“All stations ready, Lord. Vessel is ready for warptravel.”
The Warsmith, Lord of the Molten Brethren, god of war and saint to the denizens of this vessel nodded from his command throne. It was all in the hands of the Sorcerer now. Once more he’d prove his usefulness.
He gazed around the bridge of the Murder-Class cruiser, watching the mortal menials milling around their stations. He could see their fear and smell their sweat, a disgusting air of weakness, even if made slightly more bearable by the bestial stink of the Abhuman overseers of the bridge-crew.
The ram-headed Beastmen were simple-minded brutes, but they served their purpose. They knew to interpret the will of the Astartes overseeing them. They had understood the nature of things. They knew their place.
Holreck snorted, as his chain of thought ruined what may have been described as contentment.
The Beastmen knew their place, yes, but others seemed to still not be aware of their situation.
His hard gaze settled upon Varx, his pet-sorcerer. The witch was clad in Terminator-plate, as if simple armour could compensate for his lacking skill and determination.
He watched on as the sorcerer started muttering and taking control of the ship, preparing to guide it through the immaterium, as was his task.
The Warsmith was interrupted in his thoughts when the whir of power-armour approached from his left. One of the legs gave a slight hiss, imperceivable to untrained ears, but it told Holreck exactly who was approaching him here.
“I trust you wish to tell me your little prayer-circle was a stunning success.” he greeted Derrus before he could begin his usual sermon. He did not need to look at the priest to see his lean, augustine features shift into his knowing smile.
Another mild annoyance.
“You know me so well, Holreck.” the Apostle replied calmly. “And here I thought I was the one with an interest in mannerisms.”
The Warsmith shifted on his throne, deciding to finally give Derrus a glance. The Apostle’s hands were stained red. Not unusual.
“After ten thousand years everyone makes some connections.” he retorted after a long while. The Apostle turned away to look at the sorcerer, now in a deep trance, relaying commands to the helmsman and his underlings. His look was beyond his usual priestly air, but Holreck recognized it. The strained but madly-enthusiastic expression he’d seen only once, in a different age.
***
“You sound like one of the old guard.” Orros remarked while taking apart his bolter. Brylla felt irritation turn to resentment.
“Maybe the Warsmith has a point when he doesn’t attend those sermons?” he tried to retaliate.
The two relatively young inductees into the ranks of the Molten Brethren were resting in a part of the Eternal Usurper they’d claimed for their own. The room was large enough for the two Astartes to reside in and had maybe been a storage facility, before the ship’s fall into the firm hand of the Molten Brethren.
“If he didn’t tolerate us being taught the truth of the matter he wouldn’t allow Derrus to hold them.” Orros replied lazily, while picking parts of his weapon to clean and tend to.
Brylla didn’t have a response to that. He sat down on what he called his bed, a slab of steel he’d made more tolerable by piling furs of all kinds onto it. Not that comfort was something he explicitly needed.
“It's not like I am one of those mortal zealots that would like to give their blood just so he graces them with his presence.” the other marine eventually added, after having completed another one of his rites. There was a point in tending to one’s wargear, sure, but Orros took things to the extreme.
“All I’m saying is that there is truth to what he says, and his knowledge could be useful enough.”
Orros turned to look at Brylla, with his cold, calculating manner.
“I know you were told otherwise, but the proof of his teachings is all around us. This entire ship is saturated with it, and so are we.” his voice was sombre, but his words wouldn’t sit well with Brylla.
He was not one of the Molten Brethren by blood, and his early life had been spent on Fenris, later in the battle line of the Vlka Fenryka, the sixth Legion He had rejected his parent-chapter eventually, but old habits die hard, and on the matter of gods and daemons Brylla didn’t find it in himself to forget the lifelong warnings of the elders.
“I’ll say it one last time, you’re playing a dangerous game.” he breathed out, before closing his eyes.
In the back of his mind he knew they would be crossing into the warp soon.
‘Gods and daemons...’ he thought warily, ‘...gods and daemons.’
***
Varx’s eyes were closed, yet, in a fashion, he saw. Through his shielded senses he perceived, for to call it sight would be to deny it the scale it possessed. He felt the roiling tides, knew their dangers.
He was guiding a vessel through the immaterium. The warp was in upheaval.
Far away, in his physical body, he felt strain and exhaustion building up. He suppressed the very notion. The feelings drained from his psyche, more and more he let slip, became a being of pure mind.
