The loud metallic clang of blade against blade could be heard reverberating in the Nightfall´s fighting arena. For the mortal that perhaps glanced at the two Astartes testing their martial prowess it would be like witnessing the very pinnacle of martial prowess. To the two members of the Atramentar in the ring, it was a tuesday. The lamps dimly illuminated the combat arena, like a soft cloud of bluish light. Its pale light lingering in the warriors´ faces and blades as they clashed.
"Have you heard what Valzen has been saying?" asked Malek, going for a low blow with his blade.
"Father changed?" Garadon said, parrying and lunging with his sword. His brother stepped away dodging the blow. "I doubt it to be true. Primarchs do not change."
"The Chief Apothecary says otherwise." Malek thrusted with his glaive. Garadon spun as he parried and achieved first blood. Malek shrugged at that fact.
"We both know it's Valzen. Don't care if he is a damn apothecary…" They eyed each other, circling like predators waiting for the other to commit.
"What about the mortal that Magnus ordered to be restrained?" The glaive fell down, so fast came the blow that even parrying with his sword Garadon felt the small trickle of blood coursing down his pale skin.
"Melkor... That was his name right? He came back in a stasis coffin when Fulgrim visited father, didn't he? I haven't seen him for a year and a half since then."
"The cell that he was in yesterday was-"
Their blows became faster, like the strength of an avalanche sliding down from the heavens into the earth below. Their blades collided, once, twice, thrice. The violence of their clash echoing in the metallic walls. Outside of the Arena other legionnaires watched attentively as the members of the Atramentar clashed. Some put bets, some did not. They did not care. They clashed not for their brothers' entertainment, nor did they clash to better themselves in the art of the blade.
Malek lunged forward quickly, the glaive pushing the sword aside, leaving his brother open to receive the blunt force of cranium. Garadon staggered. Malek pressed his advantage. His blow was going to land. The glaive stopped a few centimeters from his face. The blade remained there for a few seconds then. Malek extended his hand to help his brother up.
He caught it up. The Legion may be their brothers, but to the Night Lords. That was a lie. They were never brothers, they were murderers, a necessary monster led by an even greater monster. The necessary shadow so that the herd they shepard doesn't step into the cliffs of shadows.
He grabbed the hand, standing up. "The cell´s walls. Something struck it, and no Legionnaire was there since Melkor had chained himself."
"You're insinuating that the Nighthaunter took upon himself to protect the mortal…" Malek said, staying quiet for a few seconds after. Then they laughed at that absurdity. The two members of the Atramentar laughed together as brothers. Perhaps that dreaded veteran formation of the eight legion was the only one where brotherhood existed. The last, or the first corner of that poisoned legion that one could find the expected bonds amidst the Legiones Astartes, even as twisted by their dark homeworld´s culture.
The light lit his room fairly well, like all light bulbs on the Nightfall, it shone with a dim blue flame like the moon at midnight in a starlit sky. Melkor sat in his chair, the cogitator he had been given open. He seemed to be taking notes about something, trying to workout something. His finger scratched his head.
He picked a pen and some paper, and drew a thing, a chart, an image. He looked at it, he had never been a good drawer, that was not helping him at this moment. He picked the piece of paper and turned it. Trying to make sense of his own drawing, to see if it brought any illumination to his small mind.
He felt like they had gaps, gaps he knew but could not remember. Like old memories slowly slipping from a mind, his mortal mind.
Someone knocked on the door. He told him to enter, with a quick word raised in tone, not in anger or frustration, but in simple factual need. For no quiet word would pass the door of his chamber.
A legionnaire opened the door and entered. Melkor got up from his seat and turned to him.
