Shadows whipped around Kane’s wrists and ankles, wispy black tendrils as they were. As Kane pushed himself to his feet from his front, an impossibly mighty sight emerged from the darkness before him. A world, shattered, against the backdrop of the void and the colorful, gaping maw of the Cicatrix Maledictum. A trillion, trillion smaller jaws descended upon the broken planet, a Hive Fleet of the Great Devourer. But that was wrong; they did not assail the planet, no, but rather the Blackstone Fortress that orbited it. Kane had learned as many in the Guard had, and knew the foul station for what it was, for its kind had been the instrument through which the Arch-Heretic had broken Cadia. Untold profane energies and weaponry struck out from the orbital Fortress as it defended itself from the hungering swarm, but Kane also noted that which could not be called a weapon; rather, from the Fortress came titanic arcs of witchcraft and foul Warp-manipulation. A powerful sorcerer, surely of the archenemy, was aboard the Fortress.

  INSIGNIFICANT.

  The voice boomed from all around Kane, and thrust him to a defensive squat as he covered his ears in futility. Yet, for all his searching, Kane could not find the source of the voice, and what was more, upon reflection Kane believed the word to be asked in the form of a question, and not a statement. It was at that realization that Kane’s eyes finally found the woman standing before him under the warzone above, her lower legs also hidden from view amidst the shadows below.

  “Are you insignificant?” she asked him, her voice much quieter, softer, and spoken with an accent that carried her words like a dance through the wind.

  “Compared to all this?” Kane scoffed, and stepped nearer to the woman. As he did so, a streak of gold burst out from the Blackstone Fortress, gilded lights clashing with blue flames. Luciene’s power, contested against something within the ancient weapons platform. Whatever warzone was far ahead, it was a fight the likes of which only she could deal with, certainly not Kane. “Compared to her?” Kane added, pointing to the tiny speck of gold amidst a sea of violence. “Yes, I should say I am.”

  “Yes, we are,” the woman agreed, inserting herself into the evaluation. Kane regarded the woman more closely. She was a vision unto herself, beauty an inadequate word to describe her form. Silver eyes glimmered against a face of brass and under a crown of shaven brown hair. One of her arms was augmetic, but the rest of her body below her neckline was hidden away behind a pilot’s bodyglove. “Our kinds are not made for any of this,” the woman declared, and Kane nodded in agreement. “Yet does that not mean that our contributions, if we can make them, are all the more important?”

  “How is a mere man supposed to contribute against forces of that magnitude?” Kane asked, exasperated, pointing toward the swarm.

  “Ishmael Kane,” the woman began, and Kane blinked from the utterance of his full name. “Keep her safe, the angel. Steer her right, as I must save him from himself.”

  “Who from who’s-self?” Kane asked. The woman grinned, and clutched at her chest, over her heart, but otherwise did not answer his question directly.

  Instead, she changed the subject entirely: “Catch.”

  “Catch what?” Kane asked, looking briefly to the black void above him before returning his gaze to the mystery-woman. He then succeeded in catching an augmetic fist to his face, and his view went black for good.

  ***

  Kane awoke with a start in a familiar bed. No more wispy shadows. No more Blackstone Fortress, shattered world, or Hive Fleet. No mystery woman breaking his face in. “What the hell?” Kane muttered to himself, and rested his head in his hands for a few moments. When his stomach growled, he looked up and finally slid himself out from his bedding, standing to his feet and stretching out a bit. Then he decided to put his strange dream behind him and try to find food on Eutophoria.

  As he set out from his room, food found him. “Oop!” Myr cried, walking past Kane’s door the moment he opened it. She was carrying some sort of breakfast on a plate back to her room. “Morning, sleepy,” she greeted him. “Want some?”

  “Uh, what is it?” Kane asked, loosing a yawn in the process.

  “Food,” Myr said dryly.

  “I can smell that,” Kane rolled his eyes, but nevertheless took a handful of it from Myr’s plate and bit into it. Whatever it was, it was not bad.

  Perhaps seeing Kane’s approval of the breakfast, Myr nodded down the hall she had come from. “Kor’Kassan made it. There’s more in the kitchen,” she explained. “You have bed hair. Want me to comb it for you?”

  “I’m good, thanks,” Kane shook his head, and snuck past Myr’s side to head for the kitchen while she continued her journey to eat in her room alone. Kane made his way through the otherwise-empty apartment and into the kitchen, where indeed, Kor’Kassan was cooking up more of whatever it was Kane had had a bite of. Kane nodded to the T’au, who nodded in return, before fixing himself a plate. “Thanks,” Kane said, and Kor’Kassan nodded again, with an added grunt of approval. “Where are the others?”