The sorcerer could guess at the tidal waves, felt the titans swimming through the sea of madness surrounding the ship, felt the claws of small things scratching at the seams of the material, trying to gain entrance into reality, he felt their hunger, their thirst, their longing for the warm flesh of mortals and could do nothing but scoff and behold them for the carrion they were.
These were not gods or higher beings, they were merely parasites on the back of reality.
A larger shadow approaching the vessel reminded him that a particularly large parasite was still a threat. Somewhere he commanded a change of course. He felt his focus had slipped, his musings had disturbed his attention dangerously.
Varx felt blood rush through him, stimulants hammering his mind into suitable shape, forcing calmness, he felt a form of battle-focus settle in, suppressing sudden shivers of stress.
Leering faces formed around him, he claws distending toward him, trying to reach into his innermost soul.
The sorcerer forced himself deeper into his calm. This couldn’t be avoided, only weathered. He felt twinging pain and boring pressure in the back of his mind, as the monstrous claws tried to break through the gellar field.
His goal lay behind the leeches sucking at his willpower, a Citadel in Maledictum-space. They weren’t the first to take this route in recent memory however. The trail of a vessel the Warsmith sought. A vessel of dread, personal importance to him.
Varx would follow the trail. There’d be no failure now.
***
The Briefing Room was sparsely illuminated. It had once been a meeting place for the mortal officers that had commanded this vessel when it had served the dying Imperium. Now it served as a semi-private chamber for the highest officers of the Molten Brethren. The mortal crew and the brethren themselves had taken to referring to the complex in the midst of the ship that held forges, studies and private quarters as the Crucible.
“You want to awaken him.”
The bearer or the technologically distorted snarl was Rothus. The old veteran was Holreck’s most trusted lieutenant, the leader of his bodyguard, that some had taken to poetically calling the “Crucible Guard”. Neither Rothus nor Holreck cared much for such theatrics.
The Warsmith did his best to temper his ire at the accusatory tone in Rothus’ voice.
“Yes.”
A long pause followed. The old veteran allowed himself a hint of a scowl. Only his lips betrayed it. For fact, most of Rothus’ face had long been replaced with trusted steel.
Still, the Iron Mask, as he was called, had a way of emoting that was uncanny.
Maybe they just knew each other particularly well.
“You know he won’t appreciate finding out that he hasn’t died.”
An uncomfortable truth. Holreck only nodded, curtly. Rothus had always been very vocal in his criticism of dreadnought-interment. To him there was nothing greater than to survive or die on his own terms, burning blade in both hands.
He’d rather suffocate on his own blackened blood than continue service.
“I need him for what we’re planning. This isn’t another supply raid. Our brothers want conquest, to stake a claim.” he slowly moved toward the table at the center of the room, flicking on a power switch. The projector at the center of the table flickered to life, producing a dusty, orange rendition of a primitive galactic map.
The Corpse-Imperium, with its Segmenta. Most importantly, the glowing gash, the festering wound that now split it in half. The Cicatrix Maledictum.
An open passageway into the immaterium, where the warp and reality collided and intermingled.
A place where gods and men could meet, as Derrus had once put it.
“In the Eye we weren’t strong enough to compete. Abaddon was our only option, but now? This is a chance at something permanent.” He turned to regard his bodyguard.
“A new homeworld.”
***
Astartes slept less often than humans. They simply didn’t tire as quickly, and the Catalepsian Node inside every single one allowed them to carry on functioning far beyond mortal limits if need be. A gift from lost fathers.
This time was not now, though. Brylla wandered strange paths in his deep sleep, stirring now and then on his bed. Unsettling dreams disturbed him.
When he finally awoke he couldn’t recall a single detail of his slumber, but did not care either. He glanced over at Orros, who was laying on his own bedding, having covered his slab in thick red cloth.
He scanned the room, the armour racks, the weapons hanging from the wall, the simple table. Lastly his eyes fell to the thin slip of a door that would lead to a small antechamber, that housed their personal thralls. The door remained locked whenever the Astartes didn’t require the mortal’s services.
The Space Wolf couldn’t hide a hint of doubt as he considered the ways the Brethren treated their slaves.
He’d always had serfs, yes, but some of the warriors around him treated these mortals like wild animals. He himself held little love for mortals, too arrogant to unite for the common good, too prone to betrayal, but he found that working them to death held no joy for him.
Good service should be rewarded. Wasn’t that why he had defected in the first place?
