Emmaline-with-false-modesty and I walked as quietly as we could with Demick, keeping our eyes peeled for any movement or noise that was out of the ordinary. It was no small task, considering the jungle itself was filled with the noises of strange beasts and the rustling of endless ferns and undergrowth beneath the canopy. I had my sidearm out, though only to keep up appearances. Much like this dreamscape, my autopistol was not real, nor was any danger in the merc's memory. My Emmaline did her best to hide her disgust and lack of enthusiasm slinking behind us. Demick sneezed loudly, and I could tell he seemed absolutely horrified at the notion. For a brief moment I wondered what problem it could cause, considering the screeching of bugs and the distant hooting of unknown fauna. But I was quickly reminded of my own upbringing on Demaratus. The long summers and the beasts that had become specialized at hunting men. Even if that weren't the case, a sneeze was a strange noise, unlike the repeated calls. It would draw curiosity if nothing else. Still, after a few tense moments, it seemed like nothing would happen. Demick began to move forward again, taking a few careful steps. Like a shot the jungle came alive as a tall, lanky avian humanoid screamed like the birth of slannesh and leaped at Demick with an uncontrollable barbarity. Demick cried out in fear, and only by the emperor's own luck did he manage to throw himself out of the way of a ceremonial club that would have broken his head in three pieces. I recognized the thing. It was a Kroot, one of the indentured servants to the Tau Empire. I was not of the Ordo Xenos, but I knew enough to realize I would expect Demick to be dead and consumed had we not seen him at the party mere hours before. The Kroot broke a sapling in two and whirled around with movement somehow both sinuous and weighted. I watched as Demick crawled along the ground, before uncovering a fern to find the red light of a proximity mine flashing. "FRAK! Get out of here!" He warned us, and scrambled to his feet as the Kroot loped after him. Demick got eight feet from the mine before it detonated, right between the stick-like legs of the xenos warrior. I flinched and reached for Emmaline out of instinct, and she did the same as the bloody shrapnel of the Kroot was flung across the reeds. Demick had been thrown half a dozen meters before a tree stopped his flight just as suddenly as it had begun. He hit the ground, and the scene began to waver. I held Emmaline protectively. "Are you alright?" I asked Emmaline-with-false-modesty, turning to her. She seemed somewhat startled, but played it off. "Nothing I haven't seen before," she remarked, and looked at me. Our gazes lingered at one another, but then I felt something odd. Something intrusive, but not wholly uncomfortable. There was a pressure, before Emmaline's blue eyes swallowed me up and there was a- [b][i]FLASH[/i][/b] [i]I was in the Tiddusdowns, chasing my boyhood friends through the gullies. We were six and seven, mostly. I forgot which I was at the time. My brother Marius was waiting for me, tumbling down the leaf covered decline and cutting me off. I skidded to a stop and scrambled up the slope as both parties of my friends turned to pursue, desperately trying to tag me, before I heard a deep roar emanating from the woods. I turned in time to see my friends stop cold and gaze at the saplings that bended- [/i] [b][i]FLASH[/i][/b] [i]I was thirteen, dancing with my classmates at the spring equinox scholam ball. Parents and teachers had joined us, the auditorium a whirlwind of movement and the sound of clapping feet. On Demaratus, you lived as if you were going to die young, and the youth had to learn how to live just in case. A girl named Chandra danced with me. My best friend Galanand retired to go hang out with some of the boys out back. I did not go, I wanted to keep dancing, until Chandra left and I followed. Thunder rolled in the distance, as we- [/i] [i][b]FLASH[/b][/i] [i]I fired seven shots, my firearm still too loud in my ears. Kronus watched with speculative expectation, hands behind his back. I was sixteen. I reloaded clumsily, nearly firing at the floor. Kronus took my autogun from me and gave me an anecdote of a Krieg trooper who had killed his own comrade during the invasion of Armageddon, and was left to hang along the walls as an Ork invader. I nodded, my eye still smarting from our sparring session not an hour ago. I was hungry, but I would not admit it. I needed to piss, but if I said so I would come back to a relentless challenge. The last had been two buckets of scalding water balanced on my hands as I ascended the stairway of the Indomitable.