The marine was clad in the midnight plate of the eighth, as it was expected. What was unexpected was that his helmet was holstered on his hip, making his face clear for Melkor to see. That was unusual. The face was pale as snow, like all sons of Curze and Corax, his eyes were dark inks of orbs with a infinitesimally small streak of white at its edges, as if the pupil had been enlarge to such a degree it took precedence over anything else in the eye socket. It was a clean face, devoid of scars or wounds, the face that one could expect from a new recruit, but it was as if it had been carved out of granite with all the seriousness that it possessed. That made it clear beyond that it was not a recruit´s face. It was a veteran´s.
Melkor looked at his right pauldron. He did not need to see more after reading the gothic script on it.
"What can I do for you, Equerry Shang?" The mortal´s voice was tempered, even. He had talked to Primarchs, and while an Astartes could and would still scare him shitless should the legionnaire in question desire such to happen, especially if it was one of the eighth, he was far more accustomed to deal with the trans-human that many, many mortals.
"What have you done to the Primarch?" he said, closing the door behind him. The voice a deadly whisper cutting through Melkor´s ease. His face cracked with confusion. As if the meaning had been lost to him.
"What are you talking about?" The mortal asked, shutting the cogitator and devoting all of his attention to the Equerry.
"Melkor," he said, making far more than clear that the Equerry had not come to play games. "What did you do to the Primarch?"
"You mean the change of attitude in Konrad?" Melkor asked, and he received a simple nod. The fanged teeth of the equerry barely visible, as if anger seeped from Shang at the lack of honorifics terms used by the mortal. Still he tolerated if barely, the fangs coming out being his only unspoken warning.
"Your Primarch is a tormented soul. I did nothing to him than remind him of what he lost. His humanity. His ability to see beyond the worse future with his visions. To help him come to terms that he is a monster"
"He is no monster," Shang protested. "He is our Primarch, a son of the Emperor. He is no monster." Melkor simply raised his arms as if defending himself from an accusation.
"He called himself a monster, not I. I simply helped him move forward."
"You mean to tell me a son of the Emperor needed the help of a mortal? You mean to tell me my father is weak?!" Shang´s voice had been barely raised but its outrange was more than clear.
Melkor flinched. His skin crawled with the Equerry´s emotion. He nodded in denial. "It is an act of great character to admit one's shortcomings." Melkor said trying to sound as calm as he could. "He thinks himself a monster and-"
"Then why has he given you a compliance?" Shang quickly cut in, and the mortal did not notice until midway through the next sentence.
"He has had troubles coming to terms with… What!" Melkor stopped midway through his sentence, as if only now the Equerry´s words had been processed. "Since when do I have a compliance to do? I'm no general. Wait what?"
Shang seemed confused by Melkor's lack of knowledge, hadn't he been debriefed yet?
"Who has your father told this to?" He asked. His mind was churning, Shang could see behind the mortal´s emerald-hazel eyes so alien to Nostramo, as if he was preparing for what would come. No. As if he was thinking about what would happen, planning his next moves, strategizing as the regicide board had flipped upside down from his previous point. He remained unmoving for a few seconds, his mind whirling, and then a grin fell on his face. His mind had finished processing.
"Only me as of now." Shang's words seemed cautious, as if the granite had slightly shattered as he realized that in truth Melkor was just a mortal who had found its way to his father by being a therapist… Or so he said. In truth, granite was as impervious as before. He cared about his father, more than anything else. Perhaps that was why his neck felt tighter. Because this mortal had cracked the shell he had seen his father create around himself.
Konrad Curze had slowly isolated himself more and more as the crusade went on. At first the Emperor, then the brothers he had. Horus was the first, then was Dorn, then, then were the hypocrites who decried the Legion. The last was Fulgrim, he had been the first to see Curze, to try and be a brother to Curze, a brother he never had. A part of the family he had never known, and last to take his isolation. That had been the start.
Soon it passed to the Legion he commanded. From the young scouts he once saw from afar as they took their first full battleplate and joined the legion, to the companies and finally even from his command staff. Some of it was simply due to the nature of the great crusade. He couldn't be everywhere. But he had known that soon only Sevetarion and he would be the ones sharing long words with the Primarch. The shell was so complete he thought it would be hardly possible to crack it. A shell so complete it would be hard too… The thought… It was not a thought he wished to have.
