Warhammer 40k: Friendship Is (NOT) Heretical

Chapters

Opening Passage and Dramatis Personae
Sitrep, Please
First (Friendly) Contact
Fruit, Friendships, and Fights To The Death
Cruelty and Kindness
Finding Stable Footing
An Unplanned Reunion

Opening Passage and Dramatis Personae

It is the 41st Millennium.

For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon‐infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperorʹs will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio‐engineered super‐warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever‐vigilant Inquisition and the tech‐priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever‐present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants—and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re‐learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. But don’t forget that in the grim darkness of the far future, there is also more than that.

There are people, too. And those people are worth fighting for.

Dramatis Personae:

Scions of the Konic

Severa, Scions Chapter Master, pathologically prone to honesty as brutal as a blow from her power fist

Casimiria, Chief Apothecary, pathologically showing compassion toward non-combatants, human or otherwise

Lucius, Master of Sanctity, pathologically dropping cluster f-bombs like they’re going out of style

Incomitus, Master of the Forge, pathologically possessed of a moody outlook on life and an oft-demonstrated mastery of the usage of snark

Magnus, Chief Librarian, pathologically curious to a degree that would have the Inquisition knocking on his door with murderous intent were he not a Space Marine

Felix, Battle Brother, pathologically incapable of driving any sort of vehicle in a sane and reasonable manner

Author's Note

Wrote both these things up, so I decided I might as well throw them in at the start.

Sitrep, Please

The Unquestionable Perfection, Observation Deck

The steel, sliding doors opened with a hiss of hydraulics, a looming, humanoid shape stepping through and into the corridor beyond. Her footfalls thudded on the steel-plated decking below, tiny servos within her armor whirring softly as it moved.

Several of the figure’s smaller brethren, regular humans wearing simple beige robes and cloaks, glanced up from their various tasks as she passed, and she acknowledged each with a glance and a nod. Some of the robed humans—the freshest recruits, probably—glanced up in surprise at even this token recognition of their existence.

Chapter Master Severa let loose a small sigh. She technically wasn’t human, set apart by her gene-enhanced stature, the blue-and-silver Power Armor she wore, and the demigod’s blood that flowed through her veins, but she still counted on these people to keep her armor and weapons functional, and so did the hundred other Space Marines on the vessel. No member of the Adeptus Astartes would be remotely worthy of the title “Angels of Death” without the hard work of these human Chapter Serfs backing them up, and it honestly bewildered her that some of her kind failed to recognize that.

Severa reached the end of the hallway, pushing her thoughts aside as she stepped through the doorway and onto the Unquestionable Perfection’s observation deck.

The walls of the chamber bore the same colors as her armor: blue with silver trimming. Further embellishments decorated the walls, the most common of which being skulls. Why the engineers who’d designed the vessel had seen fit to waste resources and space on high-ceiling, church-like interiors and covering everything with skulls was admittedly beyond her.

Severa looked away from the room’s decorations, her gaze falling on the four other occupants. “The situation?”

“In layman’s terms? Not great.” One of the four other Adeptus Astartes in the room besides Captain Severa responded, lifting his arm and gesturing out the window. Through that window, the thick forest that the Unquestionable Perfection had been forced to crash-land in was visible, spreading out in all directions; beyond the forest’s borders was the once-picturesque scenery of this physics-breaking planet.

When Severa had first looked outside, she had seen a whimsical, fairy-tale rendition of a Feudal World, complete with a fantasy palace affixed to a mountain in a way that flew in the face of even her admittedly less-than-complete knowledge of architecture and city-building. Now, that world was in flames. Villages were burning, columns of smoke stretching up into the sky and painting it an alarming shade of purplish red. The day/night cycle had ground to a stop, the moon inexplicably frozen at the zenith of its arc for well over 24 hours now. And above it all, huge, looming shapes hung in the sky, just barely visible past the smoke-shrouded sky.

“As you can see, this planet we’re crash-landed on has become the target of a Heretic Astartes invasion force.” Chief Librarian Magnus continued. His armor bore the same silver trimmings as his fellows, but was colored a brighter, more vibrant shade of blue. Runes had been carved into his armor, faintly glowing and crackling ever-so-slightly from concentrated psychic power. The lower half of a robe draped his legs and feet in tan cloth with silver lining, and a musty tome bound with heavy steel clasps hung at his belt. “They’re apparently too busy pillaging and burning their way through the feudal-level Xeno population to bother checking out a shipwrecked Gloriana-class battlecruiser, and thus have not noticed our presence aboard said battlecruiser.”

“Motherfuckers...” High Chaplain Lucius interjected, flipping the bird at the distant Chaos Space Marines visible through the window. Like the Chief Librarian, his armor bore the same silver trimmings as the rest of the Scions, but was black rather than blue, adorned with a dark-blue hooded cloak and a skull-like helmet with glowing red eyes.

“I strongly advise against tempting fate like that.” Magnus chided. “If and when they notice us, if the biosignatures our sensoria detected are accurate, we’ll have to fend off a force of roughly 1000 Chaos Space Marines and just under 1 million human cultists. Needless to say, the 100 Loyalist Space Marines and roughly 1000 crew at our disposal will be… less than sufficient for that task.”

“Thanks for the reminder that we have no choice but to leave innocents to suffer. I really needed that.” Chief Apothecary grumbled, crossing his arms over the chestplate of his blue-and-white armor as the mechanical arms of his servo-harness twitched in frustration. The “innocents” in question were Xenos, of course, but that fact was neither here nor there as far as Apothecary Casimiria was concerned, and Severa wasn’t really inclined to argue with him on that point; in her opinion, the Imperium of Man was a little too xenophobic for its own good.

Severa sighed, turning to the Master of the Apothecarion. “Look, I don’t like leaving those quadruped xenos out there to the tender mercies of the Heretic Astartes any more than you do. But as Magnus has explained, we simply don’t have the numbers to fight off such a large Chaos Warband. Getting this jalopy of a Gloriana-class battleship back into the void and linking up with the rest of the fleet has to take priority for now; we can swoop back in like a buncha big damn heroes once we’ve done all that.” Severa responded. “And speaking of which… Incomitus, you have completed your assessment of the Perfection’s condition, correct?”

“Yes, and I have good news and bad news on that front.” The Master of the Forge, like the Chief Apothecary, had a servo-harness affixed to the back of his red-painted armor, but his was larger, and bore many more articulated metal arms. One such arm lifted up, a trio of lights flickering to life and producing a miniature holographic blueprint, laying out the Unquestionable Perfection in it’s titular perfection… or rather, it’s complete and total absolute lack thereof. “The good news is that the manufactoriums on the engineering deck are still fully functional. The bad news is that the same can’t be said for literally anything else.”

Severa silently cursed to herself. Once, long ago, the Perfection’s name may have been fitting, but now the only thing unquestionable about it was the fact that it was a mangled, barely functional corpse of the vessel it used to be. It had already been in horrible shape to begin with, and having to make an unplanned planetfall for the 38th time since the Scions had been gifted the vessel had not improved its condition. Much of the hologram was a solid yellow, indicating damage that was neither negligible or crippling; very few sections were blue, indicating that they were undamaged. But that wasn’t the source of Severa’s frustration; that dubious honor went to the red on the hologram, indicating nonfunctional systems that were essential for traversing the Void. The number of such systems that had been damaged in the crash was far higher than she had estimated—and she was hardly a soul given over to heights of optimism.

“As you can see, all our sublight propulsion systems have suffered crippling damage, our gellar field generators have all been completely slagged, all our void shields are nonfunctional, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg regarding busted systems that this derelict can’t function without. Worse, several cargo holds got vented into space from the stress of our exit from warpspace, and the raw materials we need in order to produce replacement parts for damaged systems got vented with them. We’re gonna have to mine for new materials manually, and that will take about a month just to gather up the materials under optimal conditions. And having a frakton of Chaos Marines stomping around that we’ll need to avoid the notice of while we’re doing that is about as far from “optimal conditions” as you can get. All in all, getting this jalopy repaired to the point that it’s spaceworthy is going to take a full 2 months at absolute best. Given our luck, we’ll probably have to triple that estimate.”

“So, a thousand motherfucking traitors are stomping around out there, and rather than killing those bitches we have to hide from them like a buncha fucking cowards. For six. Whole. Fucking. Months.” Lucius grumbled.

“Pretty much.” Incomitus deadpanned. A long, drawn-out silence fell over the five of them.

“...I trust everyone knows what they should be doing right now?” A chorus of affirmations rose up from three out of the four marines as they turned around, heading towards the exits. In a matter of moments, the only beings left in the chamber were Captain Severa and Casimiria, the latter staring out the window.

“…Casimiria?”

“Nothing requires my attention at the moment, so I’m going for a walk. Outside.” And with that, the white-armored space marine spun around and stomped off.

Severa frowned beneath her helmet. Usually, such “walks” concluded with Casimiria dragging the corpse of at least one Heretic Astartes back with him. “Understood. But be careful out there…”

Everfree Forest, Somewhere near the Unquestionable Perfection

Wind rushed around Twilight’s form as she frantically pumped her wings, struggling to put on extra speed. Searing agony flared across her right wing every time she flapped it, but she did her best to ignore the pain.

She turned hard, nearly colliding with a tree trunk as she flapped against her own momentum. She couldn’t help but wince as branches scraped over her charred feathers, and her hooves nearly slipped over the branch they were reaching for as a result. Somehow, she managed to maintain her balance, collapsing against the tree branch and sucking in deep, gasping breaths.

How… how did this happen?! Her mind raced, struggling to figure out how that armor-plated creature had managed to spot her. The spell I cast should’ve prevented her from noticing me! Why wasn’t it working?! Why-

A horrifyingly familiar chuckle reached her ears. “Behind you…”

Twilight screamed, spinning around and unleashing a violet ray from her horn… only for the magical beam to slice through empty air.

More malevolent laughter echoed through the woods, dripping with a sadistic delight that made Discord at his absolute worst seem like a saint in comparison. Twilight peeked out from behind the trunk she’d pressed herself against… and promptly found herself staring straight into the glowing red eyeslit of the creature’s helmet.

Another scream, another magical blast; all the latter accomplished was a bush reduced to a smoking crater. Twilight’s heart pounded in her chest, barely stifled sobs slipping from her throat despite her best efforts as she frantically scanned her surroundings.

Everywhere she looked, she saw snatches of gleaming metal or hulking minotaur-like silhouettes, terror warping her perception and playing tricks on her eyes. Or was it more than just her terror? She could personally attest to the fact that her pursuer had offensive spells at its disposal; maybe it could use more subtle forms of magic as well, like summoned illusions or mind-altering enchantments.

Twilight sucked in a long, shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut as she wracked her brain for a spell that she could use to extricate herself from this nightmare…

It dawned on her a second too late that closing her eyes was a mistake, a mistake that her pursuer would be all too happy to capitalize on.

A sharp, white-hot agony flooded her right wing, like every single fiber of it had been dumped in hot magma. An ear-piercing shriek erupted out of Twilight’s throat as she fell from the branch, more of them thrashing her body as she plunged from the treetops and down toward the forest floor. She scrambled to her feet, spinning around in a panic… and promptly froze as she caught a glimpse of her left wing.

Or rather, her complete lack thereof.

All thoughts—rational or otherwise—promptly threw themselves right out the window as she stared at the charred stump that was all that remained of her wing. …no. No no nonononono-

Something heavy and hard came down on her right wing, crushing it beneath its weight. But still, the pain of her bones breaking was nothing compared to the pain of having those bones severed from her body. Again.

This time, Twilight didn’t even hear herself scream. Her vision had become nothing but a blurry, indecipherable haze, her mind clouded and sluggish from the shock of losing two entire limbs in as many seconds. Twilight would have wondered how she was still conscious if she didn’t have more pressing concerns at the moment.

“I must admit, that little ‘spell’ of yours was a clever trick. Too bad it only puts you beneath the notice of material senses.” Any thoughts of escape were quickly snuffed out when her attacker grabbed her in a single massive, armor-plated hand, lifting her up and holding her aloft in front of it.

“…please… no more… please just stop…” Her voice was a low, raspy whine, so quiet she could barely even hear it.

“I’d rather not.” The thing drew back its other arm, some kind of orange-and-purple enveloping the massive sword it carried as it wound up to chop her head off…

And all of a sudden, her vision went white, an earth-shattering WHOOM flooding her ears. She had the vague sensation of the creature’s grip loosening, of gravity taking hold of her bruised, mutilated body.

…this is what death feels like, isn’t it? Already, she could feel herself slipping away, consciousness sliding out from under her. She didn’t even feel herself hit the ground.

“WHO DARES!?” The Chaos sorcerer roared, wisps of smoke still wafting up from his armor as the slit in his visor flashed.

“Me.” Chief Apothecary Casimiria growled, his voice dripping with hatred as he leaned to the side, narrowly dodging a blast of witchfire courtesy of the Sorcerer’s baleful chaos-touched gaze. He drew another bead, and his Absolver bolt-pistol let loose another burst of mass-reactive rounds.

“Oh, a Loyalist puppet.” The Chaos Sorcerer chuckled, sidestepping the projectiles with ease. “So vehemently loyal to your Corpse-God, you couldn’t even hold yourself back long enough to let me finish killing that xeno.” The explosive bullets buried themselves in a nearby tree, blowing it apart as their intended recipient surged forward, his Force Sword flying toward Casimiria.

The Chief Apothecary didn’t bother responding as he narrowly evaded the flame-wreathed blade, answering the attack with a lightning-fast punch.

Again, the Chaos Sorcerer dodged effortlessly, Casimiria’s fist grazing the side of his face. No servant of chaos was completely alike, and that was doubly true for Sorcerers and their capabilities, but limited puppetry was one of the more common warp-borne abilities the Chaos Marine Psykers possessed. It was rarely strong enough to achieve complete control over a rational, sentient mind, even for a second, but it was strong enough to induce subtler things, like slips of the tongue, the twitch of a trigger finger at the exact wrong moment… or, in this case, a slight adjustment of Casimiria’s aim, just enough of one to throw his punch off-course.

