Year 0

Penitent and I said our goodbyes. I found it harder to do so with her than I had with Thaddeus and Hans. I swore to her I would never forget her, and that I would always believe in a universe in which she would return. She assured me that if there was a means to attain such a fate, and if the Emperor’s benevolence allowed for it, she would do so.

She left the Ixaniad Sector, and the Segmentum Obscurus altogether. Her pilgrimage would take her along the Galactic South, through the Holy Segmentum Solar to the Segmentum Tempestus. It was there that Ophelia VII lied—the Cardinal World of the Convent Sanctorum of the Adepta Sororitas. Within the Convent Sanctorum, she belonged to the Order of the Valorous Heart, which was perfectly fitting of her character.

I knew the likelihood I would ever see her again was minimal. The most likely outcome of her journey was that she would remain a Sister Repentia and be thrown into the meatgrinders of unwinnable battles on the front lines, atoning for her ‘sins’ in the most ultimate way possible. Our goodbyes, then, were goodbye.

Mirena submitted into Inquisitorial conviction willingly, with the accepted condition that she be allowed discretionary visits from myself and Castecael. I worked with the warden of the prisons on the Dawnshadow to ensure that she be treated well. Silas, likewise, did as instructed, leaving my immediate charge to reaffirm his training as a Tempestus Scion. I so greatly sympathized with them both, and did not want them to change; that they would emerge as someone other than they were was my greatest fear.

I finally received a replacement arm from the Inquisition, applied to me by Castecael. I suspected, but could not prove, that they were holding the arm out on me in case their trial decided to terminate my service. Did not want to waste resources, after all. After I had adapted to the arm, I showed it to Varnus and asked him what he thought. In his words, he found it “84.3% incapable,” and I will leave the interpretation of that as an exercise for the reader. Regardless of what that incapability implied, the outcome was that Varnus decided to requisition resources for a replacement of his design. He was, at the very least, happy I had survived my ‘dimwitted peers,’ though enthusiasm did not accompany that happiness. I did not expect it would have.

I asked Luther if he wanted me to task Varnus with enabling him to return to Harakon. Luther declined, saying if he needed to call a place home, he would go to Mordian. I understood, and left it at that.

When all was said and done, I sat in my room on the Dawnshadow and looked out upon the stars of the universe.

I was alone, again.

Year 1

I made it a habit to visit Mirena every three months. Castecael, as I understood it, visited bi-weekly. But Mirena appreciated my visits all the same. She joked. She laughed. We laughed. She lamented that her cell did not have a means for her to do pull-ups, as her Naval cell did. I assured her I would get that remedied. She also lamented that the food was far worse than she had grown used to in my service. I could not address that.

We wept for the state of things.

Years 2-6

I observed a marked decline in Mirena’s attitude over the years. Of course, this was not unexpected. Slowly, gradually, she regressed to who she had been in her Naval cell. The smiles began to fade, the laughs began to hollow. I did not intend to bring this up with her, but she eventually noticed I had something I was not saying to her. So we discussed it, though there was not much to say that was not abundantly obvious.

“Does your position anger you?” she asked me.

“My position?”

“Of being utterly untouchable. Unassailable. Here I am, in prison, for having jokingly struck you as a comrade in arms. I know you disagree with the sentence and my situation, but what about yours?” she clarified.

“I do not relish violence, even within playful banter. But yes, the shields of sanctity the Inquisition insists I wield do displease me. Mirena, in my lifetime, I will not see you imprisoned again. Ever. For anything.”

“You shouldn’t make promises you cannot keep. It may not be up to you.”

“My lifetime is up to me. I possess the agency to wield it as I will.”

Year 9

Cogs were beginning to turn. The reduced resources—people—available to me over the last decade inhibited my ability to grow and expand my influence, but it did not stop it. Zha, Luther, Xavier, Castecael, and Massino Varnus were slowly but surely able to begin laying the groundwork for my next few operations. Mirena and Silas returning to the fold, however, would be vital pieces to the puzzle of the expansion of my plans. To some extent, I think that is what the tribunal wanted for me in providing their sentencing—in retraining Mirena and Silas, and in having them then train recruits and their peers for similar tasks, Mirena and Silas would begin an upbringing of quality candidates for my purposes.

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Moreover, I had the budding beginning of a complex idea, within which Mirena’s role would be vital. Awaiting her release from incarceration was as though waiting for a star to burn out; every day and week was painfully unchanging.

And, yet, sometimes things happen faster than you are ready for.

Year 10

I knew the day well. The day that Mirena and Silas were released from incarceration and the Scola Progenium, respectively. What I did not know was how soon I would see them. I did not expect to see Silas for some time, being as he needed to travel from the Progenium back to the Dawnshadow. That journey may have taken him a handful of weeks. Mirena I did not expect to see immediately, as I anticipated she would spend much of her time with Castecael.

What I did not anticipate was the knock at my door that came near the middle of the night. Upon rising to answer it personally, I was all but tackled into my room by a notably-sweaty Mirena Law, who said nothing before embracing me in perhaps the tightest hug of my life. I returned it as soon as my initial confusion and shock subsided, and though I found her to generally smell far worse than even Abseradon had—unwashed and clearly having been exercising for some time—I nevertheless buried my face against her body, nestling my head between hers and her left shoulder. I found, in holding her, that I was doing so off the ground, she having very literally leapt upon me. I did not mind.

