Abandon - Wayward Son
I
The wind picked up, and with it came innumerable waves of biting sand. A single bright sun hung low in the sky, baking the ethereal space between the scorched surface of Tallern and the shimmering stratus above. Promeus had been walking for three successive days. The gaudy weight of his ceramite armor bore down on his broad shoulders like the crushing burden of defeat he had recently suffered. His comrade Astartes were dead. They were his brothers, not by birth, but by their resolute loyalty to a fatherly Primarch for whom there could be no surrogate.
Three days.
Three insufferable days had passed since the ambush that was supposed to change the outcome of the war. The ambush had failed. Rogal Dorn's strategy had been thwarted from within. Someone among them had been false; a traitor in their midst. There could be no other explanation. The Imperial Fists were known throughout the Segmentum Tempestus for many things, but failure was never among them. Whoever was guilty of this treachery would soon be discovered. Promeus would see to that. Once this conspirator was exposed, they would experience the wrathful justice that awaits those who are foolish enough to tamper with the Emperor's galactic expansion on behalf of the Imperium of Man.
Promeus would see to that, as well.
Promeus' arm hung limply at his side as he trudged boldly across the sweltering sand. Though not grievous in nature, the wound had perforated his armor from pauldron to wrist-guard, flaying the flesh beneath in a jagged gorge encrusted with blood and sand. His synthesized blood had clotted within hours of its affliction, allowing him to fight on in spite of the betrayal he and his brothers were inevitably to endure. The injury to his head had already begun to scar in the place where his helmet had been split against his temple. It was by the Emperor's will alone that he yet lived. Had he not been rendered unconscious by the glancing blow to his skull, he would have remained on his feet, and most certainly died alongside his brothers. When he awoke, the field of battle was empty. Even the corpses were removed. All that remained were sand, ash, and blood. Promeus clung to the lingering scent of bolter-oil and the taint of sanguine smoke, reminding himself of what he had seen, and why he mustn't allow himself to fall. Any normal man would have long-since succumbed to the profusion of heat, or the absence of moisture. A normal man would have bled to death.
Promeus, however, was no normal man.
The footsteps behind him, those not yet covered by the windswept sands, stretched out in a perfect line for a distance of nearly forty-two unbroken kilometers. In spite of his wounds, and in defiance of deficient hydration, Promeus' pace never faltered. His brothers were dead, their gene-seeds forever lost to his Legion.
He would see them avenged.
The wind continued to gust, displacing the sand beneath his feet as he strode forth toward the next summit. The tallest dune in the distance seemed to rise and fall, as though the very ground itself were concealing an unseen titan buried beneath the shifting desert. Promeus wasted little time deceiving his already fractured mind. He refused to believe that salvation was waiting just beyond the furthest precipice of sand. It was not in the nature of an Adeptus Astartes to convince himself of anything beyond the attestation of his fine-tuned senses.
The end of his journey would come soon enough.
Promeus walked across the sand, leaving behind those he had lost. He walked away from a battle he was destined to lose. As the ceaseless procession of footprints continued to stretch out behind him, Promeus marched with a singular purpose, compelled by the violent principles for which he was born and bred.
Promeus, prideful son of the VII Legion, made his way toward vengeance.