Unfortunately for the Sorcerer, while his heretical warp-trickery may have led Casimiria’s fists astray, it had not affected the machine-spirit of his servo-harness.

“You could’ve just sat back and made your job that much-URK!” The Chaos Sorcerer’s hand spasmed as several needles punched through a seam in his armor, the shock of having his veins pumped full of heart-stopping poisons stunning him for a tiny fraction of a second. The dosage wasn’t high enough to kill him, but it didn’t need to be; by the time he’d recovered, Casimiria had already buried his Narthecium’s chainblade in the Chaos Sorcerer’s throat.

“Perish, heretic.” Casimiria growled, angling the gauntlet-mounted medical implement upwards, before pulling a trigger. In a flash, a short metal spike shot out of the device, punching straight through the sorcerer’s helmet and killing him instantly.

For a long, long moment, Casimiria stood there, studying the Chaos Sorcerer’s still-warm corpse for even the slightest sign of life. Some part of him almost wanted his opponent to still be alive, was tempted to just begin lashing out at his body even if there wasn’t.

But he had more pressing concerns than taking his rage out on a Heretic Astartes’ dead body.

He wrenched the Narthecium free of the Chaos Sorcerer, turning toward the fallen xeno and scooping her up. His servo-harness set to work immediately, cleaning and cauterizing the horse-like creature’s wounds and clearing away the dead tissue the Sorcerer’s force sword had left behind. “It’s okay, I’ve got you…” He murmured to it, a servo-arm snaking out from behind him and grabbing the dead Sorcerer by its shoulder as he turned back the way he came, slowly walking back to the Unquestionable Perfection

Author's Note

Yeah, decided to go back and rewrite this chapter.
Captain Severa: 1st Company Captain of the Scions, assigned male at birth but is Transgender and uses she/her pronouns (on a related note, those in the Warhammer 40k community who shout FEMALE ASTARTES AREN'T A THING CUZ BLAH BLAH Y CHROMOSONE BLAH BLAH are completely forgetting that having a Y chromosone and identifying as a woman aren't two mutually exclusive things). Keep in mind that Severa has been through the same augmentation process as any other space marine, and has a similar physique as a result. Think this, not this.
The Scions of the Konic: This is a Homebrew Chapter written specifically for this fic. One of the things I tried to do with it is to look at several of the cliches associated with homebrew chapters and then Deconstructing those cliches by exploring why they might be in effect and how they'd realistically affect a Chapter's place in the Imperium. For example; they have a Gloriana class by virtue of the thing being a barely-functional wreck that's a lot more of a hindrance to a Chapter than an asset.

First (Friendly) Contact

The Unquestionable Perfection, Unspecified Corridor

Techmarine Incomitus lifted up a sheet of metal with his hands, holding it in place. A few prayers to the Gloriana’s machine-spirits slipped from his lips while his servo-arms carefully welded the panel back into place. Technically, he was supposed to say a lot more litanies, but he was of the opinion that the Gloriana’s machine-spirits would be a lot more pleased by efficient, thorough work than by unnecessary and excessive religious reverence.

“Good evening, Incomitus. Are the repairs progressing smoothly?”

“By a given definition of “smoothly”, yes.” Incomitus answered, glancing briefly at the Chief Apothecary… and promptly doing a spit-take so hard he swore he heard his neck crack.

Every Space Marine in the Scions of the Konic had their quirks; Casimiria’s was an uncharacteristic excess of empathy and compassion for innocent non-combatants, regardless of whether those non-combatants were humans or xenos. And on the many occasions when the Scions of the Konic had more important things to do than run around trying to save xenos that they technically should’ve been purging on sight, the Apothecary would often vent his frustration at that by going on long “walks”. And while it wasn’t exactly common for these walks to end in him returning with the corpse of a foe who’d also wandered off on their own, it wasn’t exactly unheard of either.

Thus, it wasn’t the corpse of the Chaos Sorcerer that Chief Apothecary Casimiria was dragging along with his servo-arms that had drawn the Techmarine’s attention. That dubious honor went to the small, trembling, lavender-colored ball of fur he was carrying in his normal, non-mechanical arms.

Before, Incomitus had scoffed at the verbal descriptions of the local xeno population as “cutesy multicolored ponies”, but now that he was looking at one up close, he had to admit that those descriptions were shockingly accurate. The xeno in Casimiria’s arms was almost disturbingly similar to a miniature Terran horse in appearance, differing only in its absurdly bright purple-and-violet coloration and the short horn that jutted from its forehead. How such a vibrant coat color hadn’t been removed from the gene pool by natural selection, Incomitus honestly had no idea…

“Incomitus? You’re staring.”

The Techmarine looked up at Casimiria, who’d come to a stop and turned toward him. And then back down at the xeno. And then right back up at the Chief Apothecary. “…and you have a xeno in your arms.”

“And?” Casimiria asked, as if that wasn’t something noteworthy. It probably wasn’t, knowing him… but then again, his compassion had never driven him to take a xeno under his wing before.

“...look, I know the xeno inhabitants of this planet are far, far, far cuter than they have any right to be, but you do realize that one of the Imperium’s most well-known mottos is “suffer not the alien to live”, right?”

“Cuteness has nothing to do with it. Putting aside the pointless xenophobia in that motto, there are multiple occasions when the Imperium of Man has suffered the alien to live when it was beneficial to do so.” The Chief Apothecary countered, in a tone that implied that he’d been expecting someone to challenge him on this and had formulated a response in anticipation.

Unfortunately for the Chief Apothecary, Incomitus could see several large, glaring holes in that response, holes that he wasn’t going to leave unaddressed. “Speaking of putting things aside, I’m gonna overlook the fact that your declaration that “Cuteness has nothing to do with it” just tripped, staggered, and face-planted it's way through every single bullshit detector in my brain for a moment, and instead play along with your flimsy-as-all-frak pretense by asking a simple question; how is taking an unfamiliar, potentially dangerous xeno back to your Chapter’s flagship “beneficial” to us?”

“Information, that’s how. This xeno likely has far more knowledge of this planet than we do, and given that these creatures are intelligent enough to build housing and settlements, that knowledge likely includes the locations of resources that would prove useful in getting the Unquestionable Perfection back into the void. And it’s already predisposed to share that information with us, given that I saved it from this Chaos Sorcerer.”

The Techmarine glanced down at the dead Chaos Sorcerer, letting loose a frustrated huff. “You risked your life for that xeno? This cover story of yours just keeps getting better and better.”

“My reasoning is sound, is it not?”

“Yeah, well, try telling that to the rest of the Imperium. The Inquisition’s already pissed at us solely out of principle; they’d lose their frakking minds if they found out that the Chief Apothecary decided to adopt a Xeno.”

“Well, then, I suppose it’s a good thing that there aren’t any around to punish me for daring to do anything with a xeno other than purging it on sight.” And with that, Chief Apothecary Casimiria turned away, stomping off down the corridor.

Incomitus let loose a sigh, silently making a mental note to send a lingua-vox servo-skull down to Casimiria’s Apothecarion when he got the chance. Something told him that a translation for the xeno’s language was about to become a very handy thing to have.

The Unquestionable Perfection, Apothecarion, Several Minutes Later

The first thing Twilight became aware of was a low, almost mechanical-sounding whir. She jolted awake as her mind rapidly clawed its way back to full consciousness, a thin sheet of fabric sliding off of her as she sat up.

Several things became apparent right off the bat. Firstly, she was in pain. A dull, throbbing, bruise-like pain that seemed to permeate every single fiber of her being and felt particularly intense around her wings. Secondly; she was alive. Somehow. Never mind that the last thing she remembered was one of those metal-plated, minotaur-like titans seizing her neck in one of its massive 5-digited paws and lifting its sword to chop her head off.

And thirdly, she wasn’t alone in the room. The source of that mechanical whirr, it turned out, was a floating skull hovering above her.

Twilight let loose a frightened whine, scrambling to the edge of the oddly-oversized bed, her ears flat against her neck as she gazed up at the hovering skull. It didn’t look like a horse skull, thank Harmony, but it was still very, very creepy thanks to all the unidentifiable machinery that had been bolted onto and into it. She couldn’t see any obvious weapons, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.

For a long, long minute, the skull and the mare were still, the former bobbing ever-so-slightly as the latter studied it with her wide, terrified eyes.

“…hello?” Twilight finally spoke, her voice barely higher than a whisper.

Doot! Twilight nearly jumped out of her skin at the noise from the creature, bracing herself to roll out of the way of some kind of projectile. But the floating skull did nothing else. No blades or tendrils popped out of it, no lasers or bullets came out of any of the multitude of holes on the thing, nothing about its behavior or appearance indicated that it had even produced a sound.

“Are… are you gonna hurt me?” Again, the strange device let loose another Doot!, identical to the last.

“…that’s a no, right?”

Doot!

Twilight’s ears rose back up as annoyance began to replace fear. “You can’t even understand a word I’m saying, can you?”

Doot!

“Well, at least you aren’t trying to murder me…” Twilight muttered, tearing her eyes away from the ghoulish thing and studying her surroundings. There wasn’t much to see, largely because the lighting was so dim Twilight could barely see the walls of the disquietingly large chamber. The metallic, deep blue coloration of those walls certainly weren’t doing the visibility level any favors, either.

“What even is this place-?”

Da-deet! Twilight spun back around as the floating skull let loose another noise, this one longer and slightly higher pitched than the rest. The whirring noise intensified as it turned around, drifting away from Twilight.

“Wait! Where are you going?!” Twilight exclaimed, but the skull ignored her, not even letting off a parting beep as a part of the wall it was approaching suddenly slid into the ceiling. “Please don’t-“

The skull drifted through what Twilight now realized was a door, which promptly slid shut behind it with an ominous click. “…leave.” Twilight whimpered, her ears drooping as she shivered, and from more than just the chilly draft that the door had briefly let into the room. Honestly, literally anypony else would have been better company, but at least before it left, she hadn’t been completely alone…

A distant, heavy-sounding CLOMP, CLOMP, CLOMP filled Twilight’s ears, and she froze. She’d heard that sound before, back in Ponyville. Or, at least, what those metal-plated monstrosities had reduced Ponyville to. All of a sudden, the sheer size of everything around her made a lot more sense.

Her terror came roaring back, her ears going flat against her neck once again as adrenaline flooded her veins. Oh sweet harmony above… this is a prison cell! I’m a prisoner! I should be looking for some way out of here, not trying to chat with that floating skull-thingy! Her eyes darted around the prison cell, frantically scanning her surroundings for a way out, a place to hide, a weapon to defend herself with, something, anything she could use to escape whatever fate her captors had in store for her-

The door opened, revealing a hulking, all-too-familiar silhouette.

The latest in a very long series of screams of terror erupted from Twilight’s throat. She swiveled around, flaring her wings as she leaped off the side of the bed… and was promptly reminded of the fact that she no longer had wings as her nonexistent feathers failed to catch the air and she fell… right into the creature’s extended hands. A fresh wail of terror escaped her lips as she strained against the monstrosity’s steel-plated fingers, trying to squirm free of its grasp...

“It’s okay.”

Twilight froze as her captor’s deep, slightly staticky-sounding voice reached her ears, her confusion returning with a vengeance as her captor lifted her back onto the bed, setting her down on it with a gentleness that was completely and utterly at odds with the brutality and violence she’d seen from these creatures.

For a long, long second, Twilight just sat there, her mind struggling to process what just occurred. She didn’t know what these invaders did to any live ponies they managed to capture, but she had a few good ideas, most of which involved tossing them into labor camps and working them straight to death, strapping them to a surgical table and vivisecting them alive, tossing them onto an unholy altar and sacrificing them in some kind of horrific ritual to appease whatever dark gods they served, or some nightmarish combination of all of the above.

Or, at least, she thought those ideas were good. Absolutely none of them featured one of those creatures catching her as she fell off the side of a bed, telling her “it’s okay”, and then setting her back down, completely unharmed.

“It’s okay.”The creature spoke again, somehow speaking in near-perfect Ponish as it dropped to one knee next to the bed, in an attempt to look a little less menacing. The attempt wasn’t very successful, on account of the thing still towering over her, but that didn’t change the fact that it was actively trying to not be intimidating. “You’re safe here.”

Twilight looked up at the creature, really looked at it, noticing for the first time that it differed from all the other creatures of its kind that she’d seen. For one, its armor was white and light blue instead of black and gold, and had far less spiky bits, though its wearer was no less intimidating for it. And its helmet was off, giving Twilight an unobstructed view of its head.

The creature had no fur, aside from a short, close-cropped brown ‘mane’ of sorts atop its head. It had eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears, but no muzzle, and the features it did have were disquietingly small. Its nose protruded only slightly from its face, and its icy, greyish-blue eyes were small, almost beady. And yet, despite its alien appearance, there was no mistaking the compassionate look the creature was giving her.

“Are… are you gonna kill me?”

The creature shook its head. “Of course not. Rest assured that the only thing we have in common with the beings who invaded your homeland is our species.”

The moment Twilight received verbal confirmation that her captors weren’t about to murder her, the floodgates flew open. “Can you help us drive them off? I know it’s a lot to ask of someone you just met but they’re hurting all my friends and I don’t know how to make them stop and I’m scared-“

“Easy there.” The creature interjected, laying one of its hands on her withers in a surprisingly successful attempt to calm her down. “You can worry about all that once you’ve gotten some sleep. You look like you need it.”

“…yeah.” Twilight answered, her eyes starting to droop closed. Now that the adrenaline was starting to leave his system, all the stress and terror and exhaustion that had plagued her these past few days was starting to catch up to her.

“I’ll be back with food and water a little later.” The creature stood up, draping the sheet over Twilight’s form as she shifted slightly, settling into a safe, warm, comfortable place to sleep for the first time in days. Needless to say, it didn’t take her long to drift off into a deep, deep slumber.

The Unquestionable Perfection, Master of the Keep’s Quarters, Several Minutes Later

To: Chapter Master Severa

From: Chief Librarian Magnus

While what my fellow Scions are gossiping about is typically beneath my attention, their discussions of one particular matter are becoming a challenge to not notice. Apparently, at least five of our battle-brothers spotted Casimiria carrying a “small, purple equine-esque xeno” in his arms this evening. A few of those spreading this rumor are claiming that the Chief Apothecary has, to quote a particularly tactless Marine, “lost his fraking mind”.

