[M] Shades of Grey - IC

[dakkagor]

"You're either the butcher or you're the meat, Red. Well look at me now, and look at you!"

The Kingsman was torqued backward, chest pushed up and shoulders pulled back against the ground, his jaw locked in helpless agony. The strobing light turned his struggles into something horrific.

“Pain is an illusion of the Senses. Despair an illusion of the mind.”

Sarna shivered in the snow, the cramps so bad from the cold it felt like her skin would tear off, her teeth aching from their chattering. Someone shoved a practice blade into her tiny hands.

“Perform the basic parries, as we have practiced, and I will allow you to be clothed again.”

"Wait...Primus?" the man in red breathed, in sudden recognition. And then he laughed. "I suppose if any of you Red bastards would survive it was going to be you. But who's your new friend?" He turned on his heel to regard Sarna once more. "Actually never mind, I'll ask her myself."

She stood before a furnace, blazing in heat.

“Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair is an illusion of the mind. Place your hand in the forge. If your faith is true, the Emperor will protect you.”

She knew not to disobey. She rolled back her bodyglove from her arm, and in one motion, pushed her fist into the flames. She screamed as the heat ate at her hand. Evaporating the tears from her face as she smelled her flesh cooking from the bone. She grabbed her arm with her other hand and held it in, because she had not been instructed to remove the hand.

He began to stride back towards her, kicking aside debris and stepping round the coffee table where Primus' blade had fallen. The Eldar pistol was in his right hand; his left was flexing open and closed, and beginning to smoulder with a halo of blue light.

“Pain is an illusion of the senses. Despair is an illusion of the mind.” Darl handed her a practice sword hilt first. As she took it, she felt a needle prick the palm of her hand. As she moved to the enguard position, she felt liquid pain course through her arm, the muscles spasming.

“Dark Eldar poison, recovered from their raids.” Darl offered as calmly as if she was discussing the weather. Sarna hissed, dropping to her knees as she clutched at her wrist, trying to stop her spasming fingers breaking on the hilt. Darl raised her practice blade. “Defend yourself.”

"Your bitch is mine!"

He reached down to grab her head. Sarna's head snapped up, her eyes wide as her memories unfolded like a a lotus flower in her mind. For a second, Vamassian's mind brushed against Sarna's before it recoiled.

Sarna was already moving. Her left hand had taken the knife from under her dress, reversed the grip. She slammed it into the palm of Vamassian's outstretched hand, punching the mono-blades edge clean through bone and flesh, out the other side. Vamassian howled in pain, staggering back, clutching at his ruined hand with his other, the pistol forgotten. Sarna staggered to her feet.

“I am Sarna Astros of the Moritat Sisterhood of Regis.” She ground out through gritted teeth. Her left hand was wrapped around the eldar pistol. “As an appointed Agent of His Imperial Majesties Imperial Inquisition, I sentence you to the Emperors mercy, for only he can grant a heretic the absolution he craves.”

She fired the pistol, point blank into Vamassian's stomach. The recoil of the alien weapon surprised her, pulling her arm up as she fired, punching the flechettes into Vamassian's gut, chest and face, spattering his head across the wall. The ruined corpse dropped to its knees and folded backwards, dumping blood across the floor.

“And I am nobodies bitch.”

She watched Vamassian's body twitch for a few moments, shutting out the blazing agony in her right arm and shoulder. From the other side of the room she heard wet, ruined laughter. She pushed the pistol into her belt, and staggered over to the last remaining Kingsman. She picked his sword up from the coffee table, before sagging down next to him.

“I can't stay here.” She finally said. She could hear heavy weapon fire from outside. What time she had left was running out.

“I guessed as much.” Primus coughed. He tried to force himself to sitting upright, but was violently seized by another round of painful spasms. It seemed the berserker fever that had seized him earlier had passed, leaving only the miserable pain of his slow death.

“I can't let you live either.”

Primus met her eyes and nodded, smiling.

“We'd have made some terrifying children, you know.” Primus chuckled and Sarna smiled at her own weak joke. “Maybe in another life.”

“One last thing, Shift.. . .Sarna, please, I don't want to go like this.”

Sarna nodded. She pushed a knife into the Kingsmans hand and stepped up and back.

“In the Red Kings name, Primus, I gift your skull to the skull throne.”

The Kingsmans blade purred once.

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie

The dragon roar of lander engines, and the jackhammer rattle of assault cannons. Kim had frozen in place, remembering another descending apocalypse, the carnage set in motion by her own hands.

No, back further. She remembered entering the heretic's lair wearing a false expression of meekness, just as they had entered Vamassian's hideout. She remembered kneeling before a daemon who wore an angel's face, and pledging to help spread his word. Hundreds of her own flock had seen the light - why shouldn't she? Raeden the prophet was now Raeden the heretic. She remembered the vox caster under her bedroll, that would call the apocalypse right down on the deceiver's head, and on hers.

No, back further. She remembered speaking into that same vox caster several weeks earlier.

"Missionary Raeden." The grey man had a grey voice; flinty, hard, unyielding. "This is inquisitor Feyd Lucullis."

Lucullis - the grey man. The righteous man. Until now, Kim had only spoken to his intermediaries. But now, four months after she had begged help from the Ecclesiarchy, the inquisitor who had arrived in their stead was ready to give her her orders in person.

"You will need to present yourself as a believer." Lucullis said. "You will need to enter the heretic's lair."

Kim remembered her hands, slippery with cold sweat as she cupped the vox caster. "But the villagers..." she protested, despite all the Creed's teachings that it was heresy to cross an inquisitor. "They'll think me an apostate."

"They will." Lucullis agreed simply.

Kim remembered envisioning a horrible scene. The Redeemer - the liar, the blasphemer - shouting from his pulpit, promising that blood could wash away their sins and end the drought. The remains of her flock, chanting his name alongside the others, because she had led them to him, after so long resisting. She pictured Cian shouting alongside them, drawn in like the rest, ecstatically unaware of the fate of those who bowed to any god but the Emperor. Kim had not seen him since her feigned death and resurrection on another part of Adhara as Raeden the prophet. But in their desperation people travelled far to hear the Redeemer - further than they had ever travelled for Kim and her fellow missionaries.

"But what if they follow my lead?" she protested further, compounding her sin of questioning out of fear for her followers, and for Cian. "I've preached against the Redeemer; his men know my face. I can't change identities again."

"That will have to be your people's test of faith." Lucullis' voice was implacable. "Their fate will match their choice."

"Just because a bad shepherd leads them astray, it doesn't mean the whole flock is beyond saving!" Kim had argued back. The same words she had spoken to Quintus and Alexi earlier; in defence of Maria, and of the two kids on the roof. She hadn't realised where they had come from until now. "We don't have to kill them all!"

You are his child, just as I am. Those were the words of the Creed.

All of true faith believe in justice. And those were Quintus' words; the words of his red god.

"Don't mistake me for a bloodthirsty fanatic, missionary Raeden. I do not believe in prosecuting the innocent. The moment you execute an innocent, the rest lose all faith in the ability of justice to protect them - and then what incentive do they have to follow the Emperor's laws? But Chaos is different. It digs claws deep into the hearts of its followers, and it never truly lets go. I've seen it happen. Simple follower heretics spared, only for entire cities to be lost to madness years later. All because daemons laugh when we give them the gift of mercy."

Kim's mouth had gone dry. "And what about me?"

"You're a missionary. You change your face and your words to match the indigens, but your faith stays pure. That's why only you can do this. But any who fall, we must eradicate them. All of them."

"Attention citizens." a woman's voice boomed across the rooftop garden, her words made monstrous by the lander's echoing vox-casters. "Throw down your weapons and submit to judgement, by authority of the Emperor's holy inquisition."

Kim clenched her fists. Not this time.

Despite the fear still gnawing at the pit of her stomach, she was calm, because she knew that this time she was right - truth was truth, whether the Emperor's or the Kingsmen's.

You can have faith through worship. she remembered telling her team-mates, Or you can have faith in a person, a weapon, even a set of words.

Kim knew what her words were going to be.

No more innocent blood.

The clarity and conviction that had gripped her at the dockside returned. Kim looked at the people around her - staring around in panic; cowering; hugging the wooden deck.

"Listen!" Kim shouted at them, holding up her arms and drawing their attention onto her with beckoning sweeps of her hands. "Listen! If we stay here, we all die. Fire escapes, right now."

"Then where?" one of the older refugees hollered.

"The old rail tunnels." blurted Rhen.

Kim turned, as surprised as everyone else, to look at Rhen. Even Rhen himself looked slightly alarmed, as if he hadn't quite realised that he had spoken, and was now wondering why everyone was staring at him.

"Uh..." the gangly Refugee said. "I used to go climbin' about in 'em. Like when that ungrateful prick of a lizard went walkabout. There's a main line runnin' right under the highway. Bricked off but easy enough to get in."

"You sure?" Kim asked him.

Rhen puffed up a little, defensive. "Yeah."

His Will be done. "Let's move. Rhen, you and me lead."

A confessor can't be seen to doubt. And she didn't.

+ + + + + +

Abner

Abner still wasn't sure how he had dodged, sprinted and crawled his way to the first floor function suite. Panting, he flattened himself against the wall and reached out to press the ajar door with one hand. Nosing the door open failed to provoke any shouting or gunshots, and so he reeled his way in.

He had been hoping to find Vamassian and the duke. Instead he saw only an empty lounge with overturned furniture and a blood-spattered cogitator, its cooling fans still wheezing away indifferently as short bursts of gunfire snarled from the floor above. One of Vamassian's men was slumped beneath the desk, his blood fouling the carpet.

Submit to judgement, the voice from the lander thundering above the safehouse had demanded. Bugger that!

"You bastards!" Abner barked at the empty room. "I could have belonged here!"

