrible monster." Twilight seemed to stare off into space for a few seconds before she suddenly shook her head and returned to the matter at hand. "He's just using the title 'assistant' to disguise his ownership."

"I think that's a fair judgment," Gaela allowed, "and what of Trixie?"

"Trixie... I don't know," Twilight admitted, "I haven't seen much of how she and Suuna interact. But they seem much closer than a piece of property and its owner. And she doesn't make Suuna wear a SHOCK COLLAR."

"So the difference between slavery and legitimate partnership is one's accessories?" Gaela asked dryly.

Twilight restrained a frustrated groan. She had wanted to meet with Gaela to discuss Spike's safety, but now they had gotten completely side-tracked. She wasn't about to relent, though.

"Okay, I think the problem is that your idea of 'slave' is too broad," Twilight reasoned, "for example, are YOU a slave?"

"Of course not," Gaela said, her eye narrowing.

"Why not? You don't earn a salary, like the contract mercenaries or menials. You were brought into the 38th Company under threat of violence. Your service here is coerced," the alicorn pointed out.

"I am a Dark Techpriest," Gaela replied evenly, "my labor is compensated with materials and mechanical knowledge."

"Which you end up using to build more machines for other people! And whatever title they attach to the job has no bearing on whether your labor is forced, does it?"

"It isn't."

"You told me and Rarity that you left your world because, quote, 'an Astartes pointed a boltgun at me and told me to.'"

Woman and mare had another silent staring contest. Spike drummed his claws against the table.

"... There might have been more to it than that," Gaela admitted reluctantly, "I do not resent my service within the Dark Mechanicus, nor do I have any aspirations outside the 38th Company."

"So if your consent makes the difference between slavery and... whatever else you would call kidnapping enemy workers and forcing them to serve you... then it's the same for Spike!" Twilight concluded. "Right, Spike?"

"Actually, no," the dragon said, causing Twilight to recoil. Then he pointed to Gaela. "Twilight has a point; your case is actually way worse than mine. Nobody's ever threatened to hurt me if I didn't work! How AREN'T you a slave under those conditions?"

"Because I wanted to serve Chaos," Gaela said, as if the answer was obvious.

"Because an Iron Warrior threatened you?" Twilight asked.

Gaela didn't say anything for several seconds. "That wasn't the ONLY reason," she mumbled.

"Then what was it?" Spike asked. "Now I'm really curious!"

Gaela paused again. "That's a rather... complex matter."

"Well, I'd like to hear about it," Twilight said decisively, "I can't really imagine joining an army of evil, fanatical super-soldiers that just showed up on my planet one day with guns blazing."

"That is exactly what happened to you," Gaela deadpanned.

"... Right. Well, there were circumstances, though," Twilight backtracked quickly.

"As there were for me, as well," Gaela replied, "I doubt you really want to hear the full story..."

Judging by the eager expressions on Spike and Twilight's face, Gaela had to consider that she may have misjudged their interest. The way that Twilight had produced a dataslate and stylus seemingly from nowhere also seemed to betray some slight enthusiasm.

"Do you really want to hear it?" the cyborg asked, clearly perplexed.

"Of course I want to hear it!" Twilight said, already writing feverishly on the dataslate. "Gaela, you hardly ever talk about your past!"

"It's hardly very interesting," the woman confessed, "there are many worthwhile details in my past life, such as knowledge about the inner workings of various technologies and mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, but I can't tell you those parts in any detail." She finally took a chair, resting her heavier left arm on the projection table. "Most of the rest of it is just petty tripe about tech-heresy, my interest in smuggling forbidden artifacts, my subsequent persecution by the Magi, the Tau incursions, and the attack by the 38th Company. Utterly irrelevant to you, I'm sure."

Twilight stared for some ten seconds or so before she spoke. "Humor us."

"Fine. I can spare a few hours, if you really have nothing better to do." She cleared her throat lightly. "As you know, I was born on the forge world Starhaven..."

****

Starhaven - Skitarii practice yards

My training axe sparked as it cleaved through a fencing servitor, hammering two of its shoulder assemblies aside and breaking them. The other two limbs were already aiming to spear me, but my practice target was off-balance from my strike and had to take a moment to adjust.

I took advantage of the diversion and rammed my shoulder into the servitor, knocking it back.

The blades stabbed forward before I could turn away, and I felt a painful shock as one of them connected.

+Contact confirmed. End match. Time is 19.22 seconds.+

+My match time is regressing. Troubling,+ I murmured, standing up straight. The lingering pain from the shock baton faded as I stepped away from the practice cage with axe in hand.

+You're too aggressive,+ warned a Skitarii overseer, +you prioritize the destruction of the target over your own survival.+

I raised an eyebrow at him, pausing on my way to the changing room.

+While that is an acceptable attitude,+ the cyborg warrior continued, +maximum efficiency in combat demands that you destroy the enemy AND survive to face the next one.+

+Mm. Agreed,+ I decided, looking over my training axe thoughtfully.

+However, your combat proficiency is adequate for a field Enginseer. Your upcoming evaluation is in no danger of failure.+

+I would prefer a better rating than 'adequate',+ I replied as I hung up the weapon.

+Then you may wish to practice further, Adept.+

+I have an alternate appointment,+ I grumbled to the overseer, +adequate will have to do. For now.+

After I changed into my robes - dark red with white trim, the colors of the loyalist Mechanicus - I headed down the citadel-spire and into the city.

The air of Starhaven is completely toxic, the pollutants churned out by the manufactorums having entirely replaced any viable atmosphere. Oxygen tanks are required just to walk the streets, and the most common form of death - both accidental and not - was suffering mask failure while outdoors.

"It really does seem like you humans could afford to treat the environment a little better."

Such ideas find little traction when there are thousands of planets with viable atmospheres yet to be expended, and simple individual solutions such as oxygen rebreathers exist. If we can create a viable environment in the depths of the void, we can create it anywhere.

"Okay, but still, to ruin an entire PLANET'S air and render it unbreathable..."

We had to make a choice between a healthy biosphere and volcano cannons, Sparkle, and I for one have no regrets.

I made my way into the spire-city, and eventually met an associate of mine outside a water processing plant.

His name was Tolar, a fellow Adept and enthusiast.

"Enthusiast? Enthusiast of what?"

That will be explained.

+You are two-point-eight-three minutes early, Gaela. Eager?+ Tolar asked.

+Foot traffic down the refining temple secundus was agreeable,+ I replied, +what is the situation?+

Tolar was of the same rank as I, but had no augmentations yet besides his binary vocalizer and a servo harness. We both aspired to become Secutors, Techpriests specializing in armed conflict and combat duty. We had a great deal in common.

"So, was he your coltfriend or something? Wait, no... manfriend? What would a human call it?"

"Boyfriend" is the vernacular, I believe. Also, no. The term has certain connotations regarding sexual interaction and physical affection. I can assure you that I have never experienced such crude and revolting flesh-yearning.

"Oh. Well, he was still your friend, though, right?"

Insofar as we used each other's skills and opportunities to mutual benefit, yes, I suppose you could call him my friend. There were even occasions in which I found his presence tolerable despite not being directly useful to me.

"... Close enough. What were you meeting him for?"

A xeno presence had been detected the previous day, and the infiltrators apprehended that very morning. I was not privy to all the details, but ultimately three Tau had been found among a trading vessel.

"Tau? Geez, those guys are always causing trouble, aren't they?"

Indeed. Starhaven is relatively close to Tau space, so it has proven a point of strategic interest in the Imperium's dealings with the aliens. And my own.

Our first stop was the high plaza, the vast space atop the tower that linked the city's numerous mag-rail lines.

As we approached, it became obvious that there was some sort of major disturbance going on. Were I connected to the noosphere actively I would have known exactly what was happening, but my current engagement necessitated that my movements remain covert.

When we got close enough, however, it became obvious what the affair was about.

+And there they are,+ Tolar mumbled in Binaric Cant, +sorry-looking dolts, aren't they?+

In the middle of a large crowd of menials and Tech-Adepts, a huge walking platform was moving in a tight circle. Atop it were two Techpriests shouting into the crowd: one in Low Gothic, one in Binaric Cant.

On the platform behind them were three Tau of the water caste, as well as six humans. They all had proper oxygen masks, but all of them were tightly bound and kneeling, and at the back there was a Skitarii Myrmidon holding their chains.

"LOOK WELL, SERVANTS OF THE OMNISSIAH!!" the Techpriests shouted to the crowd. "ENEMIES OF HUMANITY, THE IMPERIUM, AND THE HOLY OMNISSIAH MAKE BERTH IN OUR MOST SACRED SHIPYARDS!! XENO FILTH FROM BEYOND OUR BORDERS CORRUPT THE MINDS OF THE WEAK-MINDED AND GREEDY!!"

The Myrmidon gave one of the human prisoners a "light" kick, shattering several ribs and sending the man into a fit of screaming.

"THESE HAPLESS FOOLS HAVE BROUGHT THIS ALIEN SCUM HERE TO SWAY US TO THEIR WAYS!! TO 'TEACH' US THEIR WRETCHED HERESY!! TO DAMN US IN THE EYES OF THE MACHINE GOD!!"

He went on like that for some time as the crowd cheered and roared, demanding justice and death. The Tau were talking as well, some pleading with the crowd and one to their captors, but anything they said was drowned out by the vox-casters. I personally found it quite funny; since the Techpriest speaking in Binaric Cant had to pontificate at more or less the same rate as the one speaking Gothic, his speech sound amusingly halting and awkward.

+Let's go,+ Tolar said, moving to leave.

+What, you don't want to watch?+ I asked. +Are we behind schedule?+

+Negative,+ Tolar bleated, +but I have no desire to see a lynching. If I have my way, soon I'll be able to see xenos being slaughtered all I want.+

Really, Tolar was hardly the least pleasant of peers, but he had no sense of humor.

"Sen... Sense of... Se..."

Is something wrong?

"Twi's brain is just skipping. It happens sometimes. You can keep going, she'll catch up."

+I'd rather wait here and watch the heretics suffer than wait at the contact point,+ I said with a shrug.

Tolar stared at me silently as the Techpriests continued ranting, his eyes hard. I sensed that he had something to say and was weighing whether or not to say it.

He leaned in, his Binaric emerging as a barely audible buzz. +You realize that could be us up there some day, don't you?+

+Affirmative,+ I replied as I leaned against my axe, +I find it... instructive.+

Suddenly, the roar of the crowd grew louder, and the walking platform halted in place.

"FOR HERETICS, WE OFFER THE HOLY JUSTICE OF MARS!!" screeched the Techpriests. Then the Myrmidon reached down and ripped off their oxygen masks one by one.

"What? That's how they execute them? By asphyxiation? That's horrible!"

Ah, Sparkle, you're back. Good.

+Hmm. Boring,+ I turned on my heel and walked past Tolar, +I thought they might at least make their deaths creative. Let's go.+

Tolar made a disapproving buzzing noise as he followed me away from the plaza.

We descended further into the city, the wild and raucous cheers of the crowd fading behind us.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4, Dark Mechanicus Temple Primarus

"Those were water caste Tau, right? The ones that do diplomacy?" Twilight asked.

"Affirmative. Most likely they had intended to infiltrate the planet under the protection of the traders, teaching them the ways of the Greater Good and spreading their ideology. The Tau have been known to convert entire planets to their empire just by having their diplomats ply their trade for a few years, talking up the planet's elite." Gaela snorted contemptuously.

"Well, they sure didn't use that tactic with US," Spike groused.

"Correct. Appealing to your people with the intention of then inviting an Ork invasion to your planet would have probably generated some... controversy within the ranks of the diplomatic caste," Gaela shrugged, "that, and the Tau clearly didn't have a proper survey of your world. The Lamman Sept is quite a brash coalition, it would seem."

"Okay, I get that, but why were your people so hostile to a diplomatic envoy?" Twilight asked. "So hostile that they'd even kill the humans that sponsored them, too?"

"Planets everywhere in the Imperium deal with intelligent xenos on a 'shoot first, don't ask questions ever' basis. It is a testament to the skill of the water caste that they ever manage to find a human that won't throttle them on sight," Gaela explained. "Forge worlds are not just massive factory-planets, but also temples, places of worship. Their people are quite hostile to foreign ideas, more so than other Imperial planets."

"So what were you doing, anyway?" Spike asked. "It sounds like something pretty sketchy."

"Affirmative. You see, I have interests that the Adeptus Mechanicus - to say nothing of the greater Imperium - consider heretical and traitorous."

"Well, DUH," Twilight offered.

"I meant BEFORE my introduction to Chaos," Gaela snapped. Then she cleared her throat. "I had a very substantial interest in xenotech."

The purple pony furrowed her forehead. "... Wait... why would that be considered traitorous or heretical? Studying foreign technology isn't allowed?"

"It is. Under certain conditions," Gaela admitted, "the Mechanicus approach to the regulation of studying alien technologies is extremely complex, convoluted, and needlessly strict. Such are the numerous decrees and unwritten rules regarding the subject that even those projects that are sanctioned and undertaken rarely lead to any knowledge of worth. And actually REPRODUCING alien technology is absolutely forbidden." She sighed. "Out of all the heresies and atrocities taken up by the Dark Mechanicus, the abolition of the regulatory bureaucracy has been by far the most productive."

"Okay, but you studied this stuff anyway?" Spike asked.

"Affirmative. And with a Tau envoy having been captured that day, there were samples to be acquired."

****

Starhaven - scrapyard sub-deck

+There. That's the contact,+ Tolar blurted tightly as he spotted a menial lounging against a bundle of iron rebar, +I'm not familiar with this one, so stay aware.+

+Hm. Of course,+ I mumbled, scanning the piles of junk with my augmetic eye. I spotted a shielded material case almost immediately, clumsily hidden under a few scraps of metal sheeting. If we wanted to, we could have killed this fool and taken the artifacts.

The man nodded at us as we approached, his eyes lingering on Tolar.

"Hello, friend. The only good Eldar is a dead Eldar," Tolar said.

"And even then, we'd still prefer they never lived in the first place," the menial replied with a smile.

"Ooh, is that some sort of secret code?"

No. That was just Tolar's attempt at small-talk. He wanted to get to know the man before doing business. A waste of time, I know.

"Let's get on with this," I said impatiently as I withdrew a small metal disk case from my robes, "this contains the schematica for the drive components. You could almost build a complete set of engines from this data."

The menial shrugged and moved to take the disk. I tossed it up out of his reach, and then my servo arm grabbed it out of the air to hold it out of reach.

"Where are the artifacts?" I asked coldly.

"Right. Fine. Come here," the menial grumbled, clearly nervous. He really was new at this, it seemed.

He collected an armory case from the "hiding spot" I had noticed earlier, and then placed it on top of a crate.

"Here you are. I assume you have the access code to unlock it?" the man grunted.

Tolar took out a modified auspex and held it over the case for a few seconds.

"I don't think you're going to be able to scan the interior without opening it," the menial confessed, "it's shielded from-"

"Did anyone tamper with this case?" Tolar asked suddenly.

The menial looked startled. "Tamper with it? What?"

"Did anyone other than you or Nerridian handle this case?" Tolar clarified.

Our contact paused to think. "... Not really. I mean, I had to hand it over at a checkpoint briefly, but they didn't open it up. Nerridian said that-"

The menial didn't manage to finish his explanation. Tolar's servo arm lurched forward, seizing the man's head, while his hands grabbed the contact's shoulders. The vise claw twisted, snapping his neck and silencing a muffled scream.

"Wow. That escalated quickly."

All I could do was blink. +Did we just kill him so that we wouldn't have to pay? Are we doing that now?+

+The case has been marked! This is a trap!+ Tolar blurted, drawing his laspistol.

I snapped my head around as I heard the humming noise of a tiny repulsor motor, and I too drew my laspistol. A pair of servo-skulls were hovering into the scrapyard, their optical recorders glowing brightly.

I bracketed the first one in my augment reticule, and then speared it though the forehead with a lasbolt. Tolar shot at the other skull, but his first two shots went wide.

The skull detected it was under attack and started bobbing through the air as it hovered. A third and a fourth shot missed.

Honestly, Tolar just wasn't a very good shot.

I finally blasted the second skull, and quickly put the disk of contraband back in my robes. +You should really consider getting an augmetic eye, Tolar. Or two, ideally.+

+Not now, Gaela! Let's move!+ he yelled, sprinting down through the scrapyard. He seemed to think that we had a better chance for escape if we stuck to the lower levels of the complex, where there was much less foot traffic.

He might have been right; for all we knew, there might have been even MORE enforcers coming for us the other way.

+White hound automata!+ I hissed as my augmetic eye detected an electromagnetic signature around the bend. There was no other way to go, and if we tried to run, it would catch up to us easily.

Tolar skidded to a halt, and then he sucked in a breath. +All right, be calm. Maybe they haven't identified us, yet.+

I slowed to a purposeful walk and we both rounded the corner.

Before us stood a quadrupedal machine about the size and shape as a Kroot hound, but obviously much better armored. Its tail was an electric whip, and thick white plating covered its fibrous wire-bundle legs, giving the pattern its name. Its jaws lacked sharp teeth, being rubber-lined clamps for holding targets without tearing flesh; these machines were meant to seek and immobilize, not kill.

+White hound designation 399141!+ Tolar buzzed. +There are suspects in the scrapyard! Identify and engage immediately! Authorization code tertius alpha!+

The automata looked up at us, its single blue-light optic staring as it processed Tolar's commands.

+Negative. Authorization rescinded,+ the machine buzzed back in its own stunted machine code dialect. +Submit to proc-+

My mono-molecular-edged axe slammed hard into the automata's shoulder, cleaving through to the machine's chest just below the neck. I kicked it in the side of the head, wrenching my weapon free as sparks washed over my robes like a bloodspray made of golden light.

"Bad dog," I grumbled, clasping the axe in both hands before swinging it down in a decapitating strike.

The shriek of tearing metal filled the air, followed by a sharp buzzing noise as the CPU was brutally disconnected from its power source.

After taking a deep breath, I drew my laspistol again and stepped over the automata's remains. +I'm just saying, Tolar, it's past time for you to get serious about your augmentations. Do you not hope to replace ALL your flesh with machine augments someday?+

Tolar didn't answer right away. He was still staring at the automata.

+... This was a mistake,+ he said weakly.

+You're just trying to change the subject again,+ I accused, +also, hurry up. I doubt the enforcers only have one Hound available.+

Tolar seemed to stagger forward, as if in a daze.

"You took sudden outbreaks of violence and potential death as calmly then as you do now, didn't you?"

Not at all, really. I get a lot more worked up nowadays about my potential demise than I used to. I have more to lose.

+You destroyed it! You actually attacked and destroyed an enforcer automata!+ Tolar complained as we continued rushing through the scrapyard.

+Oh, so what? You killed the menial,+ I pointed out.

+That was different! He wasn't a security asset!+ my companion protested.

+Not on purpose, at any rate,+ I muttered as new signals started coming up on my augmetic eye, +but seriously, I think we should talk about your options for bionic replacements.+

Another Hound rounded the corner, and I shot it twice before it managed to lunge at me. My axe smashed it out the air just as another followed behind it.

+Finish that one off!+ I blurted at my companion as I rushed the next hound.

I fired my pistol, but this time the machine dodged, leaping to the side and then lunging low. Again I swung my axe, scoring a hit against its side but unable to stop it before it clamped its jaws around my leg.

Its tail snaked forward, and I released a muffled scream as a surge of electricity poured into me. My muscles locked up, and my augmetic started to return scrambled data.

Sparks were pouring off of my axe-arm, so I pressed the lasgun in my flesh-hand to the automata's head and fired into the side of its processor housing. The laser bolt penetrated, and a puff of smoke blasted out of the automata's cranial module.

But the shot didn't disable it. Another paralyzing shock hit me before I could finish it off, and the pistol slipped free of my twitching fingers.

+You will su-su-su-su-submit to proooooocessing!+ the automata stuttered at me, probably due to the damage.

Then a servo arm clamped onto the enforcer machine's neck.

+Let's see if this works on automata, too!+ Tolar grunted as he grabbed onto the hound's body and then twisted his servo limb.

A sickening grinding noise came from the automata as its head was wrenched free of its body, and my leg was freed from the grip of its jaws. At least, I presumed so; I couldn't really feel my leg right then.

+They're both down,+ Tolar said, his breath heaving from behind his mask, +are we clear?+

+Give me a minute,+ I protested, my breath still weak, +my augmetic read-outs are still rebooting.+

Then the wall we were next to exploded outward. Tolar was blasted off his feet, and it was all I could do to turn my face away from the crumbling ferrocrete as I was buffeted by the blast.

After a few seconds I rolled my head over again to confirm the presence of a new opponent.

A Mechanicus Secutor stood over the smoking ruin, his weapons hot and his optics whirling. He was a hunch-backed beast of metal and ordnance, his arms having been replaced with laser weapons and every shred of flesh covered over with heavy plating. His head was suspended in the front, and almost completely given over to optics clusters and power cabling. A red shroud covered everything, like all Techpriests wore, but his was shredded from shrapnel and heat dispersal.

"And you wanted to BE one of those things?"

Oh, I still do, to an extent. There isn't nearly as much need for them in the Dark Mechanicus, sadly, what with us being under the protection of the Chaos Space Marines. Ah, well.

+Secutor Durendall,+ I gasped out painfully, waving my servo arm as I read his noosphere tag, +greetings. I believe I am ready to submit for processing, now.+

Tolar groaned.

****

Starhaven - penitence block 17

It was two days before I saw anybody after I was incarcerated for my adventure near the scrapyards. Two days spent with chains binding my every limb taught between the ceiling, floors, and walls. My servo arm was jammed, and my augmetic eye data-scrambled. The only other thing I received during my incarceration was a drip-feed of water, to remain minimally hydrated.

"By Celestia... Gaela..."

I was surprised as well. I had little idea how I had gotten off so lightly.

"Lightly?!"

I received my answer some fifty hours after being locked up. My cell door opened, and a woman entered whom I was quite unfamiliar with. Nonetheless, I knew who she was. Everybody in the city did.

+Magos Gaien. Either you have the wrong cell, or I am in far more trouble than I had anticipated,+ I buzzed at her in Binaric Cant.

Magos Gaien was the Techpriest in charge of the Starhaven shipyards. Although her fief was all part of the holdings of the Archmagos, it was still an enormously important operation, and her personal power was accordingly substantial.

Suffice to say, I had no idea why Gaien was seeing me, unless my activities had somehow offended her directly. I supposed it was possible that Tolar and I had attempted to purchase an artifact that she, herself wanted to acquire.

Magos Gaien didn't say anything at first, merely circling around me while staring intently. Her legs had long ago been replaced by an anti-grav system, while her face was a white, magno-ceramic mask. The mask was somewhat unsettling, I recall: an unmoving mold of a woman's organic face, completely smooth and undisturbed by augmentation, with its lips slightly parted in an expression of perpetual mild amusement. With her robes dragging along the floor of the cell as she circled me, she gave the distinct impression of a ghost from old Terran mysticism.

"Adept Gaela," she said finally, speaking in High Gothic for some reason, "you're not as impressive or dangerous-looking as your profile suggests."

+This position makes it difficult to impress, Magos. I'm certain I could greet you better if I could stand.+

The eyes of Gaien's mask flashed green.

Suddenly the wall-mounted anchors to my chains shifted, with some sliding back, some forward, and others loosening their attached bonds. I was dropped onto the floor before my legs were pulled into a seated position, and my head was yanked back so that I stared up at the Magos.

"Ah. Better. You still don't look impressive or dangerous, but looking obedient will do."

+I am... pleased... you are... pleased... Magos,+ I stuttered through clenched teeth. Having my body wrenched about and folded so suddenly and forcibly hurt a great deal.

"Speak Gothic, Adept. Let me hear your real voice," Gaien commanded.

I thought it was a strange demand, but I had no particular reason not to comply.

"Yes, Magos. Uh... can I help you?" I said awkwardly. I still didn't know why the Magos was here.

"Affirmative," she snipped, as if the simple affirmation was a sarcastic response, "I'm sure you're wondering what's going on right now, Adept Gaela."

"My noosphere access has been regrettably crippled since my imprisonment, yes," I mumbled, "are you here to present me with the charges of my crime?"

"Negative," Gaien mumbled with subtle amusement. Her voice was entirely artificial, her real vocal chords having been long since replaced by augmetics. Yet it was still curiously rich in tone, providing a wealth of auditory cues and impressions that were all but lost on me.

"This is not your trial. This is your sentencing," Gaien declared.

"Ah. I see," I mumbled, "may I ask how I or my crime warrants sentencing by a Magos Primarus?"

"All will be explained," she assured me, completing another circle around my helpless form before she stopped in front of me.

Then a mechadendrite slithered out of her robes and touched its manipulator claw to my forehead.

"You have been charged with, and found guilty of, deliberately damaging the property of the Enforcer Corps Fellix Betus," she said, her tone rising as if she was speaking to someone other than me.

"...... Ah. You ARE in the wrong room," I decided. "It's understandable. Gaela is a fairly common name. Although I'm surprised tha-"

"Stop talking," Gaien snapped. I obeyed. "You may recognize that the crime I just listed is... not the most serious charge that one could accuse you and your colleague of given the circumstances of your arrest."

"I'm pretty sure I committed blatant and obvious tech-heresy," I stated, completely confused, "and I resisted processing. And used lethal force against Enfor-"

"My earlier command demanding silence is still in effect," Gaien deadpanned, "in addition, when you are convicted of a minor offense, it is quite unhelpful to respond by confessing guilt to several more serious ones."

She had a point, so I simply quirked my eyebrow and awaited an explanation.

"You may not impress in person, but your record is better than average. You're well on your way to passing your trials to make Enginseer. Or were, at any rate."

I sighed. "I don't suppose the academy accepts legally sanctioned imprisonment as a legitimate reason to postpone advancement trials? I doubt I'll be free in time to make my appointment."

Gaien laughed. I found it quite unsettling and strange.

"What, was her voice all creepy with vox-static or something? Or did it seem weird because her mouth didn't move?"

Nothing like that. I just didn't hear laughter very often. I did grow up in the Cult Mechanicus, after all.

"You're an amusing one, Gaela. And quite vicious, as well. You remind me of myself," the Magos said brightly, "as is appropriate for one bearing my gene-build."

"Gasp! She was your mother?!"

What? No. She was merely the contributor of half my genetic codex. I was produced in a gene-factory, after all. She provided her sex cells to be combined artificially with those contributed by male adepts, and I happened to be the product of one such procedure.

"... On our planet, we call those mothers. I mean, there's usually a bunch of other relationships implied by that, but the only literal requirement is having provided half your genetic material."

Oh. Well... okay, yes, when you put it that way, I suppose she was.

"That seriously never occurred to you until just now?"

Can I get back to the story?

Despite your apparent fascination with this twist, the revelation that I was a product of Gaien's gene-build was completely irrelevant to me. I'd never known who were the particular contributors to my genetic codex, and I'd never cared. The relationship implied by genetic lineage simply didn't exist in Starhaven's culture.

"That is why I'm here today, Gaela," the Magos said, "and why you're here today, as well. Obviously, there are those who would have wished a more severe punishment upon you for your transgressions, but I have intervened."

"Because I'm amusing and vicious?" I asked.

She laughed again. I shuddered at the sound. "No, Adept. Because you're of my gene-build."

"Are you SURE it's a cultural thing? Because I could completely believe that you uniquely had no concept of what motherhood or family is like or why you should care about it. This Magos sounds-"

Quiet, Sparkle.

Gaien's head tilted to the side. "Tell me, Adept Gaela: why do you engage in behavior that is obviously tantamount to tech-heresy?"

"To advance the pursuit of knowledge, the sacred quest of the Cult Mechanicus," I said without hesitation. This question I was prepared for. "The Mechanicus demands we seek out knowledge to improve ourselves, the Cult, and the Imperium of Man, and seek the truth that will grant us the insight into the workings of the Omnissiah." I clenched my teeth. "Yet the rest of the doctrine of the Cult Mechanicus is dedicated to hampering this goal. We cannot seek knowledge that is developed by aliens. Heresy. We cannot create artificial intelligence. Heresy. We cannot test Cult doctrine! Heresy! We cannot utilize psychic ability to any useful degree! Heresy! Heresy! Heresy!" I clenched my teeth, letting a glimmer of real anger show. "The doctrine of the Cult Mechanicus is backward, myopic, and contradictory! It cripples our efforts in the very quest it demands of us! That is why I disobey! That is why I hunt scraps of xeno technology, just so I can learn about something that isn't so useless and ancient as to be deemed 'safe' and 'pure' by the Magi! There is an entire galaxy of secrets waiting for us, Magos! But this, THIS is the reward for trying to seek any true enlightenment!" I tugged on my chains for emphasis.