  “Zaer’s around. Roof, probably, keeping a lookout—which is to say, keeping to himself,” Kor’Kassan explained. “Zet…vanished. Couldn’t tell you where to or when he’ll be back. Perhaps he’s also on the roof, bothering the Eldar,” Kor’Kassan grunted.

  “And Luciene?” Kane asked through a mouthful of food.

  “On walkabout. I imagine she wanted some fresh air and alone time after, you know, dying. She likes strolling the streets, seeing new faces.”

  “I can relate,” Kane said, and Kor’Kassan glanced his way. “Not to the dying part. But I’m fixing for a walk too. You’re welcome to join me.”

  “Appreciate it, but I have work that needs doing here,” Kor’Kassan shrugged. “Invite Nessa if you want company; she so rarely leaves her room, though that has begun to change since you’ve joined our crew. Regardless, I’m sure she’d like to stretch her legs after being cramped in the quarters of Zet’s ship for a few days.”

  In tight red leggings and a loose-in-the-wind crimson leather jacket that covered a black bodice, Nessa Myr only mostly looked the part of her Death Cult background while traipsing about the streets of Eutophoria. For his part, Ishmael Kane looked about as he felt: perfectly ordinary, wearing an unassuming tan field jacket over a sky-blue shirt and sandy cargo pants. The pair left from their apartment without saying much of anything, and continued a ways until Myr pointed out that the silence made for quite the awkward date. “A date? Doesn’t that seem a bit…boyish?” Kane suggested.

  “Is that not what you were asking for?” Myr wondered.

  “And you said yes to that?” Kane said, cheeks reddening, and then he shrugged the possibility off before she answered. “No, I asked if you cared to join me for a walk because…well, so that I didn’t get lost on my walk.”

  “Oh. Well, I’d be happy to be your guide, Ishmael,” Myr told him. If she cared about her not-a-date being as such, she did not evidence her emotions in her tone of voice or choice of words. “Where to?”

  “Well, there’s this bar—”

  “Operated by Cornelius, yes, I know it. Luciene had said that’s where she found you,” Myr nodded, then strode ahead of Kane and turned to face him, then backpedaling. “You’re not a romantic, are you?”

  “No,” Kane said at once, and the flatness of his response urged a laugh from Myr. “You are, though,” Kane observed.

  Myr shrugged and spun on her heels again, away from Kane. “I just like to believe there’s something better than blood amongst the stars. There’s so much darkness and despair, so much pain, and when the pain leaves it fades to stoic numbness. There has to be more than that for us out there, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve never given it much thought,” Kane admitted. “Luciene would argue for some hope out there. But you believe in love?”

  Myr nodded. “Fear is a paralytic, as we discussed when we first met. Hope cures that paralysis. But love is a motivator, a different salve that more acutely counteracts the effects of fear,” she explained, and then glanced over her shoulder to Kane and winked to him. “Unless you’re afraid of love, of course.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “I’m not afraid of love,” Kane growled in response.

  And that was true. And much though the former Death Cult Assassin made him uneasy, Kane could not deny to himself that he found Myr quite attractive. Her amber eyes blazed against the darkness of the rest of her visage, and the tightly-knotted musculature of her body, paired with the tightness of her usual attire, was very easy on Kane’s own eyes. Yet at the thought of love, Kane thought, instead, to the dream he had been punched out of that morning. Of the brass-skinned woman with eyes of glimmering silver.

  “The boy has a crush on someone, methinks,” Myr said, once more backpedaling in front of Kane. “Is it me, I wonder?”

  “Nessa, I—,” Kane started, stammered, and then shook his head dismissively. “You are very pretty. And you’ve been very kind, welcoming, and endearing for me, where I’ve instead reciprocated only some general sense of lost-ness. But I’m not pining for you, no,” he explained, and then feared some form of retaliation. It dawned on him, likewise, that Myr would be able to sniff out his fear.

  Yet no retaliation came. Not immediately, anyways. “Oh how polite and patient you are, Ishmael, despite my best poking and prodding,” she replied, and then loosed what Kane would describe as a giggle, which utterly disarmed him of his fears. She turned away from him again. “What did I call you when Luciene introduced us, but my plaything? So, I play. Somehow, you’ve found the wherewithal to put up with me. I appreciate it, but you needn’t be my lover. I’m sure there’s someone out there for us both, if not each other.” She then looked over her shoulder again, eyes squinting. “Admittedly, however, I don’t imagine Luciene will soon be recruiting another human to her crew. So we’re stuck with each other in that regard.”

