The locker door noisily squeaks as it's roughly yanked open. A chorus of laughter rings obnoxiously loud in the cramped confines of the Trottingham weather team's changing room. A chorus that Lightning Dust wasn't party too. She stares into the depths of her locker, past the crumpled heap of an unwashed garment, a small tube of chapstick, and some opened letters that all started the same way:

We thank you for your interest in the position, however-

The rest was pointless excuses, the Pegasus knew the reason why the answer was always the same. Her eyes dart to a photograph, one that shows a proud mare in a far more impressive uniform than the dreary tan vest that hung around her shoulders. She was the same mare she had been, but since her 'incident' it had been like this everywhere. She'd thought of making her own team, a frequent topic of semi-coherent conversation over a pint at the Down and Out. She was gonna do it, she had to do it.

So why did she stick around week in and week out, as the junior member of what could graciously be called a third rate weather team? The thoughts ricochet around her head as she finally snaps back to reality, only to find that she'd been blankly staring into a pair of amber eyes reflected in a smudged mirror.

“Woah mare, I thought he was gonna chew me out for sure.”

“What, ya mean li-”

“Eeeeewwwww, get your mind outta the gutter, filly!”

“How 'bout no, and we call it even?”

She certainly wasn't staying around for the company.

Lightning Dust takes a shaky breath in a vane attempt to tame the ever growing snarl of frustration bubbling up from deep in her chest. It wasn't helped by the oblivious trill of her happy-go-lucky coworkers as they loitered in the change room after their shift and gossiped like school fillies. Squirming out of her sweat stained clothes, Lightning Dust flicks a wing, catching the vest's strap and hastily tossing it into her locker with a noisy whip-crack. Unsurprisingly, the two other mares jerk in surprise.

“Woah,” Wind Whistler says, folding her ruffled powder blue pinions back to her barrel. “Feathers and flowers, what pricked you in the rump, Dusty?”

“Lemme guess, nothin'?” a voice calls from the far side of the room.

Lightning Dust closes her eyes for a moment, the Pegasus spins and slaps the squeaky door closed with a sharp buffet of her right wing. “Hey, Medley,” she eyes the other turquoise mare who titters with a hoof to her muzzle. “Shut it.”

Instead of silencing her, the fellow Pegasus bursts out laughing. Lightning Dust can only glare as Medley sweeps her mossy bangs over her eye to imitate a coquettish smile. “Oh c'mon miss moody mare. Lighten up, there ain't nopony else around!” she waggles a hoof dismissively at Lightning Dust and then sweeps it across the room. “See, sis?”

Lightning's eye twitches. It wasn't the first time Medley had called her that, not by a long stretch. “Don't you dare 'sis' me!” She takes a step forward, glaring daggers at the mare who's muzzle twists into a grin.

“Alright, alright Dusty, that's enough.” Wind Whistler interjects, lazily unbuttoning her vest while taking a few precautionary steps to put herself between the two. The eldest of the trio only had to shift a pace or two in the cramped locker room of the weather patrol 'headquarters', a simple office space in the back of Trottingham's redbrick town hall. “You know Medley's just teasing you. It's what friends do. Besides, one more complaint from a passing cleaner and you'll get yourself written up. C'mon Dusty, just let it go.”

The Pegasus at the other end of the room leans back on the wooden bench as she shoots Lightning a grin, “What, didn't have fun?”

“No.” Lightning's left eye continues to twitch as Wind Whistler steps in front of her. The taller turquoise Pegasus mare cranes her neck up a little more to maintain her glare.

“What? Whadid I say?” For once, Medley actually had the grace to look confused. But the expression shifts with a little smirk on her face, “You still mad about the whole 'twins' thing? I tell ya, colts love twins. And we do kinda match.”

Lightning Dust's snort melds with a long suffering sigh as she bites her lower lip to stifle the rising tide of irritation. “I'm nothing like you. Don't you want anything more in life than to sit on your drunken flank trying to pick up colts?”

“No?” Medley says simply before smirking and tapping a hoof to her chin, “Wait wait! Does two count?” She sticks her tongue out as Wind Whistler rolls her eyes.

The senior weathermare mumbles, “I can't believe you.”

"Hey, I'm just havin' fun, Whistler! Like I said, ain't nopony here. Look, Dusty, if it really bothers you then I'm sorry a'kay?” Hopping up and ignoring Whistler's warning glare, the glib pony saunters over with the little bob that comes so naturally to her. “First round is on me, whadd'ya say?”

Quickly searching her face for any sign of an ulterior motive beyond the obvious, Lightning Dust says nothing. There's no reply, but she does stick her head in her locker as a series of quakes ripple across her frame.

'That bucking ma-' Lightning Dust stops, her nose having pressed against an unfamiliar letter neatly tucked in front of the others.

