Chapter II.

The Atredian domain was quiet at that unspeakable hour, where even the moons had crawled below the horizon, when the clouds rolled across the stars like a roiling blanket of gray cotton, and when cold rainfall pattered loudly against muddy fields. From when the first Atredian had laid his roots on the soil, to when the last blood-descendant breathed their last, the frigid, dark mornings had been like kin to the wandering minds of their children.

Young Vinicia Atredian, second heir to her estate, brave little warrior princess, and restless sleeper, was no different to those who had come before her—brave or not. The cold mornings were lovely to the youthful little superhuman-to-be. Unlike her older brother or her newborn sister, she didn't feel so inclined to a full night's sleep. Barely three hours and she felt as if she'd overslept. It barely dawned on the little mind the why of it, though it could be simple apathy that forced her away from the answer.

The little Atredian shuffled with sluggish movements and glazed, half-awakened eyes to the table in their kitchen, happily easing herself into the sturdy, handcrafted furniture. Daddy had brought home an arithmetic book for her, and she'd been studying the thing zealously in the month since it had been put before her. Though she always groaned and wailed when he forced her to sit and study it, those early hours of the morning were her haven to read the book of her own volition. His home teachings had gotten her written hand tidy and steady, and enough self-teaching through the book had made the later hour studying a breeze. Mummy had learned to start waking early too, and she tended to make breakfast for her little warrior princess before her new sister was born. Maybe she would start doing that again… Vinicia missed seeing her mum in the wee hours of the morning. She froze as she heard the creaking of a door opening. She glanced back, and finding nothing greeting her but the dark, open space of her home, she sighed. Daddy must have awoken early, though she could have sworn he hadn't slept on the couch last night, so why would the front door be open?

The long, cold fingers that clasped over her mouth a moment later prevented the girl from screaming. She wildly thrashed as she was torn out of her seat and carried by the scalp toward the front door. Tears bled into her vision as the fingers bit painfully into her face like claws, and she sobbed into the disgusting, metallic hand that smelled of copper and rot.

"Aww, is the little Monkeigh half-breed afraid?" She was torn up, staring up at a pair of inhuman eyes on a pale, translucent-skinned face, with sharpened ears. She only sobbed and struggled against her captor as she was struck with barbed rods and cut up by the sharp fingers of the creatures. Vinicia retreated slowly into her mind as her consciousness struggled to keep up with the lack of air to her nose and mouth, and blackness dribbled into her vision until her mind fell blank, and she fell to sleep, the cold hand of her captor allowing air into her lungs as she was dragged outside, their cackling filling the air as more rushed in. Her ears caught a final tinny of glass shattering before her senses were overwhelmed by obscurity.

OoOoO

Octazarus Atredian's eyes quickly opened at the sound of his newborn's tears. He had grown accustomed to the sound over the two weeks that little Aquilina-Augustina had lived, much as he had when Vinicia had been born, and Ermingard before that. He rose like a great stone monolith from his shared bed with his dearest wife, quietly whispering a few words of comfort to the restless Lucretia.

Vinicia would be awake soon as well, if not already. She was a studious mind at heart, despite her outer appearance of disdain. Octazarus knew her little preconceived notions of what made a warrior scantly included being a hearty bookworm, but he didn't mind. Her attempts at moving about early on had given her away, and had made for a checking of an internal alarm clock that had him waking up within ten minutes of his daughter. Aquilina laid dormant in her crib, crying loudly at some unknown. Nothing outwardly seemed wrong—and then his ears caught a noise.

His hearts tensed as the sound of metallic bootsteps caught his ears. The steamer at the end of the bed was quickly bisected, and his personal weapon dragged from its depths before Octazarus went thundering out from their bedroom, Lucretia notably worried and woken by the violent sounds of the heavy, metal-lined chest clacking against their bed and the handle of their door smashing loudly against the wall as it was thrown open. Aquilina's wails only grew louder as her mother drowsily scooped her up and her father rushed into the dark of their home, roaring out the name of his eldest daughter with intent and fury—panic was no friend or enemy to a Primarch, but his voice betrayed the faintest hint of it as he lunged out into their home.