He knew that was only partially true.
Brylla rose from his slab. He felt thick muscles pop and stretch as he did so, rolling his shoulders to drive the stiffness out. He’d lain about quite enough for a while. He wouldn’t rest calmly while they were in the warp anyway. He never had.
He threw a simple, long fur coat over his half-naked form and left the cell. The rest of his squad was also around here somewhere, they’d been assigned this part of some storage facility as their home.
The layout was a simple one, a circular corridor ringed by cells similar to theirs, though some had other purposes. In the middle of the circle one found a steep drop, some sort of basin crossed by a catwalk, accessible via a simple stairway. He didn’t know what the original purpose of the pit had been, but now it functioned as a sort of arena, for his squad and those in the vicinity. There were of course other places to train or settle grudges, but the pit was, to Brylla, the simplest and best choice. The violent clashing of steel on steel already rang up to him, telling him that two of his brothers already occupied the arena.
When he looked down he was surprised to find three astartes sparring. Pelagys and Mirk, two other relatively new initiates, friends of Orros as far as he knew, were trying to take on the significantly larger Karr. Brylla scowled. Karr reminded him of his old brothers by stature, broad-shouldered even for a space marine, covered in battle scars, with ferocity in his eyes. The similarities ended in several points. Karr’s left foot was a vicious metal claw, but the most discerning characteristic was the simple lack of an organic jaw, having been replaced with a ceramite construction, skin loosely tucked over it in a mockery of flesh. Glaring above the left brow was the burn mark of the Brethren.
The two younger astartes were, so far uselessly, trying to breach the veteran’s defences. Brylla had seen this too many times to not know the outcome. For all his cold tactical acumen, Karr was a monstrous opponent, exulting in the savage heat of battle. The Space Wolf could admire that, if nothing else, about the spiteful bastard.
The fight took its usual course, the younglings eventually forced back. Karr disarmed them with savage, quicksilver blows to their arms, then charged at them with a fierce roar, grabbing them by their throats and lifting the two astartes into the air as if they were nothing, before hurling them onto the ground. Before the two could recover the veteran was on them, pinning Pelagys to the floor with his claw, while pressing the steel pipe he used as a crude training weapon into Mirk’s windpipe, his flayed lips giving an arrogant grin. Brylla turned away. He didn’t need to see Karr aggrandise himself again.
He was surprised to find himself the target of Karr’s next words instead.
“Do you want to test yourself as well, welp?” Brylla spun around to face the marine once again, feeling a slight hint of acid on his tongue.
“I don’t need to prove anything to you, half-face.” he retorted with a snarl, but the fury of the veteran from moments ago had been replaced by Karr’s usual facade.
“Well you don’t look much better after your last escapade.” the marine countered, running his hand through the short brown hair on his scalp. The twinge of hurt pride reminded Brylla of his run-in with an Ork flamer, an encounter that had cost him most of the hair and skin of his head, but had in the end been luckily non-fatal. He instinctively ran his hands over his own head, finding some patches of short stubble where once a blonde mane had sat.
With a snarl he dropped himself into the pit.
“This is going to be fun.” Karr chuckled smugly.
***
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Focus was not a choice anymore. It was a necessity if he wanted to stay alive. Varx swam through the unseen colours, through the unheard clamour of the warp, and remained mostly blind to it.
Then and again he changed the course of his vessel, focussed on his one destination, on the trail the other ship had torn through the warp before.
The evidence was clear as day to anyone with the gift to see it, the agitated chitter of the neverborn carried it to the ears of anyone with the gift to listen. He needed to shut them out. He had enough traces to go on. He felt an end to the trail approaching quickly, no, he knew it would end soon.
He maneuvered the ship by some of the stormiest reaches of the roiling tide, felt something different. They were no longer in the pure warp. Something had changed, and he recognized the shapes of objects soon. Planets, suns, wreckage.
When he gave the command to emerge, the ship didn’t tear through a veil, did not pierce any barrier. It simply slipped, it neatly throttled its speed. They were in a stretch of the Cicatrix Maledictum.
Here, in the galaxy spanning wound, the warp and the real, the materium and the immaterium meshed together, creating an uncanny blend of the two, where the laws of physics scarcely applied, and where the remnants of imperial worlds were slowly but surely falling to madness and corruption. They passed the hull of what had once been a loyalist grand cruiser, undoubtedly caught in the warpstorm following the shattering of Cadia.
