“Would be a funny way to go, though,” Bliss suggested, tapping her shoulder to my augmetic, each of our hands folded on the black, I-shaped table before us. No others shared the room with us.
“Would it?” I asked, frowning.
“I think so. Kill untold legions of heretics, you and I, and finally be done in by the crime of our own maligned existence,” she offered. I had not yet told everyone of the fate thrust upon us. That knowledge was kept to those of Inquisitorial rank, and Lucene, by necessity of her presence. But I had not brought the unwitting into my retinue; no, any who set foot into the Arctoros 5 facility—which was most of us—knew that something was wrong, for having felt so right. I did not then know if the news would ever be broken to them, or if they would die ignorant of the reason for their execution, or, optimally, if they would not be killed at all.
As for the subject of Ouranos, even fewer knew of that information. Myself, Lucene, and my superiors on Quintus. No others, not even the ever-smiling Bliss then sitting next to me in our shared interrogation room. “You OK, Callant?” Bliss asked me after a time while I mused on the above.
“I have already been the death of one of my armies. I have dreaded the thought of repeating that fate, born of what I am or have become,” I answered, looking down at my hands, which—despite being folded—trembled in place.
Bliss looked at me for a few moments, smile slowly fading away, then asked, “What will you do about it?”
“Am I supposed to do anything about it?”
“Well someone always does something, even if the something is nothing,” Bliss shrugged. “You could let it happen. That’s something you could do. Would you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you fight to save the 9th, if you could?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you know, Callant,” Bliss whispered, her smile returning. “And I think that’s what they’re afraid of, and why this debate is taking so long.”
“They are not afraid of me,” I scoffed.
“Why wouldn’t they be? You just prosecuted the extinction of a whole cell of Inquisitors. You’re pretty good at killing our kind,” Bliss explained. “And I’m pretty good at killing, period.”
“Does that mean you’d kill for me? For the 9th?”
“If you asked,” she nodded softly.
“Is this you trying to be supportive?”
“Is it working?”
That, finally, got a smile from me. “Thanks, Bliss,” I whispered. “But I personally get no pleasure out of killing.”
“Me neither. But I’m good at it, just as you are,” she replied. “I have enjoyed working with you.”
“And I with you.”
“Have you?” she asked, with an apparent touch of genuine surprise. “Enjoy having buildings land on your head?”
“Well, being as it’s happened twice,” I grumbled. “You’re fun, smart, very beautiful, and extremely capable. What’s not to enjoy?”
“I could still be an unpleasant person,” she offered.
“That possibility is denied by the word fun,” I smiled, returning the tap of shoulders. Bliss conceded that point with a giggle, albeit flirtatiously tapping one of her feet to mine under the table. “Partners,” I muttered then, unintentionally. I would not have known I said it aloud had Bliss not replied.
“Are we?” she asked, grinning widely to the point of blushing. “Should I tell Jack?”
“Oh, uh, sorry, no, I just—”
“I don’t take everything seriously, Callant, ease up,” she winked to me. But she was a partner of mine, of a sort. And indeed, Caliman was marginally correct—the group of my partners had grown. Lucene may have been a true one, by definition. But I was also close with Mirena, beyond the fabric of our relationship over the years, by nature of us both having once been soldiers. Likewise, now, I shared a similar closeness with Bliss, for we were both remade into Inquisitors from violent, bloody pasts. She, perhaps more than all the rest, understood me to my core, in ways Lucene or Mirena could only guess at. “At least you’re looking at my face, still,” she piped up, and I realized I had been looking her way for this train of thought. “One day I’ll see if I can get you to stare a bit more to my south, just for the fun of it.”
“Sorry, I…damnit, Bliss, even your face is distracting,” I admitted, grinning, and provoking a blurting laugh from her. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It’s been a pleasure, Callant,” she smiled, still chuckling to herself. “You know, you do make the eyepatch work, by the way.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
I meant to reply, but it was then, at last, that the doors of our room opened. Caliman and Emile entered. The former looked stern and grumpy as ever, the latter I, as ever, could not read. “One day you’ll complete a mission, Blackgar, and a host of Lord Inquisitors won’t need to convene about it,” Caliman growled.
“That has vast implications about my future,” I noted.
“You’ll live! There, happy? You get your life, howsoever long it may last, though this came at much debate and there are…concessions that you’ll need to agree to,” Caliman explained, still grumbling out every word, perhaps disappointed.
“And my crew?”
“The choice of the length of your lives are up to each of you. Well, it’s up to you. You, by rights, have the authority to make the choice for them, just as you may make it for yourself. You, Seraina, as well as Zha Trantos will also be open to make their own choices should they disagree with Blackgar’s command,” Caliman answered, speaking directly to Bliss for the latter sentence.
“So, he and I can choose eternity or not?” Bliss asked.
“Correct,” Emile nodded. “But again, there will be concessions. First and foremost, no one of such timelessness can operate beyond the watchful eye of our ordos for very long. Clandestine operations will be prohibited. In simple terms, any who wish to be so timeless will be under the thumb of Quintus very directly, with maximized supervision. There is no negotiating this point. Do you both understand?”