The screaming sound of the weapons firing disoriented Octazarus, but his shoulder had barely crossed the gap between the corner and the main room. The blooming pain in his shoulder was ignored as his daughter's quiet sobs of terror reached his ears, and the quiet, growing panic had been dashed to the rocks, replaced by a cold fury. His hooked war-hammer clutched toward the head, the unfound Primarch lunged through the air, closing the gap between him and the first dark silhouette—it was inhuman, lithe, with sharpened ears and speed that would outmatch any normal man. The look of surprise on its hideous, translucent face was burned away by the force of the hammer's steel head smashing through their frontal bones like a warhead, their body sent crumpling into a heap as their comrades soon returned fire.

Octazarus' bellicose war-cry rattled the windows as he ducked and wove through the splinter-fire, the darts biting into his skin like mosquitos and ignored just as readily, his hammer dropped low in his grip as he swung. Two more of the lanky things were brought low, to heaps of broken bone, rent armour plating and shredded muscle. He spun his hammer and brought the hook down into the waiting face of a third in the space it took for any one of them to adjust their aim onto his mobile form.

"You can't have her!" Octazarus' gaze flicked back and his ears caught breaking glass. His hearts dropped into the pit of his chest and even with his superhuman speed, he wasn't fast enough. Never in a hundred lifetimes would he have ever been fast enough.

Her face, beautiful and soaked in the bleeding light of the Drukhari splinter-pistol's muzzle flash, her gingery hair wreathing her face like the frame of a great work of art, her gown soaked red as the splinters burrowed into her body and delivered far-beyond lethal doses of hellish crystallised neurotoxin into her blood. His hearts stopped and he felt her name die on his lips as she fell to the floor, the wretched alien's blade slicing across her chest, through the bundle in her arms and across her heart to be certain of her death, before their eyes came to carelessly meet that of her widower.

Dracon Mezaqar of the Kabal of the Withered Shrine would never forget the look of hatred in that barbarian's eyes as he allowed himself to flit backwards away from the window, and for the briefest of moments, he felt an emotion so foreign and malign to him that it brought him pause. It would be the words of the thralls that identified it to him, years later. It was guilt. Not guilt for having slain the barbarian's wife, nor guilt for seeing his eldest and his youngest's souls thrown to the Empyrean for She Who Thirsts and the wretches of Chaos. It was a guilt born of selfishness, apathy and arrogance.

Mezaqar had signed his death in that dark morning on the planet Phyrr, and he would forever remember the look of sorrow and malice in the eyes of Octazarus Atredian until his breath was ripped from his throat.

Octazarus leapt for the Drukhari, but his mind was torn too long between his wife's decaying body and his desire for vengeance. In the second it took him to react, the Drukhari's blade had plunged through his shoulder, and his body had been used by the Dracon to spring back and out the window, snarling in pain as he dislodged the war-hammer from his side painfully, the hook cracked and broken off in him like a macabre memento. He hadn't swung true, and the rat would live.

The Primarch fell beside his wife with tears welling in his eyes and murmurs of horror on his mouth. Her life had fled her body, and all that was left was the bubbling mass of flesh that was left behind by the depraved weaponry of the Dark Eldar. His hands clenched into fists, and his voice choked as he released his pent-up sorrow with a deafening sob. He pounded his fists into the ground until they were bloody and screamed as his twin hearts shattered like glass, and on the opposite side of the galaxy, a tremble rumbled through the Warp.

Ermingard had been spared no such mercy, and for all his searching, Octazarus only prayed that his middle daughter had been taken prisoner, in vain hope that he would live to see her again. The headless body of the cotton-filled sheep-shaped ragdoll he had gifted her laid abandoned on the floor, scooped up and held tightly as Octazarus threw apart his home in a fit of rage and sorrow, before he had rushed out the door, to the barn at the far side of their property.