“Duuuuusty? C'mon, don't be a stick in the-”

A crinkle of paper echoes from the enclosed space, and the mare swiftly drags out an envelope by her teeth. Quickly tearing it open with a slice of her pinion, the mare skims the unfamiliar stationary.

Dear Lightning Dust, we request the honor of your presence in Canterlot at your earliest convenience to discuss an opportunity of the greatest importance.

The more she reads, the more unbelievable it sounds. She didn't even notice the other two mares crowding around her once the golden signet wax had broken.

“Someone slip you a little love note or somethin'?” Medley asks, traipsing over to catch a glimpse of the curious letter.

When no reply comes forthwith, even Wind Whistler steps closer until all three are huddled around the single metal locker. “Dusty, 's that a ticket?”

Stock still, eyes twitching for a moment, the tallest mare in the room looks at the impossible letter in her grasp as a boarding pass flutters to the floor. After a few moments of silence, her pinions start to shake as a glittering golden flame burns in her eyes.

Shoving the letter back into the envelope with a single sweep, Lightning Dust scoops up the ticket and slams the locker closed with her hip. The motion nearly flattens Medley, and she staggers a pace as Lightning Dust gallops from the room, “Rain check! Gonna' be gone for a bit!” She's gone in less than a second, skidding around the corner and out into the hall.

Medley staggers at the croup-check and stares at where the mare had disappeared moments before. “Fine I'll invite Rain Check if you want!” she calls after the mare, then glances over to Wind Whistler. “I just didn't think she was into her is all.” With no reply but a stony glare in return, the turquoise mare turns to look at a slightly incredulous Wind Whistler, “Yeash, y'think ya know a pony.”

“Medley...” Wind Whistler reaches up to rub at her own muzzle.

“Huh, Whadid I say?”

Amid the sterile vaults of one of the Vengeful Spirit's medical bays, only the hissing sound of centrifuges and the hum of a lithoprojector breaks the silence. A pair of figures stand on either side of the distinct green-wire projections of dual and triple helix strands silhouetted against an indistinct background. Neither of the duo speak as the centrifuge winds down.

Fabius squints at the sequencing again, looking over the immeasurable labyrinthine patterns of the illuminated genome. His pale sapphire gaze roves over the information presented faster than the human eye could blink.

A long sigh from Fabius's companion breaks the spell, “It's the same as last time: it's some sort of toxic hypoxia engineered to turn his own cells against him. The larraman cells get contaminated the moment they interact with the affected areas, and the leukocytes don't recognize the necrotic tissue. It's a damned Primarch killer.” Chief apothecary Logaan rubs the bridge of his nose before sliding his hand back across his bald pate.

“Yet the Warmaster lives.”

“Yeah,” Logaan grunts with an irritated huff, “question is, how?”

“I'm not entirely sure.” The Emperors Children geneticist narrows his eyes further to dark slits, “Yet.”

Gesturing towards a series of graphic charts, Logaan waves at the myriad of readings cluttering the already messy tangle of projected screens. “You're supposed to be some sort of savant-”

“I am.” Fabius replies dismissively.

It gets a grunt in return as the slightly larger Horusian apothecary takes a step closer, “Then 'savant' up a theory and give me something to work with, Fabius.”

The geneticist's dark eyes break with the screens and travel towards the disgruntled apothecary now standing with a hand on his hip, crinkled surgical gown still sticking to his bulky frame. He gestures to a chart hovering at the periphery of the display, and drags it to the forefront before presenting it to Logaan. The Horusian apothecary looks it over, taking in what was clearly a spectral analysis chart with a sharp spike at the upper end. But the distant glint in his eyes said he was still trying to figure out precisely what he was looking at.

'Typical. Nothing more than an amateur seamstress who works with skin. There's no art and no genius to this. It's absurd to have him in charge of a Primarch's health.'

Fabius sighs and wearily points to the obvious anomaly, "This is background radiation. If my suspicions are correct, It's both related and unrelated to the toxin.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Fabius bites his lip and makes a swift gesture, pulling another set of blank EM graph readings in front of the genome, “It means there's something we don't have the equipment to directly measure.” Returning to the anomalous chart, the Emperor's Children geneticist points at several spikes in the upper register of the spectrum, “something peaked the background radiation readings and is causing them to rise sharply, extending well beyond our means to measure. It may be directly related to the toxin that is slowly killing our lord Warmaster, or it may also be related to whatever it is that is keeping the toxin in check.”

Gathering several more readouts and then reaching for a dataslate on a nearby table, Fabius thrusts it out towards Logaan, “Tell me, did you notice anything about Horus's physical examination?”

Taking the slate, the apothecary glances down before curiously scanning the information. “No, what did I miss?”