"I do not want it." Melkor said, bridging, unknowingly, the Equerry back from the depths of his mind. "I will talk to your father. You, or the First Captain should take command if he wishes to leave."
Shang´s hand tightened in a fist. "He wants you to lead it."
"I will talk to him. I am unworthy of such a task. I am afraid I will fail." Melkor said… He said and as he spoke Shang heard the lie. It was hardly difficult to see through the lie, even a child on Nostramo would lie better than this mortal. It was such a bad lie that Shang more than clearly understood what he in truth meant. He did not think himself unworthy of the honor. He thought himself incapable of it. That was different than he expected.
"I'm going to talk with the Primarch," the mortal continued, picking something more acceptable to be outside of his chamber, a cloak of midnight blue silk and silver trim, and he left. His movements were fluid, almost absent mindedly as he passed through the Equerry. As if he was going to fall as he took a slightly wrong step only for his body to unconsciously compensate.
Slightly imperfect motor function, yet still in an acceptable state. Something so utterly human, that at a first glance without any more context it would be hard to imagine this mortal could sway a primarch and crack the Nighthaunter´s shell to this degree.
Something rose in Shang´s chest. Like a simmering state of unexplainable anger. No, jealousy most likely. This mortal had done what he should have. As Equerry, as the legionnaire with the most contact with his father. The legionnaire who knew how much his Lord suffered compared to everyone else. Yet he had done nothing, while this mortal. This human, who came out of nowhere, had done it, a mortal with no ties to his Lord, and he had done it.
He wanted to hate him, but he couldn't. There was only one thing he could feel to the mortal after his words, after he finally deigned to come and talk to him, and he did not know how to feel about that emotion. Still the words of his lord spoken when he had awakened, still made him shivered. They were so alien to his mouth. It was as if witnessing something unexplainable. It was so alien, yet so utterly Curze. So utterly the Nighthaunter.
Shang did not follow the mortal, he knew very well that when his father made up his mind, few things, and that means very few things could make him change. Instead out of curiosity on the mortal itself he opened up the cogitator and turned his gaze to the piece of paper beside it.
After some excruciatingly long moments, the machine lit up with a soft hum, its simple password bypassed through Shang´s armor network. He moved around the cogitator´s interface thanks to the helmet and the interface integrated in the Astartes battle plate, and then he finally opened the last viewed document.
It was a simple writing document, with its file unnamed, as if such a thing was too bothersome to do. When it opened, Shang was met by a most curious title.
A Short History of Fear in War.*
"You can't do this to me." Melkor said to the Nighthaunter. "You can´t give me compliance to achieve. I'm just a mortal, I have no military education and I am barely tolerated by your Legionnaires."
Sevetar did not move, he was beside his Lord in his powered armor. In his mind he wondered how he had spared the damned mortal. He was pitiful and yet he seemed to have caught his father's eye, even gained his trust. He hardly cared about that. What he cared about was why was the Nighthhaunter forcing this mortal, who barely passed by as an interrogator, to achieve compliance while he was away.
The room was seemingly brightly lit for Nostraman´s eyes, the blue bulbs shining without flickering for what seemed the first time when Melkor and Konrad Curze stood in the same room. Something the only one of these two noticed.
Curze seemend unmoved by his words, as if it was not the first time he had heard them. He put his unarmoured palm on the mortal´s shoulder.
"I judged you worthy of it. Capable of it." Curze said, his words like a whisper in the wind, yet they still hit the mortal with the force of a thunderbolt. "You will not fail me." His lips held a soft almost imperceptible smile.
Melkor´s heart skipped a beat. He felt something, he felt the same thing, no, a slightly different thing that he had felt the first time he had been bombarded with the strength and feeling of the Nighthaunter´s presence. It was more than just fearful loyalty. This time, it was trust, confidence, and fear to disappoint. Melkor gulped and nodded slightly.