With his hammer at his back, wounds stitched, garments haphazardly thrown about his bloodied bronze form and the last physical memory of his middle daughter clutched in his arms, Octazarus leapt across the back of one of their stable equines and made haste toward Zotteschot, tears across his face, stripped of emotion save for the cold fury and sorrow that gripped his heart like a vice.

OoOoO

The false world of Sedna shook as cannons bombarded its surface and psychic backlash trickled through its depths. Eight legions marched on its pocked surface, spreading destruction and death as the horrors within were slaughtered and brought to their knees.

The Second Legiones Astartes were prominent amongst peers as their freshly constructed Crusade Armour shrugged off psychic bolts and ballistic weaponry from the hideous alien menace that inhabited this awful world, yet in line with their peers, they fought with a renowned vigor, like an army trooper standing before the bodies of his comrades with his commissar's bolt pistol to his back.

No legionnaire dared question the feeling that boiled through their blood, curdled in their bones and lingered in their throats. They were the Emperor of Mankind's legions, destined to cross the stars and unite the fractured worlds of Man under the banner of his Imperium. They were his bulwark against the terror, fearless in their resolve and their bloodied genetics, yet those marines of Legiones Astarte Secundus had felt the foreign emotion as base and deep in their souls as greatly as any marine could.

It was not fear, but unease. Dread, depressive and oppressive, motivating them forward, for they couldn't explain it away with logic, only hopes that it was not their emperor staring upon them with dismay at their efficiency. It pushed them forward, as unwelcome and unknown tears trickled down their cheeks and the whisper of a name crossed their lips, unregistered in their minds and barely heard over their voxes.

Arcadius Laius, First Captain of the Sentinel Legion felt it as greatly as his brothers, even as he stood at the helm of their flagship, his face set in a resolute, stony frown as he fingered the ball-chain necklace bearing his Unification veterancy in the form of the raptor and lightning bolt. Heavy footfalls caught his ears, and he turned to find the patterned form of his fellow captain approaching.

Lupus Sluaghadhán, Captain of the Third, Butcher of Titan, strode up to him with an equal look of emotionless, stoic professionalism. His pauldrons clanked loudly as the chain holding aloft the scaly pelt across his power pack and shoulders rapped against his cuirass, the broad silvery emblem of the second legion stamped onto the lock at the left paw of the hideous beast around his armoured form, gauntlets tightly grasping the hilt of his two-handed power sword at his hip.

"You feel it too, then?" Arcadius greeted bluntly, prompting a grunt of amused affirmation and a slight incline of Lupus' head, the ghost of a nod.

"Feels like someone's tied a tourniquet around my primary heart. Most unpleasant," Lupus replied in a baritone voice, his untamed locks of black hair falling about his neck as he turned his head to face his fellow legionnaire. Arcadius only gave an inward roll of the eye and scoff at the ridiculous laxity of the bloody mane. It was ill-befitting of a legionnaire of the bloody Legiones Astartes to look so frumpy like a noblewoman, but he didn't bother pressing. The man was no slacker, and if it hindered him, it'd be cut away in a heartbeat.

"Mine as well. I'd blame it on our… cargo, however I feel it unlikely." Arcadius let loose the necklace, sinking behind his gorget as he stroked his rough-surfaced chin. Lupus nodded once more as the two stared down at the hideous false planet below them, crackling with psychic energy as the forces of seven other legions deployed en masse to its surface.

"I can't help but agree," Lupus began, resting his hands at his hips. "I spoke with several of my own legionnaires, and they felt the same tightness of the chest, the same dread. Bah! To suggest such idiocy under any other circumstance, I'd call them a nonsensical fool. They were as uninitiated as any grunt, so I am certain its more than that…"

"… and speaking of our cargo, I think it's about time we nab old Widogast and handle them, eh?" Lupus suggested, prompting a pointed nod from the first company captain at his side. The two turned from the relative quiet of the observation post at the bridge and traversed the depths of the Sublime Resolve, crossing catwalks, passing under the oppressive arches of the gothic space-bound dreadnought, lower and lower until the light became dim and the presence of Astartes and other imperial personnel became scant and few. With the chief apothecary dragged along after a very short argument, the trio of Sentinel Legionnaires marched below deck until the distinctive shimmer of golden armour was caught by their helmets.

