[i]It was cold, so very, very, cold. He had fought in such inhospitable conditions before, they all had, but the nights here froze even Astartes to death inside their armour. Ever since their arrival here is had been nothing but death after death, their own or their enemies, Minosian himself waking from a self-induced comatose state to find two of his brethren dead inside the ramshackle shelter they had constructed from the frigid night.

Slowly he checked his battered and worn armour, remains of blue and white paint still perceptable beneath the thick layer of grime and gore that showed it in the light to be red. It was armour he had worn from Bodt to the walls of the Imperial Palace itself, having never failed him yet, armour he would come to eventually shed himself of in the murky future, for the moment being the only thing that had kept him alive so far.

Groggily he ran his hands over it, over his helmet, his visor picking out his brothers corpses and his helmet the sound of heavy snowfall outside - these he blink-clicked away with a sigh, his blood already warming up in his veins, one large fist closing around the hilt of his chainaxe.

A sudden burst of shouting caused him to get to his feet, not as swiftly as he would have liked but he did so anyway, one finger always hovering over the activation-stud of his weapon as he drew back the tarp covering the doorway.

He could see nothing, but he could hear it... Shouts in the distance, the staggered spurt of flame from an unseen weapon, other voice rising protest and the clash of weapons.

How had the Third attacked so silently? No, they could not have, it was impossible even for them.

"Khârn, what are you doing?!" "You will die for this, Betrayer." "Gods curse you!"

Skalathrax they had called the planet, it was the end of his legion and the end of him as he had been known.[/i]

Inside a chamber aboard [i]The Awoken[/i], where he had been for the last several weeks, the twitching form of Minos Bull-Head sat bolt upright, his body lathered in sweat and the growl of the Nails eating once more at the back of his mind. They were always there after all, always.

Only on the eve of great enterprises - or in his own life of great acts of bloodshed - did such dreams of the past infect his transhuman 'sleep'; betrayals of himself and others, the faces of those he had massacred in the Blood Gods name, old comrades that by rights he should not be able to recall after so long and through so much as he had done.

"Khârn," he grunted through snouted teeth, rolling from the slab that served as his bed, his cloven feet hitting the floor with a thud, that one name spat from his twisted mouth with as much venom now as it ever had been at the time.

It was at that point, as he looked around the room and gave his shaggy head a shake, that he remembered precisely where he was and why - today he was to meet with his 'host' Euromulus Krynne, some sort of big meeting happening in his main lounge.

Minos wished to kill him, of course he did! He would have wished to even before he had sunk into the worship of Khorne as deeply as he had. The fool was a Slaaneshi devotee, as well as a blustering idiot, and had it not been for the promise of death and skulls in time to come - more than just his own and his crews - the corrupted World Eater may have dispatched him already.

As it was he was already moving to keep his date with destiny, his weapons held inactive in either hand, and his foetid breath rising from his mouth as he moved from corridor to corridor and hatch to hatch within the [i]Iconoclast[/i]-class vessel.

When he entered the lounge at long last, having to step over and aside from some sort of rotting gruel lining the passage into the room, he could hardly believe his eyes... It was a circus of extreme proportions.

Maybe it was the scent of potential enemies worth killing, maybe it was his Astartes traning kicking in as it had so many times before, but the very first thing he did as he strode into the room on his oddly jointed legs was assess the threat level of every individual he could see.

A coterie of mortals, unaugmented and weak, two Ogryns of differing forms (one with a very ugly maggot, but what did one expect of Nurgle spawn?), and two Astartes. The first of these he noted had [i]tried[/i] to appear as a member of the Black Legion, in the eyes of Minos at least he had failed, others may be fooled by the strangely plain black and brass but he was not. The second he could barely see, but had heard enough when entering to know not who but [i]what[/i] stood in the shadows.

Minos did not even acknowledge his patron, moving to stand some distance away from any of the others - yet within striking range, should he need it - standing open-legged and tense as a length of taught wire, for this was the only way he could stand.

[i]Enemies,[/i] some voice that was like his own but not his own reminded him, [i]I need enemies.[/i]