My mind did not sense her approach. In fact, at the time, my mind remained quiet since parting ways with Luciene. Cronos had not bothered me; I suspect it was frustrated and disappointed, its plans spoiled. But even then, I knew better than to believe the daemon down and out. I would hear its seething, hissing voice again. But until then, Mirena—her footfalls were heavy and irregular, in contrast to her usual litheness and agility. She was tired. I knew I should have wanted to rise and comfort her, but in the moment, I wanted nothing more than for the corpse ahead of me and in the grasp of my lone arm to be anything other than a corpse. So I remained as I was, prostrated over the lifeless torso of my fallen brother, he and I resting in a crater made of my anguish.

  Mirena slid, uneasy, down the crater’s slope to join me in a hurry, where she wordlessly tackled me into a hug from behind. As I suspected, her breathing was heavy and strained, and not just from her tears, though those did not help. The poor girl was exhausted. Capturing two trained killers—alive—with nothing but a laspistol to her name had bruised and battered her, and then to chase her love—me—across a rocky wasteland had drained her of her remaining vitality. And yet, she was here for me, with me. As ever she was.

  Contrasting her strengths, I was too weak of will, at first, to draw my attention away from Silas’s body, focusing on a corpse rather than a living, breathing friend. Mirena voiced no umbrage therein, if she had any, though even in the moment I was knowingly humiliated by myself. She just held me close, and sobbed alongside me. And so we remained, until the world shook. That, at last, spurred us both to look up from Silas’s body, where we saw the massive, foul Xenos ship belonging to Luciene’s crew rise from the ground and ascend into the skies. An Imperial vessel followed after it—not the Bird, I noticed.

  Mirena observed the same, and on a hoarse voice, stated, “They’re leaving the Bird here. My augmetics still sense it. Cal…” If she had a thought to accompany my name, she did not voice it, but she did turn her gaze back to me.

  “I’m out of my league, Mirena,” I said, as emotionally exhausted as she looked physically. Nevertheless, I at last pulled my one good arm off Silas’s body and wrapped it around hers. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know what to do. It all ends in…this.”

  “Just be, Cal. Just be. With me,” she answered, somehow finding the strength to squeeze at me more tightly. Her body all but glued to mine, she tapped her head forward, resting her forehead against my right temple. Her cool breath, weak as it was, slid down the side of my face and neck, and in that moment, I pictured waves of an ocean, more powerful than we were and more eternal too. I wanted nothing more than to be among such waves with her, then, but instead we remained upon the desolate and deserted orange rocks of Ranéla.

  We stayed there, as one, for a time, two souls lost and alone in the preying cosmos. But we had each other, and in those brief moments, that almost felt like enough. But then, for her sake, I realized I ought to bring her back to the Bird so she could rest and recover. She more than needed it, and well more than deserved it. Part of me wanted to walk there, to think on the journey and elongate the time before I needed to face the reality beyond. Part of me knew I would be teleporting us there, as I knew she could not make the return trip. But it would not have been the first time I turned to profane sorcery to spare her of her end, just as she relied on loving kindness to spare me of mine.

  In any case, before we set out upon whatever destiny lied in wait of us, I returned Silas’s severed arm to him, and used my mind to bury him within the dusty, stone-laden soil of Ranéla. I took his dog tags and helmet with me, and nothing more. There, still, my beloved brother lies, in tranquility undisturbed.

  ***

  Beyond the embrace of the Throne Mechanicum, Galen shifted uneasily aboard the Xenos vessel, helmet in hand. He was no longer the most imposing or destructive entity on the scene, and in fact with Mirena’s abandoning of the retinue, had become the least terrifying Inquisitorial force. Next to Carmichael, who was a monster unlike any other, Galen was just a man. And compared to Trantos, whose words could shatter planets and burn out stars, Galen seemed, to himself, even lesser still.

  Yet despite Galen’s internal discomfort, Kane and Myr continued to look on at him with fearful admiration. Neither the Guardsman nor the Assassin had ever seen a Knight in person, nor had they witnessed a pilot beyond his shell. He was, to them, a wonder. Less of a wonder than an Angel or a mechanized Xenos, granted, but a wonder all the same.

  For those not enraptured by awe or intimidation, however, there was much to discuss. Luciene stood before Zha, towering over the slender but nevertheless stern form of the Inquisitor in charge. Zha’s eyes studied the angel without reprieve, darting every which way across her crimson garments, stygian skin, and golden aura. Bliss, standing behind Zha with a hand gently resting on Zha’s shoulder, likewise studied the Nemesor that flanked Luciene. Its gaze, in turn, focused an impassive glare upon her own visage. Only Kor’Kassan had no opposite, standing next to—and not behind—Luciene, as though an advisor to the angel.

  “So,” Luciene began, breaking a moment of tense silence. “Antonius Sigird?”

  “Really? That’s where you want to begin?” Zha asked dryly, raising an eyebrow.

  “Why not? Seems as good a place as any.”