[/i] [i][b]FLASH[/b][/i] [i]Lazarus tinkered with the Salamander, explaining in detail every different model and useage of this particular chassis known in the Imperial records. He noticed after recollection thirty two that I had begun to drift off, and warned me I could lose my rank as interrogator if I was not duly focused. I was seventeen. I helped him, watching him rerout the power cables to increase the engine efficiency. Afterwards he allowed me to eat as he began to tell me of his days in service to the Omnissiah. I drifted off every once in awhile, but his metallic chuckling of a small anecdote always brought me ba-[/i] [b][i]FLASH[/i][/b] [i]Nineteen years old. Last year I had killed my first heretic. Kronus had finished teaching me on how to ritually banish a low-level warp entity with a small incantation, and I was restless. I was an avid reader, but that night I could not concentrate. I found Selencia in the hallway, and we spoke for awhile. She was a handful of years older, intelligent, attractive. She looked at me in a way I was not used to, but I enjoyed it. I had never kissed a woman before. That night was my first, and more. We never spoke of it to anyone.[/i] [b][i]FLASH[/i][/b] [i]I was twenty five. Kronus had trusted me on a third assignment as he conducted business in the Ultima Segmentum. With my sanctified relic and a few well placed shots, I had ruined an underhive daemon worshiper's ritual. His lips cut off, he wore a necklace made of sewn tongues and the canines of children. He screamed in frustration at my as of yet unused name of Blasius Deckard, before the maelstrom of warp energies flowing out of the desecrated sacrificial circle. I will never forget aiming at his head, only to watch the hands of the warp reach out, and bore witness to his soul being ripped out of his body so violently I was stunned. The maelstrom had consumed him, and his fallen husk hit the floor as his mutants scrambled away. I knelt down to check the pulse of a hostage. She was dead- [/i] [i][b]FLASH [/b][/i] [i]I wept over Kronus's body, having killed those responsible, and yet knowing it could not bring him back. For the first time, I had considered dabbling with warp treachery. Surely the end justified the means? Surely a man as stalwart as him could benefit the Imperium for another century. Why did the Emperor take our best, and leave only me?[/i] [i][b]FLASH[/b][/i] [i]Brother Bracchus and I had killed the cultists, and I held my gun in the face of a naked courtesan. She was blonde, blue eyed, and scared. But I felt I detected more. Something- [/i] [i][b]FLASH[/b][/i] [i]She was brilliant, beautiful, but unorthodox. She tripped but kept crawling. She laughed when she shouldn't. She drank too much. I helped her to her room after eating and dancing with her. Maybe I should recruit her myself. She did have some talent.[/i] [b][i]FLASH[/i][/b] [i]We kissed under the moonlight, our dancing and banter unmatched. Her lips were soft, her sighs were intoxicating. Even the longlas that nearly took our heads did not ruin the realization I was infatuated. She was what I wanted, what I still want.[/i] [i][b]FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH FLASH[/b][/i] [i]I held her injured form more times than I could remember, under fire from the soulless necrons, pinned down during a chaos raid, hiding behind flimsy material cover as immaterial daemons rampaged in our direction. Each time she looked up at me, and she felt self. And I felt whole. I was shot, but she cried my name, and cared for me. Willing to risk her immortal soul to keep me alive. We faced a chaos marine, and killed my dark mirror, Tertius Vorn. We made it back to Pacitus. I wanted to keep it a secret. I wanted to ask her to-[/i] [i][b]FLASH[/b][/i] Emmaline and I found ourselves in gloom, a dank underground room with strategically placed lights, as if the power would cost too much or its consumption would garner too much attention. Demick stood there, or rather he was on a knee with two dozen others as a masked man spoke to them with a commanding tone. Demick had been stitched up, but still held minute burns across his visage. Somehow I knew this was weeks later. The room did not look evident from a hive, it was too civilized. I could not make out the masked man's words. I was too enraged. I looked at Emmaline, who had drawn back from me. She seemed unperturbed, but wary. "What did you just do to me?" "Nothing much," she remarked coyly, but from my eyes she drew back another step. "I did not mean to see all of it. I just wanted a small peek. I"... even her false modesty was breaking as the implications flooded into her, and her sapphire eyes brimmed with tears. "I love you! Well, it's not like I love you, but I... I do! But I didn't mean..." She shook her head and reached for the sapphire choker at her neck, a gift I had given her on Moldar. "The governor of Haephestus was not without his gratitude." The cloaked figure boomed, cutting us off. "The operation was a success. The Talons of the Black Hand appears to be one as well. But now it is time to put you to the test." In the back, men in shadow stood vigilantly. "You will have two days to sup and prepare, before the shuttle will arrive and take you to a Von Hagen vessel. Your destination is Moldar..."