Personally, I’m not opposed to Casimiria taking a xeno under his care. Quite the opposite, actually; I’m looking forward to studying and interacting with a sapient, intelligent alien organism in an environment other than a no-holds-barred warzone. However, as the aforementioned Marine has made clear with his scornful comment, not all of my fellow Astartes share my enthusiasm at the prospect of sharing space with a xeno.

While I understand that you have many duties as the Scions’ Chapter Master and far more pressing concerns than this, I strongly recommend that you take a little time to look into this, confirm that the xeno isn’t a threat, and make sure the rest of my battle-brothers are informed of what you learned. I’d appreciate it if the xeno didn’t get its head blown off by a battle-brother with more fanaticism than restraint, and I’m sure Casimiria and the xeno would say the same.

Thank you.

Thought for the Day: Knowledge is the lifeblood of the Imperium

Severa closed out the message, setting the dataslate down and looking up at her surroundings. Captains, unlike the rank-and-file space marines they commanded, had personal quarters that they could decorate as they wished, but Severa wasn’t particularly inclined to exercise the latter half of that privilege. As a result, her quarters were a lot more spartan than what was normal for her station, barren aside from a desk, a chair, a bed, a rack of assorted weapons, and a partially-empty bookshelf. To Severa, this was purely a place to sleep and to work in relative peace; no more, no less.

She’d been doing the latter when her dataslate had pinged, notifying her of Librarian Magnus’s message. Coincidentally, the thing she’d been working on just so happened to be how they’d approach first contact with the Xeno natives of this planet.

Severa opened up a private vox-caster channel to Casimiria. “Chief Apothecary Casimiria, this is Severa speaking. I’m fairly sure I don’t need to tell you what I’m reaching out to you about.”

“Yes, you don’t. I was about to notify you of the development myself, actually. Rest assured that the only reason I saved that xeno was the benefits having a xeno informant on friendly terms with the Scions might grant us.”

“Of course.” Severa responded, in a tone that made it clear that she knew full well that the Apothecary’s decision to violate the Imperial tenet of “suffer not the alien to live” was driven by more than simple pragmatism… and also that she was completely fine with that. “That being said, the next time you decide to “recruit” a “xeno informant” from the local population, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me first.”

“Noted.”

“Good. And one more thing: while I’m willing to tolerate you rescuing one “xeno informant”, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to say the same for twenty or more. This is a derelict Gloriana-class Battleship that we’re frantically scrambling to get up and off-planet before the Heretic Astartes take notice of it and murder us all, not a refugee center.”

Through the vox-link, Severa heard Casimira let loose a frustrated huff. “...understood.” The Chief Apothecary growled. “Anything else you wish to discuss with me?”

“Not tonight, no.” And with that, Severa closed the vox-link, picked the dataslate back up, and set about typing up a notice to the rest of the Space Marines about their new alien guest.

Author's Note

Discipline Among The Scions (more specifically, the lack thereof): As you've probably noticed, the Scions aren't quite as disciplined as most Chapters. They make up for it by being very close-knit and dedicated to each other... which also means that they're all up in each other's business and a lot more prone to gossiping between missions as a result.
Lingua-Vox Servo-Skull: This Servo-Skull variant is cribbed straight from Friendship Is Sanctioned, I freely admit. In universe, it exists because the sheer size of the Imperium results in colonies developing radically different versions of Low Gothic, necessitating a servo-skull whose machine spirit can act as an interpreter when a colony's language has drifted so far from Low Gothic it's basically an entirely different language. It can also translate xeno languages, though processing a xeno's language normally take far longer than a few minutes, requires a much larger sample size, and more meaning is lost in the translation. Why the Lingua-Vox Servo-Skull can process Ponish so easily will be explained later.

Fruit, Friendships, and Fights To The Death

The Unquestionable Perfection, Apothecarion

Casimiria stared down at the basket in his hands, loaded with fruit he’d managed to scavenge from the Everfree. Inadequacy-fueled rage simmering in his heart; he couldn’t help but feel that he was effectively saying “sorry we just sat back and let a bunch of psychotic chaos-worshipping killing machines go to town on all your friends and family, here’s a consolatory fruit basket”. These poor, innocent xenos needed the servants of chaos who were rampaging their way across her world dead and gone, not some locally sourced fresh fruit!

Casimiria sighed; the fruit would have to do for now. He reached down with his servo-arm, the device touching a panel on the wall and causing the door in front of him to slide open.

Beyond was the xeno he’d rescued last night, sitting on the bed with all her attention on the stumps her wings had been reduced to. An eldritch glow had enveloped her horn, violet in color, and a similar glow enveloped the aforementioned stumps.

Casimiria froze in the doorway, eyes going wide at the sight of the unnatural light. This xeno is a psyker?! But I’m not feeling the characteristic chill I usually feel in the presence of a psyker using their twisted powers…

Casimiria was stirred from his thoughts by a terrified yelp. The xeno had noticed him, the otherworldly glows vanishing into thin air as she dropped down to the mattress, pressing her against the bed’s mattress and looking up at him with those huge, uncannily expressive purple eyes.

“It’s okay,” Casimiria reassured her, his suit’s vox taking his low gothic and translating it into her kind’s strangely musical language. He raised his hands to show that they carried no weapons as he stepped up to the bed, whatever witchcraft its occupant had been engaged in forgotten for the moment. “It’s just me.”

The xeno didn’t respond; she just stared at him, trembling in silence, too terrified to even speak. Seeing that terror in those purple eyes made Casimiria’s two hearts ache; he wanted nothing more than to charge out, find the sick bastard who’d given the order that had shattered her quiet, peaceful life, and frakking murder him, to impart upon him some small measure of the pain and fear that he’d conspired to inflict upon this poor, innocent creature. But he couldn’t. All he could do was this.

“Here. I brought some fruit from the surrounding forest.” Casimiria dropped to one knee in front of the bed, setting the basket down on it, within reach of the xeno. She flinched backward at first, before slowly creeping forward, sniffing tentatively at the fruit. Eventually, she reached out with a trembling hoof, slowly lifting up an orange-like fruit and taking a hesitant bite. Apparently reassured that the fruit was safe to eat—Casimiria’s enhanced sense of smell meant he’d been able to avoid picking any poisonous fruits—the xeno quickly scarfed down the rest of the orange, skin and all.

“...I don’t think I’ve introduced myself. My name’s Casimiria. You have a name as well, right?” The Chief Apothecary offered.

The xeno nodded as she helped herself to more of the basket’s contents. “Twilight. Twilight Sparkle.”

“...that’s a very strange name, in my opinion, but then again, you’d probably say the same about the name ‘Casimiria’.”

“Yeah.” ‘Twilight Sparkle’ glanced up at the Apothecary. There was still fear in her eyes, but it was less intense than before, and now fought for dominance with curiosity. “...what are you? And when did you learn ponish?”

Casimiria paused for a long moment, trying to figure out how best to explain what he was to Twilight. “...I am a member of the Adeptus Astartes, the genetically modified supersoldiers of a galaxy-spanning empire. And I actually haven’t learned your language; my armor merely serves as a translator.”

“Really?! It can do that? Can you tell me how?” Twilight Sparkle brightened up immediately, her tail and ears flying up as she darted forward, rearing up on her hind legs and placing her front limbs

Casimiria chuckled slightly; Twilight’s excitement over the prospect of learning something new called to mind Chief Librarian Magnus and his insatiable curiosity. “The specifics of how it does that are beyond me, unfortunately. You’ll have to ask some of my more technologically-inclined friends for details…” He trailed off into silence as he noticed the crestfallen look blossoming into existence on Twilight’s face. “What’s wrong? Was it something I said?”

“...not really.” Twilight’s ears and tails drooped back down as she slumped down against Casimiria’s chest. “It’s just… I miss myfriends. I… I hope they’re okay…”

…oh. All of a sudden, Casimiria was fighting back tears again. “...I hope so too…”

Black Legion Base of Operations, Canterlot's Former Location

The latest in a long succession of bone-chilling screams reached Fluttershy’s ears, and she awoke with a jolt. A terrified whiny slipped from her throat as she leaped to her hooves, trying to scramble away from the noise, only to collide with a wall of cold, hard iron bars.

The yellow pegasus’ heart began to race as her eyes darted around, taking in the distressingly tiny cage she was trapped within, the cold, unfeeling steel walls visible just beyond the bars, the gloomy, menacing red lighting. All of a sudden, the collar around her neck felt unbearably tight, her throat pressing up against the band of metal and making her feel like she was going to suffocate. The tips of her feathered wings flared, the limbs pressing against the cruel metal band clamped around her torso, almost as if they were begging to be free, begging to spread wide and carry her away from this nightmare made real.

To say that Fluttershy was not okay would be the understatement of the century.

“D-d-dashie?” Fluttershy glanced to her right, toward the only other cage in the chamber. But the cage was empty. It took her a moment to remember what had happened to its occupant.

“Be brave, flutters…” Fluttershy blinked back tears, dropping to the floor of her cage and burying her face in her belly as she recalled the last thing her friend had said before their captors had dragged her off to do Harmony knows what to her. She didn’t feel brave; just small, lonely, helpless, and completely, utterly terrified. But that didn’t stop her from trying anyway.

“W-w-when I was a l-little filly a-and the sun was g-going dooown…” Fluttershy’s voice was so low she could barely hear herself singing, and the lyrics came out trembling, stuttering and blatantly off-key, but she kept singing softly to herself anyway. Maybe if she did, she could forget that the things here that were scaring her were all too real, that they couldn’t be held back by laughter, the Stare, or anything else that she had access to, that she’s completely at their mercy and there’s nothing she can do about it. And maybe Discord would swoop in any second now to be the big damn hero for once and rescue her from this horrid place.

It was unrealistic, but it couldn’t hurt to hope, right?

“T-the darkness and the s-s-shadows t-they would a-always make…” It was at that exact moment that Fluttershy heard it; a muted, repetitive clonk, clonk, clonk, slowly growing louder. At this distance, the sound of one of her captors approaching was so quiet it was outright imperceptible if Fluttershy didn’t know what to listen for, but she did. Only a few days at most spent languishing in this cage, and she already knew that sound all too well.

“m-m-m-me…” The rest of the lyrics promptly died on her tongue, panic seizing her heart as the massive footfalls came closer, and closer, and closer.

All thoughts of trying to be brave promptly flew right out the window, followed in very short order by every other thought in her head, rational or otherwise. “SOMEPONY! ANYPONY! HELP!” She scrambled to her hooves and practically threw herself at the door to her cage, banging her hooves against it to no avail. “LET ME OUT! SOMEPONY HELP ME-“

The sound of metal scraping on metal filled the chamber, some kind of sliding door opening up to make way for a huge, minotaur-like silhouette, its glowing-red gaze locking on Fluttershy and bathing her cage in sanguine light.

The yellow pegasus reared backward, losing her balance and falling onto her back, the loop around her withers letting loose a clang as it collided with the floor. “P-p-please…” She whimpered, every single muscle in her body trembling like a leaf, her eyes burning from oncoming tears.

“Good; you haven’t died from a heart attack yet.” The creature spoke in static-laden Ponish, its voice even, smooth, and calm, yet also loud enough to make the bars of the cage vibrate. It began to stomp toward her cage, and Fluttershy pushed herself to the back of it, pressing herself against the cold, hard bars, as if that would save her from it. As if anything could. “That means I get to have a little fun with you.”

The creature came to a stop right in front of the cage, looming over the trembling pegasus, its glowing red gaze boring into her. Fluttershy was sobbing uncontrollably now, her face and muzzle utterly drenched in the tears streaming down her cheeks. “N-no… please d-don’t… you can’t…” She somehow managed to choke out in between her sobbing.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you.” One of its huge, five-digited appendages reached down, undoing the latch on the cage. A wail of despair slipped from Fluttershy’s throat as the creature reached for her, its metal-plated digits wrapping around her torso and neck, pinning her legs to her sides and pressing against the metal loops tight around her withers and neck hard enough to make breathing a struggle. “Where would the fun be in that?”

She tried to thrash, to squirm her way free of its grip, but its steel fingers held her fast as it dragged her out of the cage, turned around, and stomped out of the room, carrying her with it. Not knowing what else to do, Fluttershy just went limp in her captor’s grip, squeezing her tear-filled eyes tight as she struggled to breathe. “D-don’t kill me, don’t kill me…”

The creature chuckled cruelly, cutting Fluttershy off. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” A single digit reached up, gently stroking Fluttershy’s mane. The unwanted affection made Fluttershy recoil, made her squirm weakly in her captor’s unyielding grasp as a miserable, helpless whimper slipped from her throat. “I’m not gonna kill you. Granted, the thing you’re about to meet might, but not if you kill it first. Oh, and speaking of which… we’re here.”

A fresh scream tore itself free from the yellow pegasus’s throat as her captor suddenly threw her forward, off the edge of some kind of balcony. Without use of her wings, she couldn’t slow her fall and landed hard, but she did her best to ignore the pain as she scrambled to her feet, her wide, terrified eyes darting around as she tried to figure out what horror her captor had just thrown her into.

She was in some kind of large, square chamber, somehow even more dimly-lit than the rest of the steel monstrosity that these chaos-worshipping invaders had replaced Canterlot with. Torches alight with red flames were the only light source, their flickering glow making the long shadows they cast dance and writhe. Those torches were the only decoration the chamber had… aside from the morbid, nightmarishly life-like sculpture in the center of the chamber, looking like some sick, twisted cross between one of those monkeylike “chaos cultists” and a heap of cruel-looking metal bits-

The sculpture took a step forward. And then another. And then another.

Some part of Fluttershy recognized that she should be running, looking for a place to hide, doing something, anything except simply standing there and staring at that twisted, monstrous thing approaching her, but she just couldn’t tear her wide, horrified eyes away from it. She’d initially assumed it was a sculpture, but only because recognizing that it was a living, breathing a creature meant recognizing that someone had made it into that, had shoved all those cruel, painful-looking devices into a living, thinking, feeling creature’s body. And now, that creature was advancing on her, presumably to beat her to death with those horrible-looking pincer claws it had as forehooves, leaving her no recourse but to acknowledge the horrific truth.