  “Sigird was a heretic Rogue Trader. Blackgar killed him during my first mission with the Inquisition, some two centuries ago. We impounded and took his vessels for ourselves—made it easy, then, to falsify the identlogs, which seems to have worked to fool you enough to get you to Ranéla,” Zha explained, and then her eyes widened in realization. “I am the last of the Hestian group…,” she muttered, looking downward to the Xenos sigils that coursed in green light beneath her feet.

  “Hestia Majoris,” Bliss clarified, extending a hand in offering the info to everyone else. “The planet where the operation to thwart Sigird’s plans took place. Callant and Mirena, along with Zha, are the last survivors, now that you’ve killed Mr. Hager,” she said, briefly shifting her gaze from Zet to Luciene with an angered squint.

  “I am not happy with the blood that was shed on Ranéla, from your group or from mine,” Luciene said, addressing Bliss but not taking her eyes from Zha.

  “Good. If you were happy about it, I’d break you where you stand,” Bliss hissed. Luciene met her eyes, then, and the two wondered, from opposite ends of the question, whether they could indeed take out the other. Luciene was shocked to learn that a human had bested Zet in single combat, but that human had never fought an angel before. After that brief consideration for a future Luciene did not wish to see realized, she looked back to Zha.

  “You wouldn’t get closer to her than you are now,” Zet warned Bliss in a cold, smooth tone, unafraid of the Assassin before him.

  “Tall talk from the statue I already kneecapped,” Bliss shrugged.

  “Carmichael,” Zha said, and Bliss eased up. Zha’s eyes then met Luciene’s again. “It’s not a stretch to say that our teams may never get along. Your Xenos allies are an affront to the Imperium we are sworn to protect, and you yourself, angel, are an offense to one of our most beloved memories. But, for the sake of understanding the larger picture that so obviously teases us of its existence, I am willing to make an effort to avoid coming to blows with your allies again. I can only hope you and your friends can endeavor the same.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “We shall meet your efforts with our own in kind,” Luciene assured the savant, nodding. Then she glanced to Zet. “We shall, shan’t we?”

  “When Zaer of Biel-Tan, may he rest in peace, first saw me, he thought me a grave threat to your well-being,” Zet noted, straightening his posture. “I strove to prove him wrong. However, this one,” he began, and gestured to Bliss. “She instills in me the same worry I had made for Zaer. Not only is she capable enough to strike me down, but she is embroiled in emotional perturbation that makes her attitude and actions unpredictable.”

  “She can hear you, Xenos,” Bliss snarled.

  “Bliss Carmichael is an Inquisitor like myself,” Zha offered, placing a hand on Bliss's shoulders. “Perhaps that makes her more terrifying. By rights, it should. But she is more than capable of keeping her emotions in check and doing what needs to be done. Isn’t that right?” Zha asked, and met eyes with Bliss. Expecting reassurance, Bliss instead found doubt. Zha knew as well as the rest of their team did that Bliss had once before succumbed to her emotions in the pursuit of Valeran Mortoc. Now, Zha questioned whether Bliss had matured since the events of Jagetri.

  To that, Bliss was only sure of one thing, and looked to Luciene to answer Zha’s question. “I promised my life, and everything I do with it, to Callant Blackgar. He has, vicariously, suggested I follow your lead, angel. I will not betray his wishes,” again, she thought to herself, “not for a petty squabble with a Xenos machine, not for the loss of Silas’s life, and not for the emotional upheaval that is your existence. On penalty of eternal damnation, I do as Callant Blackgar commands. That includes being willing to work with you.”

  “You have a great deal of respect for him,” Luciene asserted.

  “More than anyone in this room can fathom,” Bliss replied.

  “Tell me about him.”

  Bliss and Zha looked to each other. The former shrugged, and the latter turned back to Luciene. “There are certain…elements of Blackgar’s life that are best discussed in private.”

  “Cronos.”

  The Inquisitor pair stiffened up, and Zha looked back to Galen and the two deserter humans that flanked him. The trio had just heard a name none of them would know the meaning of, yet all of them could be hunted and tortured for being privy to. “You know not what you’ve done with that utterance,” Zha grimaced, slowly turning back to face Luciene.

  “There is a neverborn in Blackgar’s mind,” Luciene declared, and that, at last, widened the silent trio’s eyes. “It eats away at him. It wars against his will, strong though that will may be. It is evil, in the most primordial sense, and powerful in the extreme.”

  “Is this so?” Zet asked, turning to Luciene. “The human should be purged then.”

  “Just try it,” Bliss sneered, hands closing into fists.

  “Does she speak the truth?” Galen asked, stepping up to the other side of Zha. “Is there truly a daemon within my friend?”

  “Why do you think he pushed so hard to get you out of his service and into mine?” Zha said, head not joining her eyes in turning to look at him. “Can’t be helped now, can it? Another slight, angel, and one with possibly catastrophic repercussions.”

