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[h3]A Land Far From Anywhere[/h3]
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From a distance, the fortress rose from the wasteland like a mirage. Its walls were thick and sloped, built from sun-baked brick scavenged from the bones of old cities and glazed in patches of turquoise and lapis, their colours muted by dust but still defiant. Minarets crowned the corners, not for prayer but as watchtowers, their balconies the domain of watchful guards rather than philosophers and priests of old. The irradiated desert bent around it: dunes broke against the outer ramparts, and the wind sang through carved calligraphy praising endurance, dominion, and the mercy of shelter.

A dry moat encircled the stronghold, choked with shattered concrete and the husks of dead machines, funnelling attackers into narrow kill-paths watched by hidden embrasures. Heavy gates of layered steel and cedar stood beneath pointed arches. Above them, tiles formed geometric stars and interlocking vines, each shard carefully placed. The gates were rarely opened; expected visitors passed through smaller posterns masked by hanging rugs and mirrored screens that distorted silhouettes.

Within the walls, the fortress unfolded as a city-palace. Courtyards bloomed with stubborn gardens fed by underground cisterns, where water trickled through qanats dug deep into forgotten aquifers. Date palms and fig trees grew beside solar arrays framed like ornamental lattices. Guards in layered silks and elaborate armour moved silently through shaded arcades, their curved blades etched with verses promising swift judgment. Every corridor bent and doubled back, designed to disorient intruders while guiding residents by scent—incense, oil, and warm stone. It was both an homage and a mockery to the courts that had come before it. Culture itself a tribute paid to the conqueror who had smashed aside superstition and mysticism in the name of his master’s code of reason.

At the heart of the fortress stood a domed sanctuary clad in gold-leafed panels salvaged from relics of ancient Terra. By day, it reflected the merciless sun; by night, it glowed with soft internal light, a beacon of controlled splendour in a dead world. From its high terrace, the ruler could survey the wasteland in all directions. an ocean of ash and ruin. There were parts of this world that could perhaps one day be healed, but this small citadel welcomed the isolation the vast emptiness provided.

There was a sombre mood about this private court, at odds with its usual sense of cheer. A time that all had foreseen but none had wished for approached. The usual vigour with which good humour pushed back against the dark realities of the world had become subdued.

Aristagoras, he-who-bears-the-names-of-the-conquered, regarded the vast painting before him with a tone of contemplation. The visage was that of a woman in semi-abstract. The only evidence that she had existed, yet even still distorted from recognition into a word of representative art. When he looked upon it, however, he saw her smile as it had truly been.

“I wish I recalled her, as you do.” The feminine voice, laced with a sad bitterness, snapped him out of his contemplations. He turned to face the one main reason he could never forget the face on the wall, for he beheld the mirror of it as he did.
“We were forged to be guardians and assassins both; it would do poorly for us to ever forget a target.” The Emperor’s Second Blade spoke with a sad smile. It was not often he addressed the very clinical nature of his origin, and such only caused the scowl on the woman’s features to deepen. Not at him, but at the truth of his words.

“You know well enough that whatever gene-sorcery was used to form you and your brethren is different in you.” The woman’s words were softer than her expression. An untrained eye might consider her of similar origin to him, to the female guardians of the Emperor. She was only a little shorter than Aristagoras, her form also holding the inherent strength and danger of the talons of the Emperor. Despite anyone with any thorough knowledge of the Custodians, the Thunder Warriors or even the newer Astartes wouldn’t take long to understand she was different. In many ways she was too human, a softness to her frame and a character to her eyes that gave away that she was grown and raised, not chiseled and forged for war.

“That has cost you everything. Cost us her.” The olive skinned giant motioned his hand towards the painting, of the face that even in abstract haunted his dreams and waking thoughts. The last daughter of Memphos that had been taken as spoils, yet became the joy he was never meant to feel.

“No, [i]he [/i]cost you that. It is the potter who is at fault, not the vase, when it is forged crooked.” Those eyes, without the predatory glean that marked out every Custodian as a killer masquerading as a human, held very little else but the same righteous anger as they met his own. Bearing the burning gaze of the Butcher of Shangri-Laren with as much ease as any had ever done so.

“You think I am of ill-make now?” A humoured deflection, but it worked for a moment, a slight laugh gracing the dark tan of her lips as she shook her head in frustration.

“I think it is cruel to demand of you things beyond your nature, when it is your nature that makes you his Second Blade. You speak often in the flaws of your making, but what if it is that making which made you the greatest of his warriors.” Pride ran through her words, but not for herself, for the giant she now spoke to in what could be their final conversation.

“I am sure Constantin might challenge the bias of your assessment there, little viper.” The First and Second blade had known each other for as long as any being could claim to familiarity with the pair, but that did not mean there was familiarity in their bond. The first and second forged, one with too few deviations, one with too many. Yet both knew the call in their blood was the greatest cause they could ever hope to fight for.

She shrugged as she approached him, taking his hands in her own with a gentle squeeze. “A man who fights without the flames of passion cannot hope to withstand the inferno.” He did not encourage her boasting of him, but still, there was some pride to her surety. Pride that faded when her expression turned sorrowful once more.

“You do not have to go, you have given him the world.” She did not vocalise what they both knew. There was little and less place for the more experimental of the Master’s creations in the world, the galaxy, he was building. If Aristagoras was, finally, called to the front once more, it was likely a journey he would not return from. This isolated oasis of the old ways could no longer survive the force of the Master’s vision.

“I must, for all that I am different, in this way I am not. I am called. I will answer.”