Gaien watched in silence as I finished my monologue, my breath heaving.

"Oh, my. It seems I touched upon a nerve," the Magos mumbled, "don't misunderstand, Adept. I don't particularly care why you violated the tenets of the Cult Mechanicus, although I'm glad they turned out to be so naïve and self-righteous. It would be a problem if I had an actual rebel set loose, after all."

The more Magos Gaien spoke, the more confused I became. What did she WANT from me?

"Regardless, from here on, I'm going to have to ask you not to commit anymore tech-heresy," she chided.

I frowned. "You said you were setting me loose. Why?"

"Because, obviously, I cannot have my gene-print associated with a heretic," she said, as if she really thought it was obvious.

"... I still don't understand," I mumbled. It wasn't as if Gaien had instructed me or in any way contributed to my upbringing. How did it reflect upon her if one of the products of her egg harvestings was charged as a heretic?

"My gene-products have a consistently higher performance profile than that of other magi on Starhaven," she said. Looking back, I think she was trying to convey pride in her voice. "11.8% higher efficiency ratings. 20.3% higher combat ratings. 8.9% higher academic progression." She shook her head. "I've done some things to help out here and there, mostly in resource procurement and task placement. But I simply couldn't stand by while one of my gene products was fit to be tried for tech-heresy. Such an outlier could not be ignored. So I had the more severe charges removed."

My biological eye must have been quite wide, because I was stunned by the admission. My entirely unjustified salvation had come about thanks to the statistical vanity of an unusually powerful Magos.

"Or, you know, you could consider it a mother acting to help and protect her children."

Sparkle, seriously, stop trying to project your ridiculous equine values upon humans. We don't do stupid things like that.

"Impossible," I declared, "the servo skulls-"

"Were destroyed, and their recording signals were inexplicably corrupted. No record exists of their pict-feeds," Gaien interrupted.

"The White Hounds-"

"Acted with unnecessary aggression, targeting two innocent Tech-Adepts who nonetheless should NOT have destroyed them."

"The Secutor!"

"Happened upon you two as you were leaving the area and arrested you and your colleague as suspicious individuals, as is his duty. Nothing more." She paused. "Needless to say, it's quite fortunate that you didn't raise your hand against him. His testimony would have been far more troublesome to remove."

Suddenly, the chains started moving again, and I was wrenched up into a standing position.

"As it stands, you and your colleague happened upon a corrupt, heretical menial hawking stolen xeno-tech in a scrapyard. Although initially interested, once the nature of his wares was revealed, your partner immediately killed the menial for his heretical actions. You then made to leave the area to report this criminal act, but were aggressively accosted by a trio of Enforcer automata. You destroyed them, which is why you are to be punished." She tilted her head to the side, which generated a sharp clicking noise. "Incidentally, that other Adept Tolar has also avoided harsher indictment. He chose his partner well, it would seem."

"And it's not a problem that this account is false and severely understates my crimes?" I grunted.

"It's only a problem if you make it one, Adept Gaela," Gaien said, backing away, "but I hardly think you're of a mindset to demand justice for your crimes that you don't believe should be crimes." She paused again. "That said, I do hope you understand that this is not license for you to do as you please. I cannot, and will not, intervene to save you from your own foolishness again. The rules and taboos of our order exist for a reason, and ignorance of those reasons is not license to disobey them."

I scowled. "Very well. Then let me out of here. I'll see to my Enginseer trials and then be out of Starhaven - and beyond your concern - as soon as possible."

Magos Gaien emitted a scrambled, electronic sigh. "No, Gaela, you won't. Your crime, though minor, still warrants punishment. Your trials are to be postponed indefinitely."

To be fair, that was literally the least severe punishment I could have hoped for, but I still couldn't help but scowl in frustration. I didn't have too much in the way of ambition, but it seemed that what few goals I had were dashed.

"You and Adept Tolar are to be moved from your current station," Magos Gaien continued, "to my shipyards. You will perform your labors there until such time that it is felt you have sufficiently atoned for your errors and are truly ready to advance upon the path once more."

"More of your leniency, Magos?" I snapped. I remember wishing at the time that she would let me speak in Binary. Using words makes it much harder to restrain my emotions.

"Affirmative. I think I need to keep an eye on you, Adept."

The Magos turned toward the door, and it started sliding open. "This is your second chance, Gaela. Do not waste it."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4, Dark Mechanicus Temple Primarus

Gaela looked distinctly irritated as she drummed her bionic fingers against the projector table. "So, as you can see, my 'rebellion' against the principles and religious mores of those who had created and raised me had precedent before any element of coercion was introduced."

"Was working in the shipyards bad?" Spike asked.

"No. In fact, many Adepts would have considered it a promotion. Especially with the knowledge that the administrator favored them in order to burnish their genetic credentials."

Twilight's stylus frantically scratched at the panel of her dataslate while wrapped in a purple aura.

"I still think it's possible she just saw you as a daughter, to some extent," Twilight insisted, "preference for one's genetic lineage is a very common survival trait. I'd be surprised if humans didn't have it to one extent or another."

"Sparkle, I'm not going to argue with you about this," Gaela deadpanned, "such irrational instincts based in reproductive biology are anathema to members of Cult Mechanicus, whether of the Imperial or Chaotic allegiance. Gaien did not get to be a Magos by indulging her petty, useless, so-called 'emotions'."

Twilight rolled her eyes. "All right, Gaela. Fine. Have it your way. I guess she just covered up your crimes and got you a job under her supervision to make her graphs look neat and orderly."

"You mock me, but far worse things have been done for the sake of smoothing out spreadsheets in the Adeptus Mechanicus," Gaela grumbled.

"So, what did you do in the shipyards?" Spike asked, leaning over the edge of the table.

"Repaired and maintained the shipyard machinery, mostly," Gaela said, "my days were spent performing rites of maintenance and divining errors within the loading automata engrams."

The Dark Techpriest frowned. "It was productive and rewarding work for a Tech-Adept, but I was not content. All of the xeno-tech artifacts that I had previously acquired had 'mysteriously' vanished upon my release from penitentiary. My notes had been destroyed. Although I had been absolved of the crime of pursuing knowledge deemed heretical, it was not because of any effort or rationale I had provided. My work to unravel the mechanisms of Tau engineering was still considered deviant and criminal, and the disappearance of my notes and materials was an unsubtle condemnation of interests I was convinced were legitimate."

"I have to agree with that, at least," Twilight said, taking a moment to organize her notes in the dataslate's memory bank, "a prohibition against investigating alien technology seems completely unnecessary." Then her eyes narrowed. "To say nothing of the bias against psychic power."

"To be fair, mankind's history with psykers is not as... benign as I imagine yours to be," Gaela shrugged.

"I'm sure. So how did you come to work for the 38th Company, Gaela?"

The cyborg leaned back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling with an expression that very nearly approached melancholy.

"I was in the wrong place at the right time, it would seem," Gaela said after a moment, "Tolar - whom I had seen precious little of since our arrest and re-assignment - and I were only stationed in the shipyards for three months before an unusually large trader fleet translated in-system. Clustered around a megafreighter, the fleet transmitted valid clearance codes and requested permission to dock for the purpose of exchange and resupply. Our auger relays didn't detect anything amiss, so they were granted permission to dock."

Spike gulped.

"Most of the shipyard crews didn't know anything was wrong until the first reports of shooting came from the loading facilities. In the meantime, I was performing an investigation on the aforementioned auger relays, and happened to find something very interesting..."

****

Starhaven - dockyard complex central logis nexus

+I've found the problem,+ I blurted to the two attendant Techpriests poring over a long drum of parchment covered over with code printouts, +here. A quarantined error code in string 3991-45.+

The heavy hum of machines surrounded us as my supervisors quickly rolled the drum of parchment to the code sequence I had referenced. They spent a few seconds glancing over it, and one of them bleated in the negative.

+Refutation: This is a foreign error string that's been properly quarantined, as per protocol. Conclusion: It's merely part of the aberrant rise in junk code we detected. You are in error.+

+It's not PART of the data dump that you detected, it's the cause of it,+ I insisted, +look at the code itself. It looks suspiciously like a program.+

+Rebuke: Exposure to quarantined scrapcode is a violation of operating procedure,+ the Techpriest countered.

+But I did it anyway,+ I replied, +you didn't ask me to help so that I could just follow the same rote procedures you already tried, did you?+

The other Techpriest thankfully interjected before I could continue arguing with my superior. +Interrogative: Why did you investigate that particular code string?+

+Its intercept occurred point-zero-three-nine seconds before the data dump. The timing was convenient,+ I answered with a shrug. Then I pointed to another long line of code. +As soon as it appeared, several other small changes were made in numerous data packets. They were all marked as corrupted and quarantined.+

+Affirmation: That is precisely how the logic engine's guardian engram is designed to function. So that flawed programs or data packets cannot infect the larger part of the system,+ the first Techpriest reminded me.

+Affirmative. However, the timing was so precise, and the corruption so minute, that it almost seems like the scrapcode program was trying to provoke that response rather than make any fundamental change in the system that would raise a much more obvious alert,+ I concluded.

+Rumination: To what end?+

I considered the question at length as I stared at the long, heavy roll of parchment spread over the table.

+All of the corrupted packets are related. They're all scraps of data from the auger relays. If I am correct, and it is a program, it seems like it was specifically forcing the logic engine to discard data elements from its scanning results.+

The Techpriests turned toward each other.

+Vacillation: This hypothesis seems unlikely, but may be worth additional investigation.+

+Corollary: My primary concern is the loss of specific data packets. What did the stripped code contain? What data are the auger relays missing?+

It was about at that moment that a massive plasma bolt flew by the viewport window.

We all turned toward the viewport, watching silently as three more shimmering green spheres the size of main battle tanks flew by. We couldn't tell from our angle where they hit, but needless to say, seeing any live fire in the shipyard facilities was cause for concern.

+... Revision: The Adept's hypothesis may be more likely than I had previously estimated, given recently procured evidence,+ the Techpriest blurted.

"Warning!" blared a voice from the vox caster as alarm klaxons started blaring. "Hostile forces have boarded the docking complex primarus! Docked void vessels have been recategorized as enemy units! Weapon discharges detected in sector 3, sector 4, sector 7, sector 11..."

As the droning voice continued listing breached areas of the station, I rushed to the corner of the room and took up my axe in my augmetic hand. My supervisors were having their own panicked discussion about the unexpected invasion, but I wasn't interested in sorting out the why and how of the attack.

+Well, I always did want to be a Secutor,+ I mumbled as I drew my pistol and headed toward the void docks.

I didn't make it very far before I heard the sound of a firefight. The shipyards had its own security personnel, a collection of auto-turrets, and all of the Mechanicus clergy were armed. Even so, we were unprepared. The cargo in the hallway provided ample cover for attackers, and our defense drills did not account for an enemy appearing inside the station so quickly. Any decently prepared assault force could have taken the shipyards with that advantage.

And these attackers were more than 'decently prepared'.

I slowed to a walk as I approached a corner, hearing the crack of lasguns in the hall beyond. A moment later I hear a sharp banging noise; a quick survey of the local defense network informed me that an auto-turret had just been destroyed.

I leaned out from around the corner, took a pict-capture with my augmetic optical, and then ducked back out of sight immediately before any potential enemy could fire at me.

Taking a moment to study the pict, I was genuinely shocked to see three humans in dirty, heavy coats and respirator masks covering behind crates and toting lasrifles. I had assumed that any attack would come from xeno forces. Was the planetary population rebelling? Unlikely. Pirates, possibly, but they'd have to be insane to assault an actual shipyard.

Unless, of course, they were allied to a greater power.

A closer inspection of one of the masked fighters gave me my answer. I could see an amulet hanging from around his neck, bearing a symbol universally despised in the Imperium: the Star of Chaos.

+Traitors, is it? Interesting.+

I leaned out and snapped off several shots, but my opponents were already well-fortified behind the stacks of crates, and their lasrifles were far stronger than my pistol. I did not have powered armor at the time, either, so I could not easily weather a charge. The fusillade quickly forced me back behind the corner.

"Frag out!" yelled one of the enemies.

With advanced warning of an incoming grenade, I quickly found an empty metal crate that looked thick enough to withstand a grenade blast. When the explosive charge hit the wall opposite me and bounced to my feet, I immediately slammed the crate down over it.

The resulting explosion made the crate jump slightly more than I was comfortable with, but none of the projectile shrapnel pierced it.

"Did that get him?"

"I barely heard the detonation! You get a dud or something?"

As they debated my apparent fate, I looked over my options. I almost certainly had a chance of victory in close combat, but there was an uncomfortable amount of floor to cover between the corner and the enemy. I had to find a way to divert or stop their fire for a few seconds.

"Or you could retreat, find some allies, and try holding a more advantageous position."

I tended to favor solutions that led to my hitting things with an axe.

"You really haven't changed much since then, have you?"

I brought up the pict-capture again, spotted a key point in the hallway, and then quickly leaned out again. I fired one shot, hitting a sensor built into the ceiling in every stretch of hallway. Then I quickly moved back behind the corner to evade retaliation.

The sensor was used for many things: detecting gunfire, tracking servitors, and managing environmental controls. But one of its most obvious and most important functions - and the reason why the enemy hadn't been shooting them out - was fire suppression.

"GAH! Damn it!" one man cursed as the ceiling vents started pouring a heavy white mist into the hall. They were all wearing respirators, so it wouldn't obstruct their breathing in any way, but it clung to their mask optics and provided a thick fog to cover my charge. I switched my vision mode to thermal-optic and made my move.

One started firing blindly down the hall as I rounded the corner, which was probably the smartest thing to do in that situation. His shots went wide, but rather than relying on luck to get me the whole way I kicked a chunk of the destroyed turret at him.

The ruined metal struck him in the shoulder, and his laser bursts suddenly fanned out over the ceiling rather than down the hall.

Then I was among them, and my axe swung onto the closest soldier, tearing through his flak armor and then his shoulder. A shot to the throat with my pistol finished him off.

The mercenary I had knocked over was getting up right next to me, and I rammed into him with my shoulder to slam him against the bulkhead wall. As I mentioned, I did not possess power armor at the time, but Mechanicus Adepts still tend to be much heavier than unaugmented humans. He let out another miserable grunt of pain, and I whirled toward the last foe.

This one had finally cleared his vision well enough to make a stab at me with his rifle bayonet, and I was not properly positioned to parry. Instead, my servo arm dropped and clamped onto the lasrifle as it stabbed into my chest, stopping the blade before it could do any serious damage. The vise crushed the barrel a moment later, destroying the weapon before he could think to discharge it while it was still stuck in me.

I shot him once, twice, and then a third time in the face. His hands finally slackened from his weapon, and his corpse fell next to that of his squadmate.

Pulling the bayonet free of my body, I was about to finish off the stunned soldier when I heard loud, metal-clad footsteps approaching from around an intersection at the end of the hall. Energized by the combat so far, I leapt to the attack, aiming to cleave the newcomer's head right from its shoulders the moment it came into view.

I swung just as the target stepped out into the hall.

An adamantium gauntlet, colored gunmetal and trimmed in beaten gold, seized the haft of my weapon in mid-swing, stopping it dead.

As I stared up into a helmet visor glowing crimson, sitting some four heads taller than my own, I decided that I had made a rather serious error.

The Iron Warrior calmly raised his battle rifle with his other arm, and I found myself staring into the finely rifled barrel of a Phobos-pattern boltgun.

"Techpriest," growled the Chaos Space Marine.

"Tech-Adept," I corrected him without thinking. Really, I figured I was about to die anyhow, so why worry about annoying him?

To my surprise, he just snorted, sounding somewhat amused. "Adept, then. Disarm."

I dropped my laspistol and let go of my axe. The Chaos Marine flung my melee weapon to the side, his bolter still trained on my face.

"Good. You serve the Iron Warriors now, Adept." He jerked his helmet down the path he had come. "This way."

The Iron Warrior ignored the men I had beaten - one of whom was certainly still alive - and led me down the hall. More soldiers passed us. Mercenaries and Iron Warriors, obviously, but I was also intrigued to see several individuals following who appeared to be Techpriests. They had the obvious bearings of Tech-clergy with their heavy augmentation and servo harnesses, but these ones wore robes that were coal black rather than dark red, and boasted icons pertaining to Chaos.

The Dark Mechanicus. I knew that such a group existed, but little more. I never imagined I'd see one of the most reviled of traitors.

We passed through several blast doors that had been, appropriately enough, blasted open. The loading docks were beyond the halls, and I could see that cargo was being frantically loaded onto an escort frigate. Teams of servitors and armed mercenaries hauled those crates marked as holding weapons supplies, but other crates were being carried by unarmed men and women being escorted by mercenaries or heavily armed Tech-clergy. Many of those captured wore the uniforms of the shipyard workers and security personnel.

"Geth!" barked my escort, shoving me forward. "I have another prisoner. A feisty one, too."

The Scavurel warrior turned to look at me, his servo claws twitching anxiously. "... Affirmative. Thank you, Lord."

The Iron Warrior turned away, leaving us. Geth approached me, and his servo arms quickly seized mine.

+Greetings, Tech-Adept Gaela,+ he said in Binaric Cant as he disabled my servo arm, +it would seem you work for us, now. I advise you to move quickly, as we're on a schedule. You're going to be helping us move cargo, or you're going to be bleeding all over the deck. Is that understood?+

+... Affirmative.+

****

Harvest of Steel - Dark Mechanicus foundries

I didn't get the details of the assault until much later, as I spent most of it loading contraband along with the rapidly growing collection of captured shipyard crew.

The strike was an unqualified success, having captured a prodigious cache of supplies and material while crippling Starhaven's production capabilities. The 38th Company fleet had been forced to face the system fleet's flagship, the Judgment of Mars, but use of the shipyard's defense turrets and the Warp rift had swiftly disabled the vessel. I don't know if the flagship was even salvageable by the time Starhaven's Skitarii defense forces had seized control of the shipyards back.

As for me, I was quickly separated from the other prisoners, along with the rest of the Tech-clergy. The 38th Company has a system for efficiently sorting prisoners into slaves, fuel, and potential recruits.

"Wait, fuel? What do you mean, fuel?"

Oh, right. You didn't know about that. It's somewhat complicated, and I don't want to interrupt the story with another irrelevant argument about ethics, so let's drop the subject for now. Suffice to say, slavery isn't the only atrocity committed by our army upon completion of a raid.

The cells used to hold captured Mechanicus cultists were isolated and small, but lacked the complex mechanisms of torture used by the Adeptus Mechanicus penitence rooms. My stay in the Harvest's brig was, ironically, far shorter and more comfortable than my imprisonment within my home temple.

It was less than a day after the assault that my cell was opened again, and I soon stood before another of my present-day acquaintances.

+Introductory: I am Dark Magos Kaelith. I command the Dark Mechanicus contingent of the Iron Warriors' 38th Company,+ buzzed the Magos. He was almost entirely augmetic, his entire body given over to segments of constructor modules such that he resembled an enormous centipede. His head was - or is, rather - a cluster of sensory systems hanging from bundles of cables. It wasn't clear what parts of him, if any, still bore any traits of sapien anatomy, much less actual biological organs.

I was deeply impressed.

+Greetings, Dark Magos. I am Tech-Adept Gaela,+ I replied affably.

He hesitated. Even among the Tech-clergy of the Mechanicus, not known for passions or emotional outbursts of any sort, my reply must have seemed bizarrely passive to him.

+Logged: Adept Gaela. Initiating recruitment protocol: You are to be offered a chance to serve the Iron Warriors, and learn the true nature of the Omnissiah.+

+Acknowledged,+ I nodded to him, +and what would be the benefits of doing so, besides the dubious prospect of learning of this "true nature"?+ I asked.

Kaelith's melta cutters quivered beneath his robes. +Ultimatum: The most immediate, practical benefit would be survival. Refusal will result in termination and the recycling of your augmetic components.+

It wasn't a great pitch, honestly. I don't know whose idea it was to let Kaelith try to recruit new Tech-clergy into the fold.

I didn't particularly want to die, nor did I have an especially deep attachment to the Adeptus Mechanicus. I did not care about the "sacredness" of my oaths to Mars, and it didn't particularly matter to me if my skills were used against the Imperium and worked to the detriment of humanity.

But I didn't relish the idea of laboring as a near-slave, either, and my years of indoctrination in the Machine Cult hadn't been a COMPLETE failure.

+I will need further data before I make this decision,+ I said simply.

Kaelith quivered some more, clearly annoyed. But without a clear rejection of the offer, he couldn't simply ignore the prospect of another potential Dark Techpriest.

+Acquiescence: Follow me.+

"When you gave me and Rarity the abridged version of this story, you said that the decision you made was between serving the Iron Warriors and dying, and that it was easy."

I did say that, and that was a gross simplification. I didn't think any of you would care to hear the complexities of my experience.

"Right, because who wants to hear a story about fighting pirates, finding the truth behind a vast, mysterious cult, and a personal struggle between religious loyalty and survival?"

Exactly. I'm still surprised neither of you have anything better to do.

"......"

Anyway, as I was taken deeper into the ship, I began to notice strange things about it. Its machine spirit, normally a conglomeration of thousands to millions of different components working in parallel networks over the body of the hull of a void ship, was far more united. Far more monolithic.

Far more AWARE.

Every device I looked at as I was marched through the halls seemed to look back, perceiving me just as easily and fully as I did it. A machine intelligence? True AI? It was possible; I was currently among heretics, after all. But somehow this felt different than I would have expected. There was something instinctive and animalistic about this machine spirit, which were traits not associated with programmed intellect.

I was more intrigued than ever. Kaelith could have just told me that I could study the ship, and I would have gladly sworn my life and soul to Chaos right there. But he didn't seem to notice, and instead took me even deeper within the vessel.

And that was when I met Warsmith Solon for the first time.

+Introductory: the head Warpsmith, and high commander of the 38th Company, Warsmith Solon.+

I froze, shuddering, as the blast doors opened, revealing Solon leaning over a large block of metal.

Where Magos Kaelith seemed almost elegant in his augmentation of his form, there was no subtlety or higher order to Solon's mechanization. His Astartes heritage, his gene-enhanced flesh that set him apart from mere mortals like me was a much-reduced shell, with augmetics and machines hammered onto him everywhere it seemed possible. Blasphemous runes decorated his armor, and the air in the corridor reeked of an affliction that had no equal in nature. A brutish monstrosity of tainted metal, corrupted flesh, and... something else. Something that I could barely perceive around the aura of suffocating terror that had swallowed me.

And yet there was something undeniably majestic about the sight. There was so much power in him, so much knowledge wired up to his chassis, tantalizing me with mere glances. Looking upon Warsmith Solon, trapped within the influence of his fear aura, I felt true excitement stir within me for the first time in a very long while.

"Eww."

"Not like that, Spike! ... At least, I hope not."

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Belatedly, I realized that Kaelith and Solon had been speaking while I had been staring. Then Warsmith Solon approached me directly, staring down at me through his optics cluster.

"Sho, you ashk to shee the nature of the darker powersh, do you?"

I am slightly ashamed to admit that my sense of awe and terror diminished considerably after Solon started talking.

"That does tend to happen. We understand."

"I undershtand your heshitation, Adept," Solon continued, "Chaosh sheemsh to offer little at firsht glance, shave a future of shuffering and conflict. Not that thish ish sho different from a life of Imperial shervice..."

My throat felt somewhat dry, so I spoke in Binary without thinking. +What is Chaos, exactly? Is it simply another cult? Some other facet of dogma that the Adeptus Mechanicus denies and opposes? Why do you wage war in its name? Why should I do the same?+

Solon answered without pause, as if he didn't notice that I was speaking a different language. "Chaosh ish many thingsh, Adept Gaela. But to you? To you, it would be truth."

+Truth? The truth of what?+ I pressed.

"The Machine. The Omnishiah. The quesht for knowledge that ish the very core of the Cult Mechanicush," he said, his voice possessing a hint of reverence, "Chaosh preshentsh anshweresh, Adept Gaela. They are not shimple or happy truthsh, but they are there for you if you would not deny them."

This pitch was more to my liking, and my mind raced as I considered the full implications of what he was saying.

Despite his words, I was not so naïve as to immediately trust that Warsmith Solon was speaking honestly. Or even if he was, that he was necessarily correct. Heretics of Chaos belonged to a separate dogma than Techpriests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but not necessarily a better or more "correct" one. I wasn't being asked to merely explore a different faith, but to swear my life and service to an army of heretical pirates.

As I ruminated, I finally noticed what it was that Solon had been standing on when I entered. I blinked, and my optical reset just so I could be sure it wasn't malfunctioning.

+Is that... a Necron machine?+ I asked.

Kaelith bristled, no doubt quite offended that I seemed to be trying to change the subject. Solon was more amiable, of course.

"Yesh, it ish. Tomb Shpyder, to be exact. Quite a shtubborn little pesht." He raised one of his legs and gave the inanimate machine a light kick. "Necron machinesh and warriorsh all teleport back to their tombsh when critically damaged for repair and reactivation. We probably fought thish thing three or four timesh before we finally managed to break into the tomb itshelf and ranshack it."

I gulped. +If... If I join you, can I study that?+

Solon looked over to the Tomb Spyder, and then looked back at me. "Okay."

+I'm in.+

Kaelith made a clicking noise that approximated a groan. +Commentary: So this is the "truth" you seek, then? Tampering with alien trinkets? Will these provide the answers you want?+

+Perhaps not,+ I admitted, +but I really want to do it anyway.+

"A model heretic if I've ever sheen one," Solon said with a deep chuckle, "your laborsh under our control will not be eashy or shafe, Adept Gaela, but I guarantee you ample freedom to inveshtigate technology from the alien and heretic. If that ish your deshire, it shall be well-sherved here."

+Thank you, Warsmith Solon,+ I blurted, kneeling before the Iron Warrior, +thank you for granting me this chance. I swear to serve you and your Company for as long as I am able. My body, soul, and assorted cybernetic equivalents belong to you, Lord.+

"You're very welcome, Gaela. Dark Acolyte Gaela," I felt a surge of heat in my chest as he pronounced the title. I was not an individual prone to feelings of pride, and I did not yet know the responsibilities and powers of the rank. Yet I felt... pleased at being referred to like that. Unusually so.

"And shince thish recruitment hash gone sho well, I think I know what your firsht tashk ish to be," Solon said, swiveling around to face Kaelith again.

The Warsmith said something in Binaric Cant, but I couldn't understand it. It sounded like scrapcode, almost.

Kaelith quickly scurried off, and I was left alone with the Warsmith and the pile of apparently Necron artifacts.

+What is to be my service, Lord?+

"My forcesh captured many Tech-clergy during the ashault on the shipyardsh, Acolyte. But few have been shwayed to make new oathsh," Solon admitted.

+With all respect to Dark Magos Kaelith, he did not present a compelling case for turning traitor,+ I admitted blandly, +I have long chafed under the guidance of the Mechanicus dogma, having my interests dismissed as errors in judgment or outright heresy. Others may not be so receptive to the opportunity of betrayal.+

Solon chuckled again. "Kaelith reshentsh loyalishtsh a great deal. To the point that he doesh not care whether they are actually loyal." He took several steps closer, and although the smell got stronger and his presence more terrifying with proximity, I stood where I was. "You, though... you have a detachment to your allegiance I find mosht intereshting. You do not care for the Mechanicush?"

+I think the Adeptus Mechanicus is a fine and worthy institution. By far the greater half of the alliance that maintains the Imperium of Man,+ I replied, +but it could easily be better, and it shuns the very progress it claims to represent. If challenging the crude notions of dogma and restrictions on free thought to advance the quest for knowledge is heresy, then clearly heresy is necessary. Why, then, should I fear being branded a heretic? Let the old institutions burn and new, stronger ones rise in their place.+

I hesitated, unsure if I should continue with my next thought. Solon seemed to sense that I wasn't done.

"Do go on, Acolyte. I enjoy shuch frank dishcushion."

I nodded to him. +I cannot tell yet if these "Dark Gods" offer any worthwhile answers. But I cannot rationalize sentencing myself to death before I've even considered the possibility. If Chaos were truly mere nonsense and trickery, the Imperium would not fear it so.+

Warsmith Solon's optics flickered. "Ah. It'sh ready. Follow me."

Solon headed toward the blast doors, but he paused to pick up a weapons case, clamping onto it with his servo claw before exiting the room. I did as commanded and followed behind him.

I was anxious. For all my rationale and eagerness at the prospect of studying rare xeno-tech artifacts, I had little idea of what to expect of service to Chaos. So little was said about the traitorous powers, and even less recorded for posterity. More useful knowledge dismissed by my cult for fear of heresy.

We entered another room, and I nearly tripped as I got a look at its occupants.

