Thanqol

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

The mouth of the Machine God gapes open even though there are no more slaves to feed it.

Its jaws are as unhinged as its scale, hunger as as dead as He on Terra, vast conveyor belts extending out like licking tongues into every wall and facility along the line. You have met daemons today and none of them are as deranged as this combination garbage dump, crematorium and arms foundry. Here all the dead and damaged of the entire fortification sector are to be cast into the pit, tech-barbarians hurling everything they do not know how to fix into the mouth of this hungering volcano god, praying that it vomits back out new munitions. You descend through clouds and rain, catching only glimpses of the vast cyborg skull as it spreads out across the earth for miles in every direction. One of its eye sockets is a major spaceport, one filled with shipbreaking equipment that it might cut apart even slain starships to feed its insatiable hunger.

But no one feeds it. The gears of Empire have stopped. The volcano god has gone out. The cranes and loaders are gently rusting in the rain, servitors sitting peacefully and watching the moss grow upon them. Eternal labour has for the first time been broken by peace.

Before being ended by violence.

You step out into warm summer rain, onto ferrocrete slick with water and huge pools forming around blocked drainage channels. You see many red-robed bodies have been butchered where they sat, priests and servitors broken apart without raising a hand in their own defense. You see, too, that the work of slaughter is not yet done. To kill five hundred thousand diseased magi, labourers and servitors by hand is a task of almost incomprehensible scale. Here and there, servitors go about this bloody business - lobotomized workers in Draupnir blue slowly trundling from victim to victim, crushing heads Martian red with unhurried movements of their servo-claws, before moving silently on.

These are slow, weak, mindless drones, barely cognizant of your arrival - a cleanup crew. Of the true warriors of the Machine Cult there is no sign but for the almost inaudible roll of thunder in the distance where Aedir and his Ruberics have made planetfall.

Breathless Dead

To lift her tear-stained eyes to gaze upon the face of Persephone, Bella must first traverse the infinite cosmic distance of her moon wolf t-shirt.

After all, Ceron is hers. They had always been hers; an army forged in love and lust, bestowed with every blessing their creator could think to give. The success of Doctor Ceron's legacy had always been that she had not built her children with any particular end in mind; she had not made them with controls or a built in society they would always correct back to. She had simply wanted hot wolf muscle mommies to exist and be happy. Though changeable, the moon is a closed and harmonious circle.

(Also worth noticing: underneath that shirt, Persephone is ripped.)

"It's alright," said Persephone. "It's okay."

Her fingernails are dark with dirt, her hands bruised and calloused - unlike the clean gloves of Demeter, her garden fights back. The succulent flower she wears behind her ear was won through the earth through struggle. Her face is thin and creased with many lines, faded golden curls mixed with silver beneath a straw sun hat, her skin tanned dark from sunlight and made strong by lifting children high. Her pockets jangle with jewels - glass and plastic and sequins, magpie-trash that shines all the brighter than vaulted gold.

"Come on, all of you. I have tea brewing. Earth doesn't get visitors very often, and I wouldn't want to offend my sister in law by being a bad host. And along the way, tell me some tales - I don't get out much these days."

*

The Sky Castle comes to a halt. Persephone climbs down the rope ladder, long and hard though it is. Hades stands at the top, frozen in yearning, unable to look away but seeming afraid that she will slip and fall and break her neck. At the bottom she has weather-beaten old grey ute with space enough to fit everyone (though Dyssia will have to sit in the tray at the back). It waits in the soft shade of an oak tree atop a radiant green hill.

As she climbs down, Artemis slowly turns to look at Dolce. "You... thought? You wondered, more than you should... what I prefer?"

She raises a finger sharply to his lips. "Don't think. Don't wonder. Look. Look. It's her lesson, but it's also mine. The brain is just an organ for cooling the blood. Don't listen to it, don't obey it - look. See. Watch. Listen. It is hard. There are tigers in the grass and sheep are prey animals. They camouflage themselves with words and ideologies, they appeal to the brain, appeal to philosophy and language and tricks and justifications. Flags and banners and dynasties and nations and laws and founding myths and religion and race and constitutions and propaganda and money. It takes so many words to justify their crimes, but they'll say those words all day, just like a tiger will wear his stripes all day."

"Compare it to an act of love," said Hera. "Those do not speak at all. They simply are, to the point where talking about them is impossible."