The Sorcerer drew back from the warp, sagging back into his flesh. He was immediately hit by the sledgehammer of fatigue, he felt cold sweat running down his body, clinging to his skin. Two hearts were pumping in his chest, he felt irregularity in the pattern. His breath was ragged, rattling from his lungs like the mutterings of a forlorn ghost.
He turned back toward the commanding dais at his back. He found the throne vacant, the dais sparsely filled. The marine that stood there only reinforced the slight taste of bile on his breath.
“You seem weary, Varx. Maybe you should retire for a while?” Derrus chimed, an expression of half-serious concern twisting his features. The Apostle was surrounded by some human acolytes, puny dregs that covered their aberrations with cowls and robes. Each of them carried some negligible trace of warp-born power within them, but Derrus himself outshone all his slaves, his mind was a dark corona of influence and importance, his fluid mind unreadable and undoubtedly rich with arcane knowledge.
“I almost feared you wouldn’t be up to the task, the gellar field surely was a bit strained by this journey, if the bridge-crew can be trusted.” the Apostle added, after seeing Varx was not going to reply, a hint of guile in his tone. The Sorcerer ignored him, brushing past the dais, hobbling off the bridge. His limbs felt too heavy, he knew he was probably covered with minor cuts and lesions. The world was turning around him, the corridors wouldn’t stay steady. The purr and roar of his armour was drowning out all sound, his heavy footsteps reinforcing the failure of his hearts to beat steadily. His mind felt clouded, assailed by too many influences, too tired to stay focussed.
“No witty remarks today?” he heard Derrus through the drone of blood in his ears, he struggled to put one foot before the other, if only he weren’t this weighed down...
Somehow he made it to his recluse. He almost fell through the door, weakly supporting himself on the frame. Without the stabilizers of his armour he’d probably have collapsed by now, some part of him recognized.
Sluggishly he stripped himself from the armour, slipping between comatose half-realities and falling into uneasy slumbers, before he was finally free of the plate.
Trembling hands grabbed his robes, his skin was flushed red, he felt revulsion and nausea building up more and more as he lowered himself onto the ground of his cell, trying to find his much-needed calm. He turned his head almost unconsciously, where his eyes met the portrait of a pale, beatific mortal woman. He lost his grip on reality and dreamed.
He dreamed of verdant fields and temples of marble.
***
Brylla’s grip on the pipe tightened. Karr stood still, waiting for him to attack, 10 meters across from him. Quick glances all around told him that Pelagys and Mirk had gotten out of dodge already. There would be no help from them, the bare arena would also grant no advantage. No crates to hurl, not piping to avoid. Rusty grates dotted the floor here and there, usually to keep mortal crew out of the drainage below. Most of it looked stable enough.
“The Corpse-Emperor can’t hear you. Prayers won't save you.” Karr gloated.
Brylla had enough of this word-play, he was here to show the veteran once and for all that he should watch himself! With eight steps he’d closed the distance, swinging the improvised weapon with wild abandon from the left. His opponent brought up his pipe, stopping the blow, but exposing his middle. Brylla dropped to one knee, his fist snuck under Karr’s swordarm and cracked against his ribs with force, before he pushed himself forward, aiming to ram his shoulder into the Iron Warrior. He was stopped by a powerful kick to the jaw, the deceptively thickset veteran able to somehow shift his weight almost effortlessly.
The Space Wolf was sent reeling backwards by the attack, scrambling onto his knees just in time to bring up his swordarm, deflecting an overhead strike from Karr.
The impact of the blow sent ripples through his muscles, Karr drew his knee forward, sending blinding pain through Brylla’s skull. He cried out, but wouldn’t be put down again. He felt stimulants hammering through his brain, pain inhibitors numbing his body’s pain responses. His tongue was heavy with the taste of acidic saliva.
Karr relented, giving him five paces.
“Already done? I thought you’d improved since the last time, cur. Clearly I was wrong.” the veteran goaded him on. Brylla steadied himself, rising to his feet. He spat out a gobbet of blood and acid, that sizzled on the steel floor. With an unarticulated cry he flung himself at the Iron Warrior again, he jolted toward the right, as if to pass by that side, but dove for the left, aiming a passing blow toward the organic limb of his foe. He slid past, flying by-
And then he hit the ground violently. He felt his rib cage strain, he heard a slight crack, as cold metal bored into his back.