Iron Warriors stood at the walls, boltguns at the ready, but in the middle of the room was several Tech-clergy, all of them firmly bound in shackles and kneeling. Dark Magos Kaelith stood at one end of the lineup, hissing in Binary at another Magos: Magos Gaien. The Magos had been stripped of her robes and had her mechadendrites severed, leaving a large mechanical repulsor engine and a few scraps of withered flesh visible among the twisted cables and regulators.

That would have been arresting enough, but in the center of the room was someone I knew much better than she. Tolar.

"Uh-oh. I think I know how this ends..."

"Spike! Shush!"

+Gaela! Damn! They got you too?!+ Tolar gasped, his Cant shaking somewhat as he beheld the behemoth next to me.

"We got her all right, Adept," Solon said pleasantly, "she ish oursh, now."

+What? What does that mean?+ Tolar asked. He sounded even more nervous once it was obvious Solon understood Binaric Cant.

"Dark Acolyte Gaela," the Warsmith said solemnly as he opened up the weapon case, "in recognition of your new oath and shervice, I grant you a weapon worthy of your shtation." Inside the case was a power axe. It was colored brushed steel and gold, with cabling painted in black and yellow hazard stripes. The power axe I wield to this day.

+It's not true! You're lying!+ Tolar shouted, although he was trembling in fear. +Tell me it's not true, Gaela!+

I looked up at Solon. He looked down at me.

"Well, Acolyte?"

My augmetic hand reached for the power axe, closing around the haft.

I turned away from Solon, toward the captured clergy. Two steps forward, and then I made my strike, axe level with Tolar's throat. The power field crackled sharply as it ripped through flesh and bone, and the severed head of my "friend" went tumbling onto the floor.

+I am a traitor,+ I blurted remorselessly, +it's a shame that you aren't.+ Tolar's body slumped onto the floor, blood seeping from his sizzling neck stump.

Many of the Tech-clergy started shouting in a panic at me or at each other, but I ignored them. I turned to Warsmith Solon once more, to await his judgment.

"Uh..." his judgment was surprisingly hesitant. "... Good initiative, Acolyte. However, I wash actually going to ashk you to convert him to our shide."

"Gaela!"

Yes, yes, I know. I can't read the mood. I had probably never been more embarrassed in my life. You could have defrosted a nitrogen capsule with my face.

+I... I didn't... You mean...+ my Cant stuttered like I was on the verge of crashing.

"It'sh not a big deal," Solon assured me, "we do that short of thing a lot. I undershtand the confushion."

+You traitorous swine!+ Gaien bleated, her Binaric Cant rising in pitch to a feverish shriek. +You dare turn your back on humanity? You would deny the Omnissiah's light to consort with these wretched rebels?+ Her body quivered. It was actually quite fascinating to watch; with her repulsor engine and mechadendrites disabled, her body shook on the floor, immobile, like a pot of caf reaching a boil. +You will regret turning your back on us! You will suffer when our retribution is at hand! Your days are numbered, all of you!+

I stared at the howling Magos, frowning.

Then I looked over to Warsmith Solon again. +Can I kill HER, then?+

"She doesh sheem like a shtubborn one, doeshn't she?" Solon mused. "Okay, go ahead."

The power field around my power axe once more sparked to life.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 4, Dark Mechanicus Temple Primarus

Twilight looked horrified. "You killed your own mother?"

Gaela blinked. "What? No. I don't have a-" Then the cyborg paused. "Oh. Right. Then yes, I did. Technically."

Twilight groaned. "So your attitude and tendency toward violence really has nothing to do with Chaos corruption. You've always been like that. The descent into Chaos worship just allows you more opportunities to exercise it."

"Convenient, isn't it?"

"So, wait, you're only in the Dark Mechanicus so you can mess with alien machines? You don't actually care about it?" Spike asked curiously.

"That was my initial disposition, yes," Gaela admitted, "over time, I have learned many things about the Dark Gods and their relation to the Omnissiah. I have seen many of their truths, and become a genuine believer. The path of Chaos, the path of blood and destruction, is the true way forward for humanity and the Mechanicus." She paused. "Unfortunately, I cannot relay that aspect of my past to you unless you are at least Chaos worshipers. Much of it involves secret lore."

"Yeah, really, that's okay. This was plenty," Spike assured the woman as he hopped down from his chair, "and now I get why you don't think of yourself as a slave or prisoner." He stretched briefly before walking toward the exit. "I'm hungry. I'm going to go grab a few gems from my stash."

"Pick up a ration tin for me too, would you?" Twilight asked.

"Twi, there's plenty of that stuff around here. You can find it on your own," Spike replied before he turned into the hall.

"Really, I don't know how you ever mistook Spike for a slave," Twilight grumbled, glaring out at the hallway after the disobedient dragon.

"Yes, fine. I admit error in my judgment," the Dark Techpriest said, "are you happy now?"

The purple pony didn't say anything to that, frowning.

After several seconds of deep thought, she looked up at Gaela again.

"It bothers me," she decided, "the way you killed your friend and your mother. It doesn't really SURPRISE me, but... it makes me worried that you could kill those close to you so easily."

"I never considered them to be close, and I reject the implications of your assessment," Gaela said firmly, "Tolar and I shared a similar interest, but I never saw him as anything more than a convenient acquaintance." She paused. "Granted, I was definitely too quick in killing him. Everybody can agree on that much."

Twilight cocked her head to the side. "Well, is there anybody you WOULDN'T kill, even if you had legitimate orders to do so?"

"Warsmith Solon," Gaela said immediately, "my respect for him, and the many debts I owe him, place him beyond any possibility of betrayal."

Twilight pursed her lips, looking away.

"... I would also be extremely reluctant to harm you, if such an order were to fall to me," Gaela admitted awkwardly after a long pause.

Twilight perked up immediately. "Really? You mean it?"

"Affirmative. And don't think I haven't considered the possibility, considering that you once thought to infiltrate our fortress and confront the Warsmith."

Twilight chuckled nervously, her face flushing as she looked at the Dark Techpriest across the table. Gaela was frowning slightly, as she usually did, but it seemed to be wavering, somehow. As if the expression was fighting against a different one.

The purple Princess raised a hoof. "Hug?"

"THERE WILL BE NO HUGS."

"Awww..."

The Magus

Author's Note

I had a lot of fun with this one, although it feels pretty different from the others. Not much action in the flashback scenes, I guess.

This takes place after the Iron Hearts conclusion and Epilogue.

(Edit: Added picture. Forgot it during initial publishing)

The Magus

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Magus

****

Ferrous Dominus - Solon's forge

"UWAAAH!!"

Solon glanced up from an array of hololiths as a scream echoed through the depths of his forge.

A sharp crackling noise came from within a large iron cage, followed by a few stuttering purple flashes. After a few more seconds of panicked shouting, Twilight Sparkle was dumped onto the floor, her mane sticking out straight like bundles of purple wires.

"Ow! What?" Twilight shook her head as she stood up, and then gasped as she found herself standing inside a metal enclosure. "What's going on? How did I get in here?!"

"You teleported in here," Solon said bluntly as he continued tapping away on a hololith.

"Well, yes, but I didn't teleport in HERE!" the alicorn countered, looking about at the cage that surrounded her. "This is more than 14 meters off-target, and I had the psionic manifold active! Do you think there's something wrong with it? Could you take a look?"

Solon slid his hand to the side, and the hololith was swept away into the extended gloom of his forge as he turned around. "There ish nothing wrong with your shyshtemsh. I have conshtructed a machine to intercept incoming teleportationsh and eshtablish a final materialization in a location of my chooshing rather than yoursh." He gestured to the cage.

Twilight looked surprised. "Really? And it works on magical teleports as well as your own teleportation technologies?"

"It doesh not work on our teleportation technologiesh," Solon informed her.

Twilight spent a moment digesting that fact, glancing around at the reinforced prison all around her.

"Uh... am I... bothering you, by any chance?" the purple pony asked awkwardly as her ears turned down.

"And here I thought I might have been being too SHUBTLE," Solon spat the word slowly from his vox grille while he towered over the prison, glowering through his optics clusters at the pony. "Did you want shomething, Shparkle?"

Twilight chuckled nervously. She really hated moments like these, when Solon took a moment to remind her that he was, in fact, an evil cyborg mastermind who considered her a mere weapon. She idly wondered if he ever treated Luna like that.

"Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about Serith," the alicorn said, "uh... is there any chance I can get out of this cage?"

A device on top of the cage beeped, and one of the walls slid open along a rail. Twilight stepped out gingerly, keeping her head bowed.

"So... Serith." Twilight said as she sat down in front of the Warsmith. Her armored rear made a light clanging noise as it struck the metal floor. "I'm kind of worried that he's going to kill me and my friends."

"Ash I recall, you've conshidered that a poshibility for shome time," Solon pointed out.

"Yes, true. But, well... back then I couldn't make any sense of his motivations, and assumed he wanted to hurt us out of general belligerence. Now... he kind of has a good reason." Twilight sucked in a breath through her teeth as she made this admission. It was bad enough that someone ostensibly on their side would seriously want to hurt her or her squad, but the idea that it might be even the slightest bit justified made her feel particularly miserable.

Solon turned back to his work, the hololiths sliding up in front of him and spiraling long streams of data against the walls. "How'sh that?"

"Rainbow Dash told Tellis about Serith," Twilight sighed, "Tellis told everybody else. I mean EVERYBODY. He put that vid-capture of him punting Serith's helmet off onto the big screens in sector 12 and put it onto the noosphere and everything."

"Ah, yesh. I have it, too," Solon chuckled, "me and Shliver rarely appreciate Tellish and hish anticsh, but we make an exception for tormenting Sherith."

Twilight furrowed her brow. "Really? Why?"

"For much the shame reashonsh everyone elshe doesh," Solon explained as the hololith broke apart into a stream of glittering lights, and then formed a new display, "he'sh moody, deshtructive, dishloyal, and hash no care for our fleet or itsh mission. He'sh rather similar to Tellish, in fact, except that I can force Sherith to actually do hish job when neceshary thanksh to hish armor having a remote killshwitch."

Twilight blinked, honestly surprised. "I was told that Serith wasn't very popular among the Company, but... I didn't know it extended to you too."

"Not that I don't shympathize, to shome extent. There are often timesh I too want to vaporize Rainbow Dash. And I've alwaysh wanted to kill Tellish. But Sherith ish shtill quite obnoxioush himshelf, and doeshn't make himshelf usheful enough to earn my intervention." Then Solon paused. "Although... he hash been unushually bushy on thish planet."

"Yeah. He, uh... He's actually been really helpful, when you get right down to it." Twilight sighed.

"I think it'sh Mish Trixie," Solon decided as he scuttled over to another section of the workshop, "Sherith hash never had any short of meaningful camaraderie shince hish ashignment to my army. I'm shure you undershtand why. In Mish Trixie, shomehow, he hash found a peer; shomeone who sharesh hish whimshical belligerence and general contempt for non-pshykersh."

"Yeah, I can see why they get along," Twilight grumbled, "they're both egotists, too."

Solon halted in his tracks. "Sherith? An egotisht?"

"Well, sure." Twilight frowned as the Warsmith swiveled around to face her. "I mean, isn't he? His haughty behavior and the way he dismisses conventional weapons sure makes it seem that way."

"Sherith hash many flawsh, ash I've explained, but exceshive shelf-eshteem ishn't one of them," the Warsmith insisted, "on the contrary, he hash quite the inferiority complex."

"REALLY," Twilight trotted up next to Solon's chassis, deeply interested.

"Oh, indeed. He reshentsh hish shervicesh to the Iron Warriorsh, and conshtantly concoctsh hish own shchemesh and projectsh ash he neglectsh hish dutiesh. Many of them come to nothing, incidentally, and each failure leavesh him more embittered. He lashesh out at my technologiesh and the mundane warriorsh out of jealoushy and frushtration. He knowsh he should be above shuch thingsh, but he ish not." Soon chuckled again. "I hear he wash actually quite enraged to learn that the Orksh had overcome the Warp shtorm; he had thought that yet another of hish shorceriesh had failed ush. He may not care much for our shuccesh, but with every misshtep hish reputation wanesh further and the resht of the fleet judgesh him more harshly. Shliver hash shuggeshted before that I deactivate him permanently."

Twilight's eyes were wide. "That... I... I had no idea..."

"Now that the resht of the army knowsh he ish not truly an Ashtartesh anymore, their attitude toward him will probably improve," Solon admitted, "it'sh eashier to shuffer the Shorcerer if you can think of him ash shome mere machine or warbeasht that I've cobbled together, rather than a true Iron Warrior. That shentiment doeshn't make him feel any better, I'm shure."

The Warsmith started working on another console, and spans of colored light spread a double-helix pattern in the air before him.

Twilight stared down at the floor, her brow furrowed. Then she looked up at Solon again. "Can you tell me... what happened?"

"Hm?" Solon didn't stop working.

"I don't really know anything about Serith. Just a few tidbits here and there that you've dropped," the alicorn explained, "he's from some Chaos Legion called the Thousand Sons. He's miserable and lonely. Or was, at least. He's an empty shell of armor motivated by pure psychic power coming from a 'phylactery' rather than a brain." Twilight shook her head. "Even by Chaos standards, he's unusual, isn't he?"

"He ish," Solon allowed, "but that'sh not my shtory to tell. Beshidesh, I'm bushy." His hand rose to another hololith display, and he changed it with a sweep of his hand.

"Well, I don't think he'd tell me if I asked," Twilight sighed.

"Oh, no need for that." Solon tapped at the hololith, and then it quivered in the air. A moment later a vid-capture display appeared over it. "Here."

Twilight recoiled as he flicked the hololith, causing it to slide over in front of her. "Wait, is this-"

"Mish Trixie ashked Sherith about the shame thing before we all left to attack the shpace hulk. I have the vid-capture here. You can jusht lishten to that." Solon returned to the helix display to unwind the gene-codex he was studying.

The lavender pony pursed her lips as she stared at the hololith. The screen had an image of Serith leaning against a wall with his entire left leg missing. Trixie was behind him, frozen in mid-stride, with the missing extremity hovering next to her.

"I don't know... this sounds like a rather sensitive topic, and watching a security vid-capture of him explaining it seems like an invasion of his privacy," Twilight said reluctantly.

"If you shay sho," Solon replied as he started tagging gene-chains in his hololith model, "he certainly hash no shuch compunctionsh about watching the vid-capturesh of your shleeping quartersh."

Twilight went still and silent for several seconds.

"... There are... vid-captures of my quarters?" the purple Princess asked.

"Yesh."

Twilight's eye twitched. "... Twenty-four hour vid-captures?" she specified.

"Yesh."

"That Serith views?" Twilight's voice was starting to become unusually high-pitched, and her face was turning bright red.

"Among othersh, yesh."

The alicorn gulped. "So... is there any chance that he saw me... two weeks ago... when, uh... when I-"

"Probably. Not that he'd care. Your pershonal erotic fantashiesh are not of any interesht to him or the resht of ush." Solon began linking the selected genes to different formulas listed at the bottom of his hololith. "Although it ish shomewhat amushing too shee what you get up to when the dragon ishn't around."

Twilight clenched her teeth as her face burned. "I wasn't aware that my VERY PERSONAL affairs were a matter of public record in the 38th Company. Much less a topic of AMUSEMENT."

"Oh, don't flatter yourshelf," Solon scoffed, "the video of Mish Apple head-butting the Fireblade over and over ish FAR more popular. We moshtly review the vid-capturesh of your room to determine how Lieutenant Dushk Blade ish circumventing our shecurity meashuresh. We shtill can't figure it out. It'sh uncanny."

Solon continued with his work, deeming the conversation complete. Twilight spent several more seconds sulking behind him, silently wondering which spots on her wall she should obscure to foil any further surveillance attempts.

Then she glanced around the forge, confirming that she was the only other individual in the area besides the Warsmith himself.

With a quick tap of her hoof against the air, the hololith flickered and began its playback.

****

Trixie's Quarters (vid-capture playback)

"Here," Trixie said as she floated the dismembered hunk of armor over to the wall. "Trixie finally managed to get your leg away from Tellis. It took some tricky hololith work, and Trixie doesn't think those Sentinels will be walking ever again, but Trixie got it."

The floating leg quivered in the air for a moment, and then the magic aura around it broke. It snapped toward the power armored form in the corner of the room and then slammed into place against Serith's pelvis plating.

Serith said nothing, still facing the wall as an arc of energy flashed around the joint.

"You're welcome," Trixie said simply before she walked past the Sorcerer. "Suuna! Bring out the sugared oats! Trixie has had a very stressful day!"

The unicorn's power armor split apart over her back, and her horn started glowing again. "Why don't they put some kind of restraining machine on that lunatic? This is the LAST thing Trixie needs after that debacle in Canterlot."

Trixie kept grumbling as she took apart her power armor with her magic, stripping away the pieces one by one in a cloud of sparkling pink.

Suuna entered cautiously as Trixie finished removing the torso frame, holding a bowl of oats sprinkled with brown sugar. Her eyes only crossed Serith's form for a moment before averting quickly, and then she scurried toward Trixie.

"Does this amuse you, servant?"

Serith's voice sent ice crawling down Suuna's spine, and she halted in place.

"To see one such as I, laid low so often and so easily?" Serith's voice was a venomous hiss, and Suuna began trembling in place. "Do you laugh when you see the images of my humiliation put on display for the entertainment of the fleet's vermin?"

Trixie frowned as Suuna squeezed her eyes shut, whimpering in pain.

"And then you approach me with your mirth bubbling over your thoughts," the Sorcerer finally moved, turning to face Suuna with the pulsing glow of his helmet visor, "you insolent-"

"Serith, quit it," Trixie snapped suddenly.

After a brief pause, Suuna gasped and staggered, falling to her knees. The bowl of oats Trixie had requested were caught in a haze of pink magic, keeping them from spilling.

"Trixie understands that you're having a bad day, but don't take it out on Suuna," the unicorn said sharply. The bowl levitated next to her, setting down on a metal table.

Serith made a noise from within his helmet that might have been a growl. Still, he relented. Whatever quiet amusement and satisfaction Suuna may have felt before, now her mind was soaked in naked terror. It improved his mood substantially.

Trixie waited until Suuna got up and sat down next to her, and she watched the quivering woman calmly.

"Back rub, please," Trixie requested. Suuna started stroking the pony's back, holding her gaze away from the Iron Warrior. Silence reigned for half a minute.

"... So, are you going to tell Trixie your story, or what?" Trixie finally asked, arching an eyebrow.

Serith made another irritated noise and turned away. "I must go. The Harvest of Steel will be taking to Warp space by this evening. The Nethalican must be prepared."

"You have plenty of time," Trixie scoffed, "if you'd rather talk about it later, after the Orks are dealt with, that's fine with Trixie, but Trixie wants to know."

"Know? You wish to know what I am?" Serith snarled. "The sight of this wraith-like body falling to a shambles is not enough for you? You wish to hear of my failures, my DEMISE, in detail?" A deep shudder quivered through the Iron Warrior's armor, and the outer plating rippled like a disturbed pool of water.

Trixie's eyes narrowed fearlessly. "Trixie KNOWS what you are."

This stopped Serith short.

"You are Serith. You're a Sorcerer. You're powerful, clever, and your so-called superiors can't even give you an order and be sure the idea didn't come from you in the first place. Your favorite hobbies are studying magic artifacts and annoying Twilight Sparkle, both of which Trixie delights in hearing about. Trixie already knows you." The unicorn shifted slightly under Suuna's hands to help guide her to a particular spot. "What Trixie wants to know is what happened to your body. Which Trixie thinks is perfectly fair, considering Trixie has been running around the base collecting pieces of it for you."

Serith remained silent for several long seconds. Suuna briefly glanced up at him nervously.

"You think you know me?" the Sorcerer asked. His tone gave the impression of a contemptuous sneer, although it hardly seemed like his heart was in it. "You, who have observed and conversed with me for mere months? My lifetime is measured in millennia, unicorn."

Trixie was still unimpressed, and kept an annoyed gaze fixed on the Iron Warrior's visor. "Of course Trixie knows you, Serith." Then she smirked. "So, are you going to prove Trixie wrong?"

Another long silence.

"... You make it seem so easy. So simple," Serith groused, speaking to the ceiling as he tilted his head back, "no doubt clouds your thoughts. Your power is middling, your strength pitiable. And yet you throw yourself at every challenge as if victory is assured." A tired, sad chuckle came from the Sorcerer's vox grille. "What an absurd creature you are."

"Yes, yes, Trixie knows that Trixie is the best," she said dismissively, "but this is about you, not Trixie. Are you going to tell Trixie what this 'phylactery' thing is about, or not?"

Serith seemed to reach a decision, and he snapped his gaze toward Suuna. "You. Servant. Leave us."

Suuna started to move immediately, but Trixie clicked her tongue. "Wait, why? Suuna isn't going to tell anyone!"

"I have little faith in her ability to keep secrets, but that is an irrelevance," Serith growled, "what I am about to tell you I have never told another soul in this fleet. Even the Warsmith himself does not know. I will not compromise this confidence so that you can get a back rub as you listen."

Trixie groaned, but then gave Suuna an apologetic look. "Sorry, Suuna. Why don't you go relax in the café or something? Trixie has some credits in her hat."

"Yes, Mistress. As you wish." Suuna was already digging through the hat for the money as she spoke. If Serith wanted her gone, then she was all too happy to comply.

****

Ferrous Dominus - Solon's forge

"Wait a minute!" Twilight said, leaning her head away from the hololith display. "Serith intended this story to be hidden from everybody but Trixie? Even you? Then how did you even get this recording? Why is there a vid-capture at all?!"

Solon looked up from his work. "Sherith wash making thish recording himshelf. He'sh alwaysh recording Trixie'sh room. He probably shushpectsh that I can tap into hish pershonal shyshtemsh to copy hish memory shtacksh, but in thish cashe he didn't turn off the vid-capture unitsh. Probably jusht forgot."

The Warsmith chuckled as he looked down at his workbench again. "He'sh really not ash shmart ash he pretendsh to be."

Twilight frowned up at him. "But he can easily read the minds of non-psykers, right? Won't he be able to figure out that you know about it?"

"He can't read my mind." Solon paused, and then revised the statement. "Or, rather, he can't read all of them, at leasht. After shcanning a few and having hish thoughtsh filled with technical gibberish, he ushually givesh up rather quickly."

Twilight blinked several times.

"...... What?"

Solon pointed to the hololith. "He'sh shtarting. Lishten."

****

Trixie's quarters (vid-capture playback)

"I am not an Iron Warrior," Serith stated firmly, "I possess none of their Primarch's traits, have the greatest disdain for their tactics, and find even their admirable qualities - their relentless application of logic, their efficiency, and their patience - utterly tiresome. There is only one Legion I despise more, in fact."

An electric arc whipped and crackled around his hand as he gripped it into a fist. "That Legion is my birth Legion: the Thousand Sons."

"Ah. So it's going to be one of THOSE stories," Trixie interjected, "go on."

"I will not bore you with the details of my Legion's fall from grace, but you need know that it was sudden, and not a willful choice on our part. We served the Imperium faithfully, using our sorceries to its benefit, and in reward the Emperor sent the savages of Fenris against us. As our home world and brothers were torn apart by Leman Russ and his pets, we were also plagued by a rash of debilitating mutations, twisting our flesh into horrifying and useless forms. We escaped the Space Wolves and the Imperium, but in doing so we fell right into the clutches of the entities most responsible for our suffering." Serith's voice was trembling, and he held his fist against a wall. "Our Primarch had failed us. The Imperium had failed us. And Chaos was devouring us even as it demanded our service. But the fates had further pain and indignities to heap upon us."

The next word left Serith's vox grille like a curse. Trixie was sure he would have spat on the ground if he were physically capable.

"Ahriman..."

****

Planet of the Sorcerers - time period unknown

"This is absurd! A violation!"

I was young when the Warmaster's Heresy tore the Imperium apart. One of many psykers just finishing his training such that I was sanctioned to wield my power in combat.

"After all that... THING has done to us, after twisting Magnus himself, you wish to SERVE it?"

I had started out rather idealistic. That was not a good trait to have at this particular time in our Legion's history.

"Never! I will NEVER submit my soul to the Dark God of Sorcery!"

I stared into the visor of my Coven Captain, Bisaam, as it sat atop a suit of terminator armor. The armor plate was swimming in ever-shifting runes, and an emblem of a hooked flame quivered in place on his shoulder pad.

The Mark of Tzeentch, Chaos God of change and sorcery.

"Serith. Be calm," the Captain said, holding out a hand toward me. I felt his thoughts began to caress mine, trying to put them at ease.

I pushed back, shoving his influence away. "Captain, surely you know where this path leads," I growled.

Bisaam was unperturbed by my resistance. "Power, Serith."

"Enslavement! Corruption! Self-destruction!" I barked.

"And power, Serith," Bisaam repeated.

A pair of Thousand Sons stood behind the Captain, both of them already marked and shaking their heads at my resistance. They were not psykers, but they recognized the subtle signs of our mental confrontation.

"Lord Tzeentch has offered us a new path."

"That vile daemon has cut off all others!" I retorted, gripping my staff. "Has the Changer of Ways grown so BORED with trapping us in his web of lies that we're now to simply fling ourselves into it of our own volition?"

Bisaam took a calming breath. He was patient, but my every shout and retort struck his mind like a needle. Such conduct was not normally tolerated within our ranks, but he surely knew the enormity of what was being asked of me.

"Lord Tzeentch has already taken us," the Captain-Sorcerer grumbled, "he has indeed dragged our Legion through the very fires of destruction and pushed us to the brink." He held up a hand, and it briefly glowed with arcane power. "But it was a lesson, Serith. A display of what the Changer of Ways is capable of. What WE will be capable of. He has defeated us, and now he offers us power and glory at his side, so that we may join in his machinations rather than falling victim to them."

"Then I refuse," I spat, "I would rather fight our old enemy and fall to his guile and misdirection than prostrate myself at his feet and march to war as his pawn. Let the God of Lies at least expend the effort of deceit if he would use me!"

I clapped my gauntlets together, and a clash of thunder had the two mundane Sons flinching back in surprise. I spread my hands, and a bright blue rope of swirling power was strung between them.

"Time and time again are we forced to submit to foolishness and treachery! First the Imperium forbids our craft! Then the Space Wolves descend to break us! Then Warmaster Horus uses us in his failed rebellion! We flee to the Warp, where we must consort with fell creatures and insane cultists, and take ever-greater risks simply to survive this nightmare of existence! In the meantime, the flesh-change continues to claim more and more of our brothers, turning good men to twisted, mindless monstrosities! And now! NOW, the architect of all our misery wishes us to pledge our loyalty and power to his cause? To become his lapdogs and slay whatever enemies he doesn't care to snuff out with his own efforts?!"

My voice was shrill, and my anger quite palpable. It would have physically buffeted a lesser psyker, but Bisaam was much more powerful than I. He washed away my pulse of fury with a wave of his hand, and instilled his icy calm more firmly in my body.

"SERITH," he boomed, icy mist curling around his helmet, "stop this foolishness at once! You knew this was coming! You've watched your brothers take Tzeentch's Mark by the dozen! We need his power! His knowledge! If we are to ever become MORE than the pawns of the Sorcerer God, then we must adapt and learn from him."

"Those who have taken the Mark talk little of how they might rise from servitude," I growled, warding myself from the chilling energies of my superior, "I hear only of promises of revenge against the Imperium and the fallen Emperor. I begin to suspect that Tzeentch has spirited away your memories of who and what prompted our downfall in the first place. It was NOT the Emperor."

"The Emperor was the one who condemned us and our Legion's power!" blurted one of the other Marines. "He declared us outcast! Not Lord Tzeentch!"

"That is to imply that he was WRONG," I snarled, "the events of our downfall have vindicated the Emperor, not our Primarch."

Bisaam shook his head, and his grip tightened around the handle of the force sword mag-locked against his hip. "Serith, it matters little if you see the wisdom in serving Tzeentch before you swear to him. You will certainly see it afterward. As for actually taking the mark..." the light green glimmer of his visor pulsed brighter. "You have no choice. The Primarch has commanded it."

"Ah, yes! More of our beloved father's immaculate, learned wisdom!" I snapped. This time Bisaam was startled by my words, and the other Astartes stepped forward. "To HELL with Magnus the Red!"

The lesser Sons had their bolters leveled at my eyes by the time I finished the sentence. One grabbed my neck, as I did not bear my helmet at the time.

"Take that BACK," he snarled.

"Coryvn," Bisaam warned.

"You think yourself worthy to challenge a Primarch, pup? You think you know BETTER than Magnus?" the Marine snarled, ignoring his Captain.

He let off enough pressure on my throat for me to speak, and I did so.