The creature was moving faster now, sprinting toward him at a speed that ought to have been impossible with its mangled, half-metallic frame. “S-s-stay away!” Fluttershy exclaimed, Staring deep into its eyes… and froze.

The creature didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. Not because it could just resist The Stare, the way those metal-plated creatures could. No; if anything, the creature had the opposite problem. It had no will of its own, no mind for the stare to affect; trying to use The Stare on it was like trying to use The Stare on a rock.

One of the creature’s pincer-like appendages came flying toward her. Fluttershy broke eye contact, a wail of horror slipping free from her throat as she bolted, narrowly dodging the creature’s blow. Her eyes darted around the chamber, searching for an escape, a hiding spot, something, anything-

Something struck Fluttershy’s left leg, a sickening crunch ringing out as searing pain flooded through her. A fresh scream tore itself from her throat as the injured limb gave out on her, sending her tumbling painfully to the floor. She stole a glance at it, and instantly regretted doing so; the limb was bent at a horribly unnatural angle, blood and marrow dripping onto fragmented, exposed bone.

A shadow fell over her, and she looked up at it, at the half-mechanical, corpse-like thing that was hellbent on killing her. She didn’t know why it was trying to do that to her, why her minotaur-like captor had thrown her into this thing’s reach knowing full well it wouldn’t suffer her to live, why the world she once knew had suddenly become so unbearably cruel. But she did know one thing.

If she wanted to walk away from this alive, if she wanted to ever see her friends again, then this creature—if it could even be called that—had to die.

Bile rose up in her throat as she slowly pushed herself back onto her feet. Try as she might to contain them, hot tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. The creature’s arm lifted up, its pincers gleaming in the flickering light…

And Fluttershy lunged.

One moment, and her hoof had collided with the thing’s chest, knocking it off its feet and onto its back. Another, and her other hoof had flown forward, snapping its neck so hard it’s head nearly came clean off, black, half-clotted blood gushing from its veins and splashing all over her chest and face. Another, and all was still, Fluttershy’s heart thundering in her ears as the enormity of what she’d just done slowly but surely sunk in.

And then, sound came rushing back into Fluttershy’s ears, and with it, uproarious laughter loud enough to make her bones ache.

“You- You actually did it! You actually killed something!” The monster who’d tossed her into this makeshift arena exclaimed between bouts of laughter, clutching at its chest as it struggled to draw breath through its mirth. “And here I thought you were too much of a cutesy-wootsy pussy to do it! Ha ha ha HAHA!”

Fluttershy’s coat suddenly felt like it had been dunked in freezing cold waters. The room spun around her head and her heart hammered in her ears. Between the sobbing and the horrified gasps, she could barely catch her breath. Her gorge steadily rose, until it could no longer be denied.

Fluttershy puked, what little remained in her stomach splashing all over her and mixing with the blood soaking into her coat. She collapsed to the floor and curled into a sobbing ball, too distraught to notice the slowly-spreading pool of blood beneath her… or the tall, gangly figure that had just entered the room, its tattered red robes billowing behind it as it gazed at her and her surroundings with an expression of pure, unmitigated disgust on her face.

Author's Note

Sorry progress with this has been so slow. School has been keeping me really busy as of late. On the plus side, I've been working on typing up statlines and rules for the Scions.

Yep, that's right; starting this chapter, I’m going to include homebrew 40k 10th edition rules for the Scions of the Konic and their equine soon-to-be-allies in the Author's Notes. Keep in mind that I'm more focused on making a fun and interesting faction than a balanced one; if you want to use a Scions of the Konic army list during an informal match, have the people you're playing with look over the rules and stats, and make sure they're okay with them. Especially the rules regarding the quirkier models, like Pinkie Pie (her abilities are really wacky). Also, I am not liable for any emotional or reputational damages that result from trying to bring a Scions of the Konic army list to a Tournament.

Anyway, here's the first Army Rule for the Scions. This replaces the Oath of Moment Army rule for a Scions of the Konic Space Marine Detachment. I'll post the unique Detachment Rule the Scions of the Konic can use. An Army Rule pertaining to the magical abilities of the ponies once they pick up more pony allies. Until then you can use any of the standard Adeptus Astartes Detachment Rules provided by the 10th edition Space Marines Codex besides the 1st Company Task Force Detachment Rule.

Friendship Is Strategic (Aura):

Scions’ lax discipline and minimal unit cohesion may make them the subject of much condescension, but it is also their greatest strength. The informal, undisciplined atmosphere of the Chapter allows Scions to form close bonds with each other, and while these bonds won’t turn aside enemy fire, they can still inspire individual Scions to defy the odds.

Scion models within 6” of a friendly model are said to be within Friendship range of that model. Scion models that are within Friendship range of another model roll 3d6 rather than 2d6 on Battle-Shock tests, and use the best Leadership characteristic of all the models in their unit and any units within Friendship range of that model.

Cruelty and Kindness

Arair Moonstrider looked up at the Mon’keigh up on the balcony, still chuckling to itself. And then at the sobbing, blood-soaked quadruped in the rough center of the chamber. And then back up at the Mon’keigh.

“...really?”

“Aww, don’t be such a spoilsport. Isn’t a rogue bio-engineered killing machine entitled to a little fun every once in a while?” Alosyus, the rogue bio-engineered killing machine in question, responded, speaking in a tone that made her contemplate murdering him and finding another Chaos Warband to bargain with, however briefly.

“Not if that “fun” endangers the very thing we’re here for.” Arair snapped back, struggling to keep her tone of voice level as she strode into the center of the room and snatched the quadruped up by the metal loop clamped around its withers. “Since you destroyed the Elements of Harmony—the very reason we started with conquering Equestria rather than a nation which would pose an actual threat—we need their bearers alive if we want to have even the slightest chance of recreating them.”

“Can’t you just use your energy-from-pain whatchamacallit to heal anything I do to her?”

“No.” She spun on her heels, storming toward one of the exits. “For the umpteenth time, only the Drukhari can do that, and I’m an Aeldari.”

“Oh, right…” Alosyus responded, in a tone that implied that he still didn’t get why she wasn’t willing to resort to the same profane torture rituals as her more sadistic kin, and couldn’t be bothered to care. “Still, I’m getting twitchy here, and there’s only so much entertainment one can squeeze out of forcing untrained xeno slaves to fight each other to the death. What do you expect me to do, just sit here and let myself be bored out of my armor?”

The Aeldari stopped in the doorway, clenching her teeth. Fury that put even the rage of Khrone’s deranged puppets to shame coursed through her veins. By her dead gods, she wanted to butcher that homicidal manchild of a Mon’keigh so, so, so badly.

She sucked in a long, long breath, bottling that hatred up deep inside her. “If you wish to sate your boredom, find a way to do so that doesn’t make achieving our goals here any harder.” And with that, she continued forward, carrying the filth-drenched quadruped with her.

Black Legion Base of Operations, Abandoned Crystal Mine

To say the tunnels beneath Canterlot were beautiful to behold didn’t even begin to do them justice. The subterranean cave system consisted of multiple yawning caverns, interconnected by a complex network of mine tunnels, all of it positively covered in luminescent crystals that bathed everything in a soft, shimmering blue light. And that hadn’t changed, even after multiple days’ worth of exposure to the corrupting effects of Chaos energy; something about those crystals seemed to make them push back against the touch of the Dark Gods, leaving the breathtaking crystals untouched by the their vile influence.

Arair hated it.

It wasn’t the appearance of the caverns she objected to, at least not in and of itself; she could find no fault in that, besides maybe how straight and smooth these supposedly unpolished, naturally-formed crystals were. But this place… it reminded her all too much of her old Craftworld, of something she’d lost forever. The crystals’ Chaos-repelling properties extended to her when she was down here, and the sensation of Daemons, dark energies, and worst scratching at her mental defenses in a futile attempt to get into her and warp her body and mind was lessened as a result, but in her opinion, the memories this place brought forth were worse than the assault on her mind… which was unfortunate for her, because the tunnels’ chaos-repelling abilities made them absolutely essential to her work.

Arair came to a stop in front of a stream, still holding the half-comatose, blood-drenched form of the yellow-furred quadruped in one hand. The cavern she was in wasn’t perfect for her needs, but it was close; far enough into the tunnels that none of the chaos corruption from the Black Legion’s fortress could trickle down, yet not so deep that getting to it was too much of a hassle. And it had an untainted water source.

The quadruped let loose a shriek of pain as Arair dipped her in the stream, and she couldn’t help but flinch away as blood-stained water splashed on her robe. At least the flowing water was making quick work of all the blood that had soaked into its fur…

Arair let loose a frustrated huff as she took notice of the quadruped’s back leg. Now that all that filth had been washed off, she could see that the “servitor” Alosyus had sicced on it had actually managed to injure it, and pretty badly at that. The limb was bent in multiple places and in directions that definitely weren’t natural, blood, pus, and other bodily fluids oozed from the crumpled flesh, and Arair was pretty sure she could see exposed bone.

The Eldar cursed under her breath as she yanked the quadruped out of the stream, turning toward a nearby wall of flat crystal adorned with Wraithborne restraints she’d installed there herself. They were crude, consisting of several cords each terminating in a few carabiner-esque clips, but they would have to suffice; she certainly didn’t trust whatever restraints those warp-touched Mon’keigh might whip up.

The quadruped, now fully conscious, began to plead in that oddly musical language its kind spoke as Arair began hooking the clips into its shackles and collar. The first time she’d heard one of these creatures spoke, she mistook their language for her own, but that was before she realized that it sounded like pure gibberish. She’d also realized quickly that their language wasn’t anywhere near as complex as the Aeldari lexicon, and wasn’t anywhere near as closely entwined with their body language and gestures. Beneath the superficial similarities to her kind’s language, it was actually far more similar to Low Gothic… though it at least sounded a lot better than the crude, blunt sounds of the Mon’keigh’s language.

Arair did her best to ignore the quadruped’s babbling as she finished securing it to the wall. With that, she reached into her cloak and withdrew a onyx-black, gauntlet-like piece of clothing, sliding it over her arm. Almost immediately, the Drukhari-made device sprung to life, many of the spiky bits along the glove’s armguard lifting up and revealing themselves to be articulated arms. With that, he reached down, and grabbed the quadruped’s injured leg.

The quadruped let loose an ear-piercing shriek as the device went to work, screaming at the top of its lungs as it began painfully cutting through its flesh and literally welding its shattered bone back together. Arair was a Bonesinger, not a Healer, which meant that she had to resort to this tool from her pain-loving kin in order to patch up wounds. The glove was something no Drukhari raider who had any clue what he was doing left Commorragh without, as it allowed those raiders to patch up their captives’ wounds and keep them alive for the trip to Commorragh. Unfortunately, it also had another purpose; giving those same captives a tiny taste of the pain and suffering they’d endure at the hands of their captors. As a result, it was designed to heal its target slowly, and to make the healing as painful for them as possible.

Arair squeezed her eyes shut, locking the quadruped’s wailing and shrieking out of her mind. For what felt like forever, she stood there, her fingers clamped around the injured leg as the device encasing those fingers cut and burrowed and welded, heedless of the thrashing creature it was ostensibly healing. It felt like an eternity had passed before the device finished reassembling the pegasus’s leg. The moment it did so, Arair let go of the limb, quickly withdrawing her gloved hand as she opened her eyes; the device was just as much a tool of torture as it was a tool of healing, and she didn’t want to traumatize the quadruped any more than she had to.

As the Aeldari Bonesinger began to undo the restraints, she took a moment to study what the device had done to the quadruped’s leg. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, and looked more like a proper leg, but long trails of furless flesh now curled their way up along the limb, slightly-charred scars running through the middle of each trail. Arair could tell at a glance that those scars would be permanent.

Stupid pain-loving sadists… She grumbled silently to herself, pulling the trembling, slightly pale quadruped down before turning around… and coming face-to-face with one of those oversizedMon’keigh in its tarnished white-and-gold battle armor, looming over her as its piercing red eyes bored into her skull.

Arair let loose a frustrated huff. “I do not have time for your misplaced xenophobia. Step aside. Now.”

“I’m not pissed at you for healing that xeno.” The armor-plated figure growled. “I’m pissed that you did a shit job of it. No anesthetic, no disinfectant, and there’s plenty of both if you ask around. Sure, people’ll grumble about wasting it on ‘filthy xenos’, but if you say you need them for whatever you and Alosyus are working on here, they’ll hand it over.”

“Chaos-touched medical supplies from a bunch of Mon’keigh who have sold their souls to the Dark Gods? No thank you.” Arair shot back, sidestepping the Astartes and storming out of the cavern, carrying the quadruped with her. She didn’t need some outspoken Mon’keigh telling her how to patch up another’s wounds.

Unfortunately for her, this Mon’keigh seemed hellbent on doing exactly that. “Hey, just because we’ve signed ourselves over to chaos doesn’t mean everything we touch is instantly corrupted.” The Mon’keigh snapped back, falling into step behind Arair. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but a Space Marine can’t always count on the Dark Gods to Skinshift them back into shape, and even when they do decide to, it's risky as all hell, not to mention how much it fracking hurts. Every crippling wound I can patch up is one that we don’t have to roll the figurative dice with by asking for our masters’ favor, and it would be kinda hard for me to do that if Chaos Corruption got into every injury I tried to treat.”

Arair glanced back at the Mon’keigh, noticing for the first time the servo-arms affixed to its backpack. Oh, apparently this one fancies himself a Healer, or at least the Mon’keighs’ equivalent to one. But still… “I can manage without.” Arair snapped, looking away as she continued making her way through the tunnels.

“Maybe. But I’m not sure she can.”

“...who?”

“The pegasus you’re carrying.”

...This Mon’keigh honestly thinks these moronic excuses for sentient creatures deserve proper pronouns? “What about it?”

