Rise, Blackgar.
I pushed myself to my feet, unaware of where I was. I had just been laying in the palm of Galen’s Knightly hand, accompanied by Zha. I could have been a million miles from there, then. Even once standing, I had no idea of my location, for the terrain below was of a sandy path whose edges whisked away into empty darkness. A man in a fine silk suit with a black tie stood before me, one hand held out invitingly, but not with the intent of a handshake.
Good lad.
He did not speak to me, nor was the phrase somehow forced upon me. The thought appeared in my head of my own creation, it spawned from within me.
That’s right. I have wanted to speak to you for some time now, after your success on Hestia Majoris.
“Who are you?” I asked, and though the message came across, my words were not audible to me. I was as silenced as Vilk Issik had been in trying to name the Inquisitor—Fae—he had met on Aerialon.
I am a man of little import. A spokesperson for a being far greater than either of us. Come, walk with me. We have determined the end for you.
“What the Throne do you mean by that?” I asked, following the nameless figure all the same, again not speaking audibly, save for one word. Throne. Utterance of such a holy word made this vision pulsate and tremble, its grasp on me weakening.
Ah, alas, your God does carry weight even in these parts, yes. Forgive me, I should at least give you my name. I am Ouranos, and in service to my own patron deity, I have devised for you, as I have for many others, a most perfect ending to your tale. A death. As you have long desired. I think you will find it most agreeable.
“I have no desire to die while heresy as yours yet lives,” I shot back.
Bah, you say such things while you have not even seen the face of your unmaking yet. Ignore these four, they are of little consequence.
The four he was referring to were glimmers of vile light astride our sandy path. They were each of a different hue; one blood red, royal purple, sky blue, and putrid green. I did as instructed and joined Ouranos in walking past them, though I felt as though I did not have much say in the matter. However, upon arriving at the destination he had meant for me, I froze in place, either locked there in this manipulative hell or stuck in my own terror.
Beautiful, is she not? The most perfect ending for your journey. She is your demise, and you are hers. It will be exquisite for you both. My patron is most pleased with this design, more so than many others I have devised prior. What do you think?
Before me stood perhaps my greatest fear of all. “L…Lucene.”
***
“Lucene,” I muttered, waking slowly with the light flutter of my eyelids. Something was off about my vision, but in my waking state I could not put a finger as to what.
“Right here, Cal, welcome back,” Lucene answered my call, sitting next to me on the medicae unit to my left; I found, in the process, that my augmetic arm had not been replaced. That made sense, as while the sensory one I had taken to the warzone was destroyed, the heavily-weaponized one was not, but was probably unsafe for wearing in a medicae. Lucene, after sitting where my arm usually was, leaned over to kiss me gently, then rose and passed a hand along the crown of my head, embracing me. “You were out for some time,” she started, then chuckled. “I’ve missed you,” she added, and then went in for another kiss.
“Trantos?”
“Fine, Cal, she’s fine. A bit traumatized, understandably, but absolutely fine,” Lucene answered.
“Silas?”
“Also OK. Easy, Cal, easy, the Hestian gang is still with us,” she informed me, which quelled my fears tremendously. “Silas does want a word with you though.”
“I imagine he does. I may have broken his face.”
“You didn’t. Close, though,” she grinned. “He is missing a digit, however—until an augmetic can be found for him, of course.”
“How many did we l—”
“No, Cal, don’t worry about that,” she shook her head, putting a finger to my lips. “Please, before anything else, you should understand what you’ve lost.” I frowned, not understanding. A tear rolled from her right eye, and at that thought, I knew. I only had half my vision, my left half. Seeing my moment of realization, Lucene nodded and bit her lips, moving a hand to my right cheek, where it vanished from my view. “The shrapnel from the orbital strike. Shattered your helmet. Almost cleaved your face off, but Castecael was able to save a lot. Just, not…your eye. She and Varnus agree they’ll be able to give you an augmetic, if you want one.”
“I…I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Lucene, how many did we—”
“It’s not a question worth asking, Cal,” she protested, again interrupting me. “The question of how many you saved, however, is. And 28. Twenty. Eight. You saved us from that wretched thing and the orbital strike that downed it. You saved Zha. Some days ago, before this all began, you were a legend to our retinue, a badass myth to scare the Whiteshields into compliance. Now you’re a hero to us all, every last one of us.”