"You've seen it all now, dearie," said Hestia. "You've walked the length of the galaxy. You've seen the worlds above and below. Who was happy? Who prospered? Who suffered? Who made things that way? What emotions were upon their faces? What did you see?"

You have a hill to climb. You don't want to keep Persephone waiting.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

"Hunters," Aedir mutters, looking over the plans. "Snipers. Subtlety. Swords. The seashells want us to choose between perfectly symmetrical violence and perfectly asymmetrical violence. You want to spend my brothers like coin to ease your path so that you can achieve some sort of more interesting victory."

He lets out a deep breath of smoke and grinned. "Well, to hell with you - and to hell with taking it easy. The Blood God has promised me that for every skull I take in this place he'll compensate the Warmaster in kind. So go ahead, go about your schemes as quick as you can, because I will claim this entire world with my own two hands if you're slow."

His silent guardians marched in unison towards the shuttle and he gave a lazy salute, fist banging against his chestplate, walking backwards up the ramp. "Navigator. Got it. Can't promise it'll be any pretty, but you always get what you want - right?"

He disappeared into the darkness of his ship, eyes illuminated only by the ominous fire of his cigar.

Your own ship awaits.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

The deck shakes. The Legion is here.

Rashad Aedir, the Haematic, is the fourth of your company and representative of the Blood God. He was once a sorcerer of the Fifteenth but scorn for his legion's failure set him upon a different path. The thirty Ruberic Marines that stride behind him are painted scarab black and sunset red, and their armour jerks and struggles as the people trapped inside struggle to escape. About his head orbits an eerie halo of kine-knives.

He is not your friend, and has no history with you. You do not know where the Warmaster found him or to what he owes allegiance - the only thing you know for sure is his affinity for his thick, black choking cigars, and his generosity when offering them to you. He offers them now.

"Vael," he says, igniting the flame of his cigar with a snap of his fingers. A blood vessel in his temple breaks and a line of blood runs down his face. "I cannot get a straight answer from anyone about what you think we are supposed to be doing to the Mechanicus down there. Are we fighting them or not?"

[Namespace] of the Rose

Blinded, staggering, stooped over with pain, the Maiden nevertheless dodges your lasers.

You cannot believe it. It's almost like a bad cogitator game. You fire and she's out of the way, fire, gone, fire, fire, fire, each time she languidly kicks, flips and bends like an eel to avoid each shot. Even though she's still rubbing her eyes with scalded hands she's started smiling, fully relaxed, like this is a calming morning dance for her. Her feet sweep and snap into positions, whirling her body around afterwards, barely held by the laws of physical acceleration, and in the beauty of it you can feel the pad of an approaching tiger.

So you change targets and shoot at the Crone. She dodges it too, snapping her spine back ninety degrees with the audible crack of vertebrae. You almost think she's somehow broken her own back with the movement, but no, she's coming around calm as anything, eyes closed, eyebrows furrowed like she's mentally rewriting her schedule for the day.

You realize you're bleeding. She shot you. She's still shooting you. You did not feel any impact, did not so much as see a glimmer of light at the end of that thing pretending to be a lasgun, but there are tiny holes in your armour, clean as if made with a las-scalpel. Luckily your predecessor had the foresight to put her organs in nonstandard locations - but the big one is, in a lesiurely way, bringing up what you now are no longer sure is merely an Astartes bolter and you're out of time. You have a second to try one last, experimental las shot. Despite her plate she dodges it too.

[Electronic Surveillance] None of them are voxing the Astartes for help.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

Lurec!

"Certainly not!" gasped the Raven, five hands touching against a beak-shaped void. "You have travelled all this way. You are my guests. I cannot accept your hospitality when I have so much of my own to offer."

It stepped back, the dance coming apart. As it does the light and dark that it had separated begin to blend together again, and water stains the ankles of the maidens. Tall swamp reeds brush the sides of your command throne, silt and dirt and mosquitoes lap around the bases of the cogitators, and the smell of stagnant water corrupts the air.

The five give final bows, one after another, and then their light dims as possession leaves them.

"Welcome again to my home. Come in peace, go in friendship, and leave behind some of the happiness you bring."

*

All!