“Oh for the love of… just look at her, for Ababbon’s sake! She’s pale as a sheet, is wearing a thousand yard stare on her face, and looks like she’s on the verge of going into shock, and that’s after your glove-thingy patched up just one broken leg. If Aloysius injures her worse—and make no mistake, he’s going to get her injured again—I don’t think she’ll survive being patched up by that thing.”

Arair paused in her stride, glancing down at the quadruped. Much as she was loathe to admit it, this Mon’keigh had a point. The quadruped’s fur was a touch paler than it had been and there was a vacant, battle-shocked look to its eyes. Yes, having this Mon’keigh see to the creature’s wounds risked allowing Chaos corruption into its body… but apparently this one wasn’t as hardy as its cyan-colored companion, and if it couldn’t handle the pain the glove brought, it would be dead either way. Sure, the Mon’keigh’s methods would undoubtedly be cruder than the glove… but they’d also wouldn’t be as traumatic for the quadruped. Hopefully.

Arair stopped and turned around, looking the Mon’keigh in its glowing red eyes for the first time. “Fine. Next time this thing gets injured, I will go looking for you and have you patch up her wounds. But if you get it killed, then I will personally ensure that you join it in death.”

The Mon’keigh just glared at her, crossing its arms. “…kinda says something that a soldier from an army that’s just as xenophobic as the fascist empire it broke away from is quicker to acknowledge her personhood than you.”

Arair just let loose a frustrated huff, turning away from the Mon’keigh once again. She wasn’t going to dignify that comment with a response.

Rainbow Dash sucked in a gasp as she jolted awake, the sudden motion causing pinpricks of agony to flare up all throughout her body. A barely stifled whiny of pain slipped from her throat as she staggered to her feet, her ragged technicolor mane brushing up against cold, hard iron bars. Her magenta eyes darted fearfully across her shadow-cloaked surroundings, everything slowly coming back to her as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, slowly revealing the tiny cage she was trapped in, the steel floor that cage was placed on, the walls looming almost impossibly high above her.

…the things that… that creature did to me… they had to have just been a nightmare, right? Slowly, hesitantly, Dash reached up with one hoof, toward her wings. Sure, the memories of her pain were somehow even more vivid than that one time she dreamed of being ripped apart by her best friend, but surely-

Stabbing agony flared across her sensitive plumage as her hoof slid over her feathers. She screamed in pain once again, her legs giving out on her as she landed on her side, causing more jolts of pain to shoot through her. For a long second, Dash just stayed there, on her side, the realization that the horrors she’d endured at the bony, talon-like appendages of that lanky, beady-eyed thing were all too real slowly-but-surely dawning on her.

Her eyes had fully adjusted to the lighting by now, and thus she could now see that her body was utterly covered in scars. Thin black lines snaked their way across her legs, her withers, and her restrained wings, each and every inch a nightmarish testament to the fact that the pain that thing’s glove had inflicted on her had been all too real. It almost seemed like that creature had taken a lit candle to her coat the way someone might take a paintbrush to a blank canvas.

“F-f-flutters?” She called out, hating how her voice trembled from barely-contained terror despite her best efforts.

Dead silence answered her.

“Flutters?!” Dash called out again, her heart starting to race as she glanced up at Fluttershy’s cage. Her friend was missing, gone without a trace.

…buck. A pained whine slipped from Dash’s throat as she pushed herself back to her hooves, doing her best to ignore the pinpricks of pain the motion fostered throughout her battered, abused body. She sucked in the deepest breath she could with those cold, unyielding metal loops around her neck and torso, and then threw herself forward.

A sharp wave of pain shot up her hoof as it collided with the bars. Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth, pushing through the pain as she drew her hoof back and slammed it into the bars again, and again, and again, but the door to her cage held firm. Shaking her head in frustration, she took two steps back, and then slammed her shoulder into the metal bars.

As it turned out, using her shoulder hurt more than using her keratin-sheathed hooves. A lot more.

“BUCK!” Rainbow Dash cried out as she staggered backward, another wave of sharp pain shooting through her body as she collided with the walls of her cage and collapsed into the corner. Her efforts hadn’t even dented the cold, hard metal; all she’d achieved was an increase in her pain.

“Flipping feathers…” Dash hissed through gritted teeth, blinking back tears. Celestia above, she hated this, hated how helpless she was. Hopefully Fluttershy’s okay… actually, why the buck am I even bothering to hope? Fluttershy’s probably strung up in that creature’s crystalline torture cellar, screaming her lungs out and pleading desperately for me to come and save her as it puts her through the same treatment it put me through. The cyan-coated pegasus shuddered as she recalled the glittering crystal walls, the almost painfully-tight shackles, the agonizing sensation of dozens of tiny blades slicing through her wings…

And then, almost as if some mad, thirsting god had chosen this exact moment to throw some fresh new horror Dash’s way, the door to the chamber opened, revealing a lanky silhouette in a frighteningly familiar red robe.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes went wide, shudders wracking her body as pure, abject terror flooded her mind. All of a sudden, she was a tiny newborn filly again, cowering fearfully beneath the covers of her bed, utterly convinced that there were monsters in the dark, just waiting for the chance to snatch her up and eat her whole. Except here, there were no covers to hide under, just this steel cage that simultaneously left her completely exposed and completely trapped. Here, the monsters were all too real, and she was already in their clutches. Rainbow Dash would’ve hated herself for being such a baby if she wasn’t too terrified to care.

There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to fight, so Rainbow Dash did the only thing she could think of; curl up as tight as she could, burying her face in her belly as every fiber of her being shook like a leaf. Her eyes were burning from oncoming tears, more barely-stifled sobs slipping from her throat as her torturer came closer, and closer, and closer.

When this creature had come for her earlier, she’d been rebellious. She’d insulted it, called it names, kicked and thrashed and bit whenever the opportunity presented itself. All that bravado and defiance had quickly given way to screaming and begging once she’d learned firsthand what it could do to her, what it had done to her.

The cage door flew open with a clatter, and it was all Rainbow Dash could do to not let loose with a keening wail of despair and horror. She knew what came next; the creature would snatch her up, drag her down to the crystal caves, and then-

Something collided with her, something furry and large and possessed of proportions similar to a pony. A moment later, the cage door slammed shut with another CLANG.

Rainbow Dash cracked her eyes open, blinking in confusion as she caught sight of the creature turning away and storming out of the room… and the curled, trembling, yellow-furred form she’d deposited in the cage.

“F-fluttershy?”

The next thing Rainbow Dash knew, her friend had all but lunged at her, throwing her forelegs around Dash’s neck and back and burying her tear-stained muzzle in her prismatic mane. It was now even more of a struggle to draw breath, but Rainbow Dash barely noticed; now that Fluttershy was pressed up against her, she could feel the tremors wracking her body, could feel the hitches in her chest from the raspy sobs slipping from her throat.

“It’s okay.” Rainbow Dash whispered as she returned the hug, struggling not to cry. “It’s okay, I’ve got you-“

“…you have got to be kidding me.”

Rainbow Dash glanced up, eyes going wide. The gangly, pale-skinned creature had turned around and was advancing on her cage, its beady eyes glaring down at Fluttershy. It took Rainbow Dash a few seconds to figure out what it wanted.

This thing was a little like Twilight, in that it really, really hated it when things weren’t the way it liked them. It had set up specific cages for the two of them, and was adamant that the two of them be kept in their specific cages.

And right now, Fluttershy was in Rainbow Dash’s cage.

Fluttershy looked up toward the sound, the shudders wracking her body intensifying; she’d just come to the same realization. “No… please…” She whimpered, her voice so quiet Rainbow Dash could barely hear.

“Shut. Up.” The creature hissed in heavily-accented Ponish as it reached down and unlatched the cage’s door. It reached inside, its thin digits reaching for Fluttershy…

And were promptly knocked back by Rainbow Dash’s hoof.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” Rainbow Dash snarled, leaping over Fluttershy’s curled form and shoving her toward the back of the cage with her back hooves, dropping into a defensive crouch and baring her teeth as her tail swished back and forth.

“You have got to be kidding me…” The creature growled, its face twisting in disgust as it reached in once again, this time trying to grab Rainbow Dash and move her out of the way. Rainbow Dash just batted its limb aside, slamming it into the side of the cage and prompting a pained wince from it.

“Yeah, that’s what you get for trying to-“ Rainbow Dash never got the chance to finish speaking: the next thing she knew, the creature had slipped on that black glove and stuck it through the bars, its articulated metal arms promptly burying themselves in the Pegasus’s bound wing.

Rainbow Dash let loose an ear-piercing shriek as the articulated metal blades began to slice into her wing, sending agonizing jolts into her nerves as the arm they were attached to shoved her to the side. Her whole world quickly dissolved into a haze of agony, all sound lost to the roaring in her ears as her vision blurred…

And then, suddenly, the pain was gone. Rainbow Dash collapsed on the mound of fur in front of her, the taste of blood in her mouth as she sucked in long, gasping breaths.

A muttered curse in a language Dash didn’t understand reached her ears, her eyes refocusing to reveal her tormentor, standing just a few feet away and clutching its hand. It dawned on her that the blood in her mouth wasn’t her own; she’d somehow managed to instinctively reach out and bite down on the creature’s long, gangly digits, nevermind the debilitating pain that thing’s glove had been putting her through.

“Fine.” It hissed, speaking in Ponish this time, letting go of its hand and letting it fall to its side, sparkling glass-like growths already forming over the injuries it had suffered. It took Rainbow Dash another moment to make the connection between the crystallization and the creature’s blood; the instant she did so, she spat out as much of the creature’s alien blood as she could.

“You and your ‘friend’ will share a cage from now on.” The creature continued. “But bite me again, and I will move her to an entirely different room in this complex, and do everything in my not-inconsiderable power to ensure you never see each other again for as long as you live. Do you understand?”

Rainbow Dash spat out the last of the creature’s blood, before looking up at her captor, pure hatred burning in her eyes. She wanted to say no, to fly out the still-open door of the cage and punch this alien freak’s face in for even threatening to separate her from her friend. But then again, the aforementioned alien freak had made it very clear that she could make good on those threats.

“...yes.” She said slowly, letting her head droop in shame. “I… understand.” Every word was a mortal wound to her pride, but she’d do anything for her friends. Even this.

“Good.” And with that, the lanky alien slammed the cage door shut, spinning around and storming out of the room as Rainbow Dash curled herself protectively around Fluttershy’s still-trembling form.

Author's Note

In hindsight, I think I ended up writing Arair as a microcosm for the entire Aeldari race. She has the noblest of intentions and has lost a lot over the millennia, but she's also a consummate sociopath, way too haughty for her own good, and utterly convinced that her ends justify the means. Nevermind that the means, in this case, are pure Nightmare Fuel on a stick.

Since the focus of this Chapter isn't on the Scions of the Konic's forces, I'm not gonna post any statlines. Instead, I'm gonna give you a list of commom Thoughts for the Day the Scions put on their documents, to give you an idea of their general attitude and outlook on the galaxy.

The absurdity of the universe always tends towards a maximum.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.
The only sin in combat is indecision.
Bullets and batteries are replaceable; your life is not.
The Emperor may protect, but that does not mean incoming fire doesn’t have the right of way.
If the mission has developed into a fair fight, then something has gone very, very wrong.
When in doubt, fire at will.
Never, ever, EVER unironically say “what could possibly go wrong” or anything else along those lines out loud.
There is nothing more satisfying that having your opponent take a shot at you, miss, and hit their ally in the crotch.
No one ever won a battle by under-estimating the enemy, or by over-estimating his cohorts and allies.
Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for.
It is easier to beg pardon than to seek permission.
Admitting defeat is only blasphemy against the Emperor if you use it as an excuse to give up.
Superior thinking almost always prevails against superior force.
Everything breaks, malfunctions, or wears out eventually. Plan for that.
If the advance is going well, you are probably walking into an ambush.
The only time suppressive fire works is when there is nothing to suppress.
There are very few situations, circumstances, or conditions that cannot be resolved, remedied, or rectified by the proper application of a sufficiently sized, shaped, and placed high-yield explosive detonated in a timely manner.
When in the presence of Necrons and in doubt, dismember and mutilate with extreme prejudice.
When in the presence of Tyrannids and in doubt, kill them with fire.
When in the presence of Eldar Harlequins and in doubt, do not shoot.
There’s always a way, but it’s almost never going to be a way you like.
If the enemy is within range, then so are you.
If it’s heretical, but it gets the job done and doesn't require us to swear our souls to chaos, then it isn’t heretical.
There is no such thing as a perfect plan.
Booby traps and mines are equal-opportunity munitions.
Never count on a fuse, timer, or other delayed trigger going off when it claims it will go off.
An Honour Badge just proves that you were smart enough to think of a plan, stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
The enemy almost always attacks on two occasions: when they're ready, or when you're not.
Always assume a retreating enemy is just falling back and regrouping.
In war, important things are often simple, and simple things are often very hard.
When you steal information from a tech-priest, it’s called tech heresy. When you steal information from the enemy, it’s called gathering intelligence.

Finding Stable Footing

Everfree Forest, Some Distance From The Unquestionable Perfection

Applejack dropped down onto her side, her body skidding along the slick, wet mud as it slid into a small hollow at the base of a toppled tree. A cry of pain slipped from her throat as her injured back leg collided painfully with the wood, but she wasn’t exactly in a position to complain; just seconds after she slipped inside, a snout composed of magically fused branches and leaves jammed itself into the opening, roaring viciously at the Earth Pony.

Applejack scurried backward, pressing herself into the small crawlspace she’d slipped into, trying to put as much distance between herself and the crazed Timberwolf’s scrabbling claws and snapping teeth. It wasn’t much distance, on account of how small said crawlspace was, but that was okay; that distance was more than enough to keep her out of the Timberwolf’s reach, and that was what mattered.

A distorted, warped howl reached Applejack’s ears, making her flinch involuntarily. Her Timberwolf pursuer gave her one last red-eyed glare, snarled menacingly, and then darted off. For a long, long second, she remained still and silent, scarcely even daring to breathe.

Finally, when she was absolutely sure it wouldn’t be coming back, she let loose a sigh of relief, flopping down in the pool of muddy water that covered the hollow’s bottom. “Sweet Harmony, that was close.” She muttered to herself, taking a few moments to assess her current condition.