“I do,” we answered in near-unison.
“Good. Can we trust you will explain this to your operatives?” Caliman asked.
“You can,” I nodded. “Other concessions?”
“This is a tentative ruling, made in place with the Lord Inquisitors available at the time. Should a Master or Grandmaster Inquisitor overrule this decision, any timeless individual will be either forced to take Absalom’s ‘cure’ to the condition—provided Techsorcist Varnus finds it to be such a thing—or face immediate execution. Non-negotiable,” Caliman explained. “Explain this likewise to your retinue.”
“I will,” I nodded again. “Anything else?”
“One more. You, Blackgar, are hereby given three direct commands from our council. One, you will serve on a military tribunal as needed pursuant to the defense of the Ixaniad Sector from the Iron Warriors. You may name any you see fit to join you on that tribunal, but we will do the same. This defense is to be your highest priority. Your second command is to oversee the elimination of Captain Valeran Mortoc of the Shatter Corps, named by the Heretek Antonax in our interrogation, and confirmed by Imperial intel units. Your third and final command is to identify and terminate Ouranos, at any cost, and with maximized prejudice. Quintus recognizes Absalom’s intel as credible, and that you’ve been given a vision from this entity is more worrisome still. Per Lord van der Skar’s order following your sentencing after the Hestian events, find and kill them,” Caliman commanded. Then, begrudgingly, he added, “I will assist as I can, while our goals align.”
“Thank you, Lord Caliman,” I nodded to him. He nodded in reply, our shared respect going unspoken.
***
The vast majority of my operatives, upon being told the above, almost immediately wanted to follow my decision in regards to whether to remain temporally immortal. Problem was, I was not sure what my decision would be. None of my operatives tried to sway my mind one way or another, though a handful did say they would prefer not to be immortal, to have the possibility of dying natural deaths.
Jack Harr was among such a group, to Bliss’s disappointment, though it was not a dealbreaker of their relationship, even though the latter wanted to make whichever choice I made. Luther also wanted to take Absalom’s ‘cure;’ I believe he was more interested in the afterlife than in having an end to his life, for in the afterlife, he might be with Czevia Gao again. A handful of others, particularly those zealously faithful to the Imperial Creed, such as my Crusaders, Gallius Anwar and Lanto Sven, opted for mortality. This choice of ours, both ways, made life and the continuation thereof appear as a dreadful waiting game, that I be forced to wait and witness the expiry of many around me.
On the point of zealotry, though, Lucene was quickly adamant as to prefer to follow in my footsteps despite her faith. I was unsure how to feel about that, that my choice would so decide the fate of so many around me. That was how they all got into this complication in the first place. “You just don’t get it, even after all this time, do you, Cal?” Lucene asked, crawling into bed with—and, soon, onto—me after I explained my unsurety to her.
“Get what?” I grunted as she pried my eyepatch from my face and otherwise plucked a finger down my shirt, tugging up against it and clearly wanting it pulled off. Might be hard with her resting atop it.
“We are sure of your choices, even if you are not,” she answered. “We want you to choose for us, because we trust you to do so, because you have never made a poor choice for us.”
“Other than leading you all into Arctoros 5 to begin with,” I reminded her. “Is this going to be an argument? I so hate arguing with you.”
“Because I always win,” she grinned. “Doesn’t have to be. We trust you, Callant Blackgar. We wish to follow you until the end. At least, I do. And I’m pretty sure Silas, Mirena, and many of the rest feel the same.”
“You all should have some agency over how your lives end,” I protested.
“But we do, Cal, that’s the point. We choose to go into the night at your command. I want to die in active service to you, Cal, and would rather not weakly wither away in absentia. When you find a foe you cannot defeat, I want to be there to help beat them down. And if you and I cannot do it, then that is the end I want for myself. And no other,” she explained, and leaned in to kiss me. “I don’t think I’m alone in this desire, Cal,” she whispered, our lips still touching following that kiss. “Most of us see the value in you. Most of us see the value in fighting and dying with you. That is the end we would be most satisfied with,” she explained, and then leaned in for another kiss, though that one lasted long enough to deny me a response to her explanation. Indeed, it lasted well into the night, and it lasted longer than our remaining clothes did, and it lasted longer still from there, until at last, it saw us both to sleep.
And in my sleep, I saw it again. The cabin. Not Absalom’s. But unlike in every vision I had had so far of this cabin on green plains, I finally saw its owner: me. I sat upon a wooden rocking chair on its porch. Silas, unarmored, stood some distance to my left and behind me, elsewhere on the porch, looking off into the distance of whatever world this may have been. Mirena was on my lap, holding me closely, and falling asleep atop me. She looked sad, somber, sorrowful. I looked on past her, over her shoulder, toward me—or, rather, toward my actual self’s point of view. We were looking at each other.
See it then? The truth?
The voice—Ouranos. This was another of his visions all along.
Do you see what is missing there, in your fate? I have already shown you.
“Lucene.”
Correct.