The ship has made anchor. The shuttles are loaded, the battle plans are drawn up, and a world awaits below. You have gone your separate ways during the long months of travel but now you are to be committed to each others' presence for perhaps just as many months. Side by side, you see the vast swamp of the Jade Bastion come into view; the spectacular riverbursts where dams collapsed into cities, the lines and lines of fortification, the dark grey shapes of the spaceports and their vast, empty bulk carriers.

You take with you only a few attendants each; the second shuttle carries a unit of thirty Legionnaires; the third some sort of terrible walker device. Trivialities against the might of an entire fortress world - your only real assets are each other.

Black Crusade: Fires In The Garden

Vael!

The thunderhawk... simply doesn't land. In your vision it stays up there indefinitely, engines dark. Hours, weeks - some secret of the Forgeworld keeps it aloft like the Sword of Damocles. And -

because of that it is the sword. Glyphic in the sky, it accumulates meaning, accumulates the force of immanent doom, drawing all of the loss of violence of this world to itself -

Warfare here will be as much about glyphs and symbols as force of arms. The Warp is ever-present and it speaks in a language of symbols, and the Mechanicus of Draupnir have blindly accumulated several powerful ones to themselves. Without comprehension, they have wrapped themselves in the Wards of the Hunter. Small bands moving stealthily through a terrible wilderness, baskets overflowing with treasures, long spears in hands, no fear of great beasts. Their weapons are endurance, concealment, patience and precision; violence unheralded and absolute. Their field is where the open plain meets the concrete jungle; watch always for snipers. Should an army or injustice approach, their flaming sword will fall from the sky like an apocalypse. It is a fearsome combination.

You need a countermatching symbol to ward yourselves in; an aspect to your approach vulnerable neither to hunters nor the judgement of the lord. This, as much as any tactical array, will ward you from danger.

Leruc!

The handmaidens have not merged together or suffered any rent to their bodies - if anything they have become individually more beautiful and perfect - but they are layered on top of each other like an optical illusion. They are illuminated from within by a pale light and are increasingly the only light source in the room. All the others are guttering, damp, encrusted with mildew and moss blooms.

"And I am/and I am/and I am/and I am/and I am..." it rolls the response around its mouths playfully. "And I am there. And I am here. And I am enough. And I am welcoming. And I am the End and the Death and the Crippling and the Tearing and the Entombing and the Galaxy Within The World. I am two steps removed and the center of everything. I am the Ancient Raven, and it was I who ripped the Allfather's eye from its broken socket and ate it whole. It was a lovely moment. We should do it all again. Who would you like to be?"

Hagar!

"Lord," said the Master of Ordinance, making a half-bow. "As the Bridge has commanded, we are readying the landing shuttles. One is to carry the command staff and their assistants, one is to carry the Lady Navigator and her combat walker, one is to carry security assets - what do you bid we load the remaining shuttle with? We have capacity for soldiers, vehicles, supplies, ritual components..."

No more than four, that goes unspoken. The Ordinator is familiar enough with the aspects of the Warp to know that an inauspicious number in a place like this represents wasted resources rather than tactical advantage.

Return to Thellamie

She only has one move, and it is to lose.

She knows the moment she sees the Opponent she has to use the move. She knows it as she kicks down the door. She knows it as she kicks over the table! She knows it as she slams forth the stool like a battering ram! One move! Every time! She has practiced it over and over - the taste of blood and bitterness, the feeling of dirt and bruises, the sight of a distant star getting further and further away. Endless exposure to the greatest, most esoteric martial arts and ancient techniques ever made and she only picked up the capacity to lose!

Injimo screams as she strikes forth with the blade's hilt. No space to maneuver in here, not to swing, not even to rotate her sword to stab. So she makes do with hilt and elbow and shouting and the one technique she knows. Many paths! One destination! Many opponents! Smarter, stronger, wiser, more virtuous - this one a giver of healing, one who understands the lie at the heart of the world, who can cut through mysteries that leave her as befuddled as a stone hammer. Why is she striking!? She doesn't know! She has a blade and a path and she's fucking going somewhere and it doesn't matter who put her on it or what curses she bears or who she used to know or who has forgotten her name! It doesn't matter what she's used for if all she can do is lose!

"WATCH FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO COUNTER!" she screams, heedless in her attack. The Dark Dragon did not have to reach deep to bring this curse to the surface. "BREAK AN OPPONENT'S GUARD WITH A HEAVY ATTACK! OR DON'T!! YOU SURE AS FUCK KNOW BETTER THAN I DO!!"