Needless to say, she wasn't exactly in tip-top shape.

Her appearance alone would have given Rarity a heart attack. Her mane was a tangled mess, her coat was utterly caked in mud, and she could feel the sting of dozens of scrapes and cuts all over herself. Thank Harmony she’d gotten the bright idea to leave her hat behind at the Castle of Friendship; if she’d had it, she’d definitely have lost it by now.

And there was the matter of her injured leg. Maybe it was just the light, but it looked a little like her fur was starting to go pale around the deep cut that axe-wielding minotaur thing had given her, the way her entire coat had looked when Starlight Glimmer had briefly stripped away her Cutie Mark. But then again, maybe she was imagining the faint orange glow that was just barely visible through the oozing, half-clotted blood leaking from the injury.

At least, ah hope ah’m imagining it… Applejack repressed a shudder, shoving aside memories of moaning, twitching ponies, the faint-but-noticeable smell of burning flesh, and the unearthly glows their wounds had been emitting. She could worry all she wanted to about the same fate befalling her once her friend was safe.

As she climbed out of the bolthole she’d dived into, she glanced up at her destination. Even from this distance, the silhouette of that huge, church-like steel monolith loomed over her, easily as tall as the mountains Canterlot was affixed to, like the skeletal corpse of some unfathomably huge beast. Even days later, the sight of the thing plunging down from the heavens and crashing right smack dab in the center of the Everfree forest was still burned into her memory; she had no idea how it hadn’t split the planet in two when it finally touched down, let alone how it managed to do so while leaving most of the Everfree relatively intact. And she could understand why nobody had wanted to go poking around it. There was just something about that unnatural, eerie-looking hunk of metal that set off all her primal terror alarms, and that was before all those minotaur-sized monstrosities just-so-happened to descend from the heavens and turn Equestria into a war-torn hellscape just two days after the crash. It didn’t take a genius to guess that that place would almost certainly be chock-full of those psychotic armor-plated creatures.

And yet, Twilight Sparkle had ended up somewhere inside that massive wreck, at least according to the flickering, barely functional Cutie Mark Map back at the Castle of Friendship.

Applejack took a few moments to ponder how that happened as she set off toward it once again, mostly to keep her mind off of the stabbing pain that shot through her injured leg with every step. Maybe… maybe Twily’s just let her curiosity get tha better o’ her again. Maybe she’s hiding out in there, perfectly fine fer now, too busy geekin’ out over Celestia-knows-what ta even feel freaked out. After all, why let the end of tha world as ya know it get in the way o’ science, or somethin’...

Applejack sighed, shaking her head. Or maybe ah’m just deludin’ myself. She’s probably chained up in some kinda prison cell in there, prayin’ tah sweet harmony above that somepony’ll swoop in tah rescue her before she’s strapped tah one o’ their altars an’ gutted alive…

Unquestionable Perfection, Unspecified Corridor

“Holy. Frak.” The Space Marine declared, his whole body trembling from excitement. “How. Is she. So. CUUUTE?!”

Casimiria chuckled softly as Felix’s voice reached an almost ear-piercingly high pitch. No normal space marine would have ever let himself squeal in such an undignified manner over anything, let alone an unfamiliar xeno, but then again, nobody in the Scions could truly be considered a normal Space Marine. And Felix was less normal than most.

“Umm… what’s he saying?” Casimiria looked down at Twilight, huddling next to Casimiria’s boots. He’d honestly forgotten that the four-foot tall xeno couldn’t speak Low Gothic yet, however briefly.

“Right now? He’s gushing about how adorable you look.”

Twilight looked up at him, an expression somewhere between surprise and bemusement forming on her face. “Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

“C-can I pet her?” Felix suddenly asked, dropping to one knee and extending one of his armored hands.

“Now he’s asking if he can pet you.”

“...I don’t see why not…” Twilight started to say, taking a few slow, tentative steps forward as the beginnings of a squeal of joy began to build up in Felix’s throat…

An armored, jet-black hand shot out from behind Felix and landed on his pauldron-covered shoulder, producing an audible CLANG. A helmet fashioned into the likeness of a pale, bone-white skull with burning red eyes emerged from the darkness behind Felix, prompting Twilight to leap backward with a yelp of terror. She landed squarely in Casimiria’s outstretched arms, quickly curling up and wrapping her tail tight around her front hooves, ears flat against her eyes and wide eyes locked on the black-armored space marine who’d just emerged from the shadows behind Felix.

“Felix…” Chief Chaplain Lucius growled, and Casimiria let loose a sigh. Right when Twilight was starting to open up a bit…

“Aww, c’mon!” Felix whined, spinning around and fixing Lucius with a pleading look. “Can you please just gimme a minute!”

“Maybe after you’re done with the job you’re SUPPOSED to be doing.” Lucius snapped. “Namely, helping Incomitus get a couple Stormravens operational so we can get some mining equipment out without attracting the attention of those motherfucking heretics and get the fuck off this stupid rock!”

“And you!” Lucius added, looking up at Casimiria and prompting Twilight to flinch. “While I may tolerate that xeno freak’s presence, I won’t tolerate it distracting my battle-brothers and fucking up the work they’re doing! Understood?”

“...yes. I understand.” Casimiria grumbled. “Now can you please leave? You’re scaring her.”

“Newsflash; I don’t give a fuck!” Lucius snapped, grabbing the still-begging Felix by the shoulder and dragging him off toward the hangar.

A long, drawn-out silence descended over Casimiria and Twilight.

“You okay?” Casimiria offered at length. Twilight just shook her head, pulling herself up onto one of the Chief Apothecary’s pauldrons and nestling herself in the gap between the back of his neck and the backpack he wore, her tail curling around the base of one of Casimiria’s Mechadendrites as the Chief Apothecary set off toward their original destination; the Scion’s Librarium.

For quite some time, Casimiria and the alien riding upon his shoulders were both silent, the former making his way through the labyrinth of clipped corners, square-hewn buttresses and vast archways that made up the Unquestionable Perfection’s interior with practiced ease. Quite a feat, considering how difficult the vessel could be to navigate at times.

The Unquestionable Perfection was 10 millennia old, and those millennia had not been kind to it. It had been blown apart and put back together more times than anyone on the vessel could be bothered to count, so much of its decaying, rusting hull replaced over the years that it was up for debate whether it was still the same ship or not. Needless to say, after countless jury-rigs, partial refits, and ‘temporary’ patch ups that turned out to be anything but temporary, the vessel’s interior had become far, far less intuitive to navigate than it used to be… and ease of navigation of the ship’s interior hadn’t even been high on the designer’s priority list to begin with. Even the crewmen who grew up on the thing sometimes got lost in its twisting corridors, and even with his didactic memory Casimiria doubted he could keep every single nook and cranny of the ship in his head.

He was stirred from his musings on the current condition of the Perfection by Twilight’s voice. “That… was that…?”

“No, that battle-brother has never been part of the Black Legion, despite what the color of his power armor might’ve led you to believe.” Casimira responded, guessing what Twilight was asking about. “His name is Lucius, and he’s the Head Chaplain. He rarely lowers his voice, and can come off as insensitive at a glance, but don’t be fooled; he can be surprisingly sensitive and thoughtful when he has to. And when the bolts start flying and one of those bolts is about to blow your head off, he won’t hesitate to take it for you.”

“...bolts?”

“They’re what my pistol fires; .75 caliber self-propelled explosive rounds with armor-piercing properties.” Casimiria explained, pulling out the pistol in question, releasing the magazine and extracting a single bolt from it. “It uses a cartridge loaded with a small quantity of explosive to launch the projectile out of the weapon. After this, the rocket on its end kicks in, accelerating the round and increasing the chances that it will impact upon and bury itself within the intended target. The explosive within the round then detonates, blasting the target apart from within.”

Twilight shuddered slightly. “That’s what your pistol shoots?”

“Yes.” Casimiria answered. “Among the Scions, such weapons are fairly rare; bolts, while relatively cheap when compared to some other forms of ammunition we utilize, still cost precious adamantium and diamite to produce, and thus are reserved only for those skilled enough to make the absolute most of the investment. But among other, less resource-conscious Astartes Chapters, bolt pistols like mine are the standard issue sidearm.”

“...why not use a less brutal weapon?”

Casimiria hesitated for a moment, struggling a little to formulate a response that the xeno would understand. “Because that brutality also makes it more effective against our foes than less… excessive weapons.” He finally said. “And against the sort of foes the Astartes typically face, that extra bit of effectiveness can mean the difference between survival and death… or worse.”

“...why do you have to fight at all? Can’t you just live and let live?”

Casimiria sighed. “Sometimes, I wish we could.” He paused again, thinking. “Have you ever encountered foes you couldn’t reason with? Beings who seemed to take personal offense at your happiness or existence, and couldn’t be convinced to leave you alone no matter how hard you try?”

Twilight looked down, shuddering again. “...yes. They’re rare… but they exist.”

“You may not realize it, but your species was privileged to develop in an environment where such foes are rare. That was a privilege we did not have; the Imperium we serve has been beset on all sides by ruthless, uncompromising foes since the day it was founded. Every alien race we’ve encountered, with the possible exception of your own, has been apathetic to our struggles at absolute best, or sought to wipe us off the face of the galaxy for no other reason than the fact that we refuse to lay down and die at absolute worst. Yes, the weapons we wield are vicious and brutal in nature, as are we. But to survive in the face of all that, we cannot afford to be anything less.

”…that’s why some of your kind keep glaring at me, isn’t it?”

Casimiria nodded, thinking darkly of the many Battle-Brothers and Chapter serfs they’d passed and the withering glares some of them had thrown Twilight’s way as they passed. “…yes. After all we’ve been through, we tend to be… suspicious of nonhumans.” To put it mildly... He added silently. “While dealings with xenos are not unfamiliar to us, dealings with xenos that don’t want to wipe us off the face of the galaxy are. And dealings with xenos who desire our company and companionship as an end unto itself rather than a means to an end are outright unheard of. As you can probably imagine, we tend to be… slow to trust unfamiliar xenos.”

“…doesn’t that mean that at least some aliens are going to be hostile to you because you’re so militaristic and violent towards other aliens? That some alien races want to wipe you out specifically because your first instinct when faced with an alien race that’s threatening you is to kill it?”

“I’m sure it does. But like I said, many other alien races want to wipe us out for no other reason besides the fact that we’re different from them. And we’ve learned the hard way that taking the time to discern the difference between those who fight back in self-defense and those who simply desire our extinction can be a fatal mistake if it turns out that the latter is the case—and it almost always is.”

“So you don’t even try?”

Casimiria shook his head. “We can’t, if we want to survive.”

Unquestionable Perfection,Librarium

Magnus’s eyes snapped open as the chaotic, indistinct vision came to an end. He sucked in a breath, the smell of incense flooding all three of his lungs as serpentine motes of smoke curled around him, as suffocating as they were comforting. He brushed the scented wisps away with a dismissive wave of his hand, his head tilting down toward the table in front of him as he turned his attention to the vision’s source.

Arranged on the table before him, organized in a Haloed Rosette spread, was an Emperor’s Tarot reading. It was a common tool the Scion’s Chief Librarian used in divining the future; the cards were intertwined with the warp, and thus the readings they gave had actual predictive power, and were often accompanied by prophetic visions.

The one he just experienced, much like the circumstances the Scions now found themselves in, was chaotic, vague, and made even less sense than it usually did… which was saying a fair bit, considering how difficult the predictions of the Tarot could be to interpret. Magnus took a few moments to study the spread, hoping that it would help him make sense of the vision he just saw.

The first card was the Three of Discordia, the Heretic. Its face bore the image of a Heretic Astartes of the Black Legion, resting a bloodstained sword on its shoulder. This spot in the spread defined the current situation. Evidently, the Scions would be coming into conflict with the Black Legion presence on this planet.

The second card, sideways and on top of the first, was a familiar sight, though not in a reassuring way; it was the eleventh Major Arcanum, the Titan, and the card was inverted. The card’s image was of a lone Space Marine in Scions Heraldry, standing before a Chaos Titan, sword raised in defiance. He’d seen this exact card and image many times before; The Titan was usually symbolic of inner and outer strength, and this particular variant indicated that the enemies they’d face would have an overwhelming excess of the latter and that the Scions would need sizable amounts of the former to prevail. It was a common card he’d seen many times over the years; the Scions were no stranger to impossible odds.

The third card, below the first, was the Ace of Discordia; the Harlequin. Its image was that of an Eldar Harlequin’s mask, bearing a symbol of a six-pointed starburst surrounded by five smaller stars, its shape oddly reminiscent of a horse. This position in the spread referenced the foundation of the current situation, its root cause. Evidently, this card was referring to the ponylike natives of the planet they’d been stranded on, but the context of the reference was unclear. This card in particular had a reputation for being hard to interpret, and for subtly altering the meanings of other cards that shared a spread with it.

The fourth card, to the left of the first, also represented the past, but it referred to more recent events, the catalyst of the current circumstances rather than their distant beginnings. The card that occupied this position was the Eighth of Discordia, the Lord of Blood; its image was of a man, drenched in blood, standing upon a heap of bodies and skulls. Among that pile was the mask featured in the third card, now broken, and most of the skulls were equine ones, like those featured in the Scions’ heraldry. In comparison to the third card, this one’s meaning was refreshingly clear; evidently, the man was symbolic of the black legion.

Next was the fifth card, to the right of the first. This one sent a chill up Magnus’ spine; this position in the spread referenced events that would come soon, and its card was the thirteenth Major Arcanum; the Reaper. Its image, naturally, was of a cloaked figure swinging a scythe, cutting down a second figure in black robes, a Crozius Arcanum in the latter’s hand. This card wasn’t necessarily a bad sign; it usually indicated change, and not every change was accompanied by deaths. But the image of this card was like the image of the second, as foreboding in its meaning as it was blunt. The change the card was referring to was the sort of change brought about by the cessation of an Astartes’ heartbeats, and the image had made it clear that the death would be a violent one.