  “Well, there’re worse humans to be stuck with,” Kane suggested.

  “Ain’t that the truth? Anyways, here we are,” Myr declared, stopping in her stride to gesture widely to Cornelius’s bar. Kane had not been paying attention to the path taken, and so was a bit taken aback that they had seemingly arrived out of nowhere. “Place seems to be mid-repairs. Something to do with your slaying an Ork, I imagine?”

  “Yeah. Come on,” Kane said, and pushed some newly-installed doors open to step inside the familiar establishment. Myr waited a few moments before following behind him. Neither of them was prepared for what they saw inside.

  “We have company,” Cornelius said to the lone patron at his newly-refurbished and recently-buffed bar.

  “I had said they’d arrive, hadn’t I?” Luciene replied, hands folded over a shot glass that had not been so much as sipped from by the angel.

  “What the—but—,” Kane stammered, slowly approaching the bar.

  Cornelius held his hands up defensively, sensing that Kane might feel a tinge of betrayal. “Now, son, listen—I meant what I had said about this one,” Cornelius urged, and tapped his head to the side, toward Luciene. “We weren’t scheming against you, if that’s what you think. In fact, this is the first and only time I’ve served her anything, and she doesn’t appear to be much of a drinker anyways. But a patron’s a patron…even though the establishment is clearly closed, which is apparently doing nothing to ward you lot off,” he explained, and pointed a hand toward the signage at the front of his bar. “If anything, boy, you have a knack for bringing odd women into my bar. Hello, Nessa.”

  “Hi, Cornelius,” Myr replied, and sat a few seats down from Luciene, eyeing the angel with some curiosity.

  “You two know each other?” Kane frowned, temporarily taking his eyes off the angel in the room.

  “Gotta get my stash from somewhere,” Myr said with a shrug, referring to her magazines. “Why are you here, though?” she asked Luciene.

  “Pretend I’m not, for a moment. You weren’t expecting me, and Ishmael has something he wanted to do here, isn’t that right?” Luciene answered.

  Kane sighed, shook his head, and muttered, “Never an ordinary day anymore.” He then strode up to the bar himself, and drew his piece before placing it on the counter, where he then pushed it toward Cornelius. “Thanks. It…helped. But I don’t need it anymore.”

  Cornelius eyed the stub weapon with gentle curiosity, then noted, “It hasn’t been fired.”

  “I didn’t need that kind of help,” Kane replied.

  Cornelius paused for a moment more, then pushed the piece back toward Kane. “Someday you may. Especially when you keep company like these two,” he said. “`sides, I don’t want it. My gunslinging days are decades behind me. Weapon like that’d blow my own arm off.” With one glance at Cornelius’s face and build, Kane knew every bit of the last two sentences was not true, but he also knew it was true that Cornelius did not want the pistol anymore.

  “Fine,” Kane allowed, and took the weapon back, holstering it on his side. “I guess. Why are you here, then, Luciene?” he asked, and took a seat between the secretive angel and the playful once-assassin.

  “Where do lost souls go but to old Cornelius?” Cornelius asked in the third person. “That’s how you got here, boy. For all her mysticism, sometimes even a…whatever she is needs to be able to talk to a stranger sometimes.”

  “You are far from the first bartender I’ve lamented to,” Luciene smiled to Cornelius.

  “And you are far from the last oddity I’ll have sitting in that seat,” he returned.

  Luciene’s smile widened at his jest, then faded as she looked to each of her human crew members. She then lifted blackened hands in front of herself, holding empty palms for a moment before tensing them into fists. “You two know what I am, now. Yet I still don’t—rather, I don’t know why I am. I have some intuition—I have things I’m very good at, for instance—but from all I’ve studied of myself, I have learned that my existence must be very deliberate. There’s a motive to my life. And I don’t—What?”

  Both Kane and Myr had fallen to shared chuckling, they clearly being in on a joke Luciene was unaware of. When questioned on it, Myr explained, “That’s a very normal feeling to have, Luciene. ‘The meaning of life,’ if there is such a thing, haunts all mankind. You are only human, after all.”