"Sev," Curze turned to his First Captain, his face unreadable so as to not betray any emotion. "Keep the Legion together while I am away." Even then, by his tone Melkor knew there was pain. Curze always put on a strong face when with his sons, a mask that was hardly ever broken with one of the Legionnaires. Only Shang had ever seen the pain behind that mask, and even then, he saw it as rarely as his Lord wished. Melkor had seen more of that pain than Sevetar, than the Primarch´s Equerry. He had seen it before, and he saw the cracks even now, but there were fewer.
The Night Lords legion was hardly a legion in truth. It was a poisoned body. A legion whose Primarch had its loyalty not out of the love or geneforge loyalty all others had. Instead it was a legion that respected its Lord simply because they respected its first captain. The first company would scatter to the wind as an operational unit if ever Sevetarion vanished, their unity on the battlefield disappearing, and that was the first company. What would happen if Sevatar ever died. The Legion would still exist, the captains too afraid to step out of Curze´s sight, to have the Nigthhaunter´s retribution at the back of their neck, but as soon as that threat vanished. They were more likely to scatter to the wind than keep themselves together.
The Lord of Nostramo disappeared, like a shadow under the moonlight of the bulb´s now flickering with uncertainty for a few moments before it returned to what it was before, leaving only the Voice of the Maddened son, and the Legion´s first captain together.
The first captain eyed the man, the mortal who had gained a demi-god´s trust, a man he could have killed a quarter of a decade ago. How this mortal had achieved it was something he could not understand. He was a weakling fool, and still he had obtained a level of trust with their father that no one, besides perhaps the Phoenician had achieved. It was something he did not understand.
Melkor turned to the captain, unsure how to address the first captain on an official level and not the begging he had been when he first met the warrior that headbutted Sigismund into a draw. In the end he simply spared the words from leaving his mind. He had to think, to study, to seek council, and he would have to plan. The only thing possible keeping him from failing was the First Captain´s support and perhaps the Equerry´s words. He knew the thirteenth company would listen to his words at least. Perhaps he should lean on Naraka, the
Bloodless. He had obtained the epithet while he was out. It was a good epithet.
It would be good to return to the vessel of the thirteenth company, he did quite like his quarters there. The thirteenth was by far the company most used to him, besides the tenth. The Atramentar did not know him, they did not care about him. The Contekar barely looked at him, prideful bunch they were. A thought came to Melkor's mind. Why did Shang not command the Contekar? That formation was made by the noble recruits from Nostramo, those who were nobles and were not scum, so why did Shang not command them?
He held the thought prisoner for later, to ask the Equerry at another time.
Fear and war have always been bound together in a relationship as old as time itself. The Equerry read, from Melkor´s cogitator. The green illumination that contrasted sharply with the blackness of its screen. He gazed at the papers and understood it to be not the maps he knew he had drafted before, but rather drafts on how to explain fear on the battlefield. Something Shang knew intimately, for he was a Night Lord, a bringer of Terror.
It is no wonder then that of all facets of war the Primarchs have chosen to master there would be one that would make the choice of fear. Of the savage unmitigated truth against the noble veneer that covers the other ways.
Conflict has always been something that humanity has done. In that, fear is a tool. Both for compliance and to control a battlefield.
In
A sound arrested him, the paces of a mortal filled with urgency, he shut the cogitator down. There was no point in being found being far more curious than he should. He moved out of the room, closing the door so as to not be so obvious that he had remained.
When the mortal finally could see him, half a minute after Shang had seen him in the distance, in the corridor´s dark pathways, he paid no mind to Shang´s presence. No immediate thought, no immediate reaction. Nothing, but he knew, from the way he looked at him with his green eyes, that there was a question in his mind.
Perhaps he simply did not know how to bring it up. How to talk to the Equerry. If he wasn't without his helmet, perhaps a soft smile would have crept on his face. It did not. He moved away from the door, allowing the mortal to open it without being stared down by the Astartes and then Shang went on his way, he had a company to prepare.
