Firestation Ariadne was not destroyed, but it was abandoned. I suspected that was the case; the Dawnshadow, and its Inquisitorial presence, had been evacuating Quintus below for some time, that its personnel could relocate to another, not-so-compromised world. Regardless, it took a bit of effort to get inside the frozen front doors of the Firestation, but Mirena and I made do. Once inside, I was eager to search for any vox equipment that may have remained—it was procedure to leave vox equipment behind in case any stragglers were misplaced—but Mirena had other plans, and she currently served as the bulk of my ability to move about. She brought me to a medicae station, helped me onto one of its few remaining units, and then sought a First-Aid kit all despite my objections.

She returned soon after looking for First-Aid, kit in hand, and open it up next to me while she warned, “I’m afraid my hands are not as precise as Cast’s.”

“With any luck I’ll only need stitches, which I’m sure you and I can figure out,” I suggested with a weakened grin. I could, theoretically, stitch someone or something together. Whether I could do so to myself, weak as I was, was another question. But I also confidently believed in Mirena’s abilities. “Am I pulling this out, or are you?” I asked, putting a hand on the shard of steel in my gut.

“I…,” Mirena started, then looked me over. “I’ll do it. Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll count down,” she decided. I nodded to her, once in understanding then a second time to confirm I was ready. She replied, suddenly, by kissing me, hard and firm for a few moments. I suppose it was a good luck kiss, but it certainly felt like more than that. I think she needed it as much as I did after the events of the day. Her augmetic hand found its way into mine over the course of the kiss, and there it stayed when our lips parted, that I might squeeze her hand from the pain I was about to feel. “You sure?” she asked me. I nodded again. “Three,” she began, and then pain exploded in my gut and burned through my body. I most definitely screamed and hissed. “Two one,” she said quickly afterward, tossing the shrapnel aside with a gentle grin. She then immediately got to work on suturing the wound, which was also terribly painful unto itself, and for that matter our hands had to part ways.

When I had composed myself despite the pain, and after panting for a few moments to gather my breath and my wits, I called to her. “Mirena.” She looked up to me, not saying anything. “Thank you.” She continued looking at me for a moment more, then nodded before returning to closing my wound. Her beautiful silver eyes had been trembling. Pain. Fear. Horror, not the kind that keeps you up at night but that pushes you out of bed in a cold sweat before sunlight crests your home. She was, that I could tell, physically unharmed—perhaps a bit jolted/shaken from our crash landing—but the day had wounded her very deeply.

When she had finished stitching my wound shut and had slapped a bandage over it, she rose to leave my side for some reason or another, but I reached my augmetic out to her and grabbed her arm. “Come here,” I told her, and pulled her nearer to me as I sat up, beginning to move my arm into a position to hug her. I never quite managed the task before she tackled me back against the medicae again, pressing her head between mine and my shoulder and squeezing at me more tightly than Bliss or Lucene ever had. The sobbing followed naturally, just as my hands began to settle on her backside. She had, at that point, been pinning herself against me somewhat sideways, but eventually crawled onto my medicae unit herself and, subsequently, onto me entirely. I did not mind; this was far from the first time Mirena had laid upon me in a medicae unit. And this time, more than even on Hestia Majoris, she and I needed rest.

So we rested.

Mirena spent about an hour in a state of emotional-wreckedness before running out of tears to loose. She then spent another hour pulling herself together over my shoulder. It was no pleasure of mine to be witness to the pain of someone I so cared about, but I would be lying if I said I was physically uncomfortable in the arms of Mirena Law, or to have her in my arms. I spent those two hours contentedly, save for the simmering anger at whatever had caused the events of the day that had wounded us so. Regardless, when those two hours were up and Mirena returned to some semblance of self-control, I told her, “We’ll need to talk about the day. Now, or soon. Up to you.”

“There was so much…,” she began, but her voice trailed off.

“Too much,” I agreed. “I have subjects of my own to broach with you, but is there anything you wish to speak of first?”

“The daemons…that’s not the first time we’ve seen of their kind together,” she stammered, sitting up on my gut and placing her hands on my chest. She was there on Thantalus, just as I was. The Bloodletter of today was not her first. “They don’t…they don’t so much haunt me as they did at first. They’re just…another Xenos filth to me, something alien, something that doesn’t belong. I can rationalize that,” she shrugged, sniffled once, then sniffled a second time. Still a bit nasally from her cry. “But the…that damned wall. The smiling wall. What the frig. Why would such a thing exist, what sadistic frigger could take pleasure in being or causing that? Of preying on the mind like that? What’s the point of it, of them?”

“There isn’t a point, and it’s why they don’t deserve to live,” I answered. She nodded in agreement before raising a hand from my chest to wipe a nonexistent tear from her cheek. The phantom feeling of her tears persisted still.