  Am I? Luciene thought, but kept her thoughts to herself while outwardly joining her fellows’ blithe mood. Cornelius did not weigh in, instead stepping a short distance away from the trio to wipe down another part of his newly-installed countertop. Luciene noted he was still within earshot, however. After a handful of artificial laughs which, despite their forcedness, still sufficed to further ease the tension Kane had added to the room upon his arrival, Luciene reflected for a moment. Perhaps, she allowed, her compatriots were right. Perhaps what she was feeling was only human. Yet for all her years, her gut now churned differently, alien, from any discomfort it had produced prior.

  Nevertheless, answers, Luciene realized, would not find her here, and there was no immediate use in probing her compatriots nor Cornelius further. Instead, she pushed the haunting questions aside, and, with a sigh, returned to looking outwardly at the universe, rather than inwardly upon herself. And in the universe, she found two things: One, an unsolved mystery regarding Cornelius, but it was not prudent for her to know his business; Two, a trembling disquietude within Kane, which she felt compelled to ease. Her eyes met his for a moment, after which his previously casual demeanor returned to tension. “You are burdened,” she asserted then.

  “That’s familiar behavior,” Kane noted, the last vestiges of a grin leaving his lips in his reply. “I…you wish to know?” Luciene nodded. “Alright.”

  Kane recounted his dream to his audience with minor haste, and only afterward felt he must have missed something in it, for the dream had not lasted as long to describe as it had been to experience. When he had finished, he turned to face Myr, who had put a hand on his right shoulder. “Hm?”

  “I don’t think you’re insignificant,” Myr said, shaking her head.

  “Nor do I,” Luciene agreed.

  Kane pivoted to face the angel, Myr’s hand falling from his body in the process, and frowned. “Not an unexpected reply, yet rich all the same, from you,” he said.

  “You hold me with some reverence.”

  Kane scoffed. “How could I not? You’re a frigging Living S—,” he began, softly, but still caught himself. Cornelius was nearby. Within earshot of normal conversation, but perhaps not able to hear Kane’s near-release of Luciene’s secret. Their bartender made no immediate reaction to the utterance, so it seemed to the trio that the angel’s secret a secret remained. “You are human, Luciene, you must be. Yet you are far more than any human I know. What you could do…,” he started, but shook his head and did not finish the thought. He was too hopeful to limit himself to his own vocabulary.

  “And what could you do, Ishmael Kane?” she asked. He perked up, like a student not understanding the question posed. “A trillion souls perish throughout the galaxy daily, if not faster. Is there some universal law that dictates that any single one is incapable of greatness? That is not the world I believe I live in. Armies rise and fall daily. Yet here you are with years under your belt. Think of all you have seen in your time, and know that what you have seen, you have overcome. Is the Ishmael Kane that sits aside me now not a legend in his own right?”

  Kane stared at her, owlish, before allowing himself to blink at last when it was clear her proclamation had concluded. “I’m just…ordinary, Luciene,” he said then.

  “Why?”

  I don’t have wings, for one, Kane thought to himself, but wisely kept the thought from leaving his lips this time. “What else could I be?”

  Luciene raised a blackened hand to Kane’s face, and held his head for a moment. He leaned into the grasp, finding himself calmed, at peace, within her subtle radiance. It was, as ever, her effect on people; oh, how she hoped that one day, she would disarm someone not via otherworldly powers, but through some manner of genuine connection. After the brief reverie thereof, Luciene answered Kane, “I know that when the time comes, Ishmael Kane, you will be extraordinary. That is why I found you in the first place. And that time will come, when you leave even me in awe of what you are capable of.” Luciene then lowered her arm to her side again. “Before it does, mayhap I should bug Kor’Kassan for some of his cooking. Care to join me on the journey home?”

  Home, Kane thought, and glanced to Cornelius, who was still cleaning away. He blinked once, hard, and then looked back at Luciene. “Sure, if you wouldn’t mind. Nessa?”

  “That’s Lady Nessa to the likes of you, oh extraordinary one,” she taunted him as she and Luciene rose from their stools.

  ***

  It was minutes more before Cornelius had finished wiping down his new countertop installation. All in all, the post-Orkish cleaning and repairs had done a fine job at improving the quality of his establishment, and he had already managed to serve a trio of customers despite not even being open at the time! Fortuitous signs of the future, to be sure.

  With a sigh, Cornelius dropped the rag he had been using in cleaning into a bin to be washed later, and meandered over to the far edge of his counter. He reached below and found the protrusion therein, where his fingers traced around the edge of the =]I[= shape installed under its lip. He sighed again, and then thumbed the button inward, firm, and without interrupt. “Blessed Emperor,” he muttered to himself, and shook his head in dismay before continuing his prayer.

  “Spare the boy.”