“Retinal scan.” The Emperors Children apothecary pauses as Logaan parses through the data. It's just long enough for the Horusian to visibly balk at a certain piece of obvious information.

“H-his eyes-”

“Eye color can change based on radiation, toxicity, medication, production of melanin through the mucranoid, and genetic instability.” Fabius didn't need to look to see that the Horusian was more than a little taken aback, he could hear him stagger and collapse heavily into a chair they'd shoved against the wall. Fabius could read the apothecary's self-disappointment like it was a book. He should be ashamed. “But outside of the affected area in his shoulder, there is no bio-chemical change when we compare this to records prior to the Davin incident.”

Logaan looks up, the dataslate folding forward onto his lap. Sure enough, while all the indicators had come up identical to his previous checkups, small veins of cyan had built up in Horus's irises, surrounding his pupils like they were gates. “Let me guess, you found the radiation spikes there too?” Fabius offers a single nod. But a shadow of confusion swiftly crosses Logaan's heavyset features, “I still don't recognize any of these EM signatures.”

It had taken the legion's new chief apothecary far too long to come to that realization. How Horus put up with this, he had no idea.

But in truth, the revelation had come as a surprise to Fabius as well. It was a spur of the moment thought gleaned from reflecting on the reports of the Davin incident, perusing the autopsy file of the ruined corpse left by the angry Primarch in this very lab, and recollecting Erebus's account of a strange quadruped 'warp xeno' that supposedly accompanied Horus. A creature he had yet to see. The mechanism of the poison that had nearly killed the Warmaster was still a mystery, and he'd been frustrated after every conceivable test had turned up negative. In the absence of anything better, Fabius had done something he loathed. He guessed.

Fabius once more looks back to the graphics displayed by the projector, “This is not electromagnetic in origin. I co-opted a power reading device for measuring the strength of a voidship's Gellar field.”

“You mean to tell me that it's a warp signature?”

“Yes.”

Logaan shakes his head and slides the dataslate across the simple desk an arms length away. “How did you come up with that?”

“Isn't it obvious?” Fabius glances down, the corner of his lip curling up in a sneer before it twists into a hollow smile. The expression never makes it to his cold dispassionate eyes, “I'm a genius.”

“O' powers that be, hear my prayer. If I am acceptable in your eyes, if my faith be tested and my heart found pure, then help me to fulfill your plans.”

Kal Belekar sucks in a belaboured breath while he still can. The wet and sticky air passes between cracked lips as he sways suspended by the chains that bind him to the chamber's walls. The skin of his wrists was worn away by the constant chaffing of the manacles, and his teeth were cracked and broken from his endless torment. Where once he'd been a proud captain of the Word Bearers, sworn to the commands of the Urizon, now he was a wretch hanging from chains, forgotten in a cell and left to waste away.

Yet he had been granted a small respite. His captors had left him to his muttering once again, though there was precious little energy left in his broken frame. Strips of his skin had been flensed off, the betchers gland in his mouth was gouged out, and his body was wasting away in a metabolic starvation. But something far worse was still in store, something he had heard of and never seen until that decrepit old astartes had staggered in front of him.

'The Twisted' lived up to his namesake. Hooded and cloaked, the broken astartes had swaggered up and condemned him in a single breath before hammering in the first biting nerve spike into his black carapace socket.

Pain.

It existed before on the battlefield, stressful and yet swiftly numbed. He had not remembered what it was like as a child, before the ascension. He had seen the Imperial army troopers curl up and cry when struck, or huddle in a corner, or give up and die. It had been a confusing thing once upon a time, but now he could understand. His deadened limbs wouldn't respond, and between the spastic waves of intermittent agony blazing a fire through his nerves, he merely wished to be set free. One way or another.

“If I am worthy, absolve me of this torment and return my strength.” he rasps to the walls, feeling the heat from a solar lamp beating down upon him. His tongue was thick and dry, it was eerily similar to the arid slopes of mount Tembruk back on Colchis.

How strange that his mind wound up back at home after more than a century of absence.

“If not, then let me die.”

As the words pass into the abyssal darkness around him, a sudden presence seems to lurk in the shadows. It hovers at the edge of Kal Belekar's vision like a mote of dust caught in his eye. A jangle of metal sounds like keys for a moment, before he spots the flash of gold from a bangle hanging from a too-thin wrist.

“Oh, I don't think they'll want that now, do you?” A feminine voice whispers with a sultry lilt. “Even in your position, you might be of some use to more creative minds.”

The figure that steps from the darkness shifts like a shadow for a second before it flinches back. The pale lavender hued skin and glimmer of claws was unmistakable, as was the slender shapely form that it had adopted for itself.

“Then set me free, and I'll do the Dark Prince's bidding.”