The light flickered in the darkness barely litting the walkway besides the road. Wheeled vehicle traversed it with the commonality of a late day´s traffic. She walked beneath the dimly lit road´s lamppost. The light was a blue shimmer in the oppressive darkness of her home, of this sunless planet. She put her hand on the pocket of her slightly disheveled clothes. She had owned this piece for nearly 20 years, gifted to her by her mother when she reached adulthood. It was the finest piece she had, and it was patched up in nearly every place. She took a small metallic key out of the pocket. She passed her thin silver hand, pale like snow over the battered door. It was an old door, repaired over the years of her mother´s life and most likely her grandmother´s short life.
Her hand touched the first key hole. She put the key there, and twisted it with a delicate strength. She repeated the gesture seven other times.
Once the door opened. She was bombarded by the smell of boiling water, of cooking pasta and of grilling meat. She smiled.
"Hello mama," a little creature ran towards her, with her arms opened. It had the same soft black hair as her and the face, and it was her pride and joy. The little creature lunged at her seeking a hug. She grabbed him and reciprocated the hug.
She put her things down after that and went to the kitchen. Someone was there, cooking dinner. They greeted each other with a hug. Things had been steadily going down for years now. Both knew that. There had been shootings a few weeks ago. A month ago, someone had extorted a shop they knew.
Neither spoke about that as they ate their meal, It was not a topic for a 4 year old child. The dinner was great. Rat meat cooked to perfection. He was really a great cook, she had landed on a good partner, somehow in this sunless world.
It started raining, the small quietness of its absence reminding them how truly cruel this world was, reminding them of the fans that were kept on 24/7 so that the world did not drown in the pollution of its adamantine mining industry that it had gathered over the ages.
"It will only get worse." He said as they cuddled together stroking her long dark hair.
She sighed, looking at the ceiling before answering. It was winter, it was cold, but together it wasn't as dark, as frigid. There was still some hope for their life to turn around. They had to have faith. Faith beyond the screams of flayed children being broadcasted over the vox or the haphazard work of the law enforcing branch of their regent council.
"This morning, I saw another graffiti on the wall." She said in almost a whisper.
"Hmm. What about it?" He asked absentmindedly. She knew he had his eyes closed already. He was a deep sleeper, as much as there is a deep sleeper amongst Nostramo´s populace, she was not.
"It was the legion´s insignia, the bat winged skull. They want him back." She replied. Her eyelids started to feel heavy. "I want him back."
"It has been almost a century," he said. "He won't come back. That's why things are returning to what they were during your grandmother´s time. He was harsh with everyone when he ruled from the hive spire. He was harsh but fair. But now he isn't there. He isn't here, and he won't come back."
"He will come back and fix everything. He saved grandmother once, in her youth. She saw him. He stopped two boys from-" she stopped speaking. He knew the story, even if he didn't believe her.
"His sons don't do anything. He won't," he said. She turned to argue, but he snored. He had fallen asleep already. A small sad tired smile creeped on her face.
"See you next morning," she said, and she went to sleep as well. She closed her eyelids and pushed the thin sheet they used as a blanket up, to shield them from the nightly breeze that came from their disheveled window.
On the outside black birds cawed, like a murder of crows as if heralding Nostramo's own doom.
Someone walked in the darkness of the Nightfall, Someone reached for the standard imperial port. Someone accessed the entangled circuits of the flagship. Someone put a mechanical data stealer in the port. It tried to siphon the data from somewhere forbidden. Somewhere few had even access to.
On the screen he possessed, to see the download and bypass any security protocol, Someone saw a flare of information sprint over it.
Name - Melkor
Birthworld - Nostramo
Recruitment process - Codex Praeteritionis.
