Two cloaked and hooded figures strode into a dented, scarred hut miles from any city with a swirl of cold wind. They both kept their robes wrapped around them completely, obscuring everything but their faces. One was a tall, grizzled man appearing of the age of sixty. The cloak he wore was a light shade of grey. The other was considerably shorter, and had the fresh face of a nineteen year old. His cloak was crimson. Both were far older, and both had deeper reasons of arriving than a simple social call.
"Junius," the younger one, named Bob, was speaking, "do you think he's going to turn up? He sounded pretty edgy on the vox."
"He bloody well better." Junius Fabianus sounded irritated at the very suggestion. "He's our only source of information on this world."
Junius' voice had a clipped, refined tone to it, while Bob's voice was high and reedy.
Minutes ticked by, with no sign of anything else alive. The abandoned house was windowless and lightless, and as the sky grew darker, it became harder to see.
"Junius," Bob pestered again, "What of the rest of your retinue?"
They'll be fine," Junius reassured, "and if they aren't, well, there's a reason I picked them. Celio's a decent fighter on his own, Rugar's a veteran combat medic, and if Bernhard ran into trouble, we'd hear the sounds of fighting from here. Probably even a mushroom cloud."
At that moment, the hut door burst open as a man staggered in. Instantly, Junius brought his Psycannon to bear as he shrugged his cloak off, revealing silvered Power Armour. Embossed in gold and ivory on the chest plate and his left kneepad was the signature "I" of the Inquisition. The quality of his weapons and armour quite clearly marked him as an Inquisitor, and the Psycannon he held pointing at the man showed he was a member of the Ordo Malleus, as no other Inquisitor would use such a weapon. The man immediately threw his hand up and begun pleading for his life.
"Don't shoot! I'm just an old man! You wouldn't shoot an innocent."
Junius found those who appealed to his better nature disgusting. Lowering the Psycannon, he stepped forwards, his following words little more than a snarl of rage.
"Do you presume that I, Junius, would have reservations about shooting someone? I am a Monodominant Inquisitor Lord of the Ordo Malleus. I have faced warp-spawned eldritch nightmares which defy sanity itself. I have condemned entire worlds to Exterminatus, and watched them burn. I have fought opponents who can twist the fabric of reality itself with nothing more than faith and a balanced sword. Every day, I am forced to commit atrocities in the name of the Emperor. Every day, I must sacrifice more than any other Imperial Guardsmen, for they merely sacrifice their lives. Every day, my actions determine the fate of uncounted thousands. Everything I do, every action I make, is forgotten, never recorded. I fight in silence and darkness, knowing that nobody will ever know what it is I must do. No matter what happens to me, I will die alone and unremembered, yet I still fight on. Do you presume to know what I will do?"