"Clearly they are not so infallible as we have thought, if they've been divided and make war with each other," my tone was actually calmer now that I was staring down a boltgun's barrel, "I have followed Magnus, who has led us further and further into ruin and disgrace. I have renounced the Emperor, who has been proven right time and time again about our ambitions and hubris. I have accepted and studied the ways of Chaos, so that we might flourish in this treacherous wasteland. Should we take to war again against our former allies, I will not hesitate to slay them with the full brunt of my power."

My eyes narrowed.

"But I will do that at YOUR order, Captain Bisaam, or some other that commands proper Legion authority. Not Tzeentch. NEVER Tzeentch."

"You don't have a choice," growled one of the mundane Sons.

"Of course I do," I chuckled, still staring down the length of his bolter, "I'm looking at it."

The Marine growled.

Then he groaned.

His boltgun started shaking as his arms quivered. One of his legs buckled, and he fell to one knee, gasping.

Bisaam snapped his gaze to me, and I felt his psychic presence surround mine, trying to cut off the flow of Warp energy. "SERITH! Stop this at once!"

His efforts to stop me did nothing, however. Because it wasn't me.

Both of the Astartes with us collapsed screaming, smoke billowing from the seals of their armor.

I was stunned still, partially because of Bisaam's power, and partially out of genuine shock. It looked like the two non-psykers were being cooked alive inside their power armor.

I reached down, grabbing one by the gorget and arm to help him up. The armor was room temperature, and was suffering no obvious damage or radiological effect.

Still, he screamed, his fingers curling and his visor glowing brighter. Bisaam was next to me on the ground, trying to help the other fallen Astartes. Our squabble was forgotten.

Whatever was happening was a thing of sorcery, not physical energy. I could feel something permeating my sixth sense, sweeping through my soul and diffusing into my body. I supposed this is the same effect as that which had laid low the other soldiers, and yet it hardly seemed possible. They were in terrible pain, gasping and gurgling and unable to stand up. I felt... energized and clear-headed, if anything. As if my Warp-sense had suddenly sprung into greater relief. It was difficult to tell, honestly; as I wasn't being harmed at the time, my thoughts were concerned with those who were.

"Coryvn!" Bisaam shouted, shaking the trooper he was trying to help up. Unlike me, he had his helmet on, and was doubtless scanning his subordinate to figure out what was wrong. I'm sure the data returned was perfectly useless,

"Coryvn! Can you hear me? Can you stand?!"

The power armor went fully limp, and a plume of golden smoke curled from the soldier's vox grille.

"Serith! To the apothecarion!" He lifted Coryvn's arm up so that he could sling his other vambrace underneath Coryvn's legs.

The shoulder joint broke, and the power armor suit dropped back onto the ground. I could see into the torso armor from the arm hole.

There was nothing inside.

Nothing but dust.

****

Trixie's quarters

"Question!" Trixie interrupted. "If you were so against working for this 'Tzeentch' weirdo, why did you join Chaos at all?"

That gave Serith pause. "... I was expecting something more immediately related to bodies turning into dust-filled suits of armor."

"Trixie figures you'll get to that part later," the unicorn shrugged, "but seriously, you talk about the Dark Gods and how they grant you power and knowledge all the time. Tzeentch is one of them, isn't he?"

Serith grunted, crossing his arms over his chest. "It is... different, to take a Mark. To allow a Chaos God to Mark you is to announce yourself, body, mind, and soul, as that God's servant and plaything. Chaos as a whole comprises myriad philosophies, methods to acquire power, and mighty creatures that may answer your demands. It is a self-serving faith, from the beginning to the VERY bitter end, and the only power that offers any worthy patronage and support outside of the Imperium."

Serith's gauntlet started to trace the Chaos Star on his breast plate. "To take a Mark is to subordinate yourself to that God. To put its will and whims above your own life. It grants greater power and favor, true, but it is a much shorter leash than I desire."

Serith made a snorting noise that seemed to echo within his helmet. "As I refuse to serve Tzeentch, my options are anyway quite restricted. Khorne will not abide Sorcerers. Slaanesh is despised by my current masters more than the Imperium itself. And I find Nurgle... unappealing, generally." Serith scoffed. "Not that he would favor me, either. I have no flesh or organs to infect."

"Ugh. Trixie couldn't agree more about Nurgle. Trixie pities those three plague mares." She crunched some oats and gestured for the Sorcerer to continue. "So what happened to the guys?"

"Ahriman," Serith hissed, "Ahzek Ahriman happened. In order to combat the flesh-change that was ruining our surviving brothers, he cast a rubric spell over all of the planet to cure us. Those of us with psionic power were indeed cured. Our mutation rate normalized, such that only the more useful changes granted by the Dark Gods might affect us. Our psychic powers were stronger than ever. Truly, it was a miraculous ritual." His tone suggested otherwise. "Meanwhile, every one of our brothers without a sixth sense crumbled to dust within their armor. They became enchanted automatons, even more empty and mindless than the mechanicals this fleet sometimes employs."

Trixie briefly imagined if something happened such that unicorns were empowered and all pegasi and earth ponies became empty puppets. She shuddered. While she was sometimes accused of holding the other pony races in contempt, the idea of them being ruined to the unicorns' benefit was horrible.

"Ahriman was... satisfied with his spell. Others were not."

****

Planet of the Sorcerers - time period unknown

I stalked up to the doors that led to the laboratories of Ahzek Ahriman, my staff already buzzing with energy.

Two Rubric Marines, the dust-filled golems that now populated our Legion by the hundreds, stood guard at the entrance. I could feel their souls, each one like a blank slate in the Warp. Their thoughts consisted only of the last order they had received, repeated over and over again.

I detonated the door. The Rubrics were flung off their feet and onto the floor, and the entrance was open. I sprinted inside, my hands crackling and my eyes ablaze.

Ahriman was inside, shifting through his materials and equipment. He didn't look up as I entered.

He did look up once I hurled a spear of black lightning against him, and the shadowy energy broke against his armor like water against a stone, washing away harmlessly in the currents of his psychic might.

"... Okay, wait," Ahriman mumbled, "... who are you?" I wore the Legion colors, obviously, but I was not of any power or rank that he would recognize me.

"DIE!!" I snapped, summoning more power around myself. Beakers and vials nearby shattered of their own volition, and the sturdier lab equipment started to tremble from my aura.

Then it was extinguished. Ahriman stripped my strength away, suppressing it with his own titanic will. He flung a palm in my direction, and I flew back to slam into a wall.

He could have finished me off there, or called in the recovering Rubric Marines outside to do it, but he did not.

"I should have foreseen this, obviously," Ahriman mumbled, shaking his head, "tell me, Brother... Serith," he had to read my power armor's identification rune, I suspect, "why do you seek my death? This is clearly an assault of passion, and did not involve extensive planning."

"Why do you THINK?!" I snarled, pushing my will against his and trying to stand up again. "You've taken our Legion, broken and violated, and dragged it to new depths! Your damned Rubric has slain hundreds of our brothers!"

Ahriman sighed, letting his concentration slip off of me slightly. "Yes, I know. Do YOU know that I've already been punished for this? I am exile, now. By order of our Primarch."

"To HELL with Magnus the Red!" I snapped. Ahriman was surprised enough to hear this that he stopped pushing me down, and I surged to my feet. "That's not good enough! You will suffer, as they suffered!"

I grabbed my bolt pistol, but as I tried to aim it the weapon practically dissolved in my hand, wilting and deforming far past the point of possibly firing a bullet.

"Our brother Rubrics do not suffer," Ahriman said. His voice was still calm and unhurried, but there was some other aspect to it now that was harder to understand. He sounded... intrigued. "Our brothers need not fear the flesh-change, and are no longer troubled by pain, age, disease, or-"

"THEY ARE NO LONGER OUR BROTHERS!" I roared. "Just empty, walking armor shells carrying guns, same as you'd find in any collegio cybernetica! You've killed them! You've killed ALL of them!"

Ahriman made a frustrated sound. "It was... unintended. Unfortunate. But-"

"Unfortunate?! You have ruined our Legion in ways that not even the Space Wolves or Tzeentch himself could manage! The Rubrics were Space Marines, Ahriman! They were people! Our battle brothers! You've turned our army of scholars into one of servitors!"

Ahriman fell silent. I could feel irritation and regret bubbling around his thoughts, although I couldn't tell if he was frustrated at my words or his inability to sway me.

"So, then..." he mumbled finally, clasping his hands behind his back, "what do you intend to do about it, Brother Serith?"

This time it was my frustration that surged.

"Obviously your first idea was to attack and destroy me for revenge, but that is both futile and... unproductive," he mused aloud. I was at his mercy and he knew it. "What now, young Sorcerer? Shall you swear your long life to revenge against me? Promise to hunt me down for the sake of these hundreds of souls that cannot appreciate your... heroism?"

I calmed myself, and my head scanned back and forth. Ahriman's notes still littered the desks and benches. I could see the information scattered across them; precious secrets gleaned from the writings of Magnus and the whispers of Tzeentch.

I slammed my hand down on one stack of papers. "I will undo it," I hissed.

Ahriman sounded surprised. "Unmake the Rubric? Really?"

"There must be a way," I insisted, now gathering up the papers in earnest, "destruction wrought by Sorcery is often more mutable than that caused by material weapons. Change works in many directions. This can be reversed. Our brothers restored."

Ahriman laughed. He LAUGHED at me. He kept on laughing as I gathered his notes and started rooting through his equipment.

"Oh, my, Serith," he chuckled, "if only I'd had a Sorcerer like you by my side when I began this venture. One not so easily blinded by the whims of dark gods and the will of our father." His visor glimmered. "What a lonely creature you are."

I growled as I folded up one batch of notes and then pointed at him. "Your research. Give it to me! All of it! I WILL restore our Legion, I swear it!"

Ahriman was clearly fighting not to laugh further as he replied to me. "Serith, friend... precognition is my primary talent. I have glimpsed the distant futures, some split into branches of possibility, and others clear and inevitable. I have seen our Legion's fate writ large upon the galaxy." He walked up to me, his visor glittering in the candlelight. "And you... are not part of it."

"Wow, what a JERK."

You don't know the half of it, my lady...

****

Trixie's quarters

Trixie scratched her head with a hoof. "Trixie is surprised. Why so passionate about the non-psykers in your army? Around here, you initially assumed that the non-unicorns were our slaves."

"My disdain for those without a sixth sense is a learned opinion. Not least by the Rubric of Ahriman itself." Serith chuckled ruefully. "One man is empowered and cleansed by the sorceries, stronger than ever and with his faculties intact. The next is reduced, screaming, to a pile of dust within his own armor, fated to spend the rest of existence as a mindless slave. Such is the difference between the psyker and the mundane mortal." His chuckling stopped. "I'm not completely sure why their fate angered me so. I suppose it was pride in my Legion, so desperately battered by our trials during the Heresy. I did not wish to see our army desecrated further after it had fallen so far. And the Rubric Marines did not deserve their fate. They were not subdued by some mighty warlock who overcame them in battle or by arcane trickery. Their fate was an incident of a flawed ritual, an error on the part of a Sorcerer acting without sanction from them or his Primarch. Their fate was a failure on our part. Or so it was said."

He slammed a fist into the wall again. "There is, of course, the theory that the Rubric was modified without Ahriman's consent or knowledge. That the Changer of Ways inflicted this cruelty upon us even as we submitted to him in droves. My defiant attitude toward Tzeentch was not uncommon amongst our mundane brothers, who obviously had less to gain from an alliance with the God of Sorcery. Many of them may have refused to serve the God of Change under any circumstances. The Rubric of Ahriman neatly resolved such resistance; the Rubric Marines were branded with Tzeentch's Mark and issued no complaint. My own stubborn independence was conveniently forgotten among the Legion's trauma and the divisions that followed Ahriman's departure into exile. A few hold-outs against Tzeentch no longer mattered, so long as they obeyed Legion orders."

Trixie gulped down another mouthful of oats as she listened intently. "So, what happened? Did you study a way to reverse the Rubric?"

"I did," Serith nodded, "for five thousand years, I studied Ahriman's notes and conducted my experiments. The entire time I also faithfully carried out my Legion duties, and I had to keep my work hidden. I feared meddling from Tzeentch's servants, who surrounded me constantly on the Planet of the Sorcerers."

Trixie snorted. "Goofy name."

Serith sighed. "Magnus the Red was, as your people say, something of a nerd. At times I'm quite ashamed to share his gene-seed." He shook his head. "In any case, after five millennia, something happened that shook the remnants of my Legion. Something so unexpected and devastating that some say Tzeentch himself was rattled to learn of it."

Trixie's eyes widened. "What happened?"

A puff of dust billowed from Serith's vox grille as he sighed. "I succeeded."

****

Planet of the Sorcerers - approximately five thousand years ago

I grunted as I was thrown onto a glistening obsidian floor carved with intricate runes. Rubric Marines surrounded me, as did a trio of Sorcerers with their force weapons drawn.

Standing over me was Bisaam. The millennia had changed my coven's captain, as had service to Tzeentch. Electricity seemed to dance constantly over the surface of his terminator armor, and his right arm had become a twisted, reptilian claw. He carried no force weapon, but I knew that to be grazed by his mutated talons would kill a man just as surely as being impaled on a force sword.

Lying before the Sorcerer Lord were several pieces of inert power armor. Bisaam was staring at them intently, as if willing them to move.

"What is this?" His voice was soft, but every syllable stabbed into my mind and sent shoots of pain down my back.

"This... is just a little personal project of mine," I hissed. I remained on my knees as I stared up at him. "I've had something of a breakthrough, recently. It is almost complete."

Bisaam reached down and picked up the helmet lying beneath him. It was empty. Not even dust dirtied its interior. "This... was a Rubric Marine."

"Eighteen of them were found in this state, Lord," growled another of the Sorcerers, "completely inert. Destroyed."

"FREED," I shouted. "I've freed their souls from their long imprisonment and sent them to true rest. No longer do they toil obliviously like machines." I coughed, and glanced down at the blood seeping from a breach in my armor. My brothers had not been gentle in subduing me. "The ritual is imperfect. I am still refining it. But it works. I can shatter the Rubric, and I know what further steps must be taken. Soon I will be able to restore their bodies as well, to release that energy and matter sealed away so long ago, and return them fully to true Space Marines. At last, Ahriman's curse will be undone, and some portion of our Legion's former stature will be restored."

Bisaam took his time to digest this, and then leaned forward. "No. It will not."

"Yeah, Trixie saw this coming."

I'm quite embarrassed to admit that I did not. I truly thought my Legion masters would embrace this opportunity and relish the chance to command true Space Marines rather than ensorcelled drones. My mistake.

"For millennia I have tolerated your stubbornness and disobedience, Serith," Bisaam sighed, tossing away the Rubric helmet, "for millennia I've ignored the whispers that you were dangerous and that your independence was a threat. And now it seems I've paid the price for my negligence."

With a flurry of thought, the inert armor floated up and reassembled itself into a complete power armor suit. Then he released it from his telekinetic hold, and it tumbled back to the floor into pieces.

"Eighteen Rubric Marines. Do you imagine they are simple to replace?" he asked.

"I do," I snapped angrily, "servitors are in no short supply."

His visor pulsed, and a wave of agony washed over me. In truth it could have been much worse, but I was cushioning the assault with my own psychic power. The gap in our abilities was not as severe as it once was.

"Rubric Marines are a Legion asset. They are useful. Valuable," Bisaam growled, "and I've come to appreciate how they don't TALK BACK."

"They are an abomination!" I shouted defiantly. "No other Legion makes slaves of their own Astartes! Ahriman's curse has plagued us for too long! This is our chance to end it! To correct Ahriman's mistake!"

"Ahriman's MISTAKE was political, not arcane," the Sorcerer Lord spat, "had he explained the benefits of the Rubric soldiers, rather than insisting they were a price that needed to be paid, perhaps he would have escaped exile."

I trembled in rage, but I kept a tight leash on my powers. I was still surrounded and quite outgunned.

"I think Magnus the Red would disagree," I retorted, "both with your assessment, and your actions against me now."

Bisaam leaned forward, his terminator armor creaking as he brought his helm almost nose-to-nose with mine.

"To hell with Magnus the Red," he whispered.

"Okay, Trixie thinks this guy is a total mule, but has to admit that was a pretty solid burn."

Oh, indeed. Absolutely brilliant. I was in no position to appreciate his wit at the time, however.

Bisaam backed away again. "Your experiments end now. Your research will be destroyed. You are now outcast, and with your departure the entirety of the Thousand Sons at last belongs to Tzeentch."

"Exile, then. Like Ahriman," I grunted, "how symmetrical."

This actually gave my former lord pause. "Ah... but Lord Tzeentch cares little for symmetry." He tilted his head to the side. "... I know; let's make this more interesting. There is a Dark Mechanicus vessel in orbit currently offloading supplies and vehicles." He tapped the chin of his helmet with a claw, his voice amused. "As you're no doubt aware, we don't get on all that well with the tin men. They'll deal with us, but they generally dislike the supplies we have to trade and refuse to set foot on our world." I didn't need to be a psyker to detect the smile beneath his helmet. "Perhaps a gift might improve our unsteady relations."

"So I'm to be passed off to them like cargo," I growled.

"That little extra bit of humiliation is just the right touch to separate your fate from that of Ahriman's, I feel," said Bisaam, "think of it as a way to empathize more deeply with your Rubric brothers, since you seem to care so deeply for their plight. Now you too are little but chattel to us!"

And so it was. I was handed off to the Dark Mechanicus in chains and imprisoned within the stasis fields of their ships.

The Mechanicus loathes psykers, but it well understands that our kind have value, especially when combined with Astartes flesh. The Dark Techpriests wouldn't dare put me to work or experiment upon me, but they were eager to pass me along once they found a... buyer.

"The 38th Company..."

Indeed. I was sold to Warsmith Solon like a prize pet. Quite beneficial for all involved; the Iron Warriors are lacking in accomplished Sorcerers, and the Dark Mechanicus covets the Warsmith's trinkets desperately. I hear I fetched quite a price. Even I, arguably, benefited from the exchange. Now that I was an Iron Warrior, I again possessed rank and title with which I could accomplish my goals, and no longer had to suffer the constant presence of Tzeentch's lackeys.

But this was cold comfort to me. My failures had cost me membership of my Legion, the only peers I had known for my entire long life. The Iron Warriors - as I mentioned previously - were a pitiful and morbid lot, and few besides Solon showed any appreciation for my skills and knowledge.

I was determined not to give up. Although my research had been destroyed, I had fully memorized my ritual and could replicate much of my work. I would perfect it, and then, one day, I would return to the Planet of the Sorcerers. I would face the armies of the Thousand Sons, and I would restore their Rubric Marines on the very battlefield! With their will finally restored and their slavemasters reeling, we would then see where their loyalties lay!

But this plan was... flawed, obviously. Without the Thousand Sons, I had no Rubric Marines to use for my experiments.

As such... I had to make some, first.

"Are you going to describe the time when you met Solon for the first time and realized how ridiculous he was? Trixie was hoping there would be some kind of confrontation between you two in this story."

No, I will not. The Warsmith is... strange. He is my benefactor, but I do not hesitate to admit that I despise him, utterly.

"Because he's a goofball loser?"

No. I resent him for... other reasons.

Enough. This tale is almost over.

****

Harvest of Steel - approximately two thousand years ago

"Treacherous witch! We will gut you where you stand!"

I watched the Iron Warrior calmly as he strained and writhed against the black iron chains securing him to the floor.

"You're alone, traitor! Surrounded! Do you think I will not be missed?!"

He was in full armor, of course. Necessary to contain his remains after the Rubric had run its course. Unfortunate, seeing how it made it hard to restrain him, but I was prepared.

"Do you think to break me?! You think I will fall to your witchcraft?! Try it, scum! My soul is hard as my plate! I WILL be free of these bonds, and I WILL rend you limb from limb!"

All around the room were long rows of glyphs and arcane circles, each one etched to perfection from my memory. I'd studied them hundreds of thousands of times. Everything was perfect.

The Iron Warrior eventually paused in his struggles, glaring at me through his visor of bloody red. "Nothing to say, wretch? Did you trick me here just to watch me squirm? Why am I here?"

"You are here for an experiment," I said simply, answering his question politely.

"Really, It's the least you could do before obliterating his mind and turning him into dust."

Exactly. He did not seem to appreciate my courtesy, however.

"To hell with you, Sorcerer! You won't get away with this!" he snapped. "When I perish, my brothers will know of my death! They will notice my absence! How long do you think you can hide my capture and destruction?!"

"As long as I need to," I answered with a chuckle, "for when I am through with you, you will still seem alive to your fellow warriors. You will attend your guard details as normal." I raised my arms, and psychic hoarfrost surrounded my vambrace. "In time, if things go according to plan, you will even recover what I'm about to take from you."

The glyphs lit up all around us, and the room was bathed in ghostly light.

"But, sadly, sorcerous endeavors don't always proceed... just as planned."

That line proved to be supremely ironic.

You see, I had never cast the Rubric of Ahriman before, even in its reduced form. I had studied it intensely and constantly, worked out its component rituals and energies, but I had never actually used it.

To this day, I'm still not sure what went wrong. Perhaps my memory of the Rubric was not as complete as I thought. Perhaps trying to constrain the effects to one room complicated things in an unexpected way. Perhaps I simply failed to cast it properly.

Whatever the cause was, soon after the arcane circles lit ablaze with Warpflame, the Iron Warrior started screaming.

As did I.

There is no experience that can quite compare to the agony of your cells imploding around you, from your skin down to your bones. It may not be literally the worst pain one can suffer, but I would wager it is close. Having been unable to feel pain for so long, it's all I can recall of the sensation. Somehow, I too was being turned to dust, and I could swear that the Iron Warrior's screams turned to laughter as we both crumbled together. It must have been quite satisfying for him to see me suffer the exact same fate as I'd inflicted upon him.

Regardless, within a minute, darkness took me.

I was largely insensate as a mound of dust, but not completely so. My physical senses were ruined completely; I still cannot fathom how the actual Rubric Marines function properly within their powered armor. I suppose my case was just different, as a psyker. My only sense was my connection to the Warp, and even this awareness was confused and stilted. I knew that I was not dead, as my Warp sense held a firm connection to the Materium, but without a proper body to anchor to, I was powerless in both realms. My thoughts were horribly fragmented, splintering my comprehension. I could not even think straight.

I could do nothing but wait, and wait I did.

And then I woke up.

****

Harvest of Steel - Solon's forge

"Wh-What? What is... What is happening?" I asked.

Consciousness crashed down on me like a lightning strike. I could suddenly form coherent thoughts. Vision flickered before me, instantly restored. I spoke, and then I heard words.

I was alive. Truly alive, no longer trapped in that bizarre purgatory of my own making.

"Ah-ha! It worked! Heh! Shliver wash about to write you off completely, you know!"

A voice. The Warsmith's voice. My lips curved into an irritated sneer.

Or, at least, they would have.

While trying and failing to make facial expressions, I started to piece together what had happened to me.

My mundane senses were muted, and filtered through my helmet systems more directly than ever before. They also seemed less comprehensive than I remembered; I could see and hear, but my sense of touch was simply... gone. As was all sense of muscle control.

"What happened to me? Where am I?" I demanded.

"You're in my forge," Solon said. The Warsmith loomed over me, and I could hear his many torches and tools burning against my armor. "Ash for what happened, that'sh... well, I'm not completely shure. When we found you, you were nothing but dusht in your armor."

My mind reeled. The Rubric had consumed me. Me! A psyker! And yet, my consciousness was whole again. I had not been lost, as the Rubric Marines are. How?

"How did this happen? How have I been restored?!" My voice was the harsh crackle of a vox system, but it had a subtle electronic quality to it. Like an automata's voice.

"Oh, I came up with a little shomething. Look!"

Solon grabbed my helm and lifted it. My scope of vision followed his movements, for at the moment I had no way of resisting or moving on my own.

I saw my armor, lying on an iron table. The chest plate was open. The phylactery lay inside it, hissing quietly as it did its work. A container for my soul, made of tubes and bulbs.

I was stunned, but soon continued my search for answers. My chronometer was functional, and I checked it to see how long it had been since I miscast the Rubric of Ahriman.

Four standard solar cycles.

In that moment, I finally knew the totality of my failure. My attempt to merely match Ahriman's work had unmade me. My understanding of his ritual was flawed. My research was useless. I would never be able to restore my lost brothers.

And that which I had been unable to accomplish in millennia, Solon had done in four days.

"Less than that, probably. They did have to find you and figure out what happened, first. And decide whether they wanted to bring you back in the first place."

... True. I hadn't thought of that.

"From now on you'll have to control your armor movementsh with telekineshish," the Warsmith rambled, unaware of my building despair and fury, "or did you want me to inshtall a mechanical mushcle shyshtem?"

I screamed. Plating folded inward and flames bloomed from nowhere as my howls punctured the veil of the Empyrean. Tables quivered and hololiths stuttered. I intended to swallow the room in the Warp and end my new existence as a clockwork wraith.

Solon's optical array flickered, and my efforts ceased. The flames guttered and died, the machinery settled, and the malforming metal snapped back to form.

With but a thought, Warsmith Solon had cut off my access to the Warp. My sixth sense was blinded. My entire sensory consciousness contracted to the point of seeing and hearing through my helmet, and absolutely nothing else.

"Now, let'sh not do anything hashty," Solon warned as he put my head back down, "you're probably a bit shtreshed from having your shoul shattered and then shqueezed into a vacuum tube. Get shome resht, Sherith."

As my optical visor started to cycle off, I reflected that I had been mistaken, earlier. I hadn't truly understood how completely I'd failed.

I had not just lost my body, but any hope of escaping the dregs of the 38th Company. My future was inexorably bound with the oaf Solon, for he now understood my form in ways that completely eluded me. Resistance and escape was impossible. This was my new eternity. An altogether unique damnation of my own making.

"What happened to the other guy?"

****

Trixie's quarters

"Pardon?" Serith asked, tilting his head to the side.

"That Iron Warrior you were experimenting on. What happened to him? You dusted him too, right?" Trixie asked around some more oats.

Serith took a few moments to think. "... You know, I haven't the slightest idea. That's a good question." Serith crossed his arms over his chest. "Warsmith Solon would have restored him too, unless for some reason that wasn't possible. Huh."

A contemplative silence settled over the room.

"... Well, in any case, Trixie sees why you don't want more people to know about your past," the unicorn said, patting Serith's leg sympathetically, "you're not nearly as evil as everyone thinks you are!"

"Don't tell ANYONE," Serith hissed.

Trixie nodded her head, and then furrowed her brow. "So... what about restoring your Legion? Are you still trying to do that?"

"No. I have given up my long quest. A true mark of shame for those gifted with life eternal," Serith spat, "I suppose that such a thing may be entirely possible now, if Warsmith Solon could be convinced to construct a great number of phylacteries, but I care not. I am too embittered to seek such a trite fantasy, and the Thousand Sons are no longer my Legion."

Then he raised his head. "That said, I do sometimes fantasize about returning to the Planet of the Sorcerers. But it would be no crusade of revival and brotherhood."

He gripped his gauntlets into fists, and sparks blasted from his vambrace as energy ran over it. "I am a Rubric Sorcerer, a golem psyker, the only one of my kind. Enchantments to foil flesh have no effect upon me, and I would wreak havoc amongst the feeble remnants of my former Legion. What is more, I still possess the ritual to unmake Ahriman's puppet soldiers and free their souls; the Rubric Marines of the Thousand Sons are nothing to me."

Serith blew out a sigh. "But such a conflict is... unlikely. I have no goals, no direction. No purpose to aid the passage of the centuries. Nothing but the diversions of Solon's petty tasks and my little hobbies with which to amuse me."

He paused again, and then his gaze dropped to Trixie. "I suppose I also have your exquisite company, Lady Trixie. For so long as you last, at least."

Trixie didn't seem at all bothered by the offhand mention of her mortality. "Well, when Trixie finally goes to that big stable in the sky, at least you'll still have Twilight Sparkle to annoy. Trixie is pretty sure she's immortal."

"Really? The alicorns possess eternal life?" The Sorcerer sounded deeply intrigued. "You'd think there would be more around, then. Are they forced to cross-breed with other sub-species? I haven't heard of any alicorn Princes, after all."

"Well, Trixie is pretty sure that-"

****

Ferrous Dominus - Solon's forge

Twilight paused the playback, not especially interested in hearing Serith and Trixie speculate on the mating habits of the royal family.

She dropped her gaze to the floor, her thoughts churning about her head. Minutes passed, and the only sound was the hum of energy and the creaking noise of Solon's mechanical body.

Finally, she looked up at the Warsmith.

"What DID happen to that Iron Warrior?" Twilight asked.