“Someone entered my head and it wasn’t you,” Mirena asserted then.

I nodded. “His name is Ouranos. He’s…you were there, in that trial room for our sentencing after the Hestian Tragedy. He’s the fifth. The one that set the Hestian Tragedy in motion, pitted us into the Phaenonite Affair, and led us into war with the Iron Warriors.”

“Find and kill them,” Mirena muttered, quoting the late Lord Inquisitor Halloid van der Skar, to whom I had once reported. Indeed, she remembered my orders as well as I did.

“Yes. And I intend to. Ouranos is a right damned bastard, an enemy of every one of us, of the Imperium, of everything mankind is made of. I had intended to speak of him when we rejoined the rest of the team, get you all up to date. I don’t know all there is to know about him, but I can’t fight the fight that’s coming with soldiers that don’t know what I do. Inquisitorial secrecy will only get us killed, and see him to victory, which cannot be allowed,” I declared. Mirena nodded, either in understanding or agreement. Perhaps in both.

I don’t imagine you’ll tell her about me. I never expected it, but I was profoundly caught off guard by Cronos’s interjection then.

I must have evidenced my surprise, as Mirena called to me. “Cal?”

“Just a twitch of pain,” I suggested, covering my surprise in a wince and reaching for the bandage of my recent wound. It was, however, obscured under one of Mirena’s thighs. So I settled for rubbing that instead. “Anything else you want to discuss?”

“The…there was a world out there,” she started, but could not continue in light of her horrified wonder of the memory I had tried to hide from her.

“No, not a world, a hell. It’s not something you want to see again or explore,” I started.

“Oh, surely not!” she agreed.

“And Mirena,” I continued, then bit my lip and tilted my head back for a moment. When I returned to looking at her, I chose my words with the utmost care. “Listen to me, now, Mirena. I say what I am about to say because I love you. You and I have seen behind a curtain no mortal creature is equipped to know even exists. The Warp, and the things that spawn from it, corrupts through temptation. In the days, months, and years that follow for you, you will wonder about it. You will call into question that which we know to be sacred today. There will be periods of doubt. You’ll want to know. You can’t. Mirena, this curiosity…I love you so dearly. If this curiosity ever shows a hint of becoming more to you than that, you must tell me. Do you understand?” she nodded slowly. “You and I have played this game for centuries, now. You’re a big girl, so I won’t mince words further: Death is a better fate for you than the predations of the Warp. I can grant you death. I can spare you from the Warp. And trust me when I say that that would be a truly merciful end. That is the best I can do for you. You need to want that, to prefer death over your curiosity. I’m so, so sorry, Mirena. No soul deserves this, and certainly not yours,” I explained, still rubbing one of her thighs, and having taken up one of her hands in mine as I spoke.

Touching speech. Do you lean toward death as an escape from me? Do you believe I would let you have it?

“Cal,” she replied, voice a whisper. “Thank you. I love you too. More than you love me, even, I suspect, though it is no competition. I understand. I do. And I understand that you, for your role in this great and terrible game, must ever be skeptical of my response. In fact, I am grateful for that, that you’d look out for me where I cannot. But who looks out for you, Cal? You saw all that I did—perhaps more, on account of your mind. Who would grant you death, if you need it?”

“That’s not for you to be concerned with,” I answered, and Mirena, for the first time in our lives, slapped me across the face. She had not so much as jokingly struck me since being reprimanded for such following the Hestian Tragedy. But there was a definitive, intentional weight to the slap she gave me then, as my cheek can attest.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Callant!” she pleaded, shaking her head. “I am concerned about you. That’s the whole frigging point! I love you. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand what that means? Tell me, who saves you from yourself? Because there has to be someone. It’s me if there isn’t, and you damn well don’t get to tell me otherwise, not after everything we’ve seen and done together.”

Now holding my cheek instead of her thigh, I managed a laugh, then admitted, “Well, I suppose it’s you, then. Maybe also Bliss. Perhaps you two would need to share the whole ‘saving me’ thing.”

Mirena nodded, and then at last managed a grin of her own. “Wasn’t I just saying that we should invite her along on these vacations? And damn, if we had her around now, I’d definitely feel a little better about things, I suppose. You may want to warm up to the idea of being shared between us,” she giggled.

“Doesn’t sound like the worst thing,” I acknowledged.

“Not for me and her, no,” she giggled again, smile widening. She then patted my chest. “Do you want to spend the night here, Cal?”

“As opposed to the great outdoors?”

“No, you idiot, I meant on this medicae unit. Like old times? Or would you prefer looking for the barracks?” she asked.