“I am neither, Lucene. I am an Inquisitor. They need to know it, as do you. How many did we lose, damnit?” I demanded.
Lucene sighed and shook her head. “Don’t patronize me, Cal. If half your face wasn’t missing, I’d slap the other half from you for talking to me like that,” she seethed. Then she took a deep breath in and sighed it out. “Between the Warp-thing and the orbital strike, 33.”
I closed my one eye and heaved in a deeper breath than Lucene had before smashing my remaining arm down upon some medicae equipment to my right. Lucene put a hand to my chest and pressed me into my bedding, then nodded her head down to mine and cried with me. I was tensed up for a time, a mess of a man below the somber and graceful giant I so dearly loved, but found my senses, somehow, to ease up and embrace Lucene with the one arm I still had. She wrapped me in both of hers. And there we remained, for a time, at peace together in a universe of unending war and death. For a time, she was my universe, and I hers. “Thank you,” I muttered eventually, to which Lucene replied by making my lips vanish beneath hers.
When she came up for air, which was far beyond when I had needed it, she at last replied, “No, thank you, Cal. You saved me too, as much from that daemon as my own.”
“I never should have thrust us into that situation,” I sighed.
“But it worked.”
“For less than half of us.”
“Cal,” she sighed, and then climbed atop me, her mountainous form squeezing my weakened body under her weight. “With all the boundless love I have for you, and all the respect you are owed for your position and your accolades, shut up. You surviving is a miracle. That 28 of us join you is the God-Emperor’s work at play.”
“It’ll be hard to protest with no air in my lungs,” I wheezed from beneath her, slowly being compressed deeper into my medicae’s mattress.
“Good,” she grinned. “Truth be told, I was to fetch Lord Caliman when you awoke. I think we can both agree this pause is more preferable, though, no?”
“Infinitely so, yes,” I groaned, embracing her again. And, again, she went in for a kiss. I, at last, melted away in her grasp, knowing nothing beyond that kiss until shortly after it had ended, as she was climbing off me.
“Do try to catch your breath before I return with Caliman, hm?” Lucene suggested, fixing her loosened attire.
“No guarantees,” I admitted, coughing and wheezing.
Lucene chuckled to herself, then blew me a kiss before bowing with the Sign of the Aquila to me. “I love you, Cal.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“I love you too, Lucene,” I replied, returning half the Sign of the Aquila, for lack of an arm. Lucene licked her lips over, then winked to me before departing from my private room. As the door to my room slid closed, a hand of bronze—thankfully not a brass Maletek claw—caught it before it shut completely, and instead pushed the door wide again. Silas strolled into the room, though it was not he holding the door. That, instead, was Mirena, who all but sprinted for and tackled me shortly after Silas had entered. “Somehow, I saw this coming,” I sighed, returning Mirena’s hug.
Mirena said nothing at first, instead burying her head between mine and my left shoulder. But Silas approached me near to my blindspot. “Get jealous of me, huh?” he joked, raising a four-fingered hand.
“Why are you so damn strong?” I shot back.
“Am I?”
“Well you almost beat the shit out of me despite my power armor. Draw your own conclusions,” I laughed.
“My conclusion is that I owe you an—”
“No, Silas, you don’t. Not you at the helm, I know that,” I assured him. He looked as though he were holding back tears of his own. “Get over here,” I said, raising my right hand in my blindspot. He neared and took it, holding me firmly. “Where the frig is my other arm? I can’t hug two people with one damned arm.”
“Let’s not do this solo, into the jaws of the enemy thing again, please, Cal?” Mirena spoke at last, head still buried next to mine.
“I gotta say, sir, I must agree,” Silas admitted.
“Stop frigging calling me sir, damnit. Would it kill you to get on the Cal train, Silas?” I smiled. “We’ve waited long enough for you.”
Silas sighed while Mirena sat up on my gut. “Yeah, come on, Scion, can we get a ‘Cal’ out of you? Just once?”
Silas rolled his eyes and sighed again, then turned to me. “Thank you, Cal. For everything.”
“Yay!” Mirena exclaimed, throwing her hands up toward the ceiling. “You did it!”
“You’re welcome, Silas. Thank you,” I replied.
Mirena then looked back and forth between us both, then wiggled her way further up my waist onto my belly. “OK, so, just so everyone is clear, I’m going to give Cal a very, very lengthy kiss. We’re not going to get uncomfortable about that, here, right?”