  “I have faced the daemon. I have fought it, bled from its strikes, and struck out against it in return,” Luciene said, crossing her arms. “Callant Blackgar has a part to play in what’s to come, of that I have no doubt, but the daemon wants me dead and I would like nothing more than to burn it out of existence myself. And should it ever emerge from him, I will do just that. I have no tolerance for evil of that sort, and my heart goes out to Blackgar for having struggled against it for so long. I will right that wrong, but you have to fill me in on what you know if you intend for that to happen.”

  “Cronos is the name of the entity we discovered on Merkala,” Kor’Kassan piped up, leaning forward into the conversation.

  “So, you saw that horror show down there, did you?” Bliss asked.

  “Moments before your lance batteries blew us to hell, yes,” Zet returned.

  Zha bit her lip, then shook her head. “Cronos is a daemon that feasts on self-destruction,” she explained. “Throwing yourself against it in futility will empower it further. It drives everything around it to destroy themselves, steering the populace of Merkala through a madness that toppled its civilization. It tortured Blackgar, and those of us that knew of its existence, with the thoughts and feelings that would destroy us from within. You call it evil, Luciene, but that is too kind. Heretics are evil. The Despoiler is evil. But Cronos is the antithesis of everything that makes life worth living. To draw breath, to laugh, to love, to hope—experiencing these things makes you an enemy of the daemon, and I can think of no fouler thing in the entire cosmos than a being such as that. So if siding with the mockery of Blackgar’s lost love, or with these Xenos that flank you, will bring me even an inch closer to ripping Cronos to shreds, than I am your ally in a heartbeat. Do you understand what you ask about now?”

  Luciene nodded once, slowly, and said, “I think I do, Inquisitor Trantos.”

  “Good. Ending the daemon is the only thing that matters. Everyone in this room is expendable if it meets that cause, myself included,” Bliss replied, then looked to Zet. “But until such a time as our sacrifice would result in Cronos’s end, we can all be useful to each other. Even you, Xenos. As Zha said, if you have in your arsenal something that would make Cronos rue the day it chose to nest in Blackgar’s head, then I will put my life on the line to ensure you strike true at the daemon. That is the only thing that matters.”

  Zet paused, then nodded. “I will begin brainstorming based on the readings I took from Luciene’s first encounter with the daemon.”

  “Please do,” Luciene agreed. “And my apologies for broaching this subject so…”

  “Heretically,” Zha finished the thought.

  “Not my word choice,” Luciene smiled. “I meant no disrespect, but I do not believe in secrecy and subterfuge.”

  “A naively doomed outlook on life,” Bliss grumbled.

  “In any case, while I spoke the daemon’s name, it was not the target of my original question. Please, tell me about Callant Blackgar. The man himself,” Luciene requested.

  “What do you want to know?” Bliss shrugged.

  “Did I love him?”

  Bliss closed her eyes, and Zha and Galen looked to their feet.

  “From that reaction, I loved him quite greatly, didn’t I?”

  Bliss’s eyes opened before either Zha or Galen looked up from the ground, and then she spoke. “He loved you more than anything. And you loved him more than that. It isn’t a stretch to say that you two would have died for one another. In many ways, you both did.”

  “Mmm, it seems that way,” Luciene sighed. “Perhaps I may again.”

  “That might destroy him for good. It’s probably what Cronos wants,” Zha warned.

  “Yes, I imagine so. But if I can trade my second life for Cronos’s, that seems like a worthy exchange,” Luciene admitted. “Blackgar’s eye and arm, how did he lose them?”

  “He lost the arm on Hestia Majoris, fending for himself against Sigird’s private army. You saved him from that, actually, in the final moments, but his arm was unrecoverable. And his eye…,” Zha began, but her voice trailed off. She was, after all, the first to see my head wound when I had initially sustained it, and still the grievousness of it haunted her.

  “He lost the eye fighting a fight I should have been there to assist with. He called down a lance strike on his position to thwart another hellspawn, and the shrapnel from the blast took his eye,” Bliss explained.

  “I wound up killing that hellspawn, though,” Galen—meekly—chimed in.

  “Regardless,” Bliss said, grinning toward Galen, “Blackgar’s call bought time for Galen to arrive, and saved dozens of lives in the process. Blackgar is unafraid to do what must be done, even at great and permanent personal expense, and were it not for the daemon, he would have a perfect track record of exterminating mankind’s enemies.”

  “He sounds like an impressive man,” Luciene agreed. “You love him too.”

  “I…I do, yes,” Bliss admitted, blushing. “More than…yes, I do. I wish he was spared of this nightmare. And if I must spend my soul to see him wake from it, I will do so happily, with a smile on my face.”

  “It is not your soul that must be spent, Bliss Carmichael,” Luciene declared with some certainty. “Though there are trials ahead all the same.”

  “Where do we start?” Bliss asked, sensing the angel had an idea in mind.

  “Where our confrontation began. The agent that connected you to me, who resides on Eutophoria. I must ask, keep the Inquisitorial panoply to a minimum when we arrive,” Luciene insisted.

  “We’ll see about that when we get there,” Zha shrugged. “Which agent was this?”

  “He goes by Cornelius.”