“The same trick twice?” Karr asked, with mock paternalism in his voice. He felt the claws on Karr’s mechanical limb bore into his skin, felt trickles of blood slowly running down his skin, as the veteran weighed down on him even further.
“You may be able to trick some xeno with that. But here…” his weight increased a bit more, the cracking was now a definitive sound, this was no longer the popping of cartilage, bones were slowly breaking under the pressure, “...here you need to face me.”
The moment dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, Brylla felt his hearts thrumming. He wouldn’t put it past the veteran to just bludgeon his head in. Then, suddenly, Karr relented.
“I didn’t think you’d gain any pleasure from fighting inferior foes, brother.”
A calm voice echoed from the catwalk. They’d been observed.
‘Another one to witness my shame’, Brylla thought, without looking up, at first not even realizing who the voice belonged to.
“Accepting challenges, wanderer.” Karr replied, unable to hide his offense. The visitor didn’t reply for a while. “Teaching the fresh meat some tricks.” Karr spoke, defensively, as if reacting to some unseen attack.
“Breaking them into shape, I see.” the mysterious figure finally replied. “Come with me, Wolf.” the figure demanded. Brylla sluggishly pushed himself off the ground, swayed toward the stairway, preparing for some sort of rebuttal. Despite his weakened state he’d take no orders from anyone but the Warsmith himself! It was then that he finally cast a glance at the owner of the voice, and froze.
***
In a central corridor of the Eternal Usurper, the Lord of the vessel shifted his gaze all around. The Warsmith listened, waiting until he was certain that he was alone.
It was an open secret that he preferred to slip away every once in a while, to this deep part of the ship. It was his workshop. A quiet place. He preferred it to the chambers of the Crucible.
After exactly five standard minutes of hearing only the thrum of his armour he turned toward his destination, a bulkhead about 30 meters in diameter and height. Nothing else could accomodate what was being held inside.
He hacked a code into an almost hidden console and waited, observing as first the great bolts keeping the hatch in place retracted, then listening to the inner workings of the door, before the circular hatch finally was pulled upwards, revealing a dark, circular chamber inside.
Uncharacteristic calm settled into Holreck. He liked the chamber. He’d designed it himself.
It’d be quiet. Not the quiet of fearful servants, but the quiet of true silence.
Only the humm of machinery and screech of metal to pierce his ears.
The Warsmith entered the chamber.
Once he entered his eyes focussed on the titanic shape at the far end of the workshop, buried in thick cabling, tied down by chains, the lifeless shape of a slumbering Dreadnought.
Noone knew it was down here. Not even those that knew of the workshop knew what he did here.
Holreck Kethral worked alone.
He did not turn to see the gate closing behind him.
A conversation with Derrus came to mind, then, unbidden, an irritating reminder of the outside world.
“You look like him when you leave, you know?” The priest had said. Him. The Primarch. Their scornful father. One of the Emperor’s own offspring, a demigod by all standards.
To Holreck he’d always remain a hated figure. A pariah.
Derrus had ignored his ire.
“Who could have known, after all this time, that you’d show this...striking resemblance to one you hate so much. The spark of creativity. What is it you do in there, I wonder? Build? Build like father did? Away from us all, so that noone can know?”
The Warsmith stepped over to a cogitator-terminal, rousing the machine to sudden activity.
He typed in lines of binary, high gothic designations and codes in a language long forgotten by most men, certainly dead outside of the Legions.
As shrivelled servitors and pure automata sprung to life, he pulled off his helmet. Soon his mechanical servants were unbolting his warplate.
He ignored the pain some plates caused, needing to be torn out of his flesh where the warp’s changing touch had fused them to his skin. He had no time to tend to minor bleeding.
Holreck put on his garb and flexed his mechanical left hand.
“If you’re so convinced of father, why did you come with me?”
Derrus had an answer. Of course he did.
“Because the Gods called me. Because you needed me.”
The old apothecary had been crucial in the early stages of their breakaway.
He’d been a comrade as much as anyone in the Legion could be called such.
Holreck had let the topic stand.
The Dreadnought did not react as the Warsmith set about his works, polished metal reflecting the shine of blowtorches and lumen-packs, the flashes of welding and the pulsing light of electricity.
Here in his silver chamber, Holreck Kethral was a warlord no longer. He was a master of artifice.
He worked in almost perfect silence, deep in the ship, where none could know and none could judge.