On the floor, the man he had taken for dead groaned. Abner kicked him irritably out of the way and mashed the cogitator rune-board to wake it from its dormant state. The blood-flecked screen lit up from its saved memory state, but the guardian program promptly stepped in and barred his access, demanding a keyword in a blinking white text box.

"Come here." Abner growled at the bleeding operator.

Despite having both hands curled around the hole in his abdomen, the ganger still tried to wriggle away from him. "Don't you touch me, warper!"

That made Abner angry enough to grab the ganger by his greasy hair and slam the side of his face into the wall, leaving a spiderweb dent in the plaster. Once the images flickering across his mind told him what he was looking for, he slammed the ganger into the wall again for good measure.

"People like you are always praying for my death." he growled, as the operator sank back onto the blood-sticky carpet with a groan. "Be thankful I don't have time to make you pray for yours."

He tapped the keyword into the cogitator to pacify its guardian, then rooted around in the desk drawers until he found a data wand. He plugged it into the machine, and stabbed a few more command runes. By the time he had finished, the gut-shot operator had lapsed into unconsciousness.

"I'll be taking this." he told the unresponsive body as he yanked out the data wand and slipped it into a pocket. "I think I can make better use of Vamassian's money than you can."

+ + + + + +

Rhen, Kimmie, Hadrak

They were halfway down the stairs when the blonde girl stumbled and fell against the wall, clutching at the bannister with one hand and at her head with the other.

"Karine?" one of the other girls rushed forward to steady her. "You okay?"

"Oh Throne..." Karine coughed, still twisting her fingers into her hair, "I was gonna...oh throne."

Rhen turned around, just in time to see the girl look up and meet his eyes. Her expression mutated into one of rage.

"Rhen you did nothin'!" Karine launched herself off the wall and went for Rhenat, tiny fists swinging. "You was right there an' you did nothin', you frakkin' asshole!"

"I'm sorry!" Rhen pleaded as he fended off the blows. "I didn't...I..."

I was a coward. he told himself savagely, and concluded that he deserved the blows even as he kept on trying to defend himself from them.

"Save it!" Kim's voice cracked, snapping through the miniature brawl like a gunshot. The missionary was doubling back up the stairs towards them. "There's people out there who are going to kill you. Everything else can wait!"

Karine fell back, panting. Rhen stammered more apologies, this time directed at both Karine and Kim.

"Kimmie!"

The missionary halted in turn, and spun round to see Hadrak on the landing below them, blood running down the side of his face. The chainsword in his hands was similarly red-stained.

"Hadrak." she sighed in relief. "Where are the others?"

"I don't know. Vamassian and Primus are dead in the smoking room, but I can't find any of the others."

"We need to find them. We need to get out of here."

"Out of here?" the tall man looked baffled. "Our mission's complete; we need to report back to the inquisitor. Erdene's hovering right outside with our ride home."

Kim looked at him, her expression one of earnest fear. "Lucullis will kill all these people, you know he will. When it comes to Primus' Red King or Petrosyan's Purple Prince, he won't take the risk."

Daemons laugh when we give them the gift of mercy.

The grey, stony face floating in her mind softened into the smiling visage she'd made the mistake of leaving behind.

It's not too late to change your mind. Cian's ghost said. Stay.

"I need to help them. I need to take them somewhere where he won't find them."

"You're going to stay?"

Stay.

"That's exactly what I'm going to do."

She saw Hadrak frown, choosing his words as he looked from Kim to her bedraggled tail of refugee parents, teenagers and children. "Kimmie...you know you won't be able to save them all. Some'll run away, or overdose, or shoot each other dead. Take it from someone who grew up in a place like this - it doesn't make people kind. It just makes them hard and suspicious and resentful. And you don't just get over something like what Vamassian did to these kids - not quickly, and sometimes not ever."

"I know that." Kim admitted without emotion. "Sarna told me the same."

"So why?"

"Because they all deserve the chance. And I can give one to them. The hive gendarmes won't bother a priest."

She pulled the broken chain from the pocket of her webbing and let it hang from her hand, the Aquila slowly spinning to reveal a side of bright silver, and then a reverse of duller grey.

"Our souls aren't weighed by how much we numbly pray, or how many of our faith's enemies we kill. They're weighed by the value we place on life. Especially a life they tell you doesn't matter. We destroy sorrows. We destroy daemons. We are the messengers."

Hadrak held her gaze for a moment, then bowed his head, exhaling. "Then you'd better take this." He pulled a thick signet ring from his right forefinger, and pushed down on the stag sigil to flip up a small data-communion port. He pressed it into Kim's hand. "If I remember right, you can plug it into a cash dispenser and pull out any sum you like. You'd better drain it all before Lucullis freezes all our assets."

"You're no comin' with us?" Rhen blurted, looking distraught.

The copper-haired man smiled. "I remember now that I joined the Guard to get away from somewhere like this. And it was Lucullis that let me find an honourable way to get away from the Guard. I owe it to him to return, just like I owe it to you to have a chance to escape."

Gunfire hammered on the other side of the building, and from outside there was a crashing explosion that shook the walls.

Hadrak clapped a hand onto Rhenat's shoulder, squeezing briefly, then hefted his gore-spattered chainsword. "You'd better run."

Kim grabbed Hadrak as he turned to leave. "Don't lie to Lucullis. He'll know."

Hadrak smiled again, grimly. "I know. That's why I won't ask you where you're going."

As the tall soldier darted away, Kim clasped Rhen's arm to get his attention. "Rhen, the tunnel entrance is beneath the overpass, you said?"

Rhen cuffed his nose. "Uh, yeah."

"I need you to get everybody to the rail tunnel and wait for me there. I'm going to try and find the last of my team. But if any of those inquisition people get too close then don't wait, just run. Understand?"

Rhen cracked his knuckles - terrified at the prospect, but wanting the chance of redemption. "Uh, okay. Sure thing Kimmie."

As Kim followed Hadrak in tearing off, this time back up the stairwell, Rhen realised that for the second time in a few short minutes everybody was looking at him.

+ + + + + +

Kimmie, Stan

Nara stumbled into the top floor dormitory, her glossy hair dishevelled and her figure-hugging dress greyed with dust and gunsmoke. She hunched over and splayed one hand against the wall, willing the scene before her to be an illusion. There was nobody left up here - only bullet holes, broken doors, and the bodies of the Refuge guards. She slammed her tattooed palm into the wall and let out a scream of frustrated rage.

"Shift?" a woman's voice echoed from somewhere up the corridor. It was speaking Vaxan, but didn't sound native. "Sarna, is that you?"

The voice's owner came bursting through the fire doors ahead of Nara. She was hard-limbed and olive-skinned, clad in simple black fatigues with frayed combat webbing cinched over her sweaty black tank-top. Strands of her dark hair had stuck to her face, but her eyes were coolly determined, and she carried a battered las-rifle in her hands.

For a moment the two women simply stared at each other. Then Nara, unarmed though she was, succumbed to the red closing in at the edges of her vision and snapped.

"Where are they?" she shrieked at the other woman. "What the frak have you done with them, you bloody little bitch!?"

The other woman brought her las-rifle up to her shoulder in a threatening gesture. The focusing barrel wasn't exactly pointed towards Nara, but it definitely wasn't pointed away from her either.

"Walk away." the other woman advised, her tone a warning one.

Self-preservation returning to the fore at the sight of the raised weapon, Nara took a hesitant step backward.

"You don't get to walk away from this, Nara."

The dishevelled ganger turned, towards a hulking figure that had appeared behind her. Streaked with blood and electric burn, the flickering ceiling lights washing white and black across his reflective eyes, was Konstantin Burakgazi.

"Stan." the armed woman blurted, her gun muzzle dropping a few centimetres.

[PaintSerf]

OOC - First half third of Nara and Stan's conversation moved to #42. New content as follows:

“Forgive me for such a grievous oversight.” The Luminen rallied, determined at least not to be thrown off by this woman’s quirky behavior. Konstantin almost delicately plucked Nara’s hand from the air, and grinned before placing a kiss on her knuckles. His smile broadened as Nara’s nose scrunched with the contact from his moustache. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. Tumasian. I’m Konstantin.”

“I’m very pleased to make yours as well,” Nara acknowledged, with another toothy smile as she slyly winked at her new tech-priest acquaintance. “I’ll see if I can find a way to forgive you, Stan.”

Nara gasped, and quickly reached out to touch his arm as her other hand covered her mouth.

“Oops. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” The chief enforcer stressed, and lightly squeezed her fingers on his arm to reassure him. “Do you mind if I called you Stan? We’re always contracting names around here, like Rhenat’s Rhen and Maria became ‘Ria, so that sort of slipped out without me thinking about it.”

“I don’t mind…and I appreciate that you asked. No one else did.” Konstantin’s moustache twitched as he frowned thoughtfully, and raised a curious brow as he glanced down at her. “What’s Nara short for?”

“Ah. I’m actually an exception to the rule.” She smiled, languidly shrugged, and almost coquettishly fluttered her eyelashes at him as she touched her cross tattooed hand over her heart. “I’m simply Nara.”

“I suspect that there’s nothing simple about you, Nara Tumasian.” The Luminen hypothesized. No sooner had the words come out, and he sensed his conversational theory was…correct.

“I’ll never tell.” Nara evaded, with a conspiratorial grin and a flicker of her gullwing eyebrows so devious that it made him chuckle. She gently bit her lip as she mulled a thought while regarding the tech-priest. “I’m curious, Stan. We’re getting along, so what was the issue with those other women you knew?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were they simply a bunch of miserable bitches who didn’t know a good thing when they saw him?” Nara casually asked. She quickly raked her eyes over his blood splattered abs, and then glanced at him with a speculatively arched brow. “Or do you secretly have a problem with us women-folk, Stan?”