“Here I suppose. Close access to first-aid supplies seems like a decent argument in favor,” I shrugged. “Why?”

“Well, you’re probably warm and cozy under this excellent ass of mine, but your arms are no suitable blanket. I want to look around for some amenities, if I can find any. You stay right here, though,” she suggested, rising off me to stand to her feet.

“You are rather cozy, yes,” I laughed. “Take Drepane with you. I have my mind to wield, and will follow you as best I can in that regard, but you need a suitable weapon too,” I explained, unsheathing and handing her my Nemesis falchion.

“I’m not much skilled with one of these,” she admitted.

“Would you prefer to punch the monsters of the night?” I offered. She understood, and took my weapon into her grasp. “You’ll be fine. You’re one of the most capable women I know.”

“One of?”

***

Mirena was unsure about having me part with Drepane at first, but she came to appreciate the weapon’s presence, even if merely for the light it gave off. She held it horizontally before her face, as though brandishing a torch, illuminating her surroundings as she wandered through Firestation Ariadne, abandoned as it was. She did not fear growing lost or being unable to find her way back to me; not only did she have a strong internal compass, she also knew I was watching over her and could direct her as needed. And of the rest of her worries, she found Drepane to notably quell her fears. Not completely, but the Nemesis weapon did seem to calm her once it had been engaged. Was it its psychic resonance that ebbed her mind nearer to peace? Perhaps. But she wagered that most of it was due to the weapon’s low, droning hum, a regular whitenoise to focus on aside from her haunting thoughts.

Mirena had never been inside a Firestation before—and neither had I—so her journey was indeed akin to wandering. There was also alas a dearth of maps or guides on the walls of the facility; nothing to guide a wayward soul through its many labyrinthine halls. She found, in her travels, a number of engineering bays and weapons stations, which was not surprising to anyone. It was a military base, after all, as most were on Quintus. She also found a voxstation, which was to me a delight and a big discovery—we would be spending much time there together in the hours ahead, I imagined, trying to contact my retinue.

It was, however, upon entering the canteen for the facility that Mirena’s search ended. She took a moment to look around following her entry, perhaps to scan for rations of food left behind, but did not intend to stay long. When she turned to leave, however, a great ceramite arm reached out from the darkness and into her light, gripping her augmetic hand and the hilt of Drepane. Mirena let out a yeep! before the arm flicked a finger into Drepane’s blade, knocking the weapon out of Mirena’s grasp and sending it sliding along the floor, where it continued to hum on its own. “You fell from the sky,” asserted her unknown assailant.

“I…I…I did, yes. You…you scared me, Astartes. What is your name and rank?” she asked the giant next to her, both of them now shrouded in shadow.

“Name and rank? Rannek, Protégé-Smith under Valeran Mortoc. Identify yourself,” the Iron Warrior commanded, powering on and engaging its cybernetic enhancements, illuminating the outline of his form with accursed, dim lights. Mirena’s eyes widened in horror.

“I…I am…I…,” she stammered, bewildered and terrified.

“You are Imperial, yes. That much is obvious—your flesh is tight, not taut, as would be becoming of those you call the Lost and the Damned. We are enemies, then. Sit,” Rannek ordered of her, releasing her arm from his grasp. “I will shoot you if you run. Sit. Identify yourself,” he repeated.

“I…my name is Mirena Law. I am an Agent of the Inquisition,” she admitted as she sat at the nearest table. Rannek knelt near to her, Bolter primed on her torso. It seemed, to her, pointless to try to come up with an alias that an Astartes would surely have the wits to see through. If not one of her background and expertise, how could she have survived a falling voidship and broken inside an Inquisitorial Firestation?

“Then I can only assume my Brothers have shot you out of the skies, and that you now seek refuge here, on this cold, forgotten world,” Rannek asserted, bringing his Bolter into view. Mirena’s eyes flicked at first to its short barrel, and then to the two human skulls that dangled from its underbarrel grip.

“Your…your Brothers?” Mirena stammered. “What? The war is over. You lost.”

“You lie. Our Siege may have failed to destroy the Dawnshadow, but there will be more, and they will succeed in time. Valeran Mortoc does not fail.”

“He died.”

“As obvious a lie from your Inquisition as any other. Do you believe your own falsehoods, I wonder?” Rannek asked, and made a sound that must have been a warped, desecrated form of laughter, but Mirena did not find anything particularly funny.

“No, you’re…you’re alone here. It’s been twenty years. What…what the hell have you been doing here for twenty years? No one is coming for—” Mirena started, but the barrel of Rannek’s Bolter pressed into her cheek.