The towering form of the honourary stowaway was… unwelcoming by its very nature. A suite of red-lensed eyes, akin to a spider's, stared at them from the scarred left side of his face, whilst an organic, jade-coloured eye stared from the right. His jaw was set with steel, and the lightning bolts of the Legio Cataegis and the raptor imperialis splattered across archaic gold-coloured panoply that whined and hissed with each movement served only to add to his unnerving stature. It didn't help much that he was taller by a whole head outside of that damned thunder armour.

"Ignatius Bawble, how are you feeling?" Lupus began, blunt and ignorant to the harsh stares from the chief apothecary and first company captain, directed at the back of his power pack where his head was. The towering giant only scoffed.

"The same as I did last time we spoke. My body is rotting in this metal coffin of armour, and so are that of the rest of my boys… but thank you for showing a modicum of sympathy," Bawble replied, his dark skin and metal bands over thick dreadlocks glinting in the low light of the Sublime's underbelly. He took a seat by a pile of crates as the chief apothecary sidled over to the towering berserker in gold. Lupus and Arcadius stood idly across from him, chatting idly with the ancient veteran of the Unification days as if he weren't a damning presence that would see their legion purged, were he ever to be found.

"… The Nordafrik Conclaves. What a special kind of mess. I remember distinctly, the bastards of the fourth had been besieging that horrid stronghold on the mountain's peak. By the Throne, it had taken months just to get through the walls, all while that wretched whelp kept screaming at us, promising us wealth and glory if we just put down our guns and fought for him," Ignatius excitedly regaled, his vigorous speech intermittently broken up by short, violent coughing fits and grumbles to the chief apothecary beside him, the poor Widogast silently fuming at the neanderthal.

"It was bloody hilarious watching my primarch break the fucking gremlin's back over his knee! Oh, what a time to have lived," Ignatius cackled with macabre laughter. The two marines politely joined him in more… reserved tones as the old thunder warrior kept at his story, until Lupus gravely asked the man what had been done to the bastard tyrant after his spine had been turned to dust.

"Oh, that rat. We had our fun with him… My primarch gave me the bastard's corpse, and I was plenty generous. We made necklaces out of his teeth, bracelets out of his Throne-damned fingers and ate his eyes like olives!" Ignatius bellowed again with laughter as Lupus looked on with mild disgust. The Unification veteran and first company captain in Arcadius was less affected. He bore the same scars as Bawble, fought many similar battles and knew the gallows humour of the thunder legions well, unlike his younger comrade. The apothecary took a step back as he retracted the many tools that were commonly associated with vivisection, closing away sections of armour and allowing the thunder warrior to redress.

"I've done what I can today. Your genealogy is still a damned mystery, but I will make good use of the live samples," Chief Apothecary Widogast explained, prompting a grateful and subtle nod from the slow-calming thunder warrior.

"We best be back as soon as possible, then," Lupus eagerly replied, prompting a stoic nod from his comrade, both turning their attention to the mirthless chuckle escaping the retreating lightning-clad form of Bawble, stopping to glance back at them.

"My grace to you for letting us come alongside you, Arcadius. Your… innocence is always a treat, and I only fear that we will bring the Emperor's hammer on your heads one day," Bawble idly thanked the first company captain. Arcadius only frowned softly.

"Think… nothing of it. A life debt owed is a life debt paid. Now, come, Lupus." Arcadius stomped away, sparing only one glance back at the gold glint that broke the darkness of the shadows every few sparse moments, his third company captain and chief apothecary in tow.

Some quirky shit going on, huh? Let me know what you think of the devious and dubious lore usage here, and of the chapter itself! Next time we see the ramifications of the Dracon's widowing of the Hero of Zotteschot, eh?