“No.” He declared, firmly and decisively. “I had family, friends, and I served the Domina…”

Konstantin trailed away into silence as he remembered…a moment from his past…as he sat across from a wizened, elderly woman with age whitened blonde hair and thick lensed glasses. The woman was…was…unknown, and the Luminen was made lightheaded as he strained to remember who she was. He registered her gnarled, trembling hands, one of which rested on a metallic icon as he cradled the other. When she opened her eyes, they were the clear blue of a sky foreign to Vostroya, clouded by cataracts and further obscured by weary remorse as she squeezed his hand and reached –

The Luminen consciously took a breath as he remembered the cold, scratchy touch of dry fingertips against his cheek. He recognized the vision as another memory fragment, and wondered on whether an imprecise term such as haunted was correct...and after a further moment of consideration he knew it was...even if such an admission seemed to be incorrect...for some reason. Konstantin’s minute shiver went unnoticed as Nara had completely different priorities from him.

“Domina…” Nara murmured. She guffawed as she made the translation, and shot Konstantin an almost incredulous look as her mouth twisted into a pleasantly stupefied smile. “You had a mistress?”

“You know that language?” The Luminen asked, and started as he was drawn from his reverie. That language…some derivative of Gothic seemed…familiar, somehow, as if he should have known...

“Of course I don’t.” Nara corrected the tech-priest with a patient smile. “Lord Remmy paid to make one of his bastards some kind of preacher man, and his idea of spreading the good word is overriding the public address speakers and ranting at us in his oh-so-fancy spire gibberish.”

“Delightful.” Konstantin muttered. He once again tasted acidic bitterness as he thought of Vaxanhive and Vaxanide, and clenched his fists with a clink of copper capped fingertips.

“You have no idea.” Nara emphatically groaned. “The bastard’s bastard usually goes off at like three in the morning, babbling away with the blessed word.” She disparagingly rolled her eyes and shot the Luminen a wry look and knowing half-grin. “No points for guessing who the Dominus is.”

Konstantin slowly nodded as if he knew who Nara was talking about, even if he wasn’t completely sure, as he sensed that he should know the reference. It uncomfortably gnawed at him that he didn’t know. Nara softly clicked her tongue and shrugged as she speculatively glanced at Stan’s collar.

“So…” Nara breathed, as she fearlessly reached out and traced a slow fingertip along its boundary with the tech-priest’s bared chest. She grinned slyly as he flinched at her touch, and raised an intrigued brow. “Did your mistress make you wear this harness?”

“No. I wear this as it’s expected from my Brotherhood.” Konstantin clarified, somewhat irritably, as he was reminded of the collar’s presence by Nara’s question. He had no idea why they would, as the collar was highly uncomfortable. Regardless, this thing was coming off as soon as he could manage.

“Wait…Brotherhood?” Nara blinked, and her eyes widened as she searchingly gazed at him. “You’re saying there are more tech-priests out there like you?”

“Yes.” Konstantin affirmed. He squinted fractionally as he remembered a circle of bodies around him, and an almost electrical aura around him as a series of hands pressed against his body…he counted them...nine. “There were nine more senior brothers left in our congregation when I…departed…”

“Nine? Wow.” Nara whistled. She stared off for a moment and hummed as she absently shook her head. “Whoever’s responsible for all this.” The chief enforcer’s nails lightly scraped across Konstantin’s muscled pectoral as her hand dropped down from his collar. Her fingers circled in the air as she gestured at his abs, as he once again shied away from contact. “They have some real talent.”

“The Domina is a commendably Knowledgeable priestess of the Divisio Biologis.” The Luminen agreed, with an ingrained certainty that didn’t feel deserved with his current...issues…with his memory.

“Mmh-hmm.” Nara distractedly hummed in agreement. “I’m not surprised a woman’s touch made you the way you are, Stan.” She idly trailed her fingers through her lustrous hair. “You’re a really, really well-built man.”

“The standard definition is correct as well.” Konstantin murmured, somewhat preoccupied as he glanced with pondering wariness at the dark bands of metalwork buried beneath an almost impossibly...built…re-built…correct…muscled body. He ground his teeth slightly. “I…I wasn’t always like…this, Nara.”

“You’re a tech-priest, Stan. Of course you’ve had some work done.” Nara chided, and playfully smacked his arm. She gently bit down on the corner of her bottom lip as her hand lingered. “Your mistress has impeccable taste when making her men.” She smiled. “I’d like to think we’d get along fabulously.”

“She does…but you wouldn’t.” The Luminen agreed, and then countered, with that same undeserved certainty as before. He sensed the words were...correct, which made him wonder if he had a problem with his…no, nothis…with this Domina individual. It made him wonder -

“Why?” Nara mildly questioned, and Stan’s brows raised in surprise as inadvertently echoed his own thought. She curiously tilted her head up at him as she leaned in closer. “Is that because we’re women?”

“Ah…” Konstantin breathed, as a fresh sense of unease came on with Nara’s almost completely flat tone.

“What?” The chief enforcer giggled and offered him a conspiratorially girlish grin, even as she pressed her fingernails into the dense muscles of his arm, “Everyone knows women hate other women, Stan.”

“I…” Konstantin hesitated in the face of Nara’s contradictory signals. The Luminen sensed he was in a field of conversational landmines, and from his earlier…memories…and his reaction to Nara’s earlier confrontation, he knew that he wasn’t skilled at navigating his way out from it. “I don’t…”

“You don’t think we’re hardwired to treat other women as competition for a man?” Nara voiced the observation on his behalf with a cheerful lit and dangerously narrowed eyes.

“Nara.” Konstantin firmly interjected, and once again raised his palms to forestall Nara, as he sought a direct and honest means to escape from this latest conversational trap. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Nara assured him with an almost dismissive shrug. She giggled and shoved his arm, to no discernable effect, which made her smile appreciatively. “Relax. I’m only teasing you again.”

“Why?” The Luminen questioned through his gritted teeth as he regarded the enforcer chief.

“I like to have fun.” Nara admitted, with a languid what can I say shrug. She thoughtfully pursed her lips together as she gently, almost distractedly, brushed her thumb across his arm. There was the slightest trace of uncharacteristic tension in in her brow as Konstantin could vaguely see flickers behind her eyes – similar to the lights he had observed from the youthful ganger who had recovered the stave.

“Is there something on your mind?” Konstantin hazarded to query. Correct. Interesting. He encouragingly invited Nara to proceed with both hands opened and fingers splayed. She emitted a soft, airy breath, ambiguously between a giggle and a sigh, as she raked her fingers through her hair.

“Oh, I’ve always got something going on.” Nara demurred as she smiled slightly, enigmatically. She lightly danced her fingers against her temple as her mouth quirked sideways. “It goes with the gig.”

The Luminen could not help but notice the slightly rueful undercurrent in Nara’s evasiveness. She stared off in distant, thoughtful wordlessness as she chewed her bottom lip and continued to idly stroke her thumb against his arm. Konstantin rested a hand on Nara’s to still the chief enforcer’s fidget, and draw her back into the moment as he prompted her. “Is there something in particular on your mind, Nara?”

“Actually…yeah, there is.” Nara murmured. She blinked and exhaled a soft laugh as she stared at the polymer sheathed hand that dwarfed hers. The chief enforcer shifted her hand, and interlaced her thin fingers with his. “I don’t get to have many normal conversations, too.” She offered the tech-priest a somewhat shy little smile. “I guess we’re both more alike than either of us would’ve expected, Stan.”

That…that sounds familiar… The Luminen’s brows reflexively knitted together as he processed Nara’s words, and could swear he had...thought that before. He shivered as he remembered that we are both more alike than either of us would care to admit…not that we ever will. His fingers squeezed Nara’s as he desperately tried to chase down who he had made the comparison with…and why the khek hadn’t he made an effort to forge a bond with this person?

Konstantin grunted as he blinked, and his expression furrowed even deeper as he heard the scrape of varnished nails against rubber. Nara squeezed his hand back in turn with modest, encouraging pressure as she smiled wryly at him. “Is there something in particular on your mind, Stan?”

“Actually…yeah, there is.” The tech-priest responded, and the two shared a muted laugh. Konstantin stared down at his and Nara’s conjoined hand, and then withdrew it as he demonstratively gestured at their close proximity in the confines of the small utilitarian was room. He frowned, and raised a dubious brow. “We both must have some extremely khekked up lives if this seems like a normal conversation.”

Correct.

“Honey, normal is vastly overrated.” Nara deftly and assuredly countered.

“Perhaps.” Konstantin conceded, somewhat cautiously.

He was unable to do more than admit that Nara may be correct without his own…memories…to compare her assertion back against. This…status is…vexing, and unacceptable.The tech-priest’s thought process was derailed as he felt Nara’s small hands trace their way across his chest as they once again secured themselves around his waist. She seemed somewhat pensive as she spoke.

“Although…talking with you like we’re the basic, normal sort has been…surprisingly fun, Stan.”

“I’ve enjoyed this conversation as well, Nara.”

The admission was reflexively spoken…yet he realized he genuinely meant it. The Luminen observed a slight distortion in the greyscale gradient of Nara’s face as she blushed at his words. Konstantin honestly and openly returned the chief enforcer’s megawatt smile as his hands gently encircled hers on his waist.

“Although,” He whispering almost conspiratorially, drawing Nara in closer as he once again removed her hands from his body. “I haven’t enjoyed the excessive teasing quite so much much.”

“I don’t only tease, Stan.” Nara murmured, with a coy wink that made the tech-priest flush mildly as she twirled out of his slack grasp. Her deep laughter faded into her signature airy trill as she composed herself, and dismissively waved her tattooed hand. “Okay, okay - enough fun and games.”

“Thank you.” The Luminen graciously inclined his head, more than a little relieved to move on.

“So.” Nara softly exclaimed, as she clapped her hands together. She pressed her fingertips against her lips as she calculatingly regarded the tech-priest for a moment. “I’d like to know something, Stan.”