Solon's body swiveled around. "Oh, Brother Vendrik? He wash fine. Sherith actually only managed to deshtroy hish arm. A little bionicsh work and he wash better than new."

"Oh, wow. That's... kind of sad, somehow," Twilight mumbled, "I have to admit, this really puts Serith in a new light. He always seemed so... casually competent and untouchable."

"It'sh an impression he worksh hard to maintain," Solon explained, "it makesh hish failuresh all the more embarashing, I'm shure."

"I don't really understand his enmity for you, though," Twilight considered, "you saved his life!"

"He doeshn't particularly think it wash worth shaving." Solon shrugged his massive shoulders. "Furthermore, hish entire Legion philoshophy eshpoushed the shuperiority of pshykersh to the mundane technologiesh shanctified and praished by the machine cultsh. He ish a walking, talking refutation of that ideal. A creature of conshiderable pshychic power reshcued from hish own incompetence by my machinesh. He findsh it quite galling."

"Ah. I see. It still seems kind of petty, but I understand." Twilight mumbled. "As interesting and enlightening as all this is, it doesn't really help my situation, though. Serith is still trying to kill my friends, and I don't think empathizing with him is going to stop him."

Solon waved his flesh-arm, and a new hololith slid up into place. "Oh, that'sh nothing. I'll upload Sherith'sh killshwitch program to your armor. You can deactivate him whenever you wish."

"Really?" Twilight frowned. "I don't think that will stop him from wanting to kill us, though."

"Oh, it mosht certainly won't. He HATESH the killshwitch. It cutsh off hish pshychic abilitiesh, and hish armor tendsh to jusht fall apart on the shpot. It'sh hilarioush!" Solon chuckled as the upload finished, and then he dismissed the hololith.

"Well, I still think-"

Twilight was cut off by a feminine yelp, and she jumped to her hooves as an energy spark flashed within the cage in the middle of the forge.

After a few seconds of watching the magic flare sputter, Princess Luna was dumped into reality behind the bars of Solon's prison. She was not wearing her armor, and as she stared at the bars of the cage she was clearly wondering if that had been a mistake.

"... What? Wherefore hast We arrived here?" Luna asked, glancing about in confusion.

"I'm going to get a lot of ushe out of that teleport inhibitor, I can tell," the Warsmith drawled.

"You know, you could have just asked us not to come in unannounced if it bothers you so much," Twilight mumbled as Luna continued to panic.

"I would have thought the shentry gunsh, armored blasht doorsh, and lack of formal accesh would have made thingsh perfectly clear," Solon retorted before swiveling back around, "I'll bet Celeshtia doesn't have to put up with thish..."

"Ah, excuse us? Warsmith? Princess Sparkle?" Luna asked nervously as she pawed at the bars of her prison. "Hast We made some error? We do not recall doing anything to cause offense..."

"Yeah, I should... I should just go," Twilight mumbled as her horn started to glow. A moment later she vanished in a burst of purple light.

A moment after THAT, she reappeared over Luna and then fell on top of her as the larger Princess shouted in surprise.

Solon swiveled back around. "You desherved that one," he said to the armored alicorn as Twilight groaned, "what did you expect would happen?"

Another teleport flare flashed within the cage, and the two mares yelped as yet another body collapsed on top of them.

Solon's optics whirled in their socket. "... Dishcord? Huh. I'm shurprished the inhibitor worksh on you."

"Oh, it doesn't," Discord snickered as he laid limply over the ponies' backs, "but everypony else was doing it, so I wanted to join in!"

"Get off us, daemon oaf!" Luna demanded, flapping her wings angrily.

"Turn off the inhibitor! Please, turn off the inhibitor!" Twilight shouted. "Don't leave us in here with him!"

"Maybe I'll jusht go turn off Sherith myshelf," Solon mumbled as he scuttled toward the exit, "I could use the catharshish."

The Tactician

Author's Note

And here it is. The (apparently) long-anticipated Sliver chapter. I neglected to write the flashback parts with his characteristic slur, because DEAR GOD, THE PAIN.

This will conclude the Visions of Darkness series. Unless I come up with some other kooky Chaos character worth delving into. I'm not going to do one for the Tau, because I have no clue what Tau society is like, other than it lacking all the inequality and social strife that keeps us humans on our toes. BORING.

On a final note, the first sketches of the picture included below initially had Breezy Blight and Poison Kiss laying on Sliver's legs with his arms over them, like he was a huge, armored, tumor-ridden Santa Clause. It was hilarious, but sadly, I needed to have the picture revised for accuracy.

The Tactician

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Tactician

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 5

Temple of Nurgle

Sliver knelt within a shallow pool of rancid water, his head bowed. His hands rested together on the pommel of his hammer, which lay head-down in the muck.

He remained this way for minutes, silent and unmoving. The only sound was the dripping of various water flows in the temple, and the distant echoes of cultists walking amongst the worn stone of the floors.

Then, as if on some unspoken signal, the Iron Warrior surged to his feet and swung his hammer around.

"DAMNATION!" Sliver roared, raising his weapon into the air above his head.

The hammer didn't fall. Sliver's cold intellect fought a silent battle against his boiling rage within his head. This was holy ground, not some training yard for him to abuse as he saw fit. Such tantrums were beneath him.

Gently placing his weapon down, Sliver started pacing restlessly.

"I shouldn't be here. Thiss iss a wasste of time. If Grandfather cannot balm my mind, then my time would be better sspent reviewing launch data and progresss reportss," the Chaos Lord growled.

Still, he was reluctant. His Nurgle worship had always sat uncomfortably with his duties, and he knew that there was nothing especially important that demanded his attention. Now was the time for prayer. But he found himself dissatisfied.

Amidst his brooding, Sliver picked up a noise that had become remarkably familiar of late: the sound of hooves against stone. He wasn't even that annoyed by it anymore. Still, he debated leaving the temple rather than dealing with the ponies approaching, if only to avoid them seeing him so flustered.

In the end his indecision kept him rooted in place until the mares emerged from a sewer-like tunnel joining Sliver's prayer room to the rest of the temple.

"Ah! Lord Sliver!" Poison Kiss said brightly as soon as she saw the bloated Chaos Lord. "Cheerio!"

"Hey, Lord! What's happening?" Breezy Blight asked with a smile.

Only Rot Blossom failed to offer an enthusiastic greeting, afraid that they may be interrupting his prayers or some other personal affair.

The equines of Phage Squadron were wearing torn brown robes rather than their wargear, and their coats were damp and dirty. Sliver guessed they had been in the temple for some time.

"Just got done with a few conversions and baptisms!" Kiss said eagerly. "Grandfather is quite popular with the ill and dying! This crop was mostly younger ponies, and not a fighter amongst them, but give them some time and maybe a little cholera and they'll do Nurgle proud!"

"All mares, though," Breezy griped, "sure would be nice to find an infected stallion for a change..." She pawed at the floor tiles restlessly while Kiss rolled her eyes. Blossom might have been rolling her eyes too, but it was impossible to tell through her mane.

Sliver turned to stare at the ponies silently for a few seconds, and then turned his gaze away with a noisy snort. Then he shifted his pose to again kneel in the filthy pool at his feet.

The mares of Phage Squadron weren't particularly surprised or concerned with being brushed off. Sliver had always been unfriendly, even for an Iron Warrior. But something still seemed off about the encounter. It wasn't like Sliver to try to retreat into distraction when he saw them; normally he gave them his full attention or dismissed them directly as his mood demanded.

The Nurglite ponies hesitated only a moment, and then Poison Kiss tossed her head toward the water, gesturing to her squadmates. The ponies gently stepped into the pool themselves, lining up next to the armored behemoth that they called Master.

"Bless us, Plaguefather, your children in arms," Kiss intoned, closing her eyes, "lend us your poison and turn it to strength. Protect us from the blades and bullets of the foe that would deny you, and we, in turn, shall grant your love to them."

"Blessed be the rot," added Blossom.

"Praise Nurgle!" shouted Breezy, flapping her wings and unsettling the water below.

"Every one of us you mold into a colony of disease, a living, thriving city. Rich with life, and given power over death. Thank you, Grandfather, and-"

"Be SSILENT," Sliver snapped.

The reaction was immediate, and quite telling. The ponies flinched away, their ears folded down, and Blossom whimpered. They looked up at the Chaos Lord with eyes full of hurt, but also concern. This was not a normal reaction.

Sliver hardly cared if he was feared or hurt the feelings of his warriors (or whatever the ponies rated as these days), but he instantly regretted lashing out like that anyway. Prayers to Nurgle were nothing that he should be silencing without good reason. This was mere venting, and there were more productive ways to spend his fury.

With a frustrated growl, Sliver stood up again and approached the wall of the room.

Poison Kiss shared another glance with the other mares, and then carefully took a step after the Iron Warrior. "My Lord? Have we displeased you?"

Sliver made another incoherent noise. He didn't owe the ponies an explanation, but he didn't feel especially aggravated by their presence, either. Eventually he decided that if he was going to vent in front of the equines, then he may as well vent to them rather than on them.

"It iss not you who hass disspleassed me, no. Thiss quarrel hass nothing to do with you or your kind. Or very little, at leasst." Sliver quite deliberately placed his hammer in a corner and then stepped back out of reach. If he lost his temper again, the extra effort to find his grip might very well prevent a new hole in the wall.

When he turned back to Phage Squadron, their expressions had changed completely. Their ears were perked up and they leaned forward eagerly, hanging on to every word. Sliver found it slightly embarrassing.

A deep sigh spat puffs of moist, rancid gas from the filters of his helmet. "The Russted Brotherhood iss gone. Celvid and Darrok were unable to esscape the Sspace Hulk in time when it was ssundered by the Warp sstorm. They formed the center of the rearguard when we sstarted evacuating the vesssel, holding back the Orkss who didn't even care that their ship was coming apart beneath their feet. Their ssacrifice ssaved dozenss of other brotherss, but their fate painss me deeply. Their bodiess were recovered before retreating through the sstorm, but... whatever the Orkss had not desstroyed the Warp finished off. They are gone."

Blossom gasped. The mares all looked stricken by the news, which Sliver found fairly surprising.

"I'm so sorry, Lord," Kiss said as she hung her head, "we didn't realize..."

"Of coursse you didn't," Sliver growled, "none of you equine wormss think on the cosst of our victory. The livess expended to keep the Orkss at bay. None of you CARE." He shifted and pointed a finger in the general direction of Canterlot. "That white witch who hass sseized control of the very ssolar cycle ssitss in her gilded capital - that we have TWICE recovered from alien domination - and whingess about the evilss of Chaoss and the tragedy of thiss world'ss corruption! It infuriatess me to think my brotherss perished to the benefit of that inssolent fool!"

"Is that what's bothering you?" Blossom asked tepidly. "That everypony seems so happy? Would you... feel better if we mourned with you?"

Sliver didn't answer for several seconds, staring at a crude relief of the Mark of Nurgle on the wall.

"No. No, that iss not my grievance. Merely a ssymptom of it. My fellow Iron Warriorss hardly show the ssame regret for the livess losst, nor even the mercenary sscum, even though they have borne the greatesst brunt of the cassualtiess." He swept a hand to the side. "I desspisse thiss world. I hate fighting on it, and I detesst fighting for it. I hate every creature that walkss itss ssoil..."

This time all three of the mares whimpered and looked sad.

"... Perhapss not thosse who have found their way to Nurgle'ss embrace," Sliver allowed reluctantly. The ponies perked up instantly. "But there iss nothing on thiss globe I would deem worthy of fighting for. No prize worth the livess of Iron Warriorss, be they the mighty Russted Brotherhood or the incompetent Asstartess that sswell our lessser rankss. Yet here we are. And here we sstay, until the damned shipss can be repaired. It frusstratess me."

The Chaos Lord sighed again. "Celvid thought thiss world may be worth defending. He talked of turning it into a home. But even if it iss sso, he will not ssee it."

"You care for your men very much," Kiss whispered. A small track of tears ran down her cheeks, and the unicorn paused to wipe them away with a leg. "It is not a common trait among the Iron Warriors, as far as we can tell."

Sliver made another aggravated sound. "It iss not a common trait among Asstartess of any breed or loyalty. Every one of uss iss a son of Perturabo, a fragment of the greatesst of the Primarchss. Every one of uss hass limitlesss potential. Yet we are collected and expended like ammunition. Even Ssolon..."

Sliver trailed off, his voice trembling. Then he turned away sharply, and leaned against a wall.

"My Lord?" Kiss began hesitantly. "If... If you don't mind me asking... there's something I've wondered for some time. Why is Warsmith Solon the High Commander?"

"What do you mean?" Sliver demanded, glancing back at the ponies.

"Why not you, Lord?" Kiss clarified. "I mean, personally, I rather like Warsmith Solon, but he certainly isn't very popular. It's obvious that you command much greater respect and do the bulk of the military planning. So why is the Warsmith in charge?"

Sliver turned to face the wall again. The ponies waited uncomfortably for an answer, but the seconds rolled by in silence.

A deep, aggravated groan came from Sliver's helmet, and he turned away from the wall. "Warssmith Ssolon iss Warssmith of the 38th Company firsst and foremosst becausse my Primarch, Perturabo, decreed it sso."

Sliver stomped across the length of the room, and his massive gait sent rolling waves through the shallow prayer pool.

"That iss not to ssay he iss entirely unssuited to the role. The pride of the Iron Warriorss meanss nothing to him, and he iss ever concerned with ssupply levelss and material efficienciess. It iss an ideal attitude for thiss fleet'ss objective. And he hass many other talentss that have proven mosst usseful."

Sliver reached a raised stone ridge that seemed to be carved out of the wall, and then sat down on it. The stone cracked instantly from his weight and dropped his seat several inches, but he didn't even seem to notice.

"... I could lead the 38th if I sso chosse," Sliver said after a long pause, "I have had the opportunity. I did not take it."

"Why not?" Blossom asked softly.

Sliver leaned forward. "Becausse to elevate my orderss above Ssolon'ss would be to defy my Primarch'ss wishess. To asssume that I knew better than Perturabo, who assked me to watch over the Warssmith, would be an act of grave hubriss."

He paused, staring up at the grimy, dripping ceiling. "Bessidess... we do not make ssuch a poor leadership, him and I. Ssolon keepss my armiess well-ssupplied and ssupported, and keepss attrition of my sservantss low. Desspite our army'ss reputation and remit, the 38th boasstss conssiderable numberss and ressourcess beyond that of more resspected Warssmithss. That iss due to Ssolon'ss influence and effortss."

He paused again, and then looked down at Phage Squadron. They were seated on the floor in front of him, laying together in a row and listening attentively.

"And now we count you wretchess among our number, as well," Sliver rumbled, "I am quite ssure no ssuch thing would have happened under my command."

"Well, then I'm glad he's in charge!" Breezy said with a grin.

Kiss tilted her head to the side. "So this 'Perturabo' man gave you the order to help lead this army?"

"He did," Sliver confirmed, "but Perturabo iss no mere man. He iss our greatesst leader and father, the pinnacle of all our idealss. To even meet with him perssonally, alone, wass a great honor."

Again Sliver's thick, phlegm-laden monologue halted.

"The asssignment he gave me... wass not."

****

Gloriana-class cruiser Iron Blood - briefing room

I knelt the moment I stepped past the front door, my knee plate slamming onto the floor and my gaze dropping to fix upon that very point.

"My Primarch. I am honored to hold audience with you," I said reverently, "how may I serve?"

No response came immediately, although I heard him turn around. He was fully armored, and his plate was massive, even larger than my current daemon armor.

"... So you are Captain Sliver."

"Yes, my Lord Primarch."

I was... nervous. This was a troubled time in our Legion's history. We had turned traitor against our Emperor, but our rebellion had failed. The Warmaster, Horus, was dead. The Legions of Chaos fled across the galaxy, shamed and broken in a haphazard retreat from the Imperium's remaining armies. Our own Legion had fared better than most, but we still found ourselves on the losing side, and our allies were useless. Nobody knew what would become of us, but we looked to Perturabo, as always, for guidance.

But what of me, then? I had not failed, as far as I was aware. The Iron Warriors, at least, had performed their duty impeccably during the Siege of Terra, unlike certain other armies.

"The Emperor's Children?"

Yes... Wait, how do you know about them?

"You blokes gripe about them a lot. And as Chaos cultists, we DID eventually get curious as to why one corner of the Dark Pantheon was conspicuously absent among the army."

Good. At least I need not relate THAT story.

"Rise, Captain Sliver," Perturabo commanded.

I did so, and finally stared up into his eyes. Dark and brooding, but also... searching. Inquisitive. I didn't need to see my Primarch to know that he possessed a deep intelligence, but to look into that gaze is to know true humility. To realize that one is but a small component of a larger machine that only he truly comprehends.

But machines sometimes require adjustment.

"I have heard some good things about you, Captain," Perturabo said curtly, "your rank is middling, but you have impressed."

I hesitated, somewhat surprised. "You... honor me, my Primarch. I have merely fulfilled my duties as instructed, nothing more. I am... I am honestly surprised that Commander Lavvix thought it warranted mention."

"He didn't," Perturabo informed me.

"Oh. Then... Warsmith Kuan'Shen?"

"He characterized you as frail and naïve," my Primarch said calmly.

I said nothing in response, and he leaned forward.

"How does that make you feel, Sliver? To know that your contributions to our success are ignored or credited to others less deserving? To be criticized for performing your duties with excellence and skill?"

"I... I feel confused, my Primarch," I stumbled over my words, fighting the impulse to stare at the ground.

One thick eyebrow on Perturabo's face climbed upward. "Confused as to how you're treated this way, or confused as to why?"

"Neither, my Primarch," I answered, "I know well how a Commander might take credit for their underling's success or minimize its importance. I'm confused as to where you heard good things about me when my superiors have not vouched for my service."

Perturabo chuckled. It was like the sound of a macrocrane moving.

"Very good, Captain Sliver... very thoughtful indeed." He leaned back again until he sat up straight. "I did not speak falsely when I said that I had heard others commend you. But I did not hear this from your superiors. I heard this from your men." A grim smile crossed his face. "They respect you. Appreciate you, even. Not just as a leader willing to fight among them, but as someone who eschews the petty politics and guile of our upper ranks. They think you're different. And I think they're right."

"Different...?" I was uncertain. So far the meeting had been going very well, but I was wary of overreaching or failing some hidden test of strength or character.

"You could have defended yourself against your Warsmith's criticisms or attacked him with your own. You did not. You could have started singing your own praises before your Primarch as soon as it was clear my view was favorable. You did not. You are humble, cautious, and you do not seek to place yourself above your betters. Your men even speak of impassioned grief for those lost and an honest concern for the suffering of your units. It looks alarmingly like... compassion." His brow creased. "If we're being honest, you aren't much of an Iron Warrior at all."

I felt my stomach tying itself into knots. Still, I waited for my Primarch to continue. I awaited his complete judgment.

Besides, I still didn't really know why I was here.

"Loyalty. Humility. Compassion," Perturabo rumbled, "even if narrow in scope, pertaining only to your Legion, these are... unique traits to find in one of my own. I do not possess them. It was by no quirk of my gene-seed or your instruction that you came to be the officer that you are."

I didn't know what to say. To be told that I was... different from my Legion Primarch was strange. Not necessarily a condemnation, but hardly praise. So I said nothing.

"Such traits, however, are not greatly valued by your current superiors," Perturabo continued once he seemed sure I was not going to object, "if left under the command of Kuan'Shen's Grand Battalion, I've no doubt you'll find yourself removed for some incidental failure or expire during a mission you had no hope of completing. That would be a waste. I am reassigning you a commander who can appreciate your virtues rather than resent them."

I looked up at my Primarch as he began making notes in a dataslate. It was... bizarre, to say the least, to see the mighty Primarch Perturabo performing simple bureaucratic work and shuffling low-level officers about his Grand Battalions.

"You are still confused," Perturabo grumbled as he worked, sensing my unease.

"I am, my Primarch. Why do I warrant reassignment from you, master of the Legion? Am I to undertake some specific mission?"

Perturabo showed me a stone-like frown.

"... In a manner of speaking, yes."

Another long pause settled over us, but this one was different. More tense. My Primarch was weighing his options, weighing me, in his head.

"We are at a delicate... no, an ominous time in our Legion's history," Perturabo growled. His temper was rising now, his eyes clouding over slightly. "The Warmaster has failed. The power that he sought to harness - that guided him to oppose the Emperor - Chaos, has failed. We flee along with the rest of the... rebels... for the Warp anomaly to the galactic West."

"The Eye of Terror..." I whispered.

Perturabo grunted in acknowledgment. "Eventually. First we head to Sebastus. I have one more parting gift for the Imperial Fists, and an offer for the Darker Powers." He pushed aside the dataslate, apparently done with it. "But the Legion must be prepared. Organized. Stronger than ever. We march into a new age. A dark, painful chapter of our history. A great many challenges await us aside from the lapdogs snapping at our heels." He sneered angrily. "If the Legion is to survive, it will need to adapt. We had prepared for a future as the masters of the Imperium, but instead we are to be the playthings of Chaos. Such is the price of Horus's failure that WE will come to pay!"

Perturabo leaned forward, and I heard the table groan under the pressure. My Primarch was veering further from the topic at hand, and I could feel the rage boiling away within him, slowly building itself toward violent release. I took a chance and spoke out of turn.

"What is to be my reassignment, my Primarch?"

He snapped a fierce glare toward me, but it vanished an instant later. Either he realized he was beginning to rant, or he he had decided to move me along so that he could attend to more important matters.

"You are hereby transferred to the 38th Company of the First Grand Battalion, under the command of Techmarine Solon," Perturabo's voice was again flinty and indifferent, as if what he was saying was of no real consequence, "there are leadership deficits among that command that I believe you are suited to address."

I believe I flinched, at the time.

"... Is that a problem, Sliver?" Perturabo asked. He was clearly waiting for a challenge or complaint.

"That is... generally considered a punishment detail, my Primarch," I said carefully, "am I being punished?"

At this question Perturabo looked thoughtful. I seemed to be deftly navigating the tumult of his mood, at least.

"... A punishment would imply that there is some behavior of yours that needs correcting," my Primarch finally said, "but that is not the case. I am sending you to Solon because he needs your help, not because you need his. Have you met him?"

"No, my Primarch. I've heard of him. And, well..."

"Nothing good, I'm sure," Perturabo snorted, staring up at the wall. It was covered with schematics and calculations based on the Imperial Palace. The only trophy he needed to commemorate that greatest and most bittersweet of victories. His greatest work. So far, at least.

"Techmarine Solon is not well liked by either his men or the men he supplies in the thick of combat. The criticisms of him and his command are largely true, but largely irrelevant. He is the only one I can trust with such a position, as he is the only Iron Warrior of sufficient rank and ability who would not make every effort to escape it."

Perturabo looked at me again, his eyes hard. "You will serve him, and you shall protect him, Sliver. He is not a strong man. But as we retreat across the galaxy and our foes multiply, his role, and that of the 38th Company, will become ever more crucial to our success. Do you understand?"

Once more, I knelt to my Primarch. "Battles are won with zeal. Wars are won with logistics. Thank you for this opportunity to better serve the Legion, my Primarch."

"You're welcome. You are dismissed."

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 5

Temple of Nurgle

"So, wait, I don't get it. If Perturabo liked you and he thought Warsmith Solon was a loser like everyone else, why didn't he put YOU in charge? Make Solon the Vice-Commander?" Breezy asked.

"As I ssaid before, I am not in the habit of quesstioning Perturabo'ss orderss," Sliver grumbled, "but if I had to guesss..." he looked up at the ceiling. "Compasssion. He ssaid I posssesss compasssion."

"I could argue the point, but okay, yeah?" Kiss prompted.

"Thiss iss a grave weaknesss to an Iron Warrior. To be moved by cassualtiess, to hessitate in sselling livess for an objective, iss a sseriouss flaw. One that Warssmith Ssolon doess not share. Perhapss my Primarch thought it besst if hiss relentlesss drive for efficiency held authority over my concern for my men. Or maybe..."

Sliver lowered his gaze back to the ponies. "Perturabo was alwayss curioussly indulgent of Warssmith Ssolon. I do not know why. One of hiss final actss before the misssion that earned him the form of a Daemon Prince wass to promote Ssolon to Warssmith and greatly expand hiss command. Perhapss he ssaw ssomething in Ssolon. Ssome hidden sstrength or advantage to him that esscapess hiss criticss."

"Well, he DOES prefer not to kill alien races on sight if they're no threat to him," Blossom pointed out, "we kind of like that about him."

For the first time since any of the mares had known him, Sliver laughed. It was a slow and heavy, like the beat of a drum, and it was the first non-angry outburst of emotion that Phage Squadron had ever seen from the Chaos Lord.

"Yess... perhapss my Primarch foressaw that one day, Warssmith Ssolon would bring poniess into the Legionss of Chaoss, and unite equine-kind againsst the Imperium. That wissdom certainly would have esscaped lessser mindss."

The laughter didn't last long, and soon he was back to his usual raspy breathing.

"Nonethelesss, Ssolon'ss decissionss chafe. That iss the ssource of my pressent melancholy. Hiss orderss here have cosst uss gravely, but he actss as if we've achieved a great victory."

"Okay, true," Kiss began her protest hesitantly, "but no one could have foreseen that the Orks would come charging straight through a Warp storm like that. Even Serith was shaken up."

A deep, bestial growling noise came from Sliver's helmet, and the ponies felt their fur stand on end.

"Ssserith..." Sliver's usual slur hissed slightly longer than usual as he spat the Sorcerer's name. "We were foolish to ever trusst that one."

"I think that's a BIT harsh," Breezy mumbled, "sure, he made a mistake, but it was in good faith, right? And he helped fix it, too!"

"We can never be ssure if Sserith'ss failure iss merely incompetence or a calculation," Sliver grumbled, "although, to be fair, he triess to dissguisse the former as the latter more often than the other way around."

"So, how was it? Joining the Company, I mean?" Blossom asked, trying to steer the conversation back to Sliver's past.

"Misserable. The Iron Warrior typically relegated to our Company iss a cut below the average ssoldier. Too weak for the other Warssmithss, but sstill too valuable to ssacrifice for ssome kind of daemonic ritual; that iss the 38th Company. Morale iss terrible, and where the Legion'ss other armiess ssuffer from paranoia and political sstrife, we ssuffer from apathy."

"How so, Lord?" Kiss asked.

Sliver took a moment to consider the question. "... In any normal army, Warssmith Ssolon would have been ussurped long ago. There have been many opportunitiess, given how often he iss dissabled after being mauled in a duel. However, no Iron Warrior wishess to be the one to replace him and manage thiss fleet'ss dutiess. Ordinarily promotion iss the besst method of ssurvival in an Iron Warrior army. That iss not the casse with uss. And nobody hass ever been reasssigned from our rankss."

"So you're buggered as soon as you end up here, eh?" Kiss asked with a frown. "Do you think they'd show a little more pep if you were Warsmith?"

Sliver nodded. "I do. A ssquad of ssoldierss told me as much, once."

"Just once?" Breezy asked.

"Yess... once."

****

Void Fortress Charnel

(Formerly Fortress Screaming Rapture)

The assault had been a crushing success.

We had gone in as a Chaos fleet, for a change. Not an exceptionally cunning deception, given that it was true. We declared ourselves renegades, spoke curses against the Emperor that no Loyalist could think to utter, and told them that we wished to join and supply their twisted revelries.

The servants of Slaanesh met with a swarm of unarmed mercenaries and deck ratings that docked with their station. Emperor's Children, as well as a great many of their mortal playthings. I'm not sure if Fulgrim's depraved Children ever suspected anything at all; I am inclined to give other Astartes the benefit of the doubt, but Slaanesh's warriors are a special breed of idiot.

In any case, with some micro-automata of Solon's design in the base, we were able to quietly cripple their internal security systems and communications. When we boarded the void fortress ourselves to kill the Emperor's Children we met almost no organized resistance. Some of the enemy Astartes were even killed in their sleep.

The most significant casualty was Warsmith Solon, naturally. He managed to find some Chaos Lord of no consequence in the Overseer's quarters. The Slaaneshi scum was putting power swords into Solon, one by one, when I found them. Each blade speared a separate organ, apparently, and he was saving Solon's hearts for last.

"Eww. Gross."

And stupid. I slew the Chaos Lord myself and had Warsmith Solon carted off to the station's medicae facility.

The void fortress was ours.

"What happened to all the humans you sent in as a decoy?"

Them? After the assault, many were declared lost and given over to the Dark Mechanicus for recycling into servitors. Some had gone insane in the short period of time they were exposed to Slaaneshi worship, and others took to their "cover" of depraved reveling too convincingly to be trusted afterward. But theirs was a worthy sacrifice, for but six Iron Warriors met their end against tenfold as many Emperor's Children.

