The skies themselves were burning.

The planet's orbit teemed with countless astral crafts, literally uncountable numbers of them. Starships with histories dating back decades or centuries were being scythed through like common barley, becoming nothing more than another hunk of space junk in an ever growing ship graveyard. Below, or perhaps above, depending on your perspective, soldiers swarmed over the surface, like a spiral of ants; incomprehensibly vast, and yet as tiny as a speck of dust. Killing and dying to gain the barest speck of ground.

The Siege of Terra had been going on for months.

Aboard the Maledictum Sideros, flagship of the 39th Grand Battalion of the Iron Warriors Legion, Warsmith Stathis Economos tore his gaze and thoughts away from the view outside his window. There would be time enough for idle sightseeing once they had won, but for now, Perturabo had given him a very important set of duties, and he would not disappoint him.

Although the 39th was not the largest or most famed of the Grand Battalions, and Stathis himself had only come to the position a mere century or so prior, under his supervision they had won much respect among their peers in that time. Still, when their Primarch had given the Warsmiths their marching orders, he had scarcely believed that he had been given such an honor. A position in the Siege of Terra itself!

True, his fleet was on the very outskirts of the battle, playing a supportive role more than anything, but there was no shame in that. He was there where history was being made. He would be counted among the number of those who fought alongside Perturabo himself, seizing emancipation with his own two hands.

To say the fighting was fierce would be as to say… well, an appropriate simile escaped him. Even the 39th, far from the worst of the fighting, had already taken worse losses than even the harshest of campaigns he had seen in his hundred years of leadership, and further centuries of service. But these were simply the sacrifices that were necessary to see this through. Great change always has to cut to the bone, and revolution waits for no man.

A knock came on the door to his chambers, a very familiar knock. 5 knocks, a pause, then two more. He glanced for a moment to the output of the pict-recorder to make sure, before releasing the lock on the plasteel reinforced door guarding his chambers.

Arch-Commander Hector Nikolaou, the Warsmith's second when it came to the soldiers under his command, stepped through the doorway, an easy confidence in his stride. "Has something gone amiss?" the Warsmith asked.

"Why must you assume me the bearer of bad news?" Hector replied with mock indignation, as he walked toward where the other man sat. "Can I not be here simply for the pleasure of your company, old friend?"

Stathis gave a long suffering sigh. "Any other time, that would be welcome. But now?" He gestured to the window. Another ship burst into wreckage in the distance. "There's so much to do. So much relying on me." He gave a wry chuckle. "One might almost think you an Imperial saboteur, with how determined you are to distract me from my duties."

"Of course!" Hector exclaimed, slapping his arm around the Warsmith's back, the other gesturing widely into the air. "I've got it all schemed out: First I discredit you and take your position, then I work my way into Perturabo's confidences, and then… BAM!"

"Bam?" Stathis replied, with a skeptical raise of an eyebrow.

"Bam." Hector confirmed proudly.

Stathis shook his head incredulously. "I know you, Hector. You couldn't scheme your way out of a rockcrete box." He said with a wry chuckle, as Hector bellowed his amusement in return.

Hector composed himself again, sliding out of his half embrace. "But you are right, of course," he said. "I didn't come here because I missed the melodious sound of your voice." He hesitated for a moment. "…It's about Thaubosek. There was a bit of a situation."

The Warsmith stared at him for a long moment. His elbows met the surface in front of him as his head slumped forward, two gauntleted hands sliding up a chiseled face. "What has he done this time?" He said, in a strangled voice. "Has one of his experiments gone haywire and warped an entire deck? Is he capturing menials and feeding them to his plants? Or is he trying to get the Apothecaries to dissect his hallucinatory arachnids again?"

Hector shook his head and replied "Astonishingly enough, no. Entirely the opposite. I'm here because one of his experiments actually went off without a hitch, more or less."

The Warsmith's head rose from his hands, brows high and expression hopeful. "Truly? That's a splendid omen, to be sure." A smile crept over his features, then he paused. "What… what was he working on, precisely?"

"Ah, that was one of his botanical projects, bred from carefully curated plants exposed to the warp." Hector explained. "It, well, creates sand."

"Sand." Stathis repeated.

"Indeed." Hector confirmed, with some amusement. "Quite a lot of it, in fact. Took an age and a half to grow, but when it was finally harvested, a truly enormous amount of sand burst from its… bulb? Fruit? Bud? I can't say I'm familiar with the precise botanical term. Somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred tons of it, apparently. The menials were still shoveling the last patches of it into storage when I left, although I dare say we'll be picking sand out of the cracks for years."

"Ah. Good." Stathis blinked. "Are we… in great need of sand?"

"Well… not especially so." Hector replied. "But it has its uses, and an easy, renewable source of it, even a slow one, is nice enough to have." Hector smiled. "Besides, this is, apparently, just the first step. He thinks he can get his plants to produces other materials as well, more valuable ones, with enough generations, and some additional resources." He proffered a data-slate. "This is the list. Materials, personnel, access to a few of the artifacts in our vaults-"

Stathis waved a hand dismissively. "Put it down somewhere, and I'll look it over after we take Terra."