Konstantin was silent for a moment as he mulled over Nara’s request. He had his doubts about how much he knew…especially about himself…but weighed it against his own desire to discover more. Perhaps her questions will help me remember? He gestured towards her with both hands open.

“Do I have any competition?” Nara inquired.

“What…precisely do you mean?” Konstantin questioned, his voice edged with a wary suspicion as she stared at him with keen eyed interest. Why am I so worried we haven’t moved on…

“I wasn’t completely joking around about other women.” Nara clarified, with the faintest hint of a smile. She poked the tech-priest’s densely muscled chest and confidently met his cautious, wary expression. “I want to know about my competition for you, Stan.”

“Oh.” Konstantin managed. He almost instantaneously recoiled back when Nara’s finger determinately traced down his grooved abdomen. The Luminen grunted in surprise, and gritted his metal capped teeth as he realized he’d flinched away and backed himself into the corner. Such a bad move.

“Oh, indeed.” Nara purred. The enforcer chief deviously grinned as she stepped forward and closed what slight distance remained between them in the cramped washroom with a click of her heels.

“You said you were going to stop teasing.” The Luminen tersely reminded Nara, somewhat flustered by the resumed invasion campaign of his personal space. He steeply frowned at the chief enforcer, and once again firmly pushed her hand away from where it lingered near his muscular stomach.

“I’m being very serious right now, Stan.” Nara stressed, as she stared at the Luminen with an intensity which rendered him speechless. The undercurrent of her smile was certainly not girlish playfulness. “So…is there a miss or missus Martian in your life?”

Mars…

“No.” Konstantin answered, with a decisive firmness that surprised him - given his impaired memory and only the vaguest recollections of his past life. “No. There’s not a female in my life.”

“What a shame.” Nara murmured, and sounded anything but disappointed as her smile widened. “So…you’re saying that your mistress never had her way with you?”

“Never.” Konstantin immediately and unequivocally declared. He frowned as another self-truth came back to him. He blinked and hissed with muted pain from within his chest as well as his frakking eyes, as he was struck by yet another revelation. “I’ve never…”

“That’s her loss if she didn’t -” Nara abruptly paused; open mouthed as she belatedly heard and processed the Luminen’s admission. She blinked, closed her mouth, and searchingly met his eyes. “Stan.”

“Nara.” Konstantin muttered, profoundly uncomfortable as he glanced away from her scrutiny.

“Stan…would you look at me? Please?” Nara softly asked, as she reached out and curled her hands underneath his chin. Konstantin reluctantly yielded to the delicate, prompting pressure and looked at Nara, and into her wide, inquisitive eyes. “You…you’ve never been with a woman, have you?”

“No…” The Luminen’s muted admission was clouded by a dark pall of shame. “I have not…”

“So…you’re a virgin.” Nara kept a serious expression as she cradled his chin. “So what? It’s okay.”

“No.” Konstantin objected, the words a hiss of constrained tension through his clenched teeth. He didn’t know why…but he knew, he knew it…it…it… “It’s not okay.”

“Stan, really…it’s okay.” Nara soothed, as she reassuringly stroked her thumbs on his cheeks. The critical scrutiny remained in her eyes, even as she smiled unabashedly at the tech-priest. “It’s only sex.”

“It’s not.” The Luminen seethed in denial. He stiffly shook his head, and brushed off Nara’s hands. He didn’t know why…but he knew it was important…there had been an…expectation… Konstantin dully noted the inexplicable, inescapable sense of creeping grief that coursed within him. “I…I was…I was expected…”

“I mean…sure…” Nara hesitated, and paused as she chose her next words with great deliberation. “Maybe it’s a little…unexpected, but that’s really nothing to be so ashamed about.”

“I was expected…” Konstantin insisted, as he struggled to process what the expectation was and why... “I was expected -”

“So you haven’t frakked a girl…again, so what?” Nara snapped at him. The chief enforcer’s exasperation was almost palpable as she sighed and pressed her fingertips to her lips. She assessed the tech-priest as she took a moment to collect herself, and sighed again as she gestured towards him.

“Look…if it helps, I’m sorry about coming onto you so hard…I mean, I didn’t know you –”

“I didn’t know myself...” Konstantin interrupted. I don’t know myself. He winced at the admission, and ground his teeth together with a metallic scrape as his lack of knowledge gnawed at him. “I…I only just remembered that I was expected…and I didn’t…” He grimaced as he glanced down at Nara. “I don’t remember why...only that it mattered and I didn’t.”

The chief enforcer frowned pensively at him, eyes wide with soulful concern as she observed the outward signs of his internal struggle. “You’ve really had a number done on you, haven’t you?”

Correct. The Luminen absently whispered his internal confirmation. “Correct.”

Konstantin dejectedly sagged back against the cool tile, hunched over to brace his palms on his thighs and head hung in shame. He started in surprise as Nara came forward and threaded her arms inside his to encircle his broad back and shoulders. The sudden, extensive physical contact and tightness with which the chief enforcer…hugged him…was an unexpected impropriety, and he reflexively raised his hands to once again extricate himself…until he recognized the gestures humanity.

Humanity. The tech-priest’s face tightened as he stared down at the young woman latched firmly around his torso. Konstantin anxiously brushed his fingertips together with muted, metallic clicks as he attempted to mentally grapple with the concept of humanity…and promptly abandoned that exercise in futility. He bit back an exasperated sigh as he tried to respond to Nara’s spontaneity.

“Uh…Nara –” Konstantin grunted at the vibration in his chest at Nara’s languidly hummed ‘mm-hmm’, and the slight pressure of her smile at his reaction. He belatedly turned a second exasperated sigh into an effort to clear his curiously dry throat as he stared down at the enforcer chief. “You shouldn’t…”

Nara exhaled softly, disappointedly, as if she had been unexpectedly awoken from a pleasant dream. She flicked her hair aside as she lifted her head from his chest, with her now-familiar curious expression. “…and why’s that, Stan?”

Because you’re making me very uncomfortable, Nara. The Luminen thought, much to his chagrin. It struck him to even think of such a honest response – and let alone vocalize it - as…improper, shameful and unbecoming…and wrong, as he knew it was only because he was a man. He struggled with that realization, and the ability to articulate a response as he dealt with the immediate sensory overload that Nara’s slight movements against him had inflicted.

Konstantin had inhaled sharply at the warmth of her slowly exhaled breath, and his whole body had tense at the gentle caress of her subtly perfumed hair across his chest. The tech-priest continued his futile attempts to swallow as he stared down at Nara, who smiled deviously as she clutched him tighter. He stifled a grunt as her nails scraped against his back, and shuddered as the silken fabric of her dress glided along his torso - and ‘inadvertently’ lowered the slinky garment’s suggestively modest neckline.

“Konstantin. My eyes are up here.” Nara softly scolded, with palpably playful mockery – and a wickedly sinister, uninhibitedly knowing smile - as she subtly arched her back to further emphasize her bust line.

As if I could’ve failed to notice… Konstantin sighed exasperatedly with the warmth of embarrassment on his cheeks. He winced as he painfully rolled his eyes – which only made Nara richly guffaw as he did it – and pointedly moved his gaze from her décolletage, to her twinkling eyes.

“Ah…” The tech-priest almost gasped, as he consciously took a breath and attempted to slog through the mental fog as Nara expectantly fluttered her lashes at him with a coy smile, “Ah…um…your dress -”

“My dress, huh?” Nara slowly responded. She quickly peered down, and met the tech-priest’s eyes with a devilishly triumphant grin and a doubtful quirk of her brows. “So what about my dress?”

“You…you’re getting –” Konstantin winced even as he fumbled over his words. This…is going well.

“I’m getting some Red on it?” Nara quipped, as she theatrically waggled her gullwing brows.

Konstantin’s hearty groan made the chief enforcer sort with amusement. She continued to snigger, as much at his disapproving frown as the moment itself. He sighed and shook his head. “You’re terrible.”

“I have my moments.” Nara confessed with a lopsided grin. It was as rapidly subsumed as she re-composed herself and became deathly serious. “It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

“Nara, still – ”

“Stan.” Nara’s expression did not change as she calmly and firmly interrupted him. “My dress is a dress. I’ve got more.” The chief enforcer mask slipped back off as Nara trilled airily and smiled brilliantly, as she nestled her head back against his chest with a contented sigh. “Now shut up and hug me, damn it.”

“Yes ma’am.” Konstantin grumbled with - even he had to admit - was an unseemly edge of petulance.

“Good boy.” Nara murmured with overdramatic saccharine warmth, and an indulgent chuckle as Konstantin’s teeth and fingertips ground together with a cascade of clicks. Ok, I deserved that…

The tech-priest muted another sigh as he acquiesced, and somewhat awkwardly hunched down return her unreserved embrace. He delicately wrapped his arms around Nara, and lightly rested his hands on her back. Nara hummed amusedly at his reluctance, and gently guided his head onto her shoulder.

“Relax...” The chief enforcer breathily whispered in his ear, as she soothingly ran her other hand across his back and shoulder blades. “Just relax and go with it, Stan…a little hug won’t break me…”

Konstantin hesitated for a moment longer before he relented, and obligingly tightened his hold on Nara. It…was undeniably strange, to have someone else in his arms like this, and despite the ganger’s insistence that he wouldn’t break her…the Luminen couldn’t help but notice how comparatively fragile Nara was compared to his muscular - optimized for his role in the grand design - bulk…this is…

This…isn’t…unpleasant… Konstantin admitted, somewhat numbly as he settled deeper into their embrace, his face nestled in the lustrous strands of Nara’s inky black hair. She’s soft and warm…curious…instinctively sharp…vivacious…ruthless, certainly…and dangerous…yet elegant…a stiletto, swathed in velvet and awaiting its moment…The tech-priest subconsciously assessed, distracted as he was by the underlying floral scent of her perfume…which brought to mind unbidden images of a fresh aired mountaintop or tropical inlets…as if she did not belong on Vaxanide.