Above the first card was the sixth, completing a cross. This position in the spread referred to the near future and coming events. This card was also one of the Major Arcana, the twelfth, to be precise; the Martyr. Its image was of a humanoid, bleeding from numerous cuts yet still standing, its face covered by the damaged mask featured in the fourth card. Like the first, this card was clear in what it was referring to but lacking in context. The mask obviously referenced one of the xeno natives, and the card as a whole usually represented sacrifice, acceptance, and duty; evidently, the xeno the card was referring to would have to sacrifice something, but the image offered no hints as to what it would have to sacrifice, or why.

Above this cross were the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth cards, arranged in a row. The seventh was the first in line, and referenced thoughts or inner feelings that contributed to the events referenced in the cross. This card was the twentieth Major Arcanum, the Astronomicon, and it was inverted. Its image was of the same figure shown in the sixth card, kneeling, a shredded and burnt book to its left and the broken pieces of its mask to its right. This one was, again, hard to interpret; the inverted Judge usually meant fear of death or some kind of failure. Perhaps the xeno that the spread seemed so focused on felt guilt about something?

Following the seventh card was the eighth, which represented external influences beyond control. This card was the thirteenth of Adeptio, the Regent. Its image was of a cloaked figure holding a staff; one of its ears was poking out from underneath the hood, and that ear, oddly enough, was pointed. Another hard-to-nail-down card; it had many meanings, but the most common were of ceaseless service in the shadow of someone greater, great sacrifice, and noble goals, though not necessarily through noble means.

Next in line was the ninth card, another one from the Discordia suit. This position indicated hopes and fears associated with the current situation, and its card was the ninth in the suit, the Great Deceiver. Its image was of a man, nearly naked save for a loincloth and headdress of colored feathers. Evidently, the coming conflicts would be tainted by trickery, scheming, and deception; whether such discord would be amongst the Scions or their foes remained to be seen.

And finally, there was the tenth card. This card hinted at the final conclusion to the current ordeal, and was the most bewildering of all. The card was yet another Major Arcanum, the third to be precise; Holy Terra. Its image was of a darkening orb, lit from one side by its sun and the other by a million lights. But there was something… off about it. The smaller lights were in an unfamiliar arrangement, and the landmasses didn’t match up right. The card’s meaning itself was equally befuddling, a non-sequitur relative to the rest of the spread. Holy Terra was normally associated with fertility, home, and motherhood; Magnus had not the faintest clue how any of those things related to how this particular ordeal would end for the Scions.

A servo-skull drifted toward him, snapping him out of his thoughts. “You have [TWO] visitors.” It blurted out in flat, stilted low gothic. Magnus nodded, sweeping up the cards and returning them to the carrying case of his Tarot deck, committing the spread to memory. With that, he stood up, hooking the case to his belt as he set off toward the Librarium’s entrance.

The Librarium, as its name implied, was a library of truly staggering size, so much so that it took up a good third of one of the Perfection’s uncountable decks. While it only contained the tiniest fraction of a fraction of all the most notable works humankind had penned during its 42 millennia of existence, it was still decently comprehensive, considering what little resources the Scions had on hand and the truly ridiculous number of times all the library’s contents had been melted into slag, disintegrated, vented into space, or just plain transformed into nonsensical sculptures of warp-touched matter. Some of the more notable elements of said contents included four entire shelves dedicated to the Codex Astartes—one shelf for each volume, with each volume split into approximately 400 shorter sub-volumes, the smallest of which still managed to be the longest book in the library (excluding all the other sub-volumes of the Codex of course) by an undeniably ludicrous margin, a complete collection of every other major work ever penned by the 9 loyalist Primarchs, and even complete copies of the Book of (Primarch) Magnus, the Book of Lorgar, and the Grimoire Nostramo (all three of which were kept under strict lock and key, just like every other work in the Librarium that delved too deeply into the nature and specifics of Chaos).

Needless to say, the sheer volume of its contents necessitated a truly labyrinthine shelving system. It could be a challenge for an unaugmented human to navigate, but Magnus had no trouble making his way through the towering book-laden walls. He wished that he could say the same for the rest of the Unquestionable Perfection; fortunately, the Librarium was kept in marginally better shape than the rest of the vessel, and thus easier for him to navigate. In a matter of minutes, he was in front of one of the Librarium’s many entrances. The door said entrance consisted of opened a moment later… and his second heart began to beat.

Casimiria was standing right outside the door, posture relaxed, in what would have been a perfectly ordinary sight if not for the garishly colored, quadruped xeno perched on his shoulders, gazing through the doorway into the library beyond with an oddly human-looking expression of surprise and wonder on its face.

And on the xeno’s flank, there was a symbol. A symbol that Magnus had seen before. A symbol of a six-pointed starburst, surrounded by five smaller stars.

“Must everyone stare at Twilight Sparkle like she is an ork that has decided to put on some power armor and declare its eternal fealty to mankind as the Adeptus Astartes’ first xeno battle brother?” Casimiria asked, the rhetorical question pulling Magnus out of his thoughts.

“A-apologies. I just got a little lost in my head, that’s all.” Magnus said, trying to split his attention between the xeno's words and all the puzzle pieces that had suddenly started to click together in his mind.

“It’s okay.” The xeno responded, its voice uncannily similar to that of a teenage human girl in tone as it dismounted from the Chief Apothecary’s shoulders. “It happens to me, too.” As the xeno hopped down to the floor, her mane shifted slightly, briefly exposing two bumps, one protruding from each shoulder, both covered in sparse, slightly discolored fur. The way they twitched rhythmically as she fell betrayed the purpose they once served; at one point, they’d been wings. Magnus didn’t know how they’d ended up as stumps, but he could guess.

“Really?” Magnus asked, doing his level best not to pay attention to the ghostly silhouettes of a burnt book and shattered mask to the xeno’s left and right, respectively. The conversation he was maintaining with the quadruped creature rapidly faded into the background, a small portion of his mind processing the xeno’s words just enough to give appropriate responses while the rest focused on his revelation.

The mark couldn’t be a coincidence. A conflict was coming, and the Emperor’s Tarot had made it very, very clear that this crippled xeno would be a key participant in it.

Author's Note

Turns out there's an in-depth guide to the cards of the Emperor's Tarot and their various meanings in the form of a Dark Heresy RPG supplement, which I drew heavily upon when writing the last third of the chapter. You can read it here. Magnus is using the Haloed Rosette here; the 'rosette' (the cross) is referring to the first big fight between the Scions and the Black Legion, while the 'halo' (the row above it) is referring to the entire course of the conflict.

Here's stats for the Scion's tactical squads. They differ quite a bit from regular space marines. Also note that they have las weaponry; the Scions frequently suffer from supply chain issues, and thus Bolt Weapons are reserved for those skilled enough to make every single bullet count.

Scions Tactical Squad (⌀32mm)

Tactical Squads have formed the backbone of Space Marine Chapters for ten thousand years, and the Scions are no exception. What they lack in numbers and high-end equipment, they more than make up for in ruthless flexibility and pure, unquenchable willpower.
| M: 6” | T: 4 | Sv: 3+ | W: 2 | Ld: 6+ | OC: 2 |

Abilities

Core: Deep Strike
Faction: Friendship Range
Detachment: Friendship Is Strategic
Don’t Tell Me The Odds: Each time a model in this unit is targeted by an attack, re-roll a Wound roll of 6. While this unit is within range of an objective marker you control, you can re-roll any successful Wound roll an enemy makes, regardless of the result.
Tactical Flexibility: This unit gains an additional ability depending on which Tactical Paradigm is active;

If Fire At Will is active, all ranged weapons in this Unit gain the [Assault] ability.
If Hold the Line is active, this Unit gains the [Feel No Pain 6+] ability.
If Seize the Day is active, this Unit gains the [Scouts 6”] ability.

Unit Composition

6 Tactical Marines

Every model is equipped with: Astartes laspistol; astartes lasblaster; close combat weapon.
6 models: 105 points

Ranged Weapon

Astartes laspistol [Pistol] | Range: 12” | A: 1 | BS: 2+ | S: 3 | AP: -1 | D: 1
Astartes lasblaster | Range: 24” | A: 1 | BS: 2+ | S: 3 | AP: -1 | D: 1
Hand flamer [Pistol, Ignores Cover, Torrent] | Range: 12” | A: D6 | BS: N/A | S: 3 | AP: 0 | D: 1
Flamer [Ignores Cover, Torrent] | Range: 12” | A: D6 | BS: N/A | S: 4 | AP: 0 | D: 1
Rotary lascannon [Heavy, Sustained Hits 1] | Range: 36” | A: 5 | BS: 4+ | S: 5 | AP: -1 | D: 1
Precision lascannon [Heavy, Precision, Devastating Wounds] | Range: 48” | A: 1 | BS: 4+ | S: 12 | AP: -3 | D: D3+4
Inferno Pistol [Melta 2, Pistol] | Range: 6” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 8 | AP: -4 | D: D3
Meltagun [Melta 2] | Range: 12” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 9 | AP: -4 | D: D6
Multi-melta [Heavy, Melta 2] | Range: 18” | A: 2 | BS: 4+ | S: 9 | AP: -4 | D: D6
Plasma cannon - standard [Blast, Heavy] | Range: 36” | A: D3 | BS: 4+ | S: 7 | AP: -2 | D: 1
Plasma cannon - supercharged [Blast, Heavy, Hazardous] | Range: 36” | A: D3 | BS: 4+ | S: 8 | AP: -3 | D: 2
Plasma gun - standard [Rapid fire 1] | Range: 24” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 7 | AP: -2 | D: 1
Plasma gun - supercharged [Rapid fire 1, Hazardous] | Range: 24” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 8 | AP: -3 | D: 2
Plasma pistol - standard [Pistol] | Range: 12” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 7 | AP: -2 | D: 1
Plasma pistol - supercharged [Pistol, Hazardous] | Range: 12” | A: 1 | BS: 3+ | S: 8 | AP: -3 | D: 2

Melee Weapon

Astartes chainsword | Range: Melee | A: 4 | WS: 3+ | S: 4 | AP: -1 | D: 1
Close combat weapon | Range: Melee | A: 2 | WS: 3+ | S: 4 | AP: 0 | D: 1
Power fist | Range: Melee | A: 2 | WS: 3+ | S: 8 | AP: -2 | D: 2
Power weapon | Range: Melee | A: 3 | WS: 3+ | S: 5 | AP: -2 | D: 1
Thunder hammer [Devastating Wounds] | Range: Melee | A: 2 | WS: 4+ | S: 8 | AP: -2 | D: 2

Wargear Options

1 model can have their astartes lasblaster replaced with one of the following weapons:
- 1 flamer
- 1 rotary lascannon
- 1 precision lascannon
- 1 meltagun
- 1 multi-melta
- 1 plasma cannon
- 1 plasma gun
All models in this unit can each have their astartes lasblaster replaced with 1 astartes chainsword.
2 model can have their astartes laspistol and astartes lasblaster replaced with two different weapons from the following list. This model can only be equipped with two ranged weapons if one of them is a Pistol (and it can only have one Pistol):
- 1 astartes laspistol
- 1 astartes lasblaster
- 1 hand flamer
- 1 flamer
- 1 inferno pistol
- 1 meltagun
- 1 plasma pistol
- 1 plasma gun
- 1 astartes chainsword
- 1 power fist
- 1 power weapon
- 1 thunder hammer

Keywords

Infantry, Battleline, Imperium, Grenades, Scions Tactical Squad

Faction Keywords

Scions of the Konic, Adeptus Astartes

An Unplanned Reunion

The Unquestionable Perfection, Crash Site

“Oh, fantastic. Nothing on the auspex. Because why would the universe ever let a simple task like tracking down that warped-damned servitor actually be simple?” Incomitus huffed, stowing the finicky, unreliable piece of wargear and looking up. With the auspex not reading anything, he’d have to rely on his organic senses and the sensors in his helmet.

He quickly flipped through the various vision modes of his helmet, eventually settling on a simple thermal vision overlay. Not that it did much to pierce the thick, low-hanging clouds of poisonous smog that this particular stretch of land had become cloaked within. Many of the sections of the Perfection sealed off from the rest of the ship’s interior weren’t sealed off from the exterior, and a good proportion of those sections were sealed off because of lethally high levels of toxic materials, radioactive materials, and other such lovely substances. When the ship had made planetfall, all those contaminants had spilled out into the surrounding area, turning it into the smog-shrouded, wreckage-laden dead zone Incomitus was currently trying to navigate.

Honestly, the Scions’ Master of the Forge couldn’t blame the Chapter Serfs for preferring to stick to the interior of the Perfection. Every human crewman may have been issued a sealed set of carapace armor with built-in life-support systems that were more than enough to keep out all the contaminants out here, but no amount of armor could protect the unaugmented Chapter Serfs from their own fear. As an Astartes, Incomitus had been subject to extensive biotechnological augmentation, one of the most notable elements of which was having his ability to feel fear stripped out of him right down to the genetic level, and even he had to admit that the god-awful visibility, wildly uneven terrain, lack of natural light and looming, almost skeletal detritus and wreckage scattered around him made him feel a bit uneasy.

Fortunately, the Scions had servitors, which could go where human crewmen were unwilling to go and take care of tasks they refused to do. Unfortunately, they were nowhere near as flexible as a fully intelligent crewman, and every time they fell over and found themselves unable to get up, fell into a hole just a few inches too deep to merely walk out of, or—in the case for the servitor Incomitus was trying to track down—just randomly lost contact with the Perfection due to a malfunctioning noosphere uplink, then a Techmarine or Enginseer had to go out and manually deal with whatever complication had tripped up the servitor.

“Umm… hello?” A feminine voice, filtered through the static crackle of his vox-caster, filled Incomitus’s ears. “This is Chief Techmarine Incomitus, right?”

“…riiight…” Incomitus said slowly, raising one eyebrow. Not that there was anyone around to see it. Even if there was, he had his helmet on at the moment. “Who is this?”

“Twilight Sparkle!”

“The purple xeno Casimiria picked up?” Incomitus asked, already pulling up the relevant file Magnus had sent him and dedicating a portion of his HUD to it. “Where’d you get a vox-caster? And didn’t Magnus say that you don’t speak low gothic?”