“I can leave, if—” Silas started.
“No, I may need you to pull her off me if I need air,” I replied, and at that, Mirena did exactly as she warned me about, managing to put even Lucene to shame. Silas broke into laughter and moved toward the door, but did not exit, ever content to be my savior if I needed it. I would not, thankfully, but Mirena came close to managing so.
When she had satisfied herself, she lifted her face from mine, winked to me, pecked my lips once more, and then lowered her mouth to my left ear. “Please stop putting yourself in near-death situations. Seriously. At least bring me along if you must,” she whispered to me.
“Are we still on that?” I whispered back.
“Shut up,” she giggled, finding the strength to pull us even closer together. At that, finally, the door opened again, and Silas backed away from our latest guest, wearing a scowl on his face. Our guest returned it upon seeing Mirena and I as we were.
“My favorite trio,” Caliman sighed. “Out. Both of you. You can shag your Inquisitor another time.” Neither Silas nor Mirena moved an inch—well, rather, Mirena did not stop from pulling herself against me. But Silas held his scowl toward Caliman. The Lord Inquisitor turned to my Scion. “Did he punch the hearing out of you?”
“I can hear fine,” Silas growled. “We move at his command.”
“And as his senior, you move at mine. Or do you need a return trip to that school of ours?” Caliman offered.
“Go. Both of you,” I sighed, shaking my head. Silas looked to me, smiled, nodded, and departed without issue. Mirena rose up over me, put her hands to my head, and pecked my forehead, good eye, and lips with her own before sitting up upon me once more. She looked to Caliman, sneered in disgust for a moment, then hopped off me and left the room as well.
Caliman watched her as the door closed behind her. “Can’t say I blame you,” he admitted in a mutter.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, and you’ll pretend I’m not telling you what to do when I tell you to get your eyes off my crew,” I growled. Caliman snorted, amused, but nodded nevertheless before stepping near to me, choosing my right side, where I could not see. I turned my head to follow him, ever keeping the one eye I still wielded on my Inquisitorial foe.
“How’s your head?”
“Do you care?”
“A little,” he shrugged. “Didn’t know you had a Knight.”
“Didn’t know you had Red Hunters,” I returned.
“Fair. I don’t so much have them as they are willing to answer if called upon. Very reliable. But not in my retinue,” Caliman admitted. “I expected you to die. I had prepared an outline for a report of your sacrifice and everything.”
“Disappointed?”
“Far from it. Contrary to what you may believe, Blackgar, I do respect you,” Caliman suggested.
“You drive any psyker you can find into the ground without hesitation, as bloodily and brutally as you can,” I reminded him.
“Be that as it may, I do not go around killing Inquisitors very often, and there are many of us who wield talents such as yours. I respect the requirements and appointments of our ordos. There are those who chose to induct you to our ranks, and I will not go out of my way to upend that. You have my word in that regard, for whatever it’s worth to you,” he explained, strolling from my right side to stand at the end of my medicae, that I could more easily view him. “More than that, do you have any idea how many Commissar-Inquisitors there are in Ixaniad?”
“I do not,” I shrugged.
“There are two. And both are in this room right now,” he replied. “I have little intention of filling you in on my military record, suffice to say that it is not unlike yours—very decorated.”
“Can’t imagine it ended in the same way,” I grunted.
“No, it did not,” he sighed, shaking his head and raising a hand over his eyes in dismay. “Blackgar, you and I always have and always will do what has been required to accomplish the needs of the Imperium. You and I have left thousands of bodies, friend and foe alike, in our wakes. We have and always will make tough calls. I respect you for that. And I respect that you have, at great personal cost, visited the Emperor’s Wrath upon our mutual foe. No, Blackgar, I am not disappointed with your survival. If anything, I am pleased that you are at last living up to Thaddeus Scayn’s expectations of you,” he explained, pausing to take a breath. “Go on, then, hit me with that dry humor.”
“No, no, I think I’m loving this,” I suggested, making him roll his eyes. “You can keep going.”
“Insufferable as you are, I respect you. If not for that insufferability, I might even have grown to like you.”
“Phew.”
Caliman sighed again. “Can we talk as equals, for once?”
“I thought you were my senior?”