Correct. The tech-priest tensed at the latest of these equally unbidden…affirmations, as well as the fact he had even been able to so vividly visualize landscapes of unspoiled, beautiful nature – the likes of which he also knew was correct that he had never seen first-hand before in his life. He shifted discontentedly, even as Nara continued to idly stroke her nails across the length of his back.

“Nara –”

The chief enforcer softly shushed him. She gently restrained him with a hand on the shoulder, and her other curled around the back of his neck as her cheek lightly brushed against his. Konstantin shivered at the warmth of Nara’s breath as she whispered in his ear.

“I’ll be your first.”

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie, Stan

"You don't get to walk away from this one, Nara."

He won't get to walk away from this one.

Kim blinked.

No doubt the warp-scanner screens of the Furia's auger room would have meant more to someone trained to use them. No doubt to a tech-priest the revolving auger bars and the low chattering of the room's cogitators would have meant something else again. Kim wondered what Konstantin saw with his silver eyes as he entered, laced his hands into the Cog, and bowed to the congregation of machines. She allowed him the delay, out of respect for his parallel faith. After all, Kim remembered thinking, she wasn't going to let him walk away from this one.

"Thanks for coming, Stan." she began, hoping that the familiarity of a first name would put the luminen at ease - or at least signal to him that she wasn't looking to open their conversation with hostility.

Konstantin looked around at the glass screens and hololithic projectors. "The sensorium?" he queried simply, seemingly brushing off her opening statement, and putting a dent in Kim's hopes of an early rapport.

"I thought you might appreciate some neutral ground."

Konstantin folded his hands over his wide belt, either side of the grinning Cog skull that formed the clasp. "All of this ship is the Omnissiah's ground, confessor Raeden."

"It's the Emperor's too, Stan. And you don't have to call me confessor Raeden. Kimmie is fine."

Konstantin gave no particular reaction to her second attempt at familiarity. Kim bit the inside of her cheek. Martians don't think the same way, she reminded herself.

"The Omnissiah's will built this ship and keeps it running, Kimmie." the luminen said. Despite his monotonal Martian inflection, he was somehow able to put a disapproving stress on the name.

"And the Emperor protects our souls when it dives into the Warp." Kim answered, "I don't see any reason why it can't be both."

She was pleased to see that her counter gave the luminen pause - or at least, he felt no need to take the argument further. Kim padded back to the globular hololith in the middle of the room, the navigational carta astrum that dominated the chamber from its raised dais. The stars it displayed were shimmering pinpricks, webbed together by the constellation lines of warp channels and astropathic ducts.

"You know," Kim mused to Konstantin, half-turning to look back at him as she rested a hand on the hololith projector. "I always liked looking up at the stars when I was little, wondering what was out there."

The confession didn't seem to move the luminen, so she pointed into the hololith, the projected lights playing across her hand.

"Look at these nav-charts, Stan. There's 11 Imperial worlds in this subsector alone, each with hundreds of different cultures. And none of them would give you the same answer on exactly who the Emperor is or how he works. Every ecclesiarch with a grain of sense knows that we can't hope to force the exact same doctrine on every citizen of the Imperium. Our missionaries have done their work on worlds with customs and beliefs stranger than you or me could even imagine - and they succeed because they adapt and find a middle ground with the indigens. They focus on what's universal instead of what's different."

She turned her eyes from the glowing projection to look back at Konstantin. The luminen was impassive, although he probably knew by now where she was going with this.

"It's one of the first litanies they teach us when we apply to the Missionarius Galaxia, when half of us are still full of ideas about changing the galaxy and bending it to His will." Kim had been expecting herself to smile wistfully, at the memories of her own youthful inexperience, and of the ironclad certainty that had once come with it. She shook her head instead. "They tell us, You are His child, just as I am."

She withdrew her hand from the hololith, and the patch of stars she had shadowed sprang back into being.

"I wouldn't claim to know what the Ad Mech teaches, but from what I've seen there's more similarity than difference." She hitched up a self-deprecating grin. "Unfortunately I've got no idea how anything on this ship works, so I'll use a simpler example. The lasgun I'm taking to Vaxanide is a Volpone pattern. The metal parts of it will have come from one refinery, and the plastek parts will have come from another. The focusing lenses might have been machined in a whole different manufactorum. The grenade launcher on it didn't even come from the same planet, but the tech priests made it so it all fits, and it keeps me alive. How could they build that and not acknowledge that the parts work together to make the whole?"

"I see." said Konstantin. "You brought me here to lecture me on unity."

"Not to lecture, Stan. To talk."

"You would do better to talk to your own disciples first. Every altercation between us has been down to their ignorance. I am a common variable but I am not a cause."

Here we go, Kim remembered thinking to herself. "I have talked to them, Stan. But there's two sides to every story and I wanted to hear yours."

The luminen's moustache twitched. "To devote any more time to those counterproductive exchanges would only be a further waste of energy."

"I'm asking." Kim said seriously. "Because I don't want any more stunts like that EMP grenade Sarna rigged to your alcove."

Despite his hulking, augmented physique, Konstantin looked almost cagey for a moment.

"But I've already assigned Sarna penance for that." Kim said, brushing off the event to try and lessen the luminen's discomfort as she pressed on. "Erdene, Sarna and Anais all said you questioned them about motherhood. It'll help if you understand, Stan - questions like that can be...sensitive when you're not from Vostroya."

Konstantin's stance hardened again. "I would be cautious in your assumptions of what I do and do not understand."

"Well let me tell you what I understand, Stan. I made the effort to learn some Vostroyan history when I was told you were joining the team. I know the phenomenal value that Vostroya places on its firstborn sons. And I know the pressure it puts on the rest of you to make sons of your own."

"You have the Intellect to know these things, confessor Raeden, but you do not truly Comprehend them."

Kim had known the answer to that one. "Comprehension is the key to all things. That’s what the Ad Mech teaches, right?” She hooked her thumbs around the belt of her robe. “Alright then, help me to understand."

Konstantin paused to consider. "Very well. Has your duty as a missionary ever commanded that you become a mother?"

Kim thought of Cian. "No." she answered, with a slightly strained laugh. "Almost the exact opposite, in fact."

"Is there someone you would have wanted to have children with, if it had been possible?"

Kim hadn't expected Konstantin to touch on such a raw nerve so blatantly. He couldn't have known, she reasoned.

But perhaps the insular tech-priest was better at reading ordinary people's emotions than she had given him credit for.

She decided to be honest. "Well, I didn't think quite that far ahead but...yes. There was one man I might have built a life with."

The skin around Konstantin's silver eyes creased a little, as if he too were fighting an unwelcome recollection. The similarity surprised Kim.

"What was his name, if I may ask?" the luminen said after a moment.

"Cian. It was while I was working among the indigens on Adhara." The words brought a dull ache into Kim's throat as the muscles around her voicebox threatened to close off. She looked back at the hololith for a moment, so Konstantin wouldn't see her swallowing away the lump. "But I had a duty to do, and...in the end I had to choose."

"Would it have been impossible for you to be both a preacher and a mother?"

Kim didn't trust her voice not to crack, so she answered with a smile and a shrug. She coughed into her hand. "Would it be so simple for you to be both a priest and a father, Stan?" she reversed the question, trying to change the subject.

"Such weaknesses are forbidden in the brotherhood." Konstantin was impassive - but it was a guarded, concealing kind of impassive.

It was worth her own pain, Kim remembered thinking, if she could bridge the gap between Terran and Martian with their common humanity. "And yet," she pressed, "A Vostroyan of your age would have been expected to have children by now. I can understand that conflict, Stan."

"There is no conflict. I control my emotions."

"The rest of us should be so lucky."

"That is their concern." He was closing off again, sensing an attack.

"All I'm saying," Kim tried to explain, "Is that's why the others react badly when you ask them about having kids and their place in the world. Wherever we come from, we're going to have strong feelings about things like that."

"I have such feelings, and I control them."

"So you're actually saying..." Kim shook her head. She wondered if she would ever understand the mechanicus. It didn't take Martian conditioning to be able to give cool, rational advice - but almost everyone cracked. And when they did, they needed someone who was still cool and calm to guide them back out of their own feelings. For the others, that person was usually Kim.

And now, in a bizarre reversal, she was trying to forge a bridge of understanding with Konstantin through those exact same emotions. He was Martian, but he was still human - despite himself, he had shown that to her several times in the last minute.

"Alright," she sallied. "How about this. If you were ordered to do your Vostroyan duty, to father a child - with someone you didn't know." She spread her hands. "Just for argument's sake, let's say with me - you would be able to go through with it? No questions asked?"

Stan went cold - so cold that Kim suddenly worried she had touched on something that was almost as close to home for the luminen as Cian and Adhara were for her. "I would fulfil my duty." the augmented giant said. "Reluctantly." he added.

Despite his deadpan delivery, Kim couldn't suppress a laugh. "Ouch!" she said, pressing her palm against her heart and temporarily covering her Aquila necklace. "And that's because...?" she asked, still smiling a little.

"Because." the luminen said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

In that moment, Kim had felt as if he had taken up his fulgurite staff and smashed the steel end into her face.

"Stan." Kim said again, her hands re-tensing slightly on the cold metal of her lasgun. "Who is this? How do you know her?"

Konstantin paid as much notice to the lasgun as a baseline human would of the threat display of a tiny avian. He turned his silver eyes instead to regard Nara.

“Have you not been able to extrapolate yet, Kimmie? This is Nara Tumassian, the Refuge’s sergeant at arms.”

“Who…?” Nara’s gaze whiplashed between Stan and Kim, her eyes wide. “Who are you?”