We held each other close for an unknowable length of time, then, before she finally pulled our faces before one another. When she did so, she then latched her lips to mine, holding my head in her hands. For that, I saw the need to sit upon my bed, with her still resting on my lap, while our kiss continued. When it eventually ended, I found I had fallen onto my back, in the familiar position of having her rest atop me. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered to me then.

“I can tell,” I panted, chuckling. “You finally gave me that one kind of hug you were waiting for,” I noted. She nodded and giggled to herself, then briefly pecked my lips again. When next she lifted her lips from mine and pulled ever so slightly away from me, I at last got a better look at her form. That, then, made me frown. “Mirena, what—how—who—?” I started, unable to articulate the question.

She nodded, understanding nevertheless, and held her now-augmetic right hand between us. “Parting gift from my lovely colleagues in prison,” she explained.

“Give me a name,” I stammered, rage beginning to boil through my veins.

She shook her head. “Worthless to now. Your Inquisitor buddies already executed them for it. Ruthlessly so, I may add.”

“They knew?” I asked. She nodded. “And they didn’t inform me of your condition?” She nodded again. “Why?”

“Well, probably because they knew you’d slaughter half the prison population for it,” she shrugged. “It’s fine, Cal. Well, it’s not fine, but it’s over now. Justice is served, in some way. And now I have a hand that matches yours,” she smiled, tapping her augmetic against mine.

“I’m…infuriated,” I sighed, closing my eyes and trying to come to grips with the news. “Will it interfere with your ability to fly? I don’t care—you’re irreplaceable in that position—I just want to know.”

“It will take some getting used to. Long-term, I think not,” she shrugged.

“I could have Varnus provide you with something more to your liking, if you so desire,” I offered. “He did for me,” I suggested, and though the augmentations Varnus had made to my arm were not visible then, I nevertheless waved my arm to and fro in mock demonstration.

“I may take you up on that. I hear there are augmetic devices specifically for piloting air and spacecraft. I’ll have to do some shopping around,” she smiled, and then heaved out a heavy, hot breath upon my face. It was not a sigh. Though I had only felt it a few times in the past, I knew immediately what it was.

“You’re aroused.”

“Duh.”

I was taken aback from her candor, but shook my head. “I won’t tell you how to live your life, but—”

“But shouldn’t I be aroused with Castecael?” she suggested. I nodded. “Yeah. I was. Too much so, apparently. Ten years abstinence from the good life will do that, I suppose. But yeah, Cast and I…have had a very engaging night. I, however, seem to possess too much energy.” Well, that accounted for the ‘exercise’ that resulted in her current sweat.

“So you came here,” I asserted.

“It’s a bit rude, I admit.”

“More than a bit.”

“If you ask me to leave, I will leave,” she assured me.

I paused for a moment, staring into the glimmer of her silver eyes. I had, in periods of her anger, seen them as vicious daggers. But now I saw only the welcoming glow of a moonlit evening in her gaze. “And if I don’t think I could ever ask you to leave?” I admitted.

She smiled coyly, and leaned her face just barely over mine, so close that the odd movement of a simple breath made our lips touch moment to moment. “Well, I have to fall asleep somehow, tonight,” she whispered, then latched her lips to mine once more.

A particularly lengthy night followed.

The passion, no, the emotion of the night resonated with my psychic self. In the ebb and flow of our shared existence, I felt Mirena in ways that transcended the physical. There was an ever-present worry that I would harm her in the process. But I never got the sense that such a thing would happen, and indeed it did not.

But what did happen, in the lucidity that arrived at the end of our activity, was a glimmer of the utter span of my time in the universe. My life, even that which I had not yet lived, flashed before my eyes. I remembered none of it, save for the end, and one may suggest that it was entirely a dream altogether, for sleep did follow for both Mirena and myself. But I do not dream. I have visions, psychically induced, but I do not dream.

I know not of what I saw, or how I saw it. I believe the glimpse of my unrecallable future was induced from the psychically emotional release of the evening, which in some way kickstarted a divinatory engine within my mind. I have not been able to start that engine again since then. But I do remember the end of my life.

In the end, I am obliterated.

When I awoke in the morning, Mirena was sprawled across me, still sleeping. I held her in my arms, and gently ran a hand through her hair—which had grown out in her imprisonment, and had not yet been shaved. She slept for maybe half an hour longer before revealing her shining silver eyes to me once more. She looked up at me, passed a hand over my chest before kissing it, and then asked, “Are you mad?”

“It would be rather hard to me, frankly,” I shook my head. She giggled and stuck her tongue out at me. “Having said that, I don’t think we should do that again.”

“Ouch, that bad, huh?” she frowned, and sat up on my gut.

“Quite the opposite. But that’s the point. You are tempting enough as it is. We—I—shouldn’t risk even more temptation still,” I explained.

“We,” she nodded.

“We do work, don’t we?” I smiled. She nodded again. “For what it’s worth, my door is always open to you. You’re welcome here anytime. You can spend the night here whenever you wish. But I believe it’s best if we not go that far again.”

“Pity,” she winked to me. “Wanna grab a bite to eat?”

We did so, and in the morning that followed, I never once revealed my plans of the future to her or told her of my vision.