“Yeah, I can’t, at least not yet. Fortunately, I figured out how to use magic to translate for me and to broadcast on the wavelengths you guys use for the vox-thingies.” The adorable xeno psyker responded. Had Incomitus not seen said xeno with his own eyes and thus been able to attest to its objective cuteness, he would probably have argued that that first word and the two that followed it were a contradiction in terms.

“…okay then.” Incomitus responded slowly, already using the neural interface system he’d whipped up for his armor to amend the “capabilities” section of Twilight’s file to reflect what she’d just told him. “Anyway, I presume that you have a good reason for pestering me like this? I mean, it’s not like I’m busy or anything.”

“Uh, yeah. I was hoping to get into the Primary Workshop and take a look at some of the “STCs” for the “augmetics” you guys replace missing limbs with, but I can’t seem to get the door open. There’s some kind of access panel next to it, but every time I try to use it, it keeps saying, “Access denied. This is a restricted area." Could you help me out here?”

“Absolutely not.” Incomitus heard Twilight duck in a breath in preparation to argue, and quickly cut her off with an explanation. “It’s a safety thing. The workshop is a “restricted area” for a reason; it wasn’t exactly made with unaugmented humans in mind, let alone four-foot tall quadruped xenos who are a bit too curious for their own good.” There’s also security concerns over a xeno poking around in the workshop unsupervised, but you certainly won’t hear me tell her that.

“Pleeease? I promise I’ll be careful!”

“No thank you. I’d rather NOT have Casimiria pissed at me for letting you get your face melted off, thank you very much.”

“MELTED OFF?!” Twilight exclaimed, her tone rapidly shifting from whiny to horrified. “Don’t you guys have workplace safety requirements or something!?”

“This is the Imperium of Man, Twilight. Workplace safety isn’t exactly at the top of the priority list. We try a little harder than some other parts of the Imperium, but then again, R&D is a very high-risk business for us. Contrary to what you may assume, we don’t actually know how our advanced tech functions. As a result, we’re basically stuck copying blueprints that work from STCs without understanding why they work, and trying to develop, say, a new kind of tank without first finding a relevant STC means throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. And sometimes, instead of sticking or falling harmlessly to the ground, that ‘stuff’ bounces back, hits you in the face, and reduces it to a smoldering stump.”

Almost as if to prove his point, a distant BOOM reached his ears through Twilight’s magically generated vox connection, accompanied by a yelp. “Case in point.” Incomitus added. Such detonations were daily, sometimes even hourly occurrences in the Workshop. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Twilight sounded the part, as well. Her breathing was a little labored, and the explosion had definitely rattled her, but otherwise she seemed fine.

“Good. You might want to move along while you still can; the Master of the Forge is not liable for any injuries, deaths, or emotional trauma that results from failure to keep a respectable distance from the Workshops.”

“…that’s not very reassuring.” Twilight commented.

“I’m a Space Marine. Reassuring people isn’t part of my job description.” Up ahead, his thermal vision picked out a familiar, bulky humanoid silhouette, face-down on the ground. “About frakking time. There’s the-”

And then he stepped closer, and it became obvious to him that there was something far more wrong with the semi-organic automaton than just a busted noosphere uplink.

“...servitor.”

“-wait, what? What’s wrong?!”

“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve found the servitor, or at least what’s left of it. The bad news is that, well, there isn’t much left of it.” Incomitus stepped closer, turning the heat vision filter off and studying the Servitor’s mangled corpse with his “natural” vision… at least insofar as any part of an Astartes could ever be truly natural.

“Hmm… no bullet wounds or plasma scarring. Just some extensive blunt-force trauma, and a whole frakton of bite marks and lacerations. Something really went to town on this thing…”

A low, menacing growl filled the air; Incomitus glanced up from the Servitor’s mangled remains, his heat-vision filter reactivating as his gaze swept over his surroundings. No heat-signatures that would indicate living things…

A flicker of movement caught his eye. Focusing on it, he caught sight of a vague, quadruped-like outline, somehow almost the exact same temperature as its surroundings.

“...am I the only one who just realized that all this sounds like a setup for some kind of horror movie?” Twilight interjected.

“…nope.” Incomitus turned the heat-vision filter off once again, instantly catching sight of a pair of glowing red eyes, leering menacingly at him from the smog. And then another pair. And another. And a half-dozen more after that. “You’re not the only one…”

“W-w-what’s happening?!”

“Local wildlife, that’s what.” Incomitus commented as his wolf-like opponents stepped closer, close enough that Incomitus’s gene-enhanced eyesight could make out . “They look lupine in form, about 6 feet tall from ears to paws. Oh, and they’re made up of a bunch of wooden twigs fused together by psychic energy…”

“Oh buck! Timberwolves!”

“...seriously? You call these things Timberwolves?!” Incomitus asked as his four-armed servo-harness brandished four custom-built lasguns, each one bearing a force-bayonet at the tip that crackled with matter-disintegrating energy. “Actually, never mind, I don’t understand why I’m surprised by that. The name of your capital city is a pun on Camelot, after all.”

“Hold on, I’m coming!” Twilight cried, oblivious to the fact that Incomitus had engaged the Timberwolves and was currently ripping them apart with casual ease, their bodies shredded by red las-bolts and force bayonets, their teeth and claws completely failing to pierce his ceramite armor even when they managed to get past both.

“You really shouldn’t bother. These things are barely even scratching my armor’s paint job even when they manage to get past my Mechadendrites and Servo-arms…” Incomitus fell silent as he realized that Twilight’s vox link to him had been severed. “She’s coming anyway, isn’t she?” The Master of the Forge let loose a sigh as he casually backhanded a pouncing Timberwolf, the blow smashing its head into a dozen pieces.

Twilight choked, gagging as the purplish-black smoke she’d just teleported into flooded her lungs, burning her throat and eyes. Her horn flashed as she quickly threw up a magical barrier, the improvised life support system pushing out the toxic gasses and leaving clean, breathable air behind. She took a moment to cast a few healing spells to purge the harmful substances she’d accidentally inhaled from her system. With that done, she glanced around, trying to take stock of her surroundings.

All around her, a thick veil of toxic fog billowed, painted a dim purplish-brown by the moon’s light. Massive, looming silhouettes of mangled wreckage hung over her, leaving her feeling like a tiny ant in comparison to her surroundings. Other than the moon, the faint glow of the filter shield she’d thrown up was the only light… wait, no, there was something else. A few sporadic flashes of red and green.

“Incomitus!” Twilight cried, breaking into a sprint. Her hooves kept slipping in the sludge and she had to reduce her pace to a fraction of what she was normally capable of lest she collide with dead foliage or heaps of scrap metal, yet she pressed on. She wasn’t going to abandon any of her friends when they needed her again, she wasn’t-

She skidded to a stop as a collection of broken sticks and smoking leaves flew over her head, what little still remained of the glowing coils of magical energy that once held them together rapidly disintegrating. The creature that had so casually destroyed the magical predator turned to Twilight a moment later.

“Oh, big surprise; turns out the bioengineered supersoldier clad in armor forged from hyper-advanced alloys and wielding weapons so advanced they might as well be magical can hold his own against a bunch of ravenous Timberwolves.” Three of the arms strapped to the red, metal-plated giant’s back lifted up, drawing a bead with the blocky weapons they each held. There were three flashes of red light, three audible cracks, and three injured Timberwolves in the process of piecing themselves back together were promptly blown apart. Incomitus didn’t even need to glance back at his targets. “Who would have thought?”

“...not me.” Twilight admitted sheepishly.

“If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one. Plenty of the less friendly xenos we’ve had to deal with made the exact same mistake. Just be glad you don’t have to pay for it.” Incomitus turned around, moving toward a fallen, vaguely humanoid silhouette on the ground.

“Is that a crewman?” Twilight asked, stepping forward… and promptly froze, bile rising up in her throat at the sight of the mangled corpse Incomitus was standing over.

The thing had been human once—that was the Scions’ name for their species, apparently—but now it was barely recognizable. Huge swaths of it’s body had been covered by gleaming steel plating, which in turn was covered with dozens upon dozens of snaking wires and tubes. One arm was entirely gone, replaced by a huge, brutal-looking clamp. What little flesh hadn’t been replaced by cold, hard steel was almost chalk-white, the unhealthy-looking pallor combining with the way its skin was stretched tight against its bones to make it look almost skeletal in appearance.

“It used to be. Now it’s a mindless biomechanical automaton called a Servitor.” Incomitus responded, dropping to one knee as a small mechanical tendril snaking out from his back and plugged itself into a socket in the heavily augmented human at his feet.

“Used to be?” Twilight asked, shuddering. “As in, you guys turned him into that?”

“At his insistence, no less.” Upon noticing the flabbergasted look the alicorn was giving him, Incomitus elaborated further. “We give proper funerals to those among the crew who want them, but the vast majority of them insist that even in death their bodies ought to be of use to us. And many who suffer crippling injuries that prevent them from working opt to speed the process along and donate their bodies to us while they’re still alive.”

“And you let them do that?” Twilight asked. In Canterlot, and Equestria in general, the idea of a pony’s dead body being turned into a mindless automaton like the one on the ground in front of Incomitus would have been downright horrifying, a line that nopony would ever even contemplate crossing, no matter the circumstances. But the almost casual tone Incomitus spoke with as he explained all this to her made it all too clear that for him and his species, this was a line that was crossed on a daily basis.

“Not if we can help it.” Incomitus continued. “When we can, we give them augmetics that make that unnecessary and have them continue to serve the way they used to. But sometimes, we can’t.”

“So this is what you do to those you can’t save?”

“Not always. Sometimes they get turned into servo-skulls. Other times their neural tissue gets repurposed into cogitators. But most get turned into this. Many of the Crewmen and Chapter Serfs who opt to donate their bodies like that actually consider it a great honor to have them used like this after their deaths.”

Twilight shuddered a little, reminded once again of just how different from her these beings were. Among these creatures, being allowed to volunteer to be turned into a half-alive automaton after your death was considered commonplace—an honor, even, a selfless sacrifice of something deeply personal in service to the wider community. Heck, the natural products of that practice were probably seen as something to aspire to among the crewmen, as half-living monuments to the loyalty and dedication of the individuals they used to be, of their willingness to sacrifice their own bodily autonomy for the sake of those who’d come after them. It really went to show the sort of world they lived in, that someone’s own bodily autonomy was considered far less important than having one more pair of hands for manual labor.

“...Twilight?” Incomitus asked suddenly. “You have a close bond with a pony who has an orange coat, a blonde mane, and no wings or horn, right?”

“Umm… yeah?” For a second, Twilight wondered how Incomitus knew that, but then she remembered that she’d told Magnus all about her friends. Granted, she hadn’t expected that information to circulate that fast, but for all she knew their armor suits were probably hooked up to some kind of database that let them share information quickly and easily. “Why’d you ask?”

“The Servitor saw a pony that matched that description, right before it got mauled by the Timberwolves. It looks like they’d chased her here.” The red-armored giant stood up, another tendril-like arm snaking down from his back, its tip suddenly producing a glaringly bright beam of light that peeled back the darkness and illuminated a moderately large piece of scrap, like a miniature floodlight. “And I think I can see where she went.”

Applejack coughed hard, choking and gasping for fresh air, even as the only air available burned her throat and seared her eyes. She needed to find fresh air, needed to get out of this caustic smog, but she was stuck here, underneath this piece of metallic debris.

The Timberwolves from before had picked up her trail and followed her here, chasing her into this toxic, fog-shrouded wasteland. She’d managed to find shelter from them beneath a piece of skeletal metal wreckage, where their claws couldn’t reach… but not before one of them had managed to sink its teeth into her bad leg.

Another bout of coughing and wheezing shot through her body, her chest hitching as her vision blurred and the strength seeped from her limbs. She needed to get out of this area, needed to find air that she could actually breathe, air that wasn’t so full of toxic chemicals that it made her lungs feel like they were being filled with molten lava. But she couldn’t; even though the Timberwolves were gone, the damage they’d done to her already-injured leg wasn’t: she was in far, far too much pain to stand, let alone walk anywhere.

In hindsight, she mused to herself, maybe charging off into completely unfamiliar territory to swoop in and bail her friend out like some kind of big damn hero hadn’t been such a good idea.

This is how ah die, ain’t it? Applejack thought to herself as her vision began to go dark, consciousness slowly but surely slipping away from her. There was a definite faint orange glow coming from her leg now, unmistakable in the pitch darkness, but she was in too much pain to really register it, nor the faint smell of singed fur that accompanied it. Alone, broken, weak, an’ slowly chokin’ ta death cuz’ I charged off without thinkin’. I guess it’s fittin’...

The slab of metal she was underneath was lifted up, a bright light flooding her surroundings. She didn’t even have the strength to lift her head anymore, but she didn’t need to. She could feel the presence of one of those minotaur-like creatures behind her. At least she’d be too dead to really register what it was going to do to her…

All of a sudden, clean air flooded her lungs, untainted by the burning smog she’d been inundated in mere moments before. A vague lavender blob slipped into her vision as a soothing warmth began to spread out from her neck. Everywhere it spread, the pain lessened, the burning sensation in her throat and lungs fading to nothing.

“It’s okay, AJ. I’m here. I’ve got you.” A voice murmured, high-pitched and panicky. A voice Applejack would have recognized anywhere.

“T-Twi-”

Midway through the word, the sensation of Twilight’s magic reached her leg. Unlike with her lungs and throat, it didn’t reduce the pain. Quite the opposite, in fact.

A raspy screech of pain tore itself free of Applejack’s throat, a orange light flashing in her vision as the stench of burning flesh flooded her nostrils. The shadows at the corners of her vision returned with a vengeance, consciousness slipped away from her in very short order. The last thing she heard before darkness enveloped her was Twilight calling her name.

Author's Note

Another chapter published, another character nearly dies… in other words, Tuesday as usual in the WH40K universe.

In case you were wondering, the description of the vicinity of the Perfection was heavily inspired by the Crash Site in Subnautica, complete with lethal contaminants leaking from the damaged vessel.