***
His bare feet touched the cold tiles of the temple. Around him he felt the droning silence, the oppressive air these places of worship always held. Varx let his eyes wander. He recognized the place. He’d been born in this place once, three centuries ago. His eyes found the reliefs of the great Enlightened, the heavenly family, the many minor figures of his, their, religion. A slight wind blew through the small door at the entrance. The stone beneath his feet let the cold seep into his flesh.
The sorcerer made his way toward the altar at the end of the sanctum. The stone slab was surrounded by braziers that flickered dimly. Before the altar several carpets lay scattered around. When he looked around he faintly perceived the ghost images of memories, groups of people, families, sitting on the carpets, to silently worship. A priestess holding her service. All of the images faded away whenever he tried to scrutinize them, to gleam details of his blurry past.
Only one image did not falter. At first Varx thought it was a young woman, yet her posture betrayed age. When he drew closer the woman turned toward him, dwarfed by his transhuman stature. What he beheld startled him at first. He heard a faint voice, like words torn from someone’s lips by a storm, carried to his ears but not intended for him. She seemed far slimmer now, more frail, the proportions seemed off, the ratios of her body weren’t those of a grown woman. She seemed more like an adolescent human, a child, then.
When he beheld her face he stared into a murky pond, outlines shimmering and redrawing themselves.
“Who are you?” he muttered, as the girl ran away.
***
“Your burn marks seem to be healing well, no?” Brylla’s saviour spoke. The young marine was unsure whether this was truly salvation, however. He’d found himself in a room that seemed to be a makeshift apothecarion. The attendant apothecary, however, was not an apothecary at all. Brylla had found himself trapped in a room with Derrus, the wyrd-touched priest of the Molten Brethren. The zealot eyed him with almost paternal care, searching meticulously for open wounds or broken bones. His attentions until now had been focussed on Brylla’s head, with its wide patch of burnt flesh.
He tried to hold back his disgust, his puzzlement at the sudden appearance of the priest only rooted his suspicions deeper.
“A lesson well learned, from what I hear. Maybe circumstance really is the best teacher.” Derrus mused almost passingly, as he shifted his attention toward Brylla’s ribcage. When the first of his hands touched a rib, the young Wolf felt a sharp stab of pain. Something definitely wasn’t right, Karr was a master of his craft.
After an eternity of prodding and wincing, Derrus seemed satisfied with his little bit of research.
The priest straightened himself again. Though he was no taller than Brylla, he emanated an aura of authority and threat.
“You are probably wondering how it is that I am so interested in your wounds now.” Derrus stated, rather sure of the answer. Brylla decided to humour him, confirming his suspicion with a small nod. The other marine smiled, showing white teeth.
“I was once an Apothecary in the Legion.” Derrus revealed, while stepping away from his patient, hacking some commands into a cogitator nearby. Suddenly, a concentrated light fell upon a surgery table at the left-hand side of the room, several mechanical arms extending from the ceiling. Each one bore a surgical implement.
“I kept this role in the early days of the Brethren, but my duties shifted in time.” He gestured for Brylla to lie down on the table. The Wolf hesitated for a short while.
“Karr cracked several of your ribs. I would have a look at your organs as well, if you don’t mind. We’d both like your body to mend itself correctly, I believe.”
Derrus almost sneered. He did resemble an apothecary now, his cold assessment telling of unmoving professionalism. Despite knowing better, Brylla obeyed. He couldn’t argue with the spiritual head of the warband. At least not if he wanted to survive.
The steel of the table was cold against his skin as he laid his body down, his pulse quickening.
“Anyway,” the priest continued, suddenly again with his usual voice, “soon I was unable to tend the wounds of my brothers as resources ran short.” He seemed lost to memory for a few seconds as he stood over Brylla, green eyes focussing some point in the distance. The hint of a smile played around his lips.
“So I began tending to their spirits instead.” He chuckled slightly. “All that required was faith.”
Brylla felt a needle sink into the skin of his neck. He wanted to flee, to thrash, but there was little point. If he assailed Derrus he’d be the quarry of half the warband, while the other half would look on as he was slaughtered.
“Tending both body and soul is something I rarely need to do, as few even recognize my old rank, but maybe you’ll be some good practice.”
As the mechanical arms sank toward him, Brylla fell into the dark, empty nothingness. He hadn’t had a choice either way, he knew. As his twin hearts slowed, for the first time in his life, he thought he knew what mortals meant when they spoke of fear.