“No more lies, girl. As for what I’ve been up to, that should be obvious to your Agency. Sabotage. Conquest. I have continued the war for these last few years. I have killed your weak defenders and I have laughed as they ran. I have secured this world for Captain Mortoc, as commanded. My mission is complete. Quintus belongs to the Shatter Corps. Your Inquisition has fled from us, as was ever the only possible fate,” Rannek declared proudly.

“Jaegetri,” Mirena said then, defiant of the Bolter pointed at her head. “The Citadel of Rust. That’s where Mortoc was. From there he commanded the Skybreaker. Any of this sound familiar to you?”

Rannek paused, an expressionless but nevertheless horrifying helmet glaring at Mirena for several moments more. Then, finally, his Bolter removed itself from her cheek. “This is impressive intel you have gathered,” he admitted.

“I was there. We were. We fought your Brothers on Jaegetri. We killed Mortoc. The war is over. You lost—”

“We have lost nothing while I yet stand!” Rannek shouted, shooting to his feet. “As I said, this world is ours! No defenders remain upon it. No, Mortoc lives even still. I know it. He would not have fallen to the incompetence of simple mortals such as yourselves.”

“He fell to my boss, Callant Blackgar,” Mirena shot back, a touch irate at Rannek’s denseness. “And he damn well got what was coming to him.”

“Blackgar, as in, Inquisitor Blackgar?” Rannek muttered. “The word had gone out to capture him. This is your commanding officer? Where is he?”

“In the sky somewhere, or further beyond. I was hoping to make contact with him from here,” Mirena lied at last.

“Unlikely. Your journey here, as I heard it, would have taken you past the voxstation of this installation,” Rannek asserted.

“True, it did,” Mirena confirmed. “But as you also noted, I just fell out of the damn sky. I was looking for a place to sleep and spend the night. Contacting him can wait until tomorrow.”

“Change of plans, Mirena Law,” Rannek shook his head. “You will contact him now. You will have him send a vessel to recover you. You will not reveal my presence here. I am killing you either way, but your compliance decides how quick I’ll be about it.”

“Charmed,” Mirena rolled her eyes. Having rolled them in place, she noted that the light in the room had shifted ever so slightly. And she knew why, hence her increased confidence. But she revealed none of this to Rannek, instead keeping her eyes locked with the slits of his helmet. “I’ve fought your kind for ages, I feel. I’m not much scared of you, Rannek.”

“An unarmed mortal, so defiant? Oh, there must be Iron abound within you. We shall see indeed,” Rannek laughed again, accursed a laugh as it was. “On your feet, Mirena Law.”

“No,” she shook her head, crossing her arms. Rannek raised his Bolter to her and began to take a step in her direction, but did not get his foot down before light burst out from his gut, back to front.

“You wish to know how Captain Mortoc died?” I asked him, both hands on Drepane’s hilt as I twisted it in Rannek’s gut. Rannek stomped his foot down, and began to turn around to face me, though as he did so I drew Drepane out from him so as not to lose it. When he had turned in full, Bolter pointed at my one remaining eye, he froze in place, unable to pull the trigger. Lightning danced from my gaze and along my lips, and in a heartbeat Drepane cleaved through the bastard’s neck, sending his head careening away. “Just like that.”

I released Rannek’s body from my mind’s grip after his head hit the ground a distance away, after which Mirena tackled me in another hug that very nearly floored me to the ground before Rannek himself had fallen. Which, shortly after our hug, he did with a loud thud! As Mirena squeezed me tighter and tighter, I sheathed Drepane along my waist, just in time for the lights of the facility to flicker on. They were weak, in that regard, but functional. Mirena had, after all, found some of the engineering bays. My mind was able to consult the Machine Spirits within enough to get the lights working again.

“Can…you…squeeze…any…harder?” I wheezed after a few moments of embracing her, beginning to stumble.

“Yes, very much so,” she whispered, then kissed my cheek before returning to throwing herself over me. “I really hate today.”

“Yes, it really frigging sucks. Let’s find a good place to end the day together, shall we?” I managed to get out, voice barely a squeak at that point. Mirena giggled to herself, nodded, and then began to ease up on me. “I think I have the strength to carry you on my back again, if you’d like, Mirena.”

“Cal, I never thought you’d be so forthcoming,” she sighed, nodding while encircling me. I did buckle a bit under her weight, but it was far easier to support her weight than to withstand her hugs as of late. Together, we left the last of the Shatter Corps behind us, setting out deeper into Firestation Ariadne. It took perhaps an hour of further adventuring, all of which was thankfully uneventful, before at last we found a barracks and the amenities of its blankets. Mirena asked if I wanted to rest there, rather than returning to the medicae stations, but I did not; I did not want to abandon the supplies of the medicae in case we needed them. Thankfully, I also did not mind carrying Mirena back there, newfound blanket and pillows in tow.