The mission was complete, casualties minimal, and a great deal of valuable spoils had come from our fellow Astartes. I was most satisfied with the result.

Not everyone was.

"What is it, Raikken? I have much to do before we set out again. The station must be stripped bare as soon as possible."

I was following an older veteran into the depths of the fortress, told that he needed to speak to me about an urgent matter. Although I had much work to do, I made a point of meeting with my soldiers upon request when I could.

"Your strategy was superb, Lord Sliver," Raikken said as he led me forward, "the fools never saw us coming, even after we had been slaughtering them for hours."

"Slaaneshi scum are hardly worth the effort," I replied, "and much credit must be given to the Warsmith's toys. His creations worked flawlessly."

"Of course, Lord," Raikken replied, "but it was your strategy. And you led the assault."

"Warsmith Solon led the assault," I corrected the Aspiring Champion, "I only took command once he was incapacitated."

"Because of course he was incapacitated," Raikken growled. There was something strange in his tone, and I was becoming tense. I was no stranger to fawning praise, or to contempt for my master, but it felt as if I was being led into a trap, of some sort. My grip tightened around my power axe.

"What is this about, Raikken? If you wish to complain about the Warsmith, I will hear you out at a more convenient time."

He shook his head. "No, Lord Sliver, that's not..." he trailed off uncertainly. "We're almost there. Just ahead."

Raikken was acting suspiciously, but I trusted him enough not to demand an explanation just yet. He and I were close, and he was but one of a handful of warriors I found worthy to lead who were not Warpsmiths.

"Why are Warpsmiths exempt?"

That's... complicated. The Techmarines of our Legion have always had a different attitude toward service to the 38th Company than the rest of the Iron Warriors. It's not important.

I was led into an antechamber. There were numerous dead bodies heaped in a corner, and the room was thick with gore. Along with... other fluids. I really do despise the Emperor's Children. Even murdering them is revolting and degrading.

Aside from that, there were five other Iron Warriors waiting for us. I knew all of them well; they were all squad leaders, resolute and driven. A world apart from the miserable sort that make up our rank and file.

There was also a Dark Techpriest there. This alarmed me, as this particular Techpriest was supposed to be attending to Warsmith Solon in the medicae at the moment.

"What is this? Why isn't Techpriest Bienna at her post?" I demanded.

I would have asked the Techpriest herself, but she was quite obviously being held here by force. Two Iron Warriors stood by her side, bolt pistols in hand with their other hands free to grab her if she made any sudden movements. Bienna was hunched over, her servo arms curled up.

"Bienna has been reassigned, for the moment," Raikken said as he turned to face me.

"Reassigned? Then who is caring for Warsmith Solon?" I demanded.

"Hmph! 'Caring for'!" snarled another Chaos Space Marine. "As if the Warsmith is a youngling to be coddled."

This stopped me short. Contempt for Warsmith Solon was quite common amongst our ranks, obviously, but this had a hostile edge to it that I was unfamiliar with. "Perhaps you should explain yourself, Raikken."

"Of course, Lord Sliver," Raikken bowed his head to me, "although I'm sure you've already guessed at our intentions. We wish to see a change in leadership within the 38th Company."

"Warsmith Solon is currently unconscious, and - as is too often the case - gravely injured," grumbled another Aspiring Champion. Derak, I believe he was called. "He can be executed or restrained as necessary. Or just left to expire and rot away with the rest of the trash."

"This is a mutiny, then," my tone was ice cold, "and yet, you've come before me to declare your intentions."

"Yes, Lord Sliver. Because YOU will be our new Warsmith," Raikken said with a slight smile.

Despite everything else, this actually surprised me. Betrayal and subterfuge were unfortunately common amongst the Iron Warriors, but I'd never heard of betrayers initiating a mutiny for the benefit of another.

"You are the heart and soul of the 38th Company. As well as its brain, no matter what the damnable Warpsmiths say." That one was named Regaal, I believe. "It is time you were afforded the command you deserve."

"You... want ME to betray Solon?" I asked. My voice probably possessed more confusion than was really appropriate. It wasn't a difficult concept to grasp.

"You needn't betray anyone," Raikken said firmly. "You are the Vice-Commander. If the Warsmith is incapable of continuing his duties, you are in command. What happened to the Warsmith... need not be your concern."

"It IS my concern," I protested, "I did not save Solon's life from that worthless deviant to see him murdered by my own soldiers!"

"Lord Sliver. Solon is an obstacle," Raikken said, trying his best to sound soothing, "worse, he is an easily surmountable one. If you wanted to take command of this fleet, you would have done so already. We all know this. You are simply stronger and more cunning than the Warsmith, and there are few Iron Warriors that would accept his orders over your own."

"But you presume to place me in command on your own volition, through base treachery," I growled, "is that right?"

The other warriors were growing uncomfortable, now. This wasn't going exactly as they had planned.

"We thought that perhaps you did not realize the support that you-"

"You were WRONG!" I snapped. "This... petty, childish obsession with rank and grandeur is beneath me! How does this strife serve the mission of our fleet? The mission of the Legion? Do you imbeciles truly think Solon can be discarded so easily, like a worn boltgun? Are you under the impression that his main contribution to our army is holding me back and embarrassing himself?"

Raikken took a step back. "That... uh... is the impression that-"

"Again, you are WRONG," I snarled. "I do not desire the burden of Solon's duties, nor do I wish to be any more responsible for cowards like yourselves." I pointed my power axe at Bienna. "Release the Dark Techpriest."

"Y-Yes, Lord Sliver." The Marines standing ready to restrain her quickly backed away, and Bienna looked up at me cautiously.

"Get back to work," I growled, "the Warsmith is in dire need of many new organs right now, and is in no state to fashion them himself."

She blurted something in Binaric Cant before rushing for the door. My visor could have translated it, but I didn't bother. My eyes were locked on Raikken.

"Well... this is awkward," the Champion mumbled, clasping his hands behind his back, "I truly thought you were as tired of being overlooked as we were, Lord."

"I have never been overlooked," I hissed, "I command such strength and loyalty, as you said, that I may overthrow Warsmith Solon at will. I do not do so because it is a bad idea. That you presume otherwise is testament to your own weakness and stupidity. And that you should attempt to overthrow him like THIS..."

Another Iron Warrior coughed through his vox grille. I think that one was named Yol'en. "Well, this is why we left Warsmith Solon alive, rather than killing him outright. We suspected you might not be pleased with his loss..."

"My Lord Sliver," Raikken continued, looking pained, "please, understand. We only wished to help you, as you have helped and guided all of us."

"And I suppose there was no thought of reward in your minds," I said coldly, "surely you didn't think you would be given my rank, or that of some dozen Warpsmiths who would object to this charade."

"I would have preferred an assignment on a different fleet," Raikken said with a bitter chuckle, "but that would have been my second choice, Lord."

I sighed in frustration. "Raikken... I'm sorry."

"It is no matter, Lord," the Aspiring Champion said with a wave of his hand, "it was our error."

"No. That is not what I was apologizing for," I said, right before I planted my axe blade in his jaw.

"Well. That escalated quickly."

The others were shocked by Raikken's immediate execution, but Astartes are well accustomed to sudden violence and the appropriate response. By the time Raikken's corpse hit the floor, the others had their weapons drawn.

"Lord Sliver!" cried Yol'en as he brought up his power sword. "Please, we-"

An axe stroke knocked aside his weapon and I fired my bolt pistol into his visor. He would survive the initial wound to be executed later.

None of the others did. They waited until I killed Derak until they actually fought back rather than begging me to stand down.

"By Grandfather..."

I killed them all. They were competent warriors, and I possessed but a fraction of the power I do now, but they were completely outmatched nonetheless. Solon had forged my power armor himself. Not daemon plate, but more than enough to turn aside their bolts and blades. It was washed red with the blood of my brothers, that day.

"But they... they were your friends, right?"

Friends? I don't know. My relationship with them was closer than that of my lesser men, but I had not yet created the Rusted Brotherhood. I was not a child of Nurgle. I did not share that bond with them.

It did not matter. Friendship, brotherhood... these things pale in comparison to duty. Those men respected me, perhaps loved me, but they did not learn from my example. To betray one's master for no better reason than desiring a better one is a crime I will not tolerate.

"But, wait... didn't all Chaos Space Marines betray that Emperor guy who-"

Shut up.

"Okay."

****

Several days later, the void fortress had been stripped apart and the desecrations of the Whore God burned. A few traps had been set, as a final gesture of contempt for the Emperor's Children. The next lot of them to arrive at the station for their depraved celebrations would find only empty halls and explosive death.

Warsmith Solon was back on his feet again, with a fresh clutch of machines humming away in his torso. He said that he would create better ones once he had the time, but had insisted upon a meeting with me as the fleet prepared to depart.

I thought he wished to discuss the next destination, or pry more deeply into the unexplained loss of six higher-ranking Iron Warriors after a mission was completed. I was close.

"You didn't have to KILL them, you know," Solon said with a heavy sigh, "their crime was a serious one, but they would have repented if you'd demanded it."

I was shocked still, at first. "... Who?"

"Raikken and the others," Solon clarified calmly, "slaying them was unnecessary. They had already backed down. You could have demoted them, or just locked them up for some period of time."

"Warsmith, how did you...?" I trailed off in frustration. I had taken steps to ensure that word hadn't gotten out about the execution of my men. Not that I intended to keep it a secret for long, but I wished to explain it on my own terms.

"It wasn't hard to figure out," Solon scoffed, "I just back-traced all your IFF signals through the void fortress internal auspex relay after I heard they had been killed. They all died standing in front of you, with no enemy units detected. After I pressed Dark Techpriest Bienna, it was not difficult to determine what had happened."

I wanted to feel agitated that Bienna had spoken directly against my orders, but after killing six champions to preserve the Warsmith's authority it was quite contradictory to expect a Dark Techpriest to defy it.

"I thought the internal auger system had been deactivated," I grumbled.

"It was suppressed. The data was collected, just not by the Emperor's Children. But that's not the point. I do wish you'd leave decisions on summarily executing my allies to me."

"Your 'allies'?" I asked incredulously. "Raikken and his conspirators were acting as assassins!"

"Not very good ones, obviously. They faltered as soon as you expressed doubt. They lacked the resolve to finish me right away, and their mutiny crumbled as soon as it encountered resistance. I'm simply saying that-"

I slammed a fist onto the table, and Solon jerked back. His servo arms ducked low, like frightened beasts.

"And you think nothing of the fact that if they POSSESSED greater resolve - or were slightly more impulsive - they would have slain you while you were helpless, without my knowledge?!" I roared. "You want those wretches alive, still, to continue plotting against you? To spread their idiocy that if YOU were removed from power, I would finally be given the rank I deserve and they would be able to escape this fleet for a posting they want?!"

Solon held up his hands in a placating gesture. "All right! Yes! Very good points! You're correct, Sliver! Let's drop the subject!"

I growled at him for a bit longer, and then turned around to leave.

"Wait, Sliver! That wasn't the only thing I had to speak to you about!" the Warsmith protested.

I halted, but did not look back. "What?"

"There were a number of prisoners captured when we took the station, as I'm sure you're aware," Solon began, recovering his posture.

"I am. Many mortals were found in states of exhaustion or were too drug-addled to resist when we arrived. What of it? The Slaaneshi worms are probably too wasted and deranged to function as slaves. Did you have a particular use for them?"

"I thought you fed your extra prisoners into your evil monster ship? That's what Dark Magos Kaelith keeps threatening to do with us if we break our wargear."

This was before the creation of the Harvest of Steel. Before he and I had taken to worshiping Nurgle. Even before Solon mastered the creation of daemonic wargear. It made it much harder to productively dispose of unwanted lives. Although we still did our best.

"Actually, I am particularly interested in one captured man who is NOT a cultist of Slaanesh," Solon continued, "he was found locked in an abnormally clean room with nothing but food and water. Wasn't restrained or anything. Quite strange."

I finally turned around to face my Warsmith. "Who is he? Some prisoner of theirs that would not turn to the Dark Gods?"

"Oh, no, he serves the Dark Gods, all right. Just not the Whore God in particular," Solon explained. "But consider it. He was left unharmed and unmolested by the Cultists and Emperor's Children. He bears no signs of torture or insanity. Either they had reserved him for something special, or for some reason tormenting him held no appeal."

I nodded slowly. "And what do you want done with this man?"

"I want you to oversee his interrogation immediately. He may have worth to us besides simple labor. Find out what he was doing there and what he knows. If he had some importance to the Emperor's Children, we may be able to harm them further."

"Wow, you REALLY hate those guys, don't you?"

"Is it really necessary for me to do this now? I have many other duties before we set out again," I complained.

"Well, normally I would have given the task to Raikken," Solon admitted, "but..."

"... Right. Fine. What is this man's name?"

"He goes by the name of Virgil, I believe. Thank you, Sliver."

****

"No way! Father Virgil was rescued from Slaaneshi cultists?"

For a given definition of "rescued". It's doubtful he was ever in danger. Whatever else I can say about the Children, Chaos faith is something that they take seriously, and Virgil's connection to the Dark Gods is quite obvious. He would have proven too useful to murder for fun... Probably.

"So does that mean they wouldn't hurt Father Virgil? Why did they capture him?"

To this day, we don't know what the Emperor's Children intended for him or how much they knew. Although, to be fair, the same could be said of us. We had no initial plans for him either, and even now the man is quite a mystery to us.

"Really? How?"

For starters, the events I'm recalling now took place some four thousand years ago.

"Ah. I see. He's aged rather well, hasn't he?"

Yes. But his impressive longevity is the least curious mystery of the priest. Virgil knows things. He can hear the whispers of the Gods.

"We all can, though. I don't like to bother Grandfather Nurgle, and it isn't like there's much point to it, really, but what makes him different from any other cultist?"

He can actually take something useful from them.

"Whoa!"

"Oh, wow."

"Bully!"

After I arrived for the interrogation, the most obvious curiosity was the indifference Virgil displayed. He was locked in an armored, guarded room and shackled to the walls, but he simply stared up at me with the same bland, disinterested expression he uses to this day.

"Hello, mortal," I sneered, stepping up in front of him, "I have been instructed to see to your accommodations while you're under our guard. How are your lodgings?"

"Technically adequate," Virgil replied.

"Good. We're going to move this along quickly, because I have little time to waste on you. If you cooperate, then I needn't bother having you tortured or possessed."

"Okay," he replied without the slightest hint of fear or resentment. Or any emotion, really.

"What were you doing with the Emperor's Children? Are you one of their servants? Or one of their playthings?"

"Neither. I was captured by the Emperor's Children while providing services to Chaos pilgrims heading to Screaming Rapture."

"Services? Of what sort?"

"I am a priest. I granted them blessings, heard out their concerns, and led their prayer."

I began pacing in front of him, my visor locked on his dull, listless eyes. "A member of the dark clergy? Hmph. That explains why you were not tortured for their amusement. But why were you imprisoned?"

Virgil shrugged.

"Make an educated guess," I growled, "there must have been a particular point at which they locked you up. Why would the Slaaneshi scum want to keep you from wandering the station and joining in their hedonism?"

"I don't know. They confined me soon after we made port with the station." He paused, tilting his head to the side. "Perhaps I stood out as the only human that was not especially excited to be there."

That gave me pause. "I can imagine how you might attract attention for your... attitude. Are you always so relentlessly stoic?"

"I'm told that I am," Virgil said blandly, "I would not contest it."

It's a remarkable thing about Virgil: it's exceptionally difficult to remain hostile to him. He could defuse a raging Khornate by boring them into a pacified state. I've seen him do it to Tellis, too. It's a talent I dearly wish I could replicate, at times.

I was already sorely tempted to undo his shackles and leave him to wander the ship as he wished, if only to keep from wasting anymore time. But my commitment to my task came first.

"You came to Screaming Rapture with a band of pilgrims, you say? Acting as their priest?"

"Yes."

"Did you expect to be detained by the Emperor's Children? To serve them rather than your... flock?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"The Emperor's Children are Slaaneshi. They need little counsel or guidance in their prayers and ceremonies, especially as they were not heading into battle. Depravity is all the Prince of Excess commands, and is something humankind excelled at long before it caught the attention of the Gods. I offered certain prayers and ceremonies to the Children, but they didn't seem interested. And then they locked me up."

"And then we showed up and captured you in turn," I mumbled.

"Yes."

A long pause settled over us.

"I get the distinct impression that you're not going to cause trouble. What would you do if you were to be set free to wander the ship?" I gestured toward the door.

"I would offer to guide your warriors in prayer and ceremony, and induct new cultists," Virgil paused, "until I can get to another station and onto another ship."

"Are you headed somewhere?"

"Yes."

By this point it hardly felt like an interrogation anymore. This man clearly posed no hostility or resentment, and was offering his help freely. Granted, at the time I didn't put much stock in Chaos faith or ceremony, but anything that could stiffen the backbones of our mercenary forces was welcome.

So my next question was asked purely out of curiosity.

"You want to leave, then? Is there some planet you're trying to get to?"

"Technically, no. It's not a planet."

I began removing the chains from his shackles. "What is it?"

"A graveyard. Or prison, perhaps. Nurgle's rotting heart, where his most prized victims' are left to fester. Malgotha."

****

Ship strategium

"Malgotha? Hmmm... What is that, exactly?" Solon rolled the name around on his tongue, grimacing slightly.

"It's a place. I know little more," I admitted before I sat down, "Virgil could not speak of it in anything approaching technical terms."

I brought up a star map and began working out the coordinates. "He seemed fairly sure where it was, however. And that it was related to the God of Plagues."

"Nurgle, is it? Interesting." Solon scratched at his vox caster. I positioned the pathing through the star map, then pointed to a particular spot.

"Here's where he claims it is. Not a planet, or planetoid, or so Virgil says. For having so few details on what it is, though, he seems quite sure and precise as to its location. Malgotha. Nurgle's rotting heart."

"Well, that could mean anything," Solon scoffed, "why does Virgil want to see it?"

"He says it's a prison. Again, whatever that means. I doubt it's a literal dungeon for holding prisoners, as daemons are not known for taking their foes alive. It's a holy site, evidently, and he wishes to see it as part of his religious obligations."

We gazed at the hololith for several seconds. I could hear the whir of Solon's optics as he stared intently, and knew his mind was churning as well.

"Well, it's not very far out of our way. Let's take him," the Warsmith said.

I really should have expected this, especially after pulling open a star map and pointing out the exact spot to him, but I must confess that I had not.

"You're not serious," I grunted, "why would we divert the fleet even a day out of our path for some mortal hitchhiker?"

"Proper priests of the Dark Gods are not so common as to be brushed off when encountered," Solon pointed out, "you can vouch for his legitimacy, at least?"

"The words that come from him ring true. I have no objective proof of his profession." I snorted. "I suppose that if there was really some sort of daemon planet hanging in realspace in the middle of nowhere, that would be evidence to his claim. But I see no point in it. There is unlikely to be salvage of any use to us." I paused, and then leaned forward. "More importantly, if Virgil IS correct, then we may well lead our fleet to its doom. Nurgle is not a being to take lightly, Warsmith."

"And so we will not," Solon insisted, "but it is the prerogative of Chaos fleets to seek out these sorts of places, is it not? Think of what we could learn! The artifacts that may be found!"

"I have little idea. My interest in the Chaos faith begins and ends with the weapons it may provide. I have no use for Gods."

"My, my, Lord... how far you've come."

"Do you have any formal objection, Sliver? We have ample time to find this place before we re-enter the Segmentum Solar."

I hesitated. Solon, as he often does, was leaving the final decision to me. My criticism of the mission would decide whether or not we went. I felt... strangely uncomfortable with this, despite being in this position hundreds of times before. I felt as if my future hung in the balance with this choice. Warriors who visit the holy sites of Chaos are often changed forever for the experience, and not always for the better.

"I feel like this is a waste of time. But I have no objections," I finally said, "if you wish to investigate this... place and assist Virgil, very well."

Those words had sealed my fate, as well as the Warsmith's.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 5

Temple of Nurgle

Sliver heaved a sigh. "That iss all. I feel ssomewhat at easse, now." He started to shift his armored bulk to stand up. "You may return to your own prayerss."

"Wait, what?" Breezy recoiled in surprise. "But what about Malgotha? How did you end up turning to Nurgle?"

"You do not need to know that," Sliver said evenly. He stood up again and took hold of his hammer.

"Awww... but I really wanted to hear about one of Nurgle's holy temples!" Blossom complained.

"It wassn't a holy temple, sstrictly sspeaking." Sliver mumbled.

"Then what was it?" Kiss asked, jumping in front of him. "Was it really a prison? Or Nurgle's heart?"

Sliver found himself surrounded by the three mares now, all of them staring up at him with big, wide eyes full of wonder and curiosity.

"Move asside," he commanded.

"Please tell us!" Blossom begged, clapping her front hooves together. "Is it some kind of forbidden lore? Or a Company secret?"

"No, it... rrrrgh..." As a growl rumbled within his helmet, it occurred to Sliver that he could simply walk over the equines and they couldn't possibly stop him. He found it strange that this was only occurring to him now, and even more so that he felt hesitant to risk squashing the ponies under his massive tread.

"Thiss tale iss... not one I sspeak of lightly. What happened on Malgotha..." Sliver sighed, letting his hammer rest on the ground beneath him again. "I ssupposse there'ss little point in hiding it. You'll probably jusst go and assk the Warssmith. He will not hessitate to tell you."

Again, it occurred to Sliver that he could simply punish or even slay the mares for bothering him. By now he could reluctantly admit to himself that he simply didn't want to do that. Somehow or another, he had reached the point where he'd rather endure being pestered by pony cultists than be rid of them for good.

Blossom wilted slightly. "Is it that bad? You don't... HAVE to say anything if it's painful for you." The earth pony's eyes were completely obscured by her bushy mane, but the pleading looks he was getting from the other two didn't seem nearly as ready to let the matter go.

"... No. I ssupposse it iss not," Sliver mumbled. He leaned back again into his previous seat, and the stonework cracked further under the bulk of his terminator armor. "Fine, then. I will tell you the tale of Malgotha."

"YES!" Breezy jumped and hovered briefly, tapping her front hooves together in excitement before dropping back down. The display caused a curious twinge of some strange, new, non-bitter emotion deep within Sliver, and the Chaos Lord took a moment to banish the aberrant sensation and compose himself before he dared speak again.

"Malgotha wass, as Virgil had ssaid, not a planet. When we initially found and approached it, we misstook the land for void debris. It wass a floating island ssitting within the empty depthss of sspace, one sside flat and the other a ssurface of jagged, icy rock. Barely twenty-five kilometerss from edge to edge, and half that in depth, yet it had a sstrong gravitational field. One that - naturally - only sseemed to work in order to allow atmosspheric presssure and movement over itss flat ssurface. Our augerss could make no ssensse of it."

"Chaos magic?" Kiss asked.

"Indeed. Malgotha reeked of the Warp. It wass a consstruct of Nurgle'ss will, depossited in realsspace for reassonss unknown to uss. Perhapss Grandfather meant for it to be found by unwitting mortalss like oursselvess. We made for the ssurface with a ssmall detachment of Iron Warriorss to esscort Virgil. He wass ssingularly unhelpful in preparing uss for the trip; he ssaid he had never been here before, desspite knowing where the blassted island wass in the middle of empty void."

"Preparing you? Why? Was it dangerous?" Blossom asked.

Sliver barked out some phlegm-choked combination of a laugh and a snort. "My little pony, Chaoss landss are ALWAYSS dangerouss..."

****

Malgotha - landing site

"I want a light defense perimeter here, focused along the ridge. The rear approach will be mined, with auto-turret cover. But I want the main path guarded by Astartes guns, and ready to be abandoned at a moment's notice!"

I immediately set about creating a perimeter and defensive fire plan. Despite the unusual nature of our visit, I intended to treat it like any other mission.

"Hmmm... atmospheric scans suggest that this air should be breathable... barely. Temperatures are inexplicably quite comfortable, too." Solon glanced over at me. "Should we bring down some of the mortal soldiers as well?"

"No. Not here," I replied sharply, "they're likely to fall victim to some manner of daemonic madness or illness and turn on us. Only Iron Warriors should make landing." Then I looked over my shoulder. "Not including this one, of course."

Virgil was standing at the edge of the defensive lines, writing on a scroll of parchment. He still wore his normal robes, with no armor or face protection. Curiously, even though he had been released from his cell's chains, he still wore the wrist shackles we had used to restrain him.

"I think it's symbolic. Father Virgil is very deep. Probably. I mean, he seems like the sort..."

The Warsmith approached the priest.

"Is this about what you expected, Virgil?"

Virgil looked up over the top of his parchment to stare at the surroundings. The lands around us were a noxious wasteland, both rocky and moist. Small pockets of sludge were scattered all around the vast plains, spitting cloudy vapors into the air. Strange, alien trees, withered and decayed, sported growths of shining crystals that provided basic illumination for us. It was hardly the most hostile or bizarre landscape any of us had seen, but it still boded ill.

"It's not bad," Virgil mumbled eventually.

"It's certainly more conducive to us needy biological life-forms than I would have expected," Solon noted.

"Such is the way with Nurgle. Disease is a form of life. Without other life, it cannot survive." Virgil gestured to the land ahead of us. "It is in the interest of the parasite to be inviting to its host."

"This is supposed to be 'inviting'?" A Warpsmith asked, staring at the vile landscape.

"To be fair, out of all the Dark Gods Nurgle has always had the most trouble with aesthetics," Virgil pointed out with a shrug.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 5

Temple of Nurgle

Sliver suddenly looked down at the mares sitting at his feet, pausing his story.

"That remindss me: I've been meaning to assk you three about that."

"About what?" Blossom asked.

"About not looking like your bodiess are wracked with disseasse and falling apart," Sliver clarified. "Granted, not all Nurgle cultisstss are sso blesssed as I, but I would have expected at leasst ssome fur losss or tumorss. If it weren't for your markss, one could misstake you for ordinary equiness."

"Oh, that!" Kiss smiled brightly and brushed aside a lock of her mane. "It isn't easy. A lot of cosmetic magic, a fair bit of primping, and a distinct preference for the non-disfiguring diseases keeps us in good shape! Seriously, I have every strain of cholera and tuberculosis there is, but I just can't abide mange."

"It's kind of a drag sometimes," Breezy admitted, "I go through a few packs of mints every day to keep my breath from hurting people when I don't want it to."

"It's hard work to keep all my bugs sedated and docile when I touch another pony," Blossom sighed, "and we STILL have a hard time finding dates."

"You mortalss and your vanity," Sliver scoffed, shaking his head. "A wasste of preciouss time and energy, if you assk me. But enough. Back to Malgotha."

****

Malgotha

Virgil started heading toward the front of our deployment, looking as if he was going for a leisurely stroll rather than navigating a poisonous daemonic wasteland.

"Do you need a void suit? Armor? Or a respirator, at least?" Solon asked. "Really, you're practically naked."

"No, thank you."

"So what do you intend to do now that you're here?" I demanded. "If you wish to stay for long, then we will leave you."

"This will not take long," Virgil assured us, "a matter of hours. No more than a day, at most." He stopped and looked back at us. "Will you be accompanying me?"

"Do you require our protection?" I asked.

"Sliver, if you wish to remain here, you may. But I did not come to this place to stare at it from afar." The Warsmith stepped up next to Virgil. "I'm quite interested to see more of this anomaly. Let's see what kind of land earns the title of 'Nurgle's rotting heart'."

I growled in frustration. This was always the most trying part of serving under Warsmith Solon. The man has an atrocious record for combat, yet never hesitates to take to the field if he thinks he might be useful or takes a personal interest in the mission. Challenging formidable opponents and then getting mangled to within an inch of his life seems to be literally the only pattern Solon cannot recognize.

"Are you saying you'd rather have him stay back, out of danger?"

I'd rather he learn to fight AT LEAST as well as our bloody Trademaster. I'm quite certain the damned merchant could carve the Warsmith apart if they'd ever had occasion to fight.

"I'll go with you," I said, turning away. I quickly organized an escort for us. Two full squads, one with flamer support and another bearing melta guns. Anything that could stand against more than twenty Iron Warriors was too dangerous to be worth fighting for the sake of mere curiosity. We had to make way on foot, as the land looked too brittle, and the sludge pits too pervasive, for armored transports. As such, I resolved to call a retreat if there looked to be any possibility of a losing battle.

"So it didn't seem that way right off, then?"

No. Malgotha seemed almost... placid at first glance. But as men of Chaos, we knew better than that. Malgotha was a land in which death lay just underneath the surface.

Literally so, as it turned out.

We set out across the wasteland. Virgil led us, showing no care for the terrain beyond not stepping in the pits. We scanned the area around us constantly, searching for any signs of resistance or activity, but found nothing.