“I used to work with Stan.” Kim replied frostily.

“You’re...you were a scavenger?”

Kim gnawed her lip. “Here perhaps. I’ve been whatever they needed me to be. I’ve also been a confessor, a missionary...a wanderer.”

Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes.

“And I’ve been a heretic.” Kim said reluctantly.

Konstantin felt his skin prickle uncomfortably. ”Reluctantly.” he had added - and Kim had laughed (“Ouch!”) as if the answer were supposed to be a criticism of her own shortcomings, rather than his. Faced with the too-clear image, there was a certain poignant, disconcerting similarity with the way Nara had teased him with the same gesture.

"And that's because...?" the confessor had asked, the afterimage of a smile still clinging to her face, even through the greyscale filter of Konstantin's augmented vision.

Because last time I joined the priesthood to avoid it, the luminen thought, but it would be unacceptable to voice those words aloud. "Because." he said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

Kim blinked, violent sparks of life-force suddenly fulgurating behind her eyes. "Just what's that supposed to mean, Stan?"

"Burakgazi is a devotional name." Konstantin attempted to clarify, feeling the acid-burn across his skin that threatened to ignite his voltagheist tattoos. He, as he had never been allowed to forget, would never carry the name. "Only warriors of true faith may carry it."

He had thought that the confession would forestall the confessor's affront. But instead, Kim shook her head in exasperation. "Goodbye, Stan."

Konstantin's brow furrowed in consternation, causing the silver orbs of his eyes to scratch painfully against their sockets. What had he said? "Your emotional response is premature. I-"

"That was low, Stan." the confessor accused him venomously. Her arms were crossed across the front of her crewman's jumpsuit; defensive, angry, hurt. "Really frakking low. Is pushing emotional people's buttons just to prove your point a frakking game to you?" She exhaled, somewhere between a bitter laugh and a teeth-baring snarl. "Golden Throne, I really thought you were just being clueless with the others..."

Konstantin took the unusual, borderline unacceptable step of moving himself to bar the door and stop her leaving. Perhaps he was not as in control of his wrath as he professed, but it would not have been correct to allow the confessor’s erroneous conclusion to go unchallenged.

Kim was definitely not in control of her wrath.

"Get out of my way Stan, or I swear to the God-Emperor..."

Konstantin fought the baseline urge to grit his teeth. "I need you to calm down and listen, Kimmie."

"And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one.” Kim looked up into his silver eyes and slowly shook his head. “You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions. But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit."

That final, hypocritical barb, thrown out of pure animal instinct to wound, had cut far deeper than it had any logical right to.

“You are no heretic, Kimmie.” Konstantin rumbled softly. “And it would be no shame for a child to bear the name Raeden.”

Kim felt an incongruous, ugly laugh rising in her throat and threatening to spill out. “That’s not what you said back on the Furia. And you’d be right. What do you think the name Raeden means on Adhara, after they told me to join up with the dissenters so they could target them better? Do you think I could go back there, even if I had the choice?”

Konstantin hesitated, pausing to process his turbulent thoughts. “I didn’t give...adequate context to my statement. I meant that a child should not have to bear my name, not that it should not have to bear yours. I was…” The luminen paused, and briefly marvelled that he did not feel the sense of shame that might have accompanied the baseline hesitation. “I was disowned too. I was not a Firstborn, not a warrior. But I was still expected to father warriors. And I...I joined the fulgurite brotherhood to avoid that responsibility.”

Kim faltered a little. “You were...what? I didn’t...”

"You didn't know what was expected of him." Nara broke in acidly. "Because you didn't ask."

"Because." Stan had said. "Our hypothetical child would be a Raeden."

Kim blinked, utterly thrown by the unexpected insult. "Just what's that supposed to mean, Stan?"

"Burakgazi is a devotional name. Only warriors of true faith may carry it."

Kim shook her head in stunned disbelief. Who was he to accuse her of losing faith, when he knew absolutely nothing of the circumstances behind it?

Because he didn’t even bother to ask! Because you didn’t ask, said another voice, cutting across the memory in Nara’s bitter Vaxan hive-cant. But the Kim in the memory couldn’t hear her.

Standing in the cold light of the sensorium, Kim felt painful black fingers constrict around her chest, and knew that the conversation was over. "Goodbye, Stan."

The luminen frowned. "Your emotional response is premature. I-"

Kim remembered the luminen's rigid stance. She remembered feeling attacked by the unyielding arrogance of it. But what if it hadn't been certainty in his stance at all, but un-certainty?

"That was low, Stan." She remembered the words spilling out of her, driven by bitter, instinctive backlash. "Really frakking low. Is pushing emotional people's buttons just to prove your point a frakking game to you? Golden Throne, I really thought you were just being clueless with the others..."

She shoved herself away from the carta astra hololith and stalked towards the door. The luminen took a step sideways, barring her exit with his augmented bulk.

"Get out of my way Stan, or I swear to the God-Emperor..."

"I need you to calm down and listen, Kimmie."

"And now you're going to try and play the reasonable one. You frakking prick. Tell you what, Stan. Maybe you can keep control of your frakking emotions."

It welled up before she could stop it, the one thing she knew would strike the Vostroyan priest in the emotional heart he professed so arrogantly not to have.

"But you watch several thousand of the people you were supposed to save get thrown to the fire and tell me if you're still a warrior of true faith after that, you secondborn piece of shit."

Kim saw, with the clarity of raw etched emotion, how badly she had let her own demons twist that exchange.

Stan saw, with the clarity of artificial engrams that had never been intended to carry such emotion, a new perspective on the confessor’s anguish. It was the same pain that he carried, and that so vexed his sense of self-control. But she has no voltagheists to absorb her wrath for her.

"Alright.” Kim said, in a voice that was almost a whisper. Her expression bore the heavy weight of sudden, upsetting clarity. “I understand now. That's why you were so interested in asking us about children, wasn't it Stan?"

Stan clenched and unclenched his gloved hands. "And my phrasing was...unacceptable. What I should have said, when we talked of names...was that I would want my sons to be free of the burden of mine.”

Kim looked at the floor, and then back up at the luminen. "How did it take us forgetting and re-learning everything?” She shook her head in self-reproach. “Is that what it takes to have enough perspective to see clearly?"

Stan flexed his hands again, the metal-capped fingertips clacking together. "How did it take us forgetting and re-learning everything to have the courage to admit that we're more alike than not?"

He clenched his fist with a soft squeak of rubber and knew that the observation was correct. He was not like Him, no. Never. But perhaps, he was a little like her.

[Azazeal849]

Kimmie, Stan

“I don’t think we can go back.” Kim said, monotone.

“I will not go back.” Konstantin amended forcefully. “Not to him. Not to the inquisition.”

“The inqui…?” Nara’s eyes widened. “But you’re...scavengers…”

She looked almost panicked, backing up against the wall and shaking her head..

“No. They’re just a conspiracy theory. Just a story to frighten kids. You can’t be…”

“They’re real, Nara.” Kim assured her grimly. “And so’s your Purple Prince - though you won’t have liked to meet him if your boss Petrosyan had actually finished his ritual.”

“There is a lot that you do not know, Nara.” Stan stated levelly. “But I will give you the chance to learn. And I will be judging if you are worthy of that knowledge.”

A cold sweat had broken out on Nara’s forehead, shining through the dust and sticking strands of hair to her skin. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “I…”

“You told me that you were drawn to the Refuge to better yourself. Prove to me now that you are still on that mission.” Konstantin huffed through his moustache, his augmented ears twitching slightly. “You can start with them.”

Both of the women looked momentarily confused. Nara began, “Who-?” before their baseline hearing also picked up the sound of stumbling footsteps on the stairs. Four sweating, shell-shocked figures blundered into the hallway. Stan recognised Erik, the young ganger, who had loaded himself up with a battered shotgun and - to Konstantin’s disapproval - his cog-toothed mechanicus staff. He dropped both as soon as he caught sight of the luminen blocking his path. Konstantin could see the fear darting like caged lightning inside his head.

He has no fight left in him. He is no threat. If anything, I should be protecting him.

Behind Erik was the barmaid from the lounge, and the young cook who had brought Nara the sponge down in the kitchen quarters. Between them they were supporting an almost comatose Ellen. The doe-eyed young woman was rag-dolled in their arms, her bare feet closer to trailing than to supporting her own weight. Her head was sunk down against her chest, and her shoulders were heaving.

“I didn’t want…” she was whispering, over and over again, oblivious to Stan and the others. “I didn’t want…”

“What happened to her?” Kim shot at the four survivors, and Stan recognised the steely protective edge in her voice.

“I don’t know.” the cook replied, seemingly on the edge of tears himself. “We found her in her room…”

“Witchcraft.” Nara murmured, almost too low for the baseline humans to hear.

Kim snapped round. “What?”

Nara visibly swallowed. “She was under Vamassian’s spell. He liked touching the girls, especially the ones that were due to go uphive.”

“Karine was like that too…when Vamassian died it must have...” Kim trailed off, and then he eyes widened as something flashed inside her mind. “Oh Golden Throne. How many other children are uphive right now…?”

Konstantin was suddenly aware of the weight of the seneschal’s dataslate in his pocket. With that, and with-

“Nara.” the luminen deadpanned. Nara turned reluctantly towards him, looking uncertain. “I think I will need your knowledge yet again. Where might I find a record of the slaves that Vamassian sold, and to who?”

Nara opened her mouth; closed it again. “We...Vamassian didn’t exactly keep records…”

“Because they’re just frakking cattle to you?” Kim challenged. Stan saw her finger shift on the trigger guard of her shotgun. He flexed his hand, ready to snatch the gun muzzle aside with a magnetic lure if necessary.

“How many can you remember?” Stan asked stonily.