She has only one move, and it is to lose. There's nothing to it, and nothing to lose.

Breathless Dead

"Re...da...na..."

Once again you lay vanquished upon the earth, staring up at the face of Hades.

This time is different. He has not come to take you. He has not dressed in funeral black and murderer's crimson, and he wears a gentle smile as though you remind him of someone. You are tired but there is nowhere left to go; the future stretches out ahead as a place of silence and softness and sleep, unnumbered days spooling out with no beginning and end. The burden is lifted and cast aside - the certainty of your failure is undone. He did not believe in you. Day by day, week by week, year by year, you proved him wrong.

So certain was his doubt that other ships have set sail even as your voyage continued. Each of them failed, stormwracked, lost. He thought you were lost too when you vanished into the Rift, gone where all his greatest hopes came to die. He never thought to hear from you again.

He embraces you. It feels like a collapse; an intention to simply lift you to your feet, but the physicality of it cracks a shell grown brittle with time. You feel his tears upon scars where once you felt blood. You feel hearts beat, no longer just yours.

"Thank you," he said. Then the God of the Dead simply cries.

*

The Gods gather in the clouds above. Zeus comes, white toga over onyx-black skin, hair like a thunderstorm at midnight, with a softened Hera holding her arm with a gentleness of hard-won trust. Poseidon comes, impossible colours crammed into a weathered cloak, the smallest possible condensation of humanity. Mars comes, bold as brass, and Minerva slinks with the stench of petroleum. Hestia was here already, hoodie raised, and Dionysus scratches patterns in the mirror even still. Artemis sits still, fingers flexing against leather gloves a size too small, and Apollo smiles at the one sun left to him. Only Aphrodite and Demeter are missing - though what could have driven them away from this soft little world is a mystery for the ages.

They shine down, present and distant. Nobody on this world asks them questions, and so they do not speak. Their shrines still gleam on mountain tops and in dark places; their statues lie forgotten and untended. The swords of divine power are still all about, gently rusting.

And then the strangest thing of all.

They bow their heads and give their blessings.

The clouds gather still. Wedding bells ring out. The Earth passes another day without earthquake or meteor or war. The mad find the words they need and all the virtue humanity needs falls freely from the skies. With no prayer or acknowledgement from the people below, the Gods give; they give as freely as they always have, as freely as the soil and water and sun always has. Though no bargains are struck, the world turns. Though no sacrifices are made, the world turns. Though no coin flows, the world turns.

One by one they step down from their cloud in the evening sunlight, each of the gods holding a candle. They pass in a procession, one after another, pausing as they pass the heroes who crossed the galaxy. A last chance for prayers, questions and farewells in the face of a passing eternity.

[Namespace] of the Rose

"Well, when you put it like that -" said Sarra with a smile, a shrug and a -

- she's got a plasma gun!

You can't believe it. You should be better than that. You should have noticed. November should have noticed. Different wars select for different personality traits, and you both went through a war where anyone without a certain baseline of paranoia about being ambushed at any moment simply did not make it. And here you are, events playing out like you are remembering them. You see the blue glow, the strain, the thoughtless flick to the overcharged setting, the way the coils ripple as the shimmering cloud of cosmic fire erupts from the tip directly towards -

You feel the heat brush your cheek as the shot passes. You hear the detonation behind you as the majority of November-Black is outright vaporized.

"Ow! Fuck! Motherfucker!" the killer has dropped the gun (you flinch as the plasma gun hits the floor), clutching her hands. For a moment you wonder if it overloaded - but no? That was a successful shot? Then what - is she not wearing gloves? Even ordinary fire from one of those things builds up heat fast and insulating gloves are basic safety features, and this lesson would have been learned if she had ever fired that gun on that setting before. As deities go, the Machine God was at least always immediate with his judgements.

But even as the matron kneels down to tend to the maiden, the crone has her eyes on the prize. She has a laspistol in her hand and aimed at your head, drawn during that same non-moment before, standing just far away enough to avoid a CQB takedown. She has professionalism enough to cover for both of her comrades. "One goes to war with the army one has," she muttered, almost apologetically. "Less elegantly it is. Would you like to hear my counteroffer?"