On one side of the strange void-island was a sea of brackish filth, and it was upon those shores that Virgil halted us. Great slabs of stone poked out of the ground at various angles, inscribed with dirty scratchings that may or may not have made sense to our attendant clergy.

"Here," Virgil said, clasping his hands together. He closed his eyes and started mumbling prayers.

Solon was taking pict-captures of the monoliths, but I was restless. So far there had been no signs of conflict or resistance, something almost unheard of for any daemonic land. I was utterly convinced that this calm was merely building up to a catastrophe.

"And... it was, right?"

Not QUITE in the way I had anticipated.

It was several minutes after the start of Virgil's prayer when a creature surged up out of the nearby sea with surprising speed. It was large, at least the size of a main battle tank, and covered in a thick layer of vile sludge.

I don't have a better description of it, because the first thing I did was blast it apart with my combi-bolter.

"Oh, dear."

My reaction was instantaneous, stitching mass-reactive shells across the daemon's face. It flinched away from the explosions, gurgling something that was lost among the pounding of my gun.

"Hold fire! HOLD FIRE!" Solon shouted.

I stopped shooting, but the other Iron Warriors were already aiming their own weapons, and they trusted my instincts more than Solon's. A savage fusillade of boltgun fire cut down the creature, tearing off great chunks of flesh and bile and pushing it back into the water. The Marines bearing melta guns moved to get a clear shot, and twin streams of super-heated gas finished it off. A frightened wail filled the air as Warp-flesh turned to dust and ash, and the daemon collapsed into motes of glittering green light.

Virgil frowned at the rippling waters where the creature had emerged, saying nothing as bolt casings bounced along the ground at our feet.

"That daemon wasn't hostile." He turned to look at me. "I probably should have mentioned that earlier."

A guttural snarl came from behind me, deferring a sarcastic retort. A humanoid creature, possibly human beneath its shell of weeping growths and crusted sores, was crawling out of one of the sludge puddles nearby. It snarled again as it found its footing, reaching its grime-soaked hands for my weapon.

"Now THAT one is hostile," Virgil said. I'm sure he thought he was helping.

I swung my axe down into the new daemon's shoulder, cutting deep into its body. The power field crackled and hissed against the corrupted flesh of its target, chewing away at its rotting bulk, but the beast seemed unconcerned. It seized my armor and clawed against it furiously, and I in turn hacked away more and more of its body with every swing of my axe. It took three more blows to stop the thing for good, chopping it to pieces of oozing limbs beneath me. Molten scars marred my armor from my opponent's claws, eating into the outer layers with some foul Warp acid.

But the battle was only beginning.

While I had been rending apart the first daemon, more had emerged from other pools, growling and grasping for us. My Iron Warriors opened fire, blasting apart many of the monstrosities while they scrambled to their feet. The flamers proved most effective, igniting the creatures and devouring their diseased flesh quickly.

But there were simply too many opponents. Hundreds, probably thousands of the foul cyst-like pits marred the face of Malgotha. As the closest daemons fell before flame and bolter, another ring of monsters rose to defend their blasted island.

"Virgil!" Solon shouted while charging some kind of plasma weapon. "Can you pacify these creatures?! We are not here to fight!"

Virgil, unsurprisingly, looked almost bored while the horde of slavering daemons charged into our guns. "I can try. It may be difficult to make that point while you're still fighting, though."

A great flash came from Solon's gun, and a half-dozen of the vile daemons perished in a burst of clustered explosions.

"Do what you can!" Solon growled, ejecting an energy cell from his gun and snapping in another. "Sliver!"

"Our escape path is cut off!" I snarled, blasting apart foe after foe with my combi-bolter. "We cannot retreat through the wastes! We'll go by the coast! Keep your backs to the sea and maintain fire discipline!" I struck off the head of a daemon with my power axe, and then led a charge along the water.

My men followed in an instant, and Warsmith Solon formed up at the rear of our firing line. Hardly a dignified position for my superior, but nobody complained.

Virgil simply stayed still, praying in front of those damned monoliths. Naturally, the daemons paid him no mind, parting around him in their rush to kill us. We left him there; I wasn't about to risk all our lives to bring him with us, and he didn't seem at all concerned with our situation anyway.

The creatures came in waves, luckily, apparently subject to some invisible will that drove them to attack. They'd stumble from their foul pits and mass together, then fling themselves into our guns in a single diseased mob, like insane, leprous Orks. Some of them may have been Orks, in fact. We cut down one crowd of daemons after another as we moved along the coast, making steady progress toward the landing zone. I ordered my warriors to shoot the legs out of the first rank of the larger hordes, tripping and slowing the greater mass of daemons for the flamers and grenades to kill large swaths of them at once.

Vox reports came from the zone itself, confirming that all of Malgotha had erupted with the armies of Nurgle to slay the intruders that had violated his rotting heart. We were well fortified, however, and whatever force produced and guided the monsters did not see fit to send more formidable warrior-daemons to attack us. I was confident that the landing zone would hold until we arrived for extraction.

Even so, I cursed myself the entire way of the retreat. I had caused all of this. My overcaution had lapsed straight into recklessness, and we were being driven from Malgotha as a result. Although I held no particular respect for Nurgle at the time, I deeply regretted agitating him. This was an error I never would have tolerated from a subordinate, and as we fought our way along the coast of that vile sea, I contemplated penance and sacrifice.

It was then that my SECOND tactical error became apparent.

I had no particular reason to think that the sea was safe, aside from the fact that daemons were spilling from the land and not the water. Under the circumstances, desperate as they were, it was simply a guess that it would remain that way. And, to my credit, only one new daemon appeared from the sea of filth.

"Tentacle monster?"

Tentacle monster. To be fair, daemons literally base their physical forms on our own ideas of what monsters look like, so it says more about us than them.

"Ewww..."

The spine-tipped, slime-covered tendrils shot from the water like harpoons, and two Iron Warriors were ripped apart before anyone knew what was happening.

I turned in time to strike at an incoming tendril with my axe, and even so the limb knocked me down. I was thrown from the formation, my combi-bolter spinning out of my hand.

The tendril arched up, oozing... something from its wound. I gave it no time to orient itself, and leapt to my feet to sever the limb.

Evidently this made me the focus of this new daemonic threat, which I suppose was just as well; the others maintained their fire on the daemons advancing from land, lest we be overrun from both directions.

Another tendril snaked around my legs, intending to bind me. I again ripped through it with my power axe, but this proved merely a diversion; while my axe descended another tentacle darted in from the side, puncturing my armor and plunging into the flesh below. I was knocked down again, but this time I felt great pain seeping through my body, and my muscles began to constrict. I had been infected by one of Grandfather's many ailments.

As I struggled against my fate, I finally saw the beast at the root of the filthy appendages, or at least some substantial portion of it. It resembled an enormous human head sitting in the water, bald and encrusted with boils, yawning open a malformed jaw. The tendrils squirmed, worm-like, from its mouth, and those that I had severed flailed about in the air as if in terrible pain.

"Oh, okay! So those were like its tongues! I thought they were going to be-"

No, they were not.

"Although, really, even the tongue is a little-"

STOP THAT.

The tentacle dug further into me, and its length began curling around my arm to drag me into the sea.

Suddenly, I felt hands seizing my armor and holding me back, and shouting coming from vox grilles. My men were trying to save me, pull me back from the daemon.

Putting aside that this tug-of-war was intensely painful, I knew that if they focused on the larger beast, we would be overrun by the lesser daemons. "Forget me!" I snapped. "Let the daemon choke on my bones! Keep going! Retreat!"

There were shouts in response. Probably protests. I wasn't listening. It was perhaps fitting, if anything, that I die at the hands of the daemons I had provoked. I would not see my men killed in a futile effort to save myself. "That's an order! FALL BACK!!"

The tendril pulled my body up, and the gauntlets gripping my body slackened. Battle cries and the roar of boltguns seemed to rise ever louder as I was carried toward that wretched sea.

Then there was a flash of light, and the tendril holding me went slack. I fell into the shallows of the beach, my body wracked with pain. Another tentacle started moving for me right away.

"I said go!" I gasped. "Retreat, damn you!"

The tentacle lashed closer, but before it could reach me, a power sword cut into its side. The daemon shrieked. An armored body stepped between me and the creature, but my vision was spinning and I couldn't tell who it was.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "I said-"

"You don't give me orders, Sliver," said the Iron Warrior, releasing a ferocious blast of plasma into the maw of the sea daemon. "Now get up and move along! I won't lose you here!"

It was Solon. Warsmith Solon had saved me, and now stood between the daemon and I.

"Oh, wow!"

This confrontation lasted all of three seconds. A tentacle smashed into him from above, knocking Solon down and then dragging him into the sea instead.

"Oh, wow..."

I didn't see any more of what happened. Everything was a feverish daze. I was pulled to my feet by my men, and carried along as they continued the retreat. Paralyzed and helpless. And yet my Iron Warriors fought tooth and nail for me, eventually resorting to knives when their boltguns ran dry. They surrounded my body, intent on defending me to their last breath.

None had raised a hand to defend the Warsmith, incidentally.

And then, apparently, the daemons just... stopped attacking. They withdrew and retreated back to their pits, leaving us free to complete our own retreat.

My own state was deteriorating fast when we reached the landing zone. An Apothecary treated me immediately, restoring some sense of awareness and thought, but I could feel something wretched clawing through my body, burrowing ever deeper. I knew that I would belong to Nurgle, soon.

"Finish loading the Thunderhawk! Lord Sliver requires evacuation!" snapped a champion.

I grasped the Apothecary's gauntlet. "What... of the daemons?" I gasped.

"They've withdrawn, Lord. They were unable to break the defenses of the landing site," the Apothecary assured me, "now, we must get you-"

"The bodies," I hissed through the pain, "if there... is no opposition, you must... recover the bodies."

The Apothecary nodded slowly. "As you wish, Lord. However, you must depart at once."

"Lord Sliver!" shouted another Marine, rushing up to us.

The Apothecary quickly tried to intervene. "Lord Sliver is badly wounded, and cannot-"

"Be SILENT," I commanded. Between heavy breaths, I nodded to the newcomer. "What is it, Brother?"

"The Chaos Priest Virgil... he's returned," the Iron Warrior spoke awkwardly, as if he wasn't sure what to say. "He wishes to speak to someone in charge, but-"

"Bring him," I said.

I didn't have to wait long before Virgil stepped through the phalanx of my Iron Warriors. His robe was wet and filthy, and he was carrying an object between his hands. No doubt this was what had so flummoxed the other Marine; he was carrying Solon's helmet, holding it upside-down. Presumably so its contents wouldn't spill out.

"Speak!" I barked at the human.

"I have spoken to the Lord of Plagues, and stilled His wrath," Virgil began in his usual disinterested monotone, "He insists, however, that all us, quote, 'weirdo Goth kids,' unquote, get off His lawn and stop making such a racket."

I wanted to laugh, but could not. "Indeed... we shall." I took several deep, rasping breaths. Even with the aid of the Apothecary's serums, it was becoming harder to breathe and keep my eyes open. "Warsmith Solon. Is that... all that's left of him?"

"No," Virgil replied, "I managed to get the rest of his armor to the beach as well, but it was too heavy to carry here." He held up the helmet. "What would you like me to do with this?"

I hesitated. "Then... he is dead."

Virgil looked down into the helmet, as if considering the prospect. Then he turned the helmet right-side up. Thick, bloody slurry oozed from the armor piece, splashing over the ground. An augmented skull dropped out and hung from the helmet, suspended from the optics cluster by thick cabling running into its left eye socket. It was obviously Solon's.

"Sure seems like it," Virgil noted.

"What? But, wait... he can't... WHAT?"

My body protested and my hands trembled, but I reached out and took the helmet. I was almost glad for the rising pain of Nurgle's plague, for it felt like a just punishment for what I had done. I had doomed Warsmith Solon. Not through deceit or confrontation, but through incompetence and miscalculation. There is no greater sin for an Iron Warrior.

"Find... the rest of him," I said. My voice was weakening, but I forced myself to give the commands.

"We will, Lord," the Apothecary assured me, "but you must-"

"GO! All of you!" I snapped. "I'm not... leaving this rock... without every other Iron Warrior... that set foot upon it! FIND HIM!"

The others backed off, and then commanded Virgil to lead them to the armor. He complied with his usual cooperative apathy.

I was left alone with the filth-covered helmet of my Warsmith in one hand, and his wired-up skull in the other. Disease wormed its way through my veins, the only other companion to this moment of acute misery.

I focused my gaze on the skull. In times of mourning I often imagine the remains of my brothers to judge me, blaming me for their fates. I felt none of this from Solon's hollow stare. It felt like... he had forgiven me. Or perhaps he didn't blame me in the first place.

A fly crawled out of the skull's empty eye socket.

****

Ferrous Dominus - sector 5

Temple of Nurgle

The mares of Phage Squadron stared at Sliver with wide eyes and slack jaws.

Sliver sighed and started to stand again. "And that iss the sstory of Malgotha. Virgil overssaw my converssion to Nurgle'ss sservice ssoon after we left, and I have dutifully followed the Plague God ever ssince."

He started turning around, only to have Breezy Blight leap in front of him again.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What about Solon?" she asked, looking distressed. Poison Kiss looked similarly distraught, and Rot Blossom seemed to be rubbing away tears from under her impossibly bushy mane. "Did Solon really die?"

"Did he look dead the lasst time you ssaw him?" Sliver asked.

"But... what happened, then?" Kiss asked. "Was the skull fake? Was he resurrected? Turned into a daemon, maybe?"

"That iss perhapss the mosst important ssecret of the 38th Company and our... ESSTEEMED Warssmith." Sliver chuckled grimly. "I will not tell you what happened. But he obvioussly weathered hiss gruessome fate better than any of uss expected. He iss now a favored child of Nurgle as well, and conssiderss the encounter on Malgotha a crucial boon."

The ponies glanced at each other, confused but unsure what more to ask.

Sliver turned his head, staring at the shrine at the end of the room. "Although... I should ssee to it he attendss sservicess more often. Ssometimess I feel like he takess Grandfather for granted."

For the second time that day - and for the second time since they had ever met the man - Sliver laughed. He walked out of the room while chuckling, clearly in a substantially better mood than when he had entered it.

The three pony cultists were left behind, still perplexed.

"Was that some kind of joke? I don't follow," Kiss mumbled.

Breezy frowned and scratched at her head. "So... Warsmith Solon is... a bug? Or, like, a bug piloting a huge metal walker thing? If we took off the helmet would there be a little fly in there working a bunch of tiny levers?"

"That technically wouldn't be the oddest thing we've seen since we got here, but I'm still guessing not," Kiss retorted.

"I think we should check," the pegasus insisted, "also, this might mean that Blossom is actually his boss!"

"That's not how my powers work, Breezy," Blossom reminded her friend, "or how rank works, for that matter." She paused. "Also, I think that's just a generally bad thing to do to something that could easily kill us all."

"Pff. You girls are no fun," Breezy complained.

Poison Kiss rounded on the pegasus sharply, and the gray pony recoiled in surprise as she found herself nose-to-nose with her squad commander.

"Antagonizing the blokes who saved our hides is not a JOKE, Breezy," the unicorn hissed. "Warsmith Solon gave us our station, our weapons, and our future." Breezy gulped, and her ears flipped down. "Whether he's an Astartes, a daemon, or an especially clever maggot, as far as I'm concerned he's every bit as great a leader as Princess Celestia." She poked the pegasus in the chest repeatedly.

"And that's being pretty generous to Princess Celestia," Blossom mumbled.

"Okay, okay! I was just curious..." Breezy wilted under Kiss's glare, and what she assumed was a harsh stare of disapproval from Blossom.

"Well, pack it in, because story time is over," Poison Kiss whirled around again, heading deeper into the temple. "We have work to do. For Nurgle, for Chaos... and for Equestria."

The Driver

Author's Note

Continuity isn't especially important in this series, but this takes place during Book 4, Chapter 1.
Also, this is like the second time I've ever done first-person perspective. It's so WEIRD.

The Driver

Visions of Darkness

Punctuation key: "Gothic Speech", +Binary Speech+, "Out-of-narrative speech"

The Driver

****

Ponyville - Sugarcube Corner

"So, I never did get what your deal was, Dest. What's your problem with the Company?"

Dest was currently sitting in the attic space of Sugarcube Corner, in what had been made into his temporary sleeping quarters. It was small, stifling, and rather than furniture it was filled with stacks of supplies.

It was just like home, he'd acknowledged wryly when he first slept here.

There was one large, circular window at the front of the room, and it was from here that his rest was disturbed. Tellis hung from the awning on one arm, his legs braced against the outside wall and his visor glaring through the dirty glass of the window.

Dest sat up from the comically undersized cot that served as his bed. His power armor lay in pieces in the corner of the room, and he was clothed only in the skin-tight black bodysuit Astartes normally wore under their armor.

It was some time before Dest actually got around to addressing the Chaos Lord, and when he did it was all he could do to contain his annoyance.

"Lord Tellis, was there something else you needed of me?" the rhino driver grunted.

"Nah, not really," Tellis admitted, "it's just... I was thinking over that stuff you said."

Dest couldn't help but feel surprised at this, but found that the explanation didn't resolve anything.

"What of it, Lord? If is not important, I wish to retire for the evening."

"It's what you said about the way the Company treats you. I didn't get that," Tellis elaborated.

"Our previous conversation was about you, not I," Dest noted.

"Right. But then you said something about how we both have trouble relating to the other Iron Warriors. I didn't really get that," the Khornate confessed, "I mean, I find the other Marines pretty lame because I'm a super-badass and call them out on being cowards and emo daddy's girls. But you're just a grunt with a boring job. You should fit in like... like a... thing that fits really well." Tellis grunted as he failed to come up with an appropriate metaphor, and he placed his hand against the glass. "Anyway, I'm going to come in. The last two ponies that walked by out here gave me weird looks and ran off."

Tellis reared his hand back, but Dest held up his hand to halt him.

"My lord, that window isn't large enough for you," Dest pointed out blithely.

The Raptor tilted his head to one side and then the other, judging how much space he'd need for his flight pack and shoulders.

"So I should break through part of the wall, too?" he asked as he glanced back and forth to gauge how much space he'd need.

"So you should drop down to ground level and walk up the stairs," Dest corrected.

"Oh. Well... okay." Tellis actually looked like he was going to argue the point before he shrugged it off and dropped down.

The heavy whomping noise of metal boots hitting the ground came from outside, and Dest sighed as he hung his head.

"This has the makings of a long and unpleasant evening," the rhino driver grumbled to himself.

"Aw, don't be like that, Desty!" Pinkie said, patting his leg with a hoof. "He just wants to talk to you! You should hear him out!"

Dest looked down at his side, where Pinkie Pie was laying on his bed right next to his pillow.

"Sure, Telly is kind of loony, and he doesn't seem to understand the difference between comedy and horror, but I feel like he's making an effort to connect, here!" the party pony insisted. "I mean, at first he came to you about his own problems, but now this isn't about him! He really wants to know more about you!"

"What are you doing in my bed?" Dest asked as soon as she stopped talking.

"I heard it was story time!" Pinkie chirped. Her pink, fluffy tail was wagging back and forth like a dog's.

"And you heard this falsehood from where?" Dest asked.

"Well, that's what we're building up to, isn't it?" Pinkie asked as she withdrew a paper bag full of kettle corn.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dest said, "but aside from that, how did you get in here without me noticing? There's only one entrance, and it is secure."

Before Pinkie could respond with a silly non-answer, the entrance to the attic burst off its hinges, instantly rendering it non-secure.

"Yo, I'm back," Tellis grunted as he walked into the room. The wings of his flight pack scraped against the doorway, but he managed to get through without carving out part of the wall.

Then he crossed his arms over his chest. "A roach in a Ripper swarm!"

Dest didn't know what to make of the sudden exclamation. "What's that?"

"The thing you fit like! You fit like a roach would in a Ripper swarm!"

"I don't... that wouldn't even-"

"Anyway, like I was saying, you should have this Iron Warrior thing down," Tellis continued, "you're boring, hard-edged, and you seem like you constantly have an adamantium rod shoved up your arse."

"Hey! Desty isn't boring!" Pinkie countered.

Tellis paused. "Wait, why is she-"

"Don't," Dest stopped him, and then let a sigh escape his lips, "you're right in that my mannerisms are sufficiently befitting of an Iron Warrior. And yet I am an Iron Warrior in name only."

"I'm not following," said the other Chaos Marine.

A long pause. "Are you aware that the 38th Company takes in soldiers from other Legions, Lord?"

"Nope. How's that work?" Tellis asked.

Dest briefly wondered why such an important facet of their fleet's composition would be hidden from one of its primary commanders, and then figured that Tellis had been told and had simply forgotten. It didn't seem to be the kind of detail he'd hang on to.

"The Company is reinforced with Astartes assignments to the fleet when it resupplies our planets," Dest explained.

"Right. And the new guys are all a bunch of losers. I know that much," Tellis grunted.

"Some of them, yes. And some are assigned to this fleet for other reasons. One of those reasons is coming from other armies besides the Iron Warriors. This Legion being paranoid as it is, those warriors are treated as a liability and bartered off as soon as possible."

"Is there a point you're getting to?" Tellis grumbled. "This is seriously starting to test my attention span."

"Ooh! I know! You're from another Legion, aren't you Dest?" Pinkie volunteered exuberantly.

"I was taken from a loyalist Chapter, actually, but yes, Pie, you are correct."

"Oh. So that's it? You're fresh from the halls of the hated Imperium so you get treated like crap?" Tellis asked.

The Raptor Lord continued before Dest could reply. "So what Chapter are you from? Can't be Space Wolves, you don't have the hair for it. Plus I'm pretty sure you're literate. You're not crazy enough to be a Blood Angel, and I think that if you were a Dark Angel you wouldn't have told me any of this."

"Blood Ravens?" Pinkie guessed.

"Why, has he been stealing baking supplies?" Tellis asked. "Also, how do you even know about them?"

Dest sighed deeply. "My former Chapter was the Imperial Fists, Lord."

There was a long pause after Dest spoke, disturbed only by the sound of Pinkie munching on her kettle corn.

Then Tellis fell back onto his rear, nearly cracking the floorboards with the impact.

"Well, all right, then," the Raptor said as he got into a sitting position, "I have GOT to hear this."

"Yaaay! Story time!" Pinkie Pie cheered.

Dest groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Must I? I can assure you, the tale is not nearly so... dramatic as you probably expect."

"Hey, if you start boring me, don't worry, I won't stick around for the rest," Tellis assured him, "now out with it."

Dest glanced down at Pinkie Pie, who was grinning eagerly in anticipation.

"Very well. But I imagine Pie requires an explanation to put the tale in context." He cleared his throat. "The Iron Warriors, before they turned to Chaos, used to serve a massive, centralized dictatorship that claimed dominance over all of humanity: the Imperium of Man. Eventually the Iron Warriors and many other Legions of Space Marines turned against the Imperium; some in service to the forces of Chaos, and some for more personal reasons."

He paused. "The reason my former Chapter membership is relevant is because the Imperial Fists fancy themselves the loyalist rivals of the traitor Iron Warriors." He snorted. "Personally, I see that as a laughable conceit on the part of the Fists. Their string of losses at the hands of the Iron Warriors is quite long, and includes some very famous and crippling failures. I would consider the Imperial Fists their practice targets rather than 'rivals'."

"Ha! Oh, man! Even considering you converted, that's pretty harsh!" Tellis laughed.

"It's relevant, however," Dest insisted, "when I was captured from my former Chapter, I was but a Scout, still early in my training and new to my gene-implants. I had not been schooled fully in my Chapter's history, and much of its lore - particularly that of the Heresy, our darkest hour - was unknown to me."

Dest paused to wet his lips. "As such, the first time I saw an Iron Warrior, I had no idea of the storm that was coming."

****

Gallus V - 8 standard solar years ago

"I've sighted something moving," I said as I peered through my monoculars, adjusting the zoom as it autofocused against the glare. It took a moment, as the glare was rather intense; the color scheme of steel and gold reflects light obnoxiously well.

The rest of my squad were spread out in formation, covering all the approaches. We were investigating the landing of an unidentified vessel nearby. It had made planetfall with alarming speed, and there was apparently a larger group of vessels approaching the system patrol fleet, but we didn't yet know what to expect.

Gallus V had a good variety of climates over its surface and some fairly intimidating alpha predators, which allowed for plenty of decent survival and wilderness training. So the Imperial Fists garrison fortress on that world often hosted neophyte Scout teams.

At least, it did back when that garrison still existed.

I hope that didn't spoil the ending for you.

"Is that... That's Astartes power armor," I said. My voice was confused.

"Imperial?" asked my Sergeant.

"Is there any other kind?" I asked. In retrospect, that was a very poor response.

"Do you see Imperial heraldry on that armor or not, Scout?" hissed the Sergeant.

"I... I don't," I mumbled, my confusion growing, "something's wrong. That armor's been heavily modified."

"Colors. Give me colors and an emblem," the Sergeant demanded, the brush shifting under his feet.

"Silver and gold, Sergeant. And the Chapter symbol looks like... a metal skull."

"We have approaching vehicles," Lennol said, spotting exhaust plumes in the distance, "small ones... bikes! Blast!"

"Let's move, Scouts! Back to base!"

We ran, evading the vanguard assault forces searching for us. One of the most difficult aspects of fighting Chaos Space Marines is that they know our tactics as well as we do; they knew that we'd have scouting teams searching for the landing site and trying to get a count of enemy forces, and they knew which spots we'd prefer to cover our approach and spotting site. While that wasn't enough for them to catch us, we weren't able to accomplish much besides identify the foe.

Once we got back to the citadel, it instantly became a frenzy of activity. I managed to get my Sergeant alone long enough to ask what that Space Marine was doing out there and why we had designated him as an enemy agent.

He told me that those Space Marines bearing the Iron Skull were traitors and heretics, and servants to the Great Enemy. I could hardly believe it. I had learned OF Chaos, of course, but without hearing the history of the Horus Heresy first the idea of an Astartes, the penultimate defender and hero of the human race, fighting for the sake of corruption and the destruction of the Imperium was inconceivable to me.

"Oh, you're not that bad! Although I kind of wish Tellis would stop stabbing the flour sacks!"

"What? Oh, sorry. Story's a little light on action for my taste. Let's get to the bloody parts, eh grunt?"

Anyway. Though this revelation was quite disturbing to me, behind the walls of our fortress I knew we would not fall. We were the Emperor's Space Marines, his finest warriors, and we were the sons of Dorn, the masters of fortification and defense. I knew not why these traitors sullied our world with their presence, but I knew that they could not defeat us.

"Wait for it..."

I was wrong.

"And now we get to the bloody part!"

****

Gallus V - Imperial Fists Citadel, two days later

It all began just about as expected.

The advance of siege tanks we predicted and defended against. The artillery we also predicted but could do little against.

They came in waves, perfect formation, diving at a corner of the fortress with mediocre firing lines. They cut into the fortress, not like a hammer, but like a scalpel, hitting the same spot with demolisher cannons and lascannons and earthshakers.

The wall was breached. Once it broke open the Imperial Fists poured into it, filling the breach and the battlements above with adamantium and boltguns. Reinforcements were called from all over from the rest of the fortress to hold the breach against an escalade. Textbook.

A textbook the Iron Warriors knew as well as we did.

The walls shook again. The tempo of vibration was constant, furious, like a hateful, pounding drum beat.

"Steel yourselves, Brothers," said Melkis. A Techpriest, he was busy rummaging through supplies, looking to assemble additional heavy bolter gun positions for the battlements.

"They breached the wall? Already? The siege is barely in its fifth hour and they're already launching an escalade?" I was surprised, and perhaps sounded a little too impressed as well. My Sergeant glared at me.

"They're not launching an escalade yet," mumbled another Scout from another unit. We were all gathered here, as a skeleton crew, while the bulk of our brothers manned the breach. "I don't hear enough bolter fire. I think they're pulling back, actually."

"They fear the cost of an assault this early, as well they should," Melkin mumbled, hoisting a heavy bolter and turning it over, "they will find a wall of our Battle-Brothers far more formidable than mere ferrocrete."

That made sense. It might have even been true.

But it was a moot point.

"To the battlements!" howled a voice from above.

We looked up. It was Lennol, looking more frantic than I'd ever seen him. None of us are exactly prone to panic, but he was definitely panicking.

"They're coming! Land Raiders and... and some sort of of walkers! Approaching fast on the West side!"

"The breach is on the East side," I pointed out obliviously, like an imbecile.

"We need heavy weapons up here! We have to man the battlements!" Lennol repeated desperately. "Let our brothers know that-"

The walls shook again. No distant reverberation this time. This was the reinforcement layers trying to hold back damage.