“A few…” Nara shifted uncomfortably. “But listen...Stan...you might be better off not finding them. Even if Vamassian didn’t bewitch them he...broke them in...you know, when they first arrived…”

She trailed off in the face of a furious, damning silence.

“And you just let it happen?” Kim hissed, dangerously.

“It was…” Nara stopped whatever she was about to say, and turned her nervous, lapine eyes towards Konstantin. She visibly gathered herself, straightening her shoulders and dropping her voice to a neutral, reasonable tone. “Look, Stan...the only way to make a real difference down here is to have a way in with the people who pull the strings. And to get their ear you need to do them a few favours...but once you’re up there rubbing shoulders with them…”

The luminen didn’t speak, but he did move faster than his hulking frame indicated. Nara let out a little shriek of alarm as she was pinned up against the wall. Hayk’s knife was in Konstantin’s hand, called by a magnetic lure, and now it was resting a centimetre from her throat.


“You’re usually a good liar, Nara Tumassian.” the luminen rumbled. A dull glow was pulsing under his skin as he fought to keep his voltagheist electoos from spitting their indiscriminate fury at everyone in the hallway. “But I can see your life force.”

"What?" Nara stammered. The alarm in her eyes to genuine fear. A tear trembled on her right eyelid before spilling down her cheek. "Stan...please..."

The knife stayed in place, but did not press forward.

“I’m sorry…” Nara whispered. “Half an hour ago we were laughing. What’s happened? Let me help…”

The knife withdrew, an infinitesimal fraction - too small to be noticed by any but Konstantin.

Even knowing her crimes, and suspecting a number of others, she had been the one to remind him of what he was. Not just a weapon, as he would have had me. Perhaps no longer a member of the Fulgurite brotherhood. But still Konstantin. Still a luminen. Still a man. Still, against all that Mars considers to be correct, a human.

A flawed human - rendered not in the clearly delineated binary of divine logic, but in the shades of perception and experience, circumstance and opportunity.

“Yes.” he growled quietly. “You will help. Prove that you're a better person than you have been thus far, Nara.”

He released the Refuge enforcer, who shuffled back against the wall with her lips clamped firmly shut.

“She can’t come with us.” Kim said. “The kids’ll want her head.” Her stony expression suggested that she did not plan on stopping them.

“She will not be going with you.” Konstantin corrected her. “She will be coming with me. But first, I need to clear your way out of here.”

Kim looked at him incredulously. “Past a gunship? Stan, that’s suicide. You need to run, there’s a tunnel out by the-”

“Which you won’t get far along if the overwatch sees you on its augers. Trust my logic this time, Kimmie.”
Stan realised that his lips had quirked into a wry smile. It was unexpected, but not unpleasant. He felt it fall from his face once more as a graver consideration entered his thoughts.

“Look after Karine especially.” The young girl’s face glitched over his silver vision with painful clarity. “And reassure her that the Duke will never be returning to haunt her.”

He turned to Erik, his silver eyes roving downward to the metal staff that had fallen from the ganger’s shaking hands.

“Erik, my stave if you would.”

+ + + + + +

(Placeholder for PaintSerf’s Stan vs Erdene scene)

[Azazeal849]

It had been a restless night, and the sea of souls was turbulent. Vaxanide was a whirling orb, casting off streamers of golden dust as creatures on the planet breathed their last and dissolved into the waiting maw of the Warp.

Formless shadows, the more mindless of their kind, clustered like hagfish around the bursts of disintegrating energy. They jostled for space around the richest feeding grounds - the disease-struck refugee camps around Remsburg; the killing fields where PDF units fought tooth and nail to drive the Orks back into the Terrigan jungle; the rough seas where makeshift rafts overturned and hundreds at a time drowned trying to reach the safety of Vaxanhive.

The two daemons were easily powerful enough to drive off the bottom feeders that tried to encroach on their personal hunting ground. The blood being spilled in the dockland slums below the spire wall was for them alone.

The Khornate growled with displeasure, drawing its spectral claws back into the shadows of the warp as the first ray of dawnlight spread its own fingers across the hive. The Slaaneshi drifted to its side a moment later, dragging trails of pale blue warp fire that tasted of spice and dead flesh. It hissed through its teeth, laughing sibilantly.

“Eight hours.” it goaded in a sing-song whisper. “What do you have to show for it?”

The first daemon gestured with a claw, dispersing a stream of soul-fragments as they bled out of the underhive. “The feral worlder.” It grinned. “And the assassin.”

“The assassin? You lie.” The Slaaneshi corkscrewed down, wrapping its tail of crackling mist around the small, elfin figure that was climbing its way up the inside of the spire wall. The magenta flames of its eyes narrowed, studying the caged, glowing soul through the veil of realspace that held it at bay.

“She rejects you!” the daemon cackled, scattering into the immaterium and reforming in front of its rival. “Like the unworthy master you are!”

“And yet she gifts me a prize.” the daemon of Khorne rumbled tolerantly. The taste of Primus and Quintus’ blood was still on its tongue, coppery and sweet. “She will be rewarded for that.”

The other daemon emitted a series of staccato clicks, and the clouds of warp fire surrounding it pulsed in warning. “This game was about pawns, not prizes.”

The first daemon growled. “She just needs to be...convinced.” It dissolved itself into the screaming whirlpool above Vaxanide and willed itself down towards the ruins of the Refuge. “And what of you, oh subtle one?”

The Slaaneshi darted in front of it, as if to bar its path from the soul-lights dancing below. “The psyker shall do my work yet. And the luminen.”

“Ha!” the first daemon thundered, sending ripples dancing through the clouds of emotion around it. “The luminen? The luminen is as much mine as yours. You have nothing but empty plans and promises, like your patron.”

The Slaaneshi screeched, and for a moment their warp fire auras collided, sparking with violent red lightning. In the spires of Vaxanhive several children awoke, sobbing from terrible nightmares. The brief clash subsided as the two daemons drew back, eyeing each other warily.

“You fail to consider the future.” the Slaaneshi hissed, gloatingly. “How many of my faithful stand now? The girl, with the luminen. More potential believers, with that naive priest. This planet will be my playground long before your new pet reaps a skull worthy of your patron’s notice.”

The red daemon’s laugh drawled like a mudslide, scattering the knots of shadow-creatures that were still feeding around the spires of Vaxanhive. “You creatures of the prince, always focused on the grains of sand, missing the greater whole.”

Turning away from the pulsing orb of Vaxanide, it dived into the currents of the Warp and allowed the riptide of emotion to carry it to a new vantage point. Dragging itself into an island of calm, it looked down upon a roiling nebula, covering the subsector known to the Imperium as Adrantis.

“You have no idea how much blood is about to flow for the Master of Mankind.”

+ + + + + +

EPILOGUE

@ElizabethStark - Hadrak

“Hang in there, Erdene. Help’s coming.”

The sun was rising, but brought little warmth, only a chilling wind off the riverfront that scattered the smoke climbing from the smashed lander. Every now and then it would shift and blow greasy, grey smog into Hadrak’s face, filling his nose with a reek of burned wires and prometheum. Erdene’s beloved Khu Laan would not be leaping any mountains any time soon.

With every resident fled and the local PDF warded away under threat of excommunication, there was little for them to do but wait. Hadrak had splinted Erdene’s leg as best he could, and covered the interrogator with his blood-spattered jacket to keep her warm. They spoke little, though every now and then the fingers twined through his own would squeeze tight, and the Atillan interrogator would hiss through her teeth as her thin eyes threatened to spill tears. Hadrak wasn’t sure if it was the pain from her broken leg, or the pain of seeing her precious steed reduced to twisted scrap.

The thrum of anti-grav plates suddenly whined through the silence, and Hadrak knew then that their wait was over. He breathed out - not so much in relief as to calm himself for the coming storm. Shadows splashed across the battered hotel as several grav cars glided out of the tunnel in the spire wall and hovered down from the overpass. Their black chassis were dagged with the red chevrons of the Vaxanhive gendarmerie. Landing skids unfurled from the bottom of each car as it touched down, and a squad of confused-looking lawmen piled out to cordon the area. At their head was a man dressed in a surcoat of black and white and grey - all the shades of truth - and he stalked straight towards the two survivors.

Inquisitor Feyd Lucullis looked down at Erdene, his flint-chip grey eyes creasing at the corners. “Can you stand?”

Erdene grimaced. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

The inquisitor cupped two fingers over his shoulder and beckoned curtly. Two of the gendarmes hurried forward, carrying a medikit and an unfolding stretcher.

“We’ll hunt down the heretics.” Lucullis promised, clasping his hands tightly behind his back as he looked up at the derelict Refuge. Hadrak saw him grind his teeth as his gaze slid downward towards the wrecked lander. “Every one of them.”

“It might be hard to find them, sir.” Hadrak replied.

The inquisitor’s steely gaze target-locked onto him. “Where did they go?”

Hadrak couldn’t stop the corners of his mouths tugging upwards in a wan smile. “By the Emperor’s grace, inquisitor.” he said, knowing that he wasn’t lying. “I truly don’t know.”

+ + + + + +

Kim the Guardian

Stumbling from the confines of the abandoned rail tunnel, Kim felt the sun’s rays on her skin and felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The clear objective, the simple responsibility of the people around her, was more of a relief than a burden - no matter how complicated the practicalities of the future would get. They were her flock now. She had to have faith that Stan would help the others who had already been shipped uphive. It was easier to do so than she had thought; certainly easier than she would have countenanced before tonight, back when she had been reading the luminen’s values so tragically wrong.

He’ll help them.

She wondered how many people Vamassian had sent to the hive spires, tricked by false promises or by his own abominable warpcraft. Liza K, Kim recalled one name from her conversation with Maria; there were no doubt dozens more whose names she didn’t know.

The first thing she would have to do with her own new flock was learn all of their names, and how many of them didn’t have anywhere safe to go.