“Alright, fine,” Caliman shrugged. “Have it your way. We can go on not-quite hating each other. I didn’t come here to recruit you to my retinue, I’m here to fill you in on the status quo. To that end, I have ordered an Exterminatus of the planet below.”
“They’re not dying, are they?” I sighed.
Caliman shook his head. “Even the Astartes were unsettled. My fleet will maintain orbit here while the Exterminatus is prepared, shooting down anything that tries to escape. But if these vile beings that once called themselves Inquisitors wish to revive upon this planet eternally, then I see no other choice but to take that planet from them. If that refuses to kill them for good, then at least they will come back to life to immediately die again in the black void of space.”
“You have nothing but enthusiasm from me, for once,” I admitted.
“See? Common ground,” Caliman smirked, then shrugged the grin off. “Second order of business: during the fighting, a Fenrisian battlecruiser belonging to the Space Wolves entered orbit. It…didn’t do anything. But it’s there, and active; its crew is very much alive. We have no idea why they’re here, and they likely have no idea why we’re here. But both of us are two damned hateful of the other to approach that conversation.”
“You know whose side I’m on for that debate,” I assured him.
“Of course, I did not question that,” Caliman defended. “A parley is likely inevitable. We need to know what brought them to this world, and how. Will you want to be part of that conversation?”
“It’d be my pleasure, sure,” I agreed.
“Excellent. We will put it together when you’re on your feet. Our fleet cannot host such a meeting in its current condition anyways, but I am sure as hell not setting foot on their turf. If they can wait, we will have that conversation in a few weeks. If they cannot, then we will need to give chase,” Caliman elaborated. I nodded in agreement again. “Third and final thing. I think you will find this one most…engaging. You have Iblis Kyle detained aboard this vessel.”
“I do. Emile finally sniff her out?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask. I assume you’ve detained Kyle due to her…skillset and what you’ve likely found to be a false identity.”
“I don’t have you to blame for her, do I?”
“You do. Her real name is Seraina Al-Amar. Younger sister of Emile Al-Amar,” he explained.
I sat there for a moment, dumbfounded, allowing Caliman to take smug pleasure in my being outwitted. I shook the feeling off with a return to dry humor. “They don’t look alike.”
“Yes, Emile always commented that her sister was cursed by the genetic lottery,” Caliman nodded, agreeing.
“Cursed?”
“Cursed, in her words, to possess a form that ever tempts the wills of men astray,” Caliman explained. “And, in my experience, women too. Seraina is, now, an Inquisitor of her own right within my retinue. I suspect you have an inkling that was not always the case. I also suspect, though this is not a conversation I should have with you, but rather you with her, that it is not what she desires of her future. It is not my place to speak of her past, nor guess at her future. I invite you to ask both of her. Tell her her name, and she will understand that I have given it to you, to give permission to her to speak. That is, of course, if you wish to know. But you’re an Inquisitor. I believe that’s a safe assumption.”
Caliman let that all sit with me for a moment, which I appreciated. When next I looked up to him, I simply asked, “Why?” He frowned and turned his head, seeking clarification. “Why did you assign her to me?”
“Your mission was an important one. I wanted to have eyes and ears to understand its progress. But more than that, you are an extremely capable man, Callant Blackgar, and an even more dangerous psyker. Seraina is the one woman I think could put you down and live to serve another day,” he answered.
“I thought you didn’t kill Inquisitors,” I grumbled.
“I said I didn’t do so often,” he smiled with a shrug. “And I like to cover all possibilities. I no longer consider the need for her to kill you a possibility. So congrats, you’re off the hook. For now. Treasure it,” he suggested. “Talk to her. She likes you. Not in the way that…damnable pilot of yours does. But in her own way, she likes you. Talk to her. You will not meet another like her, if you’re lucky,” he chuckled.
“Is that all, Caliman?” I sighed, about at my wit’s end with his games.
“Yes it is, Blackgar,” he confirmed. “Shall I leave you to your recovery?”
“Please. And if Lucene is outside, send her in,” I asked of him. He nodded, and as Lucene had, bowed to me with the Sign of the Aquila before departing. Lucene entered the room shortly after him, grin widening as she entered. “Love, trust me, as much as I’d like to continue where we left off, I instead have a request of you.”
“Of course, Cal, how may I assist?” she asked, still grinning.
“Fetch me Bliss Carmichael. I would speak with her. Alone.”