"To the battlements, Brothers," Melkin said darkly, stepping up and handing the heavy bolter to my squad sergeant, "we shall not falter before the traitor. We shall not relent before the heretic."

It was all very inspiring, but I was really very concerned about the way the sound of pounding and the barking of foreign voices was coming from the other side of the wall behind me.

"We shall not fear, for we are fear incarnate!" Melkin shouted, trying not to seem at all alarmed by the distinct sound of melta weapons discharging close enough for us to hear. "Remember, Brothers, that the Emperor protec-"

And that was when a giant fist ripped through the wall and he got bitten in half by a maulerfiend.

"HAH! Classic."

I don't really remember much of the siege after that, as the second breach of the fortress wall nearly buried me. But that strategic maneuver had always left an impression. After spending hours breaching the wall where we were prepared, they breached a second wall in minutes where we weren't. A hammer raised over our faces, and we're felled by a spear to the back instead. The Iron Warriors' casual contempt for Imperial Fist defensive tactics is always something I've come to admire. Between the Chapter that excels at building fortifications and the Legion that excels at breaking them, they've always had the harder, more dangerous specialty.

My violent introduction to that specialty was something I reflected on at length as I was taken back to the traitor flotilla as a prisoner. Many captives had been taken, and as far as I am aware there was little point to the assault other than to cause minor, if direct harm to the Imperial Fists Chapter of Space Marines.

My Battle-Brothers conspired to escape our imprisonment and arm themselves, but such plans counted for nothing; the Iron Warriors knew all of the abilities of Astartes physiology and knew how to imprison us.

What eventually happened to the others I can only venture a guess, but I'm certain their fate was grisly, long, and fatal. As for me, my destiny split from theirs the day that the Dark Apostle Jeldas came to appraise the prisoners.

"And here we have them, Brothers! Slaves to the False Emperor! Puppets to humanity's liars and cowards!" he spoke grandly, his vox booming like a preacher as he spread his arms wide.

Some of my Brothers spat curses and defiance, but most simply glowered silently.

The new arrival regarded the first cell, an uncommon enthusiasm about him.

"Ah! This one! Decent rank, and an uncommon firmness to him. He will not break." The Dark Apostle stared briefly at a brutally injured Captain, and the Iron Warriors behind him nodded.

"This one is... hmmm. The opposite. Soft. For one of the imbeciles in yellow, anyway," the Apostle said as he looked over another. The Imperial Fist spat at him, but the glob of acid spattered uselessly against an energy field and boiled away.

He went from cell to cell, looking over the Space Marines and judging them after a long glance. I'm guessing he was laying out their fates for the guards to process, but did not do so with simple declarations of "torture" or "sacrifice". He simply laid their spirit bare, and then moved on to let them stew over their immediate future.

Then he reached my cell.

"Hmmm. HMMMMM..." the humming noise was much louder as he stared at me, and I stared back. I was looking over his armor. Not to find weaknesses, but analyzing the differences between it and the power armor I saw on the initiates, trying to find out what it all meant. The horns, the skulls, the spikes.

"There's something missing from this one," the Dark Apostle declared mildly, thinking on the subject for many seconds. "Ah! I've got it! It's contempt!" he tilted his helmet to the side, honestly fascinated. "You don't look down on me, Brother?"

He was right, I realized after a moment. Every other Imperial Fist glared at the Apostle like he was some sub-human worm mocking them from a pit of filth they didn't deign to approach. They had been utterly crushed, humiliated, and dragged into the void to face a grotesque and awful fate, and they stared out of their dank little cells with the pride of kings.

Admirable, I suppose, but as for me, I was filled with curiosity, not hate.

"What are you?" I asked, peering closer to the crackling energy field. "Why are you doing this?"

"WHY!" the Dark Apostle boomed, his head twisting this way and that. He laughed. "This one asks WHY! HAH!"

"Don't listen to the traitor, Brother," rumbles the Captain. I don't know his name. I didn't know any of their names. They were initiates, fully-fledged Space Marines. I was a Scout, and a young one at that. I was the only Scout there. Probably the only Scout that survived.

The Dark Apostle turned toward me again, the bloody-red lenses of his visor boring into my eyes. "The Astartes are constructed to know no fear. To stand in the clutches of the enemy and still defy them takes no particular courage or valor," he told me, "hate is a force we all draw from greedily, and though it empowers us, it can also... blind us."

"Scout! Do. Not. Listen," snapped the Captain, "the traitor speaks only lies! Believe in the Emperor's light!"

The Dark Apostle gestured to the cell where the Captain was held. "Observe. The shining example of the Emperor's Space Marines," he said with an audible sneer, "watch how he hurls hollow insults and useless orders from within his prison, clinging to an obviously futile hope that's been painstakingly carved into his brain matter. How NOBLE." He said the last word with a noisy, vox-distorted snort. I noticed that his escorts seemed to be getting uncomfortable enough that I could see them fidgeting even in full power armor. Clearly this wasn't a normal part of the procedure.

"It is a far greater virtue, I believe, to question. To wonder. To want to peer into the darkness and see what's there, rather than raging at it with blade and bolter." He paused, and his visor pulsed brightly. "Would you like to see into the shadows, young Astartes? Would you like to understand... 'why'?"

"Scout! Don't do this!" howled the Captain furiously. There were other Brothers too, shouting for the Dark Apostle to leave, or beckoning for me not to give in.

Give in to what, I wondered. And what would be the point of refusing? I figured we were all going to die anyway, so why perish with questions that the foe was willing to answer?

"Yes," I said, ignoring the shouts from the other cells, "tell me."

"Can't believe you fell for that, dude. Seriously? Buttering you up like that because you hadn't already heard specifically why you should shoot us on sight?"

"Isn't that a good thing, though? I'm glad Desty became an Iron Warrior!"

If I may continue? Thank you.

I was taken away from the other Imperial Fists after that. I never saw them again. After a day in a slightly larger prison protected by Iron Warriors rather than an energy field, I saw Dark Apostle Jeldas again.

He gave me answers. He explained why.

He told me about the Iron Warriors and their ancient grudge against the Imperial Fists, about the Horus Heresy, and about the ancient powers that lurked in the Warp and sought dominion over humanity. I'm not completely sure, even now, how much of what he said was true. But what lies he may have spoken were not pretty ones. His representation of the grievances against his Legion were no doubt exaggerated, but he offered little reason for me to sympathize. Jeldas and all the Iron Warriors were self-described traitors. They had brought ruin to the Imperium and caused the deaths of untold billions.

"I'll bet most of that was Tellis, huh?"

"Not a technical majority, no. I'm working my way up there, though."

Even with the dark truth of Chaos laid out before me, and the murder of my Chapter's garrison fresh in my mind, I was yet intrigued. From my birth and barely-remembered childhood on some backwater hive world to my training in the Imperial Fists, I have never known of any creed besides the Imperium's. I'd never known Chaos as anything other than a dark, vaguely monstrous THING that threatens humanity. Chaos was not a good path, by any means, but it was a path that I had never known about, locked as I was in my Imperium Chapter in Imperium space and inundated with the Imperium's own brand of "truth". Chaos was different: fractious, seditious, and twisted. And yet entire Legions of Space Marines thrived under the banner of the eight-pointed star.

More to the point, the Imperium's path had been closed to me. Destroyed by renegades who had bested my Chapter on its own planet at its strongest point. Whatever else I could say about the Iron Warriors, I could not doubt their strength. Whether it came from the power of Chaos, or was simply the power of the Iron Warriors Legion sustained by Chaos for ten thousand years, I had no doubt that the the Fourth Legion was the stronger and more cunning when measured against the Sons of Dorn.

Eventually, Jeldas exhausted his supply of relevant lore for me to muse over. I had assumed that my end would come soon after that. Probably as a live sacrifice in some barbaric act of witchcraft.

"Oh, no! I wonder if Desty's going to make it!"

"... You're doing this on purpose, right?"

Pie. Stop.

Again, I was wrong.

Jeldas came to me again, not with an executioner's axe, but an open hand.

"You... want me to join? Join you? A Chaos Legion?" I asked. I was stunned.

He seemed slightly surprised at my surprise. "But of course. You have heard the truth. You have been told 'why'. The shroud of ignorance that has guided you for your short life and - if I may say so - disastrous introduction to the Imperial Fists has been stripped away. The way of Chaos is now open to you."

He was holding out his hand. I stared at it.

"I didn't ask you about Chaos in order to join you," I grunted.

"But you DID ask," Jeldas noted, "the Imperium says: blessed be the mind too small for doubt. They make a virtue of stupidity and ignorance. You, I am afraid, are not very virtuous in their eyes."

I looked away, grimacing, recalling the angry shouts of the other Imperial Fists as I was led out of the brig.

"Why would I betray the Imperium?" I asked.

"Betrayal implies a debt of loyalty owed to the betrayed, Brother. What debt do you owe the Imperium?" the Dark Apostle mused. "They ripped you from your birth world, turned you into a living weapon to serve in their armies, and then placed you in that embarrassingly fragile planetary garrison. You cannot even claim the gift of security so desperately sought by the masses of the hive worlds."

He shook his head. "The Imperium has taken your life, your future, and even your humanity. And what has it given you in return? Not even a suit of powered plate, as far as I can tell."

"How can you possibly trust me?" I grunted, trying to get a better feel for what I was being offered.

Jeldas humored me, as before. "Trust is in very short supply in our Legion," the Dark Apostle chuckled, "but it CAN be earned here. ALL can be earned in service to Chaos. Rank, wealth, power beyond imagining, mutation, suffering, punishment, death beyond man's gravest nightmares."

"Wow, you weren't kidding about him not sugar-coating things. You guys have got a real PR problem in general, you know?"

I went back to staring at his hand. His armored hand with claws that could tear my throat out with a swift movement.

"If you will not serve the Legion, then you will be returned to the main brig with your Battle-Brothers," Jeldas explained patiently, "they will see that you have rejected the Eightfold Path, and will laud you for your fortitude and wisdom." He paused meaningfully. "And then, in your wisdom and buoyed by their praise, you will share their fate."

Another pause. "The choice is yours, Dest."

Choice...

I'd never been given that before.

My servitude to the Chapter was martial slavery. I was taken from an underhive slum, implanted with genetic enhancements, and then indoctrinated. Sure, there had been ways out, but they all involved failure, all led to death, and none had been actually offered to me; success was presumed, and then demanded. Survival instinct and the shrill, hateful creed of the Imperium had spurred me to comply. Choice was a novelty to me.

"I hope I don't regret this," I grumbled as I seized his hand.

Jeldas laughed. "Brother, please. You know what they say about hope."

****

Ponyville - Sugarcube Corner

"And then you joined the Iron Warriors and lived happily ever after, right?!" Pinkie Pie asked, clapping her hooves together.

"No, Pie. There was nothing happy about my new life," Dest admitted, his eyes dim.

"Well, that's your fault, dude," Tellis interrupted, "should've joined a cult. Khorne knows how to party!"

"Khorne parties are actually a little intense for me," Pinkie admitted with unusual seriousness, "I really think it kills the mood when someone dies playing the party games."

"And I think it strangles the mood when they don't. Different strokes, horse."

Dest saw that Pinkie was giving the Chaos Lord a strange look and decided to bring the topic back toward his past.

"I didn't know what to expect when I joined the Iron Warriors, and now that I know more about the Chaos Legions I suppose I got off quite easy. I was not interrogated for information, forced into some arcane ritual, or even branded with new Legion symbols. There was little indoctrination in my new path. Most of my training was in the use of power armor, which I had never actually worn before. Where initiation into the Imperial Fists was a long and painstaking process, becoming an Iron Warrior seemed to require nothing more than saying 'yes'."

Tellis chuckled, and Dest continued ruefully. "Soon I realized the truth of the matter. Although I now wore the colors of the Fourth Legion, I was hardly an Iron Warrior. For the next two years I was assigned to no squad or given any combat detail, merely occupied with trivial guard duties or endless training drills. I never saw Apostle Jeldas again. I was an outsider in the Chaos fleet, and I was treated like one. I will say, however, that I experienced little serious mistreatment due to being from the Imperial Fists specifically. I think most Iron Warriors find the prospect amusing rather than alarming."

"I know I do," Tellis affirmed needlessly.

"Of course. As always, it could have been much worse," Dest admitted, "after the first two years of drudgery, the fleet made port on a fortress world controlled by the Legion to take on supplies and reinforcements. And there I was given some... unexpected news."

****

Sallus VIII - Iron Warriors fortress world

"I'm being reassigned?" my face was impassive, but my mind was racing.

"'Reassigned' is... a nice way of putting it." The Aspiring Champion chuckled darkly. His power fist kept clenching and unclenching its fingers as he stared down at me, as if he were imagining crushing me within his metal palm. "You're being sold, Fist."

That seemed like a pointlessly bleak way of putting the same thing, but I was silent.

"The 38th Company has granted us fresh supplies and weapons, and in return, we grant them bodies. Soldiers. Fresh meat." I briefly wondered if he was listing different names for the same thing, or if they really paid for ammunition in food and corpses. "Congratulations on finally being of service to our Legion, Fist." He sneered at me and walked away.

I suppose it was supposed to be insulting, or demoralizing, but that was hard to do to someone in my position. I was already doing completely menial, needless chores for an army that saw me as little more than an unwanted pet. Would service to this other fleet be worse?

I lined up at the appointed place, along with two dozen other Chaos Space Marines.

I knew none of them, but then I hardly knew anyone in the fleet. I did notice, though, that their armor was largely unadorned. Their plate lacked embellishment, mutation, or customization. It was a crude method for determining accomplishment, but it gave the distinct impression that I was not standing among the fleet's finest warriors.

"Attention, scum!" barked a voice from behind me. "Your new Lord approaches!"

"Ooh! Ooh! I know who that is! I know!"

"Heh. This is going to be great."

Warsmith Solon stepped in front of the line of Iron Warriors, looming over us. I almost flinched. I'd seen Techpriests and Techmarines before, and even a Magos once, but Solon was something else entirely. Twisted fleshmetal, hissing pistons, and acrid smoke surrounded the man that would be my commander, and looked to have walked straight from man's nightmares. For the first time since joining the forces of Chaos, I truly stood in awe at the power of the Dark Gods, and the terrifying majesty that was possible to acquire in their service.

And then Solon started talking.

"Sho you will be the new sholdiersh, then? Allow me to introduce myshelf! I am Warshmith Sholon, commander of the 38th Company! From thish point forward, you will sherve my fleet!"

There may be no other time that I was so glad to be wearing my helmet. My expression was priceless, I'm sure.

"We shall ply this galaxy and take itsh treashuresh for ourshelvesh! And our plunder shall fuel the enginesh of war ash the Dark Godsh shpread their corruption acrosh the shtarsh!"

It wasn't just his voice, although that was what initially snapped me out of my sense of awe. His mannerisms were hardly befitting of a Space Marine Sergeant, much less a Chaos Lord. He's too energetic, too mercurial, and mild-mannered. It felt like he's trying to sell us on our new posting, rather than explain it to us. I was honestly embarrassed, which I hadn't thought possible.

I could see the Aspiring Champion from before walking away with a grin on his face, trying to keep from snickering.

"Hee! Yeah, Shmithy is pretty funny!"

"I've attended some of those transfers just to see the new guys gawk and stumble. It's hilarious!"

Solon says something else, but I'm not listening anymore. I'm confused, to say the least. What is this new posting going to be like? Will I see combat again? Will I be ordered to fight against the Imperium actively this time? Will I be forever consigned to an ignominious role in the ship barracks, even in this new fleet? Would that be for the best?

The pounding of large, metal legs gets closer, and my soldier's instincts force me to attention as Solon wanders by.

He stops in front of me, a hololith screen hovering in front of him. One optic is on the screen, but his helmet is turned toward me.

"Intereshting," he says simply. Then he moves on.

That was the closest I've ever come to holding a conversation with Warsmith Solon. It was the only thing he's ever said to me. "Interesting."

"If it's any consolation, I disagree."

"Aww, that's not true! You're super interesting, Desty! Even if your back story deliberately downplays the dramatic tension and irony of your betrayal rather than exploiting it!"

"... You're a weird little horse, you know that?"

I cannot fault Solon's lack of personal attention. I fault him for plenty of other things, but not that. The bonds of trust, camaraderie, and mentorship have ever been strained in the Chaos Legions. The transfer to the 38th went rather well for me.

My assignment as a Rhino driver is a very subtle act of brilliance by whomever made that decision. It was a front-line role of understated importance, unlikely to draw attention or scorn. I have no need to form any significant bond with my peers, so trust is hardly a problem. And in the task of ferrying soldiers from a muster point into the thick of combat, I've rarely had to take the lives of our Imperial foes directly. Perhaps they fear I'll have an attack of conscience and turn on them if I have to look Imperial troops in the eyes as they die around me.

Conscience has hardly been a problem for me. No. I've had... other issues with my given role.

****

Gelleon II

The treads ground uselessly into the slick, gooey mud below as the Rhino's engine roared. Its machine spirit howled furiously underneath me, incensed by the defiance of nature as it fought for traction.

It seemed to be no use. The ground on this obnoxiously humid planet was a steaming soup, and the tread of the Rhino simply moved mud rather than the transport.

Artillery shells arced overhead, but the barrage was weak; the mud was so bad that sometimes the shells would hit without exploding, sinking into the sludge with a wet slurping noise.

Other Rhinos raced past mine, their dozer blades cutting away a thick layer of water off the top of the mud and allowing the treads to get a better grip. My transport's dozer blade had been shattered by autocannon fire, but I couldn't see how we would get further without one.

"Are there any wrecks nearby?" I demanded of my gunner.

"Wrecks? Friendly or hostile?" he shouted from above.

"Doesn't matter."

"There's a wasted battle cannon turret behind us on the left side."

"Wait here," I grunted as I grabbed a laser torch and pushed up into the main access hatch.

I leapt into the bog, my armor immediately sinking into the muck up to my thighs. I spotted the smoking cannon and started trudging forward, intent on scraping together a dozer blade from the scorched armor plates.

It was miserable, but at the moment I was actually feeling pleased. I was being useful, showing ingenuity and stretching my conventional skills to complete my mission.

More whistling from above. I ignored it, hearing the soft slurps from the shells sinking and the muted splashing noises from them exploding in the mud. Followed by the ear-splitting crash of one hitting durasteel vehicle plating.

I halted, and a few bits of flaming metal flew past my legs. I turned around. My Rhino was gone, along with the squad that had been packed inside it.

****

Corvex Prime

The dust was thick in front of my viewport, but visibility wasn't especially necessary at the time.

The whooping of Ork warriors came from off to the side, being carried along at speed by the rumbling Battlewagon. They were shooting wildly at my vehicle as they went, most of them missing and none of them doing any real damage.

I wasn't really sure what the Ork driver was up to. Were I in his place, I would be trying to get behind me to crush me under the giant spiked roller attached to the front of the battlewagon, but this one seemed like he was trying to race me instead.

The Rhino's top hatch opened, and I heard the sound of bolter fire. That only egged the Orks on, though. Soon I heard them cheering as our passengers fired at each other.

"Drive closer!" barked one of my passengers.

"For the LAST TIME, swords don't work against-"

My gunner cut off my angry rant. "Stop arguing and do it!"

I growled beneath my helmet, but I did as instructed, rolling the transport almost flush with the heaving mess of scrap armor easily twice the size of my Rhino.

Apparently the Ork driver had pulled the window down to make certain gestures at us, my gunner explained after the fact. After I got close enough, one of my passengers threw a frag grenade into the cab.

It exploded, and the Battlewagon swerved away.

Then it swerved back toward us.

The roller-

"Come on, man, say the name. You know what it's called."

... The dethrolla smashed the rear of my Rhino flat, completely pulverizing the passenger bay before the Battlewagon peeled off and sped away out of control.

"Hee hee! Dethrolla. Oh, but it's super sad that the other Marines died, though!"

Yes, well-

"Ooh! Can I do the next one? I'll do the next one!"

What do you mean yo-

****

Planet Pony - AJ's farm of appliciousness

So there was this huge space dinosaur attacking the farm! Gaela had just shot it and it was super mad, but it still had some wounds left. So it started chasing her through the orchard!

It looked like it was going to munch her up when suddenly Desty's like WHAM!! And rams his Rhino into the Spacerannosaurus! He totally saved Gaela!

"That... okay, yes, xeno-terminology aside, that's true so far."

But the aliensaurus makes its armor save! So then it turned around and totally bites the Rhino, chomping it into pieces! Desty's okay in the driver's cab, but a couple of poorly-characterized humans are squished and immediately forgotten!

So then alien rex gets bored or maybe it prefers sauce on its APC or something so it turns away to get back to stomping and chomping!

And then Desty suddenly EXPLODES from the wreck!

"Aw, HELL naw!" Desty said, pulling back the boltgun slide with that awesome "ch-chak" noise they make!

"Okay, no. No, I did not say-"

Wielding dual bolters - because he's a BAWSS - Desty rips into the side of the spacecerotops, which roars in pain and swears revenge in its howling angry space dino language! It sweeps around and tries to bite him, but Desty leaps to the side, bolters blazing as he dodges!

"She is WAY better at this than you are, dude."

"This account is becoming exponentially less accurate. For one thing, it took time for me to extricate myself from the Rhino cab. Didn't those Apple ponies attack-"

And then the tyranospacus rex comes after him again! Roaring with fury and probably making foreign-language jokes about needing more iron in its diet, it leaps forward to sieze Desty in its massive jaws! Desty, in the middle of reloading, spin-kicks the xenosaurus in the FACE, throwing it onto its side!

"Whoa! You KICKED a greater gnarloc in the face?!"

"... No, Lord."

Meanwhile, I was across the orchard, Kung-Fu fighting the kroot from the kill team!

I hit one in the gut, and then did forward, down, down-forward and punch, smashing into him with a wicked uppercut! Then I Karate back-kicked another kroot to get some space, and then pulled out a melta bomb from the stashes I keep all over AJ's farm in case of alien invasion!

"I'm glad SOMEBODY does. It's like that family seriously never even considered the possibility until we showed up."

"... You're not even trying to keep this within the realm of realism anymore, are you?"

"Desty, catch!" I shouted, flinging the bomb to him.

He caught the meltamajigger, but the voidasaurus had already shrugged off the last attack and was coming for him!

"You want a snack?" Desty growled as he armed the bomb. "Watch out for heartburn!" He plunged his hand right into the monster's gaping jaws!

"There's no way-"

"Dest? Shush. Seriously. Let her do this."

The meanie space dinosaur bit down, tearing Dest's arm off, but foolishly swallowed the bomb as well! A second later its eye bugged out, and its stomach bulged, and it was hilarious, but seriously that must have hurt like nothing I've even imagined! It burped up some smoke, whimpered a bit, and then keeled over, dead as a doornail. That had been killed. By some means one would employ to kill doornails. Whatever THAT is.

"Oh, Lord Dest!" Gaela gasped, latching onto Desty's side and staring lustily up into the scary red eyes in his visor, "you SAVED me."

"All in a day's work, Acolyte," Desty grunted, shifting the shoulder that was pretty much just a gross stump at the time, "I only wish I could have saved my other passengers. But such is my curse."

Desty looked up at the sky sadly, a lone oil tear crawling down his helmet.

****

Ponyville - Sugarcube Corner

"And that's the story of how Desty lost the Rhino, saved the day, and ended up with his slick new robot arm!" Pinkie finished, grinning as she slapped a hoof against Dest's entirely non-cybernetic arm.

"I would like to point out that while two of those things did ultimately happen, I do not have any bionic limbs," Dest noted, apparently still devoted to the accuracy of the story.

"Well, have you considered it? Some of them are pretty cool," Tellis said, "in this fleet you only get top-of-the-line augments. Lots of features and stuff."

Dest rolled his eyes.

Then the Raptor Lord scratched at the chin of his helmet. "But getting back on track, here. Your big problem is that your Rhinos keep getting wrecked and your passengers are all killed?"

"Not at all, Lord," Dest said, "I hardly consider that a problem. Countless transports are lost in combat zones, after all, their passengers destroyed in an instant. That I keep surviving for it to happen again is something I consider good luck, not bad." He paused. "Even if the Dark Mechanicus DOES claim that the Rhinos' machine spirits are starting to become nervous in my presence."

Pinkie Pie had apparently laid out over his legs belly-up at some point, and his hands unconsciously moved to stroke her stomach.

"If I have a 'problem' with my service to the 38th, it is a matter of purpose, not luck."

He seemed to fume for a moment, his fingers digging harder into Pinkie's fur. She didn't seem to mind one bit, humming pleasantly.

"I felt that I served no particular purpose to the Imperium or the Imperial Fists. Perhaps I would have had I been able to complete my training, but that did not happen. This is why I could bring myself to turn against them for my own survival. But neither have I found purpose with the Iron Warriors. The 38th Company offers me something useful to do, at least, but..."

He trailed off for a few seconds, silently accommodating Pinkie when she mumbled "More to the right."

"I still feel that my actions and presence lack significance. I departed from Ferrous Dominus in defiance of orders, and yet none have sought me out or tried to contact me. For all I know I may have been written off as a casualty or desertion, and it's quite apparent that no one in the fleet cares. Unlike many of my 'brothers' I don't even have a squad champion to decide between finding me or simply requisitioning a replacement."

Tellis snorted through his vox grille. "Dest, listen up. If you can't find 'purpose' with THIS," he slapped a gauntlet against the Iron Skull painted on his left shoulder pad, "then find it with THIS," he then used his other hand to indicate the Mark of Khorne featured on his right side. "You have your choice of finding purpose in violence, disease, or change. This isn't hard." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Obviously, I recommend violence, because it has the most overlap with what we already do. A lot less reading involved."

"I've considered it," Dest admitted, "but I am hesitant. True Chaos worship has never been especially... appealing to me. I belong to a Chaos Legion thanks to a distinct lack of better options, not devotion. Without the fanatical zeal of the cultist, I imagine that being marked would simply leave me adrift on an even bleaker path than the one I currently roam."

"You're kind of a whiner, aren't you?" Tellis asked. "You ask me, you fit in perfectly with the rest of the grunts. I don't see how anyone could consider YOU an outsider."

Without waiting for Dest to think up an appropriately dry response, Tellis hopped up to his feet.

"Well, it was fun hearing about your rhino blowing up, but unless Pink Horse here can narrate the rest of your life story, I'm sick of hearing about it. Later, scrub."

The Raptor Lord walked out of the room, his wings scratching grooves into the doorway as he left.

Dest didn't watch him go, letting the room sink into a comfortable silence.

He felt Pinkie Pie shift over his legs, but didn't pay the pink mare any particular attention until she spoke again.

"Hey, Dest?"

The Iron Warrior glanced down, surprised to hear Pinkie use his name rather than the very slight modification she used as a nickname.

She was smiling up at him, but it seemed to lack its usual bubbliness.

"I'm really glad you're here," Pinkie said, her voice much lower than normal, "like, not right here, in our attic, which is great though, but like, here on our planet."

"You're glad that a band of brutal and corrupt space pirates landed in your nation and started hunting aliens on your soil?"

"Yuh-huh!" Pinkie said, nodding her head without hesitation. "Because you came with them!"

"You're crazy," Dest pointed out, taking his hand away from the pony.

Pinkie promptly jumped up onto her hind legs and poked a hoof into Dest's nose. "Oh yeah? Well, the Cakes are glad you're here too! Are THEY crazy?"

"They allow you an unconscionable level of discretion and responsibility in caring for their spawn. So their sanity is quite in doubt as well."

Pinkie scrunched up her muzzle. "Huh. Never thought of it that way," she mumbled.

Then she shook her head and poked the Chaos Space Marine in the chest. "Not the point! We really like having you around! And... uh..." her voice trailed off, and her ears fell flat against her head. "And... we'd feel really, really bad if something happened to you, even if the other Iron Warriors don't care."

Dest regarded the pink equine skeptically. "I don't see any reason for your attachment," he admitted after a long moment, "even the Cakes have pointed out that my countenance is cold and unfriendly."

"What, are you kidding?" Pinkie scoffed, climbing up onto the Marine's shoulder. "You're the best! You're like Gummy Mark Two! Except that instead of freaking out my friends and slobbering on my mane, you kill my enemies and do my day job for me!"

"I am enthralled that I compare favorably to your defective pet reptile," Dest deadpanned.

"That's right!" Pinkie grinned and patted the driver's shaved head. "I just want you to know that you're really important to us!"

Then she yawned. "Thanks for the story, Desty! But I think I should get some sleep now."

"Mm. Good night, Pie."

"Good night, Desty!"

"......... Pie."

"Hm?"

"I am not going to let you sleep on my lap. Go back to your quarters."

"Awwwww!"