She paused to look at them. A dozen men and women, blinking in the sunlight, some holding children close. The young cook, looking almost like he was about to start laughing in relief. Karine and her two friends, still in their formal dresses, quiet and guarded. The ganger kid who had shot Alexi dead out of terror, hugging Kim’s shadow in fear of the former prisoners. Ellen, leaning heavily on one of the refugees, silent.

Sarna and Hadrak were right of course; she might not be able to help all of them. But that was no reason not to try. After sacrificing her identity so many times for the Emperor, all she had left were her principles. She intended to stick to them.

Rhenat looked around the graffiti-sprayed, rubbish-strewn docklands, and cuffed his nose. "So...um...where first?"

Kim turned Hadrak’s signet ring over in her hands. "We need somewhere I can withdraw this money and then hide it. We need shelter and food, and we need to pick up the people from the boats. We'll find all those things at the Red safehouse.”

“What if the gendarmes come calling?”

Kim patted the webbing pocket where her aquila pendant was still safely nestled. “You think they’ll bother a priest in her own soup kitchen?”

She looked at Rhenat and raised a smile, picturing a brown-haired, pointy-featured girl who bore a striking resemblance to him. With any luck, Maria would still be at the hospital down Pilgrim’s Quarter.

“First though? Let's go fetch your sister."

+ + + + + +

@Felwether - Abner

The water was black under the phosphor twilight of the hive lights, and the surface was foamed with some kind of effluent from the chemical works squatting by the riverfront. Despite the enveloping darkness, the low rumble of the boat’s outboard engine made Abner nervous. He had waited until the following night to risk crossing to the north bank, holding his nerve as hive enforcers swarmed around the Mertesari hotel and the surrounding slums. Once or twice, he had been sure that one of their sweeping stab-lights would shine into the construction pipe he was hiding inside, and he would be dragged out to face the pitiless gaze of the inquisitor.

But Abner Able was a survivor, and his instincts were good. He had been surviving all his life, policing his own mind almost as closely as the Imperials who hated him purely for what he was, for a curse that he had never asked to receive.

But, as recent events had proven, it was not solely a curse. And Abner was not solely a survivor. He clutched at the pocket of his frayed cargo trousers, feeling the hard edges of the data wand still safely hidden there. The access codes for Vamassian’s accounts would open up more than funds - they would open up opportunities.

He would not lurk in the shadows as Vamassian had, squirreling his gains away for a retirement he would never enjoy, trapped by a life that had now killed him. They were both psykers, but they were not alike. Abner was more subtle, better trained to blend in. He knew the workings of the Imperial institutions, even those of the Emperor’s most holy inquisition. He intended to use that knowledge.

While the Refuge and the Kingsmen and his former team-mates burned, Abner Able would thrive. And no-one would ever cross him, disrespect him, look down on him, ever again. He would look down on them.

The sallow psyker grinned to himself as he watched the gendarmerie grav-cars buzzing back and forth over the docklands, converging on the spire like fireflies.

“You’ll be hearing from me again.” he whispered. “You will all know my name.”

+ + + + + +

@PaintSerf - Konstantin

It was daylight and it was not daylight. Perhaps a hundred metres above them, the great dome of the hive spire was tessellated with glow-panels, which dominoed on in a slow sequence to fill the uphive with daylight radiance. Following the path of the sun outside the dome was an aesthetic choice more than a functional one, but Konstantin could appreciate both the mechanical complexity and the final effect. After all, one did not invalidate the other.

His two companions, who had never seen anything like it in their life, simply gaped - their eyes roaming from the shining sky dome to the onion-bulb towers that stretched towards it, and the orderly streams of grav-car traffic that flowed between them.

Ani was the first to speak, squinting to protect her expanded pupils as she turned to the others.

“Well Tumassian.” she murmured, scratching at the short hair on the right side of her head, “Is it what you pictured?”

Nara hummed quietly to herself in lieu of a spoken reply. She turned to Konstantin.

“I still can’t quite believe you managed to get us up here.”

Konstantin was not about to admit it, but he could hardly believe it either. Spire modules might be uniform from Vostroya to Vaxanide, and most adepts might be disinclined to obstruct a highly-augmented fulgurite, but still it had taken more than a little luck. Perhaps the Omnissiah, or the Purple Prince, or whatever patron was now following the black comedy of his existence, had conspired to make it so.

Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that it had taken too long. Every hour that they had spent struggling uphive was another hour that some young girl or boy was forced to spend trapped with someone like Vamassian’s vile Duke.

“We aren’t here to admire the view.” he said quietly, and looked up at one of the nearby mansion-towers, matching the image on his greyscale vision to the one Nara had showed him on the Duke’s dataslate. “We have work to do.”

+ + + + + +

@Cfavano - Prima

Quietly, reverently, Anais lifted away the paving slab, and dropped to her knees in front of the hole concealed beneath it. She had taken some time and care choosing the location. The sixty fourth pillar of the Vaxanhive-Remsburg overpass would have been insignificant to most, but it was the place where Quintus had retrieved the weapons that let them wreak glorious carnage on the Prince’s followers. It was the place where Primus had singled her out to help him escort the refugees to the safehouse, where he had talked more about the Red King. About how she had been an arena fighter, but could now be so much more.

The whole hive is your arena now. Primus had said.

She raised her head towards the twinkling lights of the hive spire, and imagined herself at the very pinnacle, with ecstatic crowds of hive patrons cheering and screaming her name. One day she would stand there, with the Red King’s blessing and Primus’ weapon. The Kingsman’s power sword was a comforting weight, slung across her back on its leather strap. She had carried it safely away from the hotel at Mertesari, along with one other prize.

Carefully, Anais lowered the severed head of Samvel Vamassian into the empty hole. Holding it in place with one hand, she took out her spiral knife and methodically carved the King’s symbol into the forehead. A letter X, crossed through at the base and across the centre, to form a simple impression of the snarling skull of the Red King. Already dead and drained, the waxy skin did not bleed. To make a more fitting dedication, Anais drove the point of her dagger into the ball of her thumb, and streaked the bleeding digit across the symbol to anoint it.

Better.

Anais replaced the paving stone, rose to her feet, and took a deep breath to calm her racing heartbeat. She had fulfilled Primus’ promise; she had given Vamassian’s skull to the Red King. If only the smug little bitch Shift hadn’t killed him first. Her mood soured slightly as she thought of the young swordswoman. She gave the King no genuine tribute. Not even when they had fought to determine the fate of the mewling Refuge girl.

You weren’t defeated. Primus had reassured her. The Red King spoke through you.

She exhaled. No matter. She had gifted the skull. She now carried Primus’ sword. She was now Prima, and she fancied she could already feel the King’s approval surging through her in a wave of adrenaline as she pictured the future. The whole hive is your arena now. She would carve her way to the top of it, searching for worthy opponents whose blood she could tribute to her patron.

Somewhere along the way, she would need to seek out Sarna Astros.

Sheathing her dagger, Prima turned towards the hive and began to walk.

+ + + + + +

@dakkagor - Sarna Astros

Another miserable day in the underhive. Rain blattered against the single glaze windows, and was beginning to seep through the usual spot in the kitchen roof. The paint was already warped and sagging, and it was probably only a matter of time before the whole damn ceiling caved in. The best Milena had been able to do was put a saucepan on the floor to catch the drips. Hopefully her mother would see it as she shuffled to the door for her morning lho-stick, and not simply trip over it and spend the next hour cussing her out. Looking through the window, Milena saw palls of brown smoke drifting across the river from the factory districts. The rain met the smoke and turned it into gobbets of liquid tar, which ran down the window in dirty slug-trails.

Milena ran a hand through her brittle hair and roundly cursed everything, from the rain to her grouchy mother to the smirking waif who had blown up her house. Only the Red King knew where she and Primus were now, but a totally atypical number of gendarmes and uphive kill-teams had been crawling all over the slums recently. At least she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the bloody Refuge.

She shrugged deeper into her jumper - it was easier to layer up since her mother could rarely afford to switch on the radiators, even when the local district heating network was working properly - and wrapped her hands around her cup to try and extract some warmth from the sludgy recaff inside. She had just taken a sip, and was trying to summon the willpower for her upcoming shift at the chemical works, when there was a loud thumping at the door.

Milena’s heart jumped into her mouth, and she nearly dropped her cup. Only gendarmes knock. As she sat there trembling, the knock came again, an insistent thump thump thump. Milena managed to put her cup down beside the greasy sink and make her way to the door. She placed her thumbs over each other and made the skull-sign X of the King with the blades of her hands, but the ritual did little to steady her nerves. Eventually though she had to open the door.

Standing there was a single figure - not a gendarme, but a stocky man in an oiled raincloak, the hood pulled up against the downpour.

Milena’s fear immediately sublimated into anger. “What the frak do you want? I’ve got work in an hour and if you wake my mum up I’ll have to spend it listening to her moan about it.”

The man unbuttoned his raincoat, revealing the official grey tunic of an administratum adept. Oh.

“Are you Milena Sarkissian?” the adept asked, looking oddly serious and ignoring Milena’s outburst.

“Who’s asking?” Milena replied guardedly.

The adept produced a folder from an inside pocket - shit, he really is administratum, it’s got the letter I stamp with the funny squiggle in it and everything - and offered it to Milena.

“I’m very sorry to tell you this, but your aunt and uncle in spire 4 both died last week in an unfortunate industrial accident. Their last will and testament instructed us to give you this…”

Milena didn’t have an aunt and uncle in spire 4, but - perhaps fortunately - she was too baffled to say more than, “Huh?”

She took the rain-spotted envelope and peeled open the seal, which was already coming unstuck from the damp. Inside was the title deed to a two-bedroom flat, somewhere up in the midhive.

She had to read it several times to fully process it. As a consequence, she didn’t see the cat-like figure crouching atop the next roof, who looked on, smiled to herself, and then turned away.