The code was so lengthy and complicated he could not understand it, there was no apparent pattern. Crafted with symbols unknown to him, date, letters, runes of Nostraman and other, older, intertwined with numbers and letters from gothic low and high and even the Mechanicum binary.
It was as beautiful as it was complicated. Someone´s elevated mind could only appreciate it. Like a regular mortal appreciating an infinitely beautiful painting with no idea how it had even been made. That was the code, a code he would never be able to replicate. A code so unique no one, save its owner, his Lord and the Emperor himself perhaps could overcome and understand it.
Induction - Mortalis Protocol.
Regular induction for mortal servants. A lie, Someone knew that much. Just as Nostramo´s. This head of the great beast had seen the man with the name, from afar. He was no Nostraman. There was no possibility he was. From his skin being far tanner than any native from that sunless world, his eyes being as regular as a man from Terra. His pupils were neither of dark inky color nor enlarged. He was not from Nostramo, and he was sure that he had not passed through the regular induction protocol, nor even perhaps sworn oaths to the Imperium and the Emperor if he swore any at all.
Biometric Data -
The man´s file was as different as Terra is to Mars. Several divergences from the mortal human genecode beyond the tolerable or expected point, but not in an inhuman way. It was not the abhuman strand of divergence... No, not divergence. The comparative data appeared on the screen. There were far too many similarities with far different human genomes in the Imperium, each from different sections of the DNA strand of the Imperium, there were things that had never appeared except in damaged parts half repaired through humanity's ability to adapt to its environment on a biological level. Here they were complete.
He was a unique specimen. For all intents and purposes the first human, in relation to the Imperium´s Citizens. "Fascinating." Someone whispered to himself.
Service Record - Interrogator
Interesting start of career, for someone that clearly possessed a benefactor inside the legion. For the eighth, the legion Someone had been in for so many years, hiding his pale turquoise colors beneath the veneer in midnight clad, it was strange. The legion hardly ever needed an interrogator.
The rest of the list was broken, as if it had either been deleted or so secure through a protocol that not even he would be able to break in an acceptable time. If he could, that is.
Someone heard long and heavy footsteps approaching. Someone decoupled his program from the databanks and sent them to the void between the stars, using a specific protocol to reach its intended destination, to reach his Lord. Someone turned away from the port, to leave this secluded hidden section of the Glorianna class warship. Yet he could not.
Someone blocked his passage. Someone barred Someone´s passage. A man taller than him, far taller than him, that gazed at him with piercing black eyes. His skin was like snow. Someone gulped, he had been found, and by the eighth Primarch no less.
Curze grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up.
"I'm tired of rooting you out. I can smell you far more easily than you think." He said in High Gothic, anger clear in his tone just like the Nostraman accent in his voice. "Alpharius should learn to stop testing my patience."
Someone felt his breathing turn hard, his twin hearts pounding in confusion and fear. Still his armor was the midnight clad battleplate. It was, until it was not. He had been close to being found before, but he had never imagined the volatile Primarch´s presence would feel like this.
"Any confession to make, Son of the Hydra? The Primarch´s gaze was thunderous, like a storm barely held back by the smallest act of understanding at his brother´s game or function. Heavy, thunderous and piercing, as if his own heart, his soul being laid bare.
In the end. Curze snapped his neck, he did not speak after all he was but one of the beast´s many heads. His turquoise armor, filled with his legion´s technology to blend in falling to the floor, its true iconography being displayed to the true master of this vessel.
Still someone, in the deepest part of the galactic void, in time would receive a report. A smile creeping on his face at the mystery before his table.
The Nighthaunter sneered. He had allowed Alpharius´s little sons to do as they wished in his ship. That would end now. It was his ship and his alone. It hadn't been hard to notice something wrong in those "sons" of his. Nor had it been difficult to understand their game. He had just allowed it. Whatever Alpharius was doing he did not know, no one knew, but he knew full well that he was not going to be dragged into his game without knowing.
He wouldn't tolerate his interference any longer, no matter how subtle it was.