She balks at the offer, then laughs. Placing a hand to her bust, still cloaked in shadows, the female's fanged grin flashes in the gathered gloom. “Me? Nonono, I'm not here for you. I've no use for an astartes, they aren't my 'type'. I'm just, shall we say, nosy. Besides, I'm sure that your time will come soon enough, little captain. As for me-” her figure waver and flickers, “I have other places to be.”

The sound of the Great Ocean lapping at the shores had always been something of a comfort to the Crimson King. In ways beyond human comprehension, it was much like the Primordial sea from whence life had emerged. And within it were creatures, great and small. He was one of the former. He wasn't some mindless predator slicing through the firmament as a shoal of sharks sensing blood, but a being of light.

And still, it didn't matter.

Witless. Gormless. Ignorant.

It plays out in front of his mind's eye again, the bursts of light and clatter of explosions as the Selenar and Martian chattel scramble to avoid the lethal bolts of lightning. What should have been a moment of illumination, of warning about his father's favored son, had birthed a far more horrific revelation.

Magnus had known it before his father spoke. He, Magnus, had been the instrument that put an end to his father's dream. Just like that, without word and without delivering the message that had been so critical, he had fled the sanctum and left it to the wiles of the Great Ocean's denizens.

Now, just as then, he beheld the throne of a god. It sits silhouetted on the horizon, a monument to the stillbirth that was ascendant mankind. It would have been a golden seat for the enlightened New Man to rule from without the threat of the Great Ocean, or its destructive waves that slowly erode the shores of reality. It's still there, a dark silhouette shining across the sparkling aetheric seas, a last ominous landmark to what could have been.

It was his fault mankind ascendant was dead in its cradle. The dream was dead, he was its murderer.

As the royal gallery of Terra lay in ruins, so too would the spires of Tizca. Prospero would burn, and he was its unwitting architect. Surely the Wolves would come, unleashed by his father's rage and drowned by their primal bloodlust. Now too, Horus had a serpent whispering in his ear, and would surely let it come to pass. Prospero would die, and he too would die with it. He and his sons would meet the Executioner's axe and pay a paltry price for that which had been wrought of ignorance. He didn't need to see the writ, he didn't need to hear his sons come to him with news of woe. He had already seen it passed from golden hands to golden hands, before being lifted to the king of winter wolves.

As if sensing his hesitation, his self-effacing doubt, the multitudinous predators turn to see him as prey for the first time. Through the aetheric seas and swirling maelstroms of living colours, tendrilled beasts squirm and thrash as they slice through the current to confront him.

Perhaps better now, here, than in the material world. Perhaps there could be some semblance of recompense he could pay. Suspended in the sparkling void as a luminous star, the Crimson King looks upon the limitless ocean that seethes around him.

“What will the wolves find here if I am gone?” he wonders to himself as the titanic form of a gelatinous mountain of spectral muscle turns its thousand eyes upon his dimming form. “Wolves will come to hunt, to kill, and to gather when they sense the end is near. Animals cannot be blamed for following their instinct.”

A voice whispers in his ear, so alike the great heralds of the future to whom he owed so much. “Is that all they do, mighty king of Prospero?”

Magnus did not so much turn, as redirect his conscience to an infinitesimal spot that he had seemingly missed lurking in the shadows. No, not missed, overlooked.

The Crimson King confronts the slender, feminine form coalescing so near to him. She was pale, bovine, with two pairs of arms and a slender swishing tail, naked aside from the garlands of gold and bangles on her wrists. Her jet black eyes reflect a pale orange glow within the elongated skull. She was so far beneath him that he could obliterate her with a thought, and so often it was her kind that shied away from him.

This one did not.

“Peace, Crimson King.” She winks and cocks her head to the side, her swaying movements imitating a living flame made of smooth flesh. “I come here as a herald of comfort and joy.”

“I know your kind.” Magnus hardens his resolve, and like a tsunami, waves of pure eldritch force ripple outwards from him. “You think me a witless child, that I would listen to you?”

“I am but a friend of a friend of a sibling, o' lord of sorcerers.” she feigns a curtsy, grasping at the hem of a dress most certainly absent. “I had watched your intervention. Most admirable, o' loyal, generous-”

“You try my patience, creature.” Magnus focuses his attention on it, even as the immense monoliths delving through the oceans of dreams fade away from the resplendent star in their midst.

She bows her head in supplication while spreading her upper arms wide. “The message I impart is this,” behind her head among the swirling eddies of pink and purple, a bright white crescent moon forms in the abyss. “The Wolf seeks blood, but the Sun brings with it Illumination through the Night. Trust in yourself, Crimson King. When you awaken, you will greet a new dawn.”

In a puff of smoke that sizzles like motes of silver dust, the creature disappears and flows back into the endless tides.

Author's Note

Aaaalright, there's the two vignette style bridges. Next time, we'll be getting into the meat of it again.