Hector sat the data-slate gently down on a surface and looked down at it, face tightening. "That man and his 'Thaumobotany'. Ever since we took on the aid of these… entities in the warp that call themselves gods, that's all he can think of, all he spends his waking hours on. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's all he dreams of as well."

He shook his head. "These creatures and their domains… They're so absurd." He paused. "Well, maybe not Tzeentch. Plans within plans. Scheming, manipulating, deceiving. I can respect that. Reminds me of our Alpha Legion cousins. I could never do things like that, I just don't have the head for it. The rest? What do they glorify? Mindless brutality… hedonism… frakking plagues, of all things…"

The Warsmith chuckled. "You aren't entirely wrong, Nikolaou. But it's an easy thing to dismiss them out of hand, rather than appreciating the subtleties. The so called 'blood god' may venerate brutality above all, but it only takes a glance at the World Eaters to see the merit in that. Or, indeed, our very own legion. Do we not fall upon fortress worlds with unyielding brutality, scouring their defenders from existence, just as Perturabo himself scoured his legion when he found us wanting? Do we not push ourselves to the breaking point, never stopping for rest, never asking for respite, never slowing but to convalesce for the merest fraction of a moment, that the great furnace of war might temper the iron within?"

He rose as he spoke, as did the fervor in his voice. "And what is a plague, but a form of life? Life, unconstrained, uncontrollable. Spreading through a world, unheeding of what it consumes along the way. One could describe humanity itself in such terms. Hedonism? What is hedonism but excess of the very passions that drive us?"

He paused a moment, catching his breath, then continued in a more level voice. "These… 'gods' are represent extremes, yes, destructive and potentially wasteful extremes. But waste is unavoidable, and destruction is necessary. Otherwise, we wouldn't exist. Nor would this revolution, or any revolution for that matter. These entities are less creatures and more… forces of nature. Wild, and constantly in flux. That is why they need us, isn't it? To take their wild energies, and give them form. To shape them with our wills. To be the unyielding aqueduct to their raging waters.

Stathis hesitated, as if he were trying to find the right words. "I admit, they trouble me as well. Seeing what some of the other legions have become… it's truly distressing. But I don't blame the 'gods' for that, no more than I'd blame a crutch for robbing a man's leg of strength. Fire is a good servant, but a bad master. We must remain vigilant, and ensure that we are our own masters instead."

"Iron within, iron without," Hector murmured.

"Iron within, iron without," Stathis repeated.

Hector stared out the window behind the Warsmith, mulling over his words. "Don't worry, old friend. I still believe in what we're doing here. The galaxy burns, and so much has been lost, but it's all going to be worth it. We're going to leave them better than we found them. Whatever it takes."

Arch-Commander Hector Nikolaou left the way he came, as Warsmith Stathis Economos turned his attention back to his duties. It was a cheering interlude, but he had a Grand Battalion to manage, a part to play in Perturabo's grand plan. Many of his brothers would be sent to their deaths in the days to come, and it was his duty to see that not a single one of them was wasted.

Stathis blinked his eyes a few times, his augments clearing the haze of sleep from his mind. His many enhancements over the millennia had reduced his need for sleep to a fraction of what it was when he was but a mortal, but it couldn't remove it fully, not without sacrificing far more than he was willing to. So suffer he must these wasted minutes, spent on useless memories of a much lesser self.

He wasted no more time in extracting himself from his bedding, immediately trudging over to the array of pict-screens to the side of his room. He scanned over them, reading over inventories and progress reports and alerts. Several messages had been received from the other battalions; offers of trade, requests for aid in some strategic endeavors, alliance overtures; he dismissed them all from the system. Those leeches would get nothing of his.

5 knocks, a pause, then two more. Stathis considered leaving the door locked, but Hector would just keep knocking. It would be less hassle in the long run to let him in. The Warsmith flicked a lever to his side, and the door slid open, revealing a towering figure in power armor, bedecked with the mark of the Changer of Ways.

Hector Nikolaou stepped through the open portal, an easy confidence in his gait. "Stathis, old friend, finally gotten those weary old bones out of bed, have you?"

Stathis stared at the man. "Why are you here, Nikolaou?"

Hector brought his hand to his chestplate in mock indignation "Can I not simply be here because I missed you while you were asleep? For the joy of your company alone?"

"No, you cannot." Stathis snapped. "Get to the point."

Hector sighed. "Alright. The Amazing Rando asked me to give you this," He proffered a data-slate. "It's a request for additional funding for the Sorcerers' Consortium. I hear they have quite a few exciting new projects they're dying to get started on. The work they do there is truly fascinating."

Stathis stared at the data-slate balefully. "Another demand on my limited resources from Rando?" He grimaced. "Rando isn't even a real Sorcerer! Why is he the one sending these to me?"

"Sorcerer or not," Hector began, "he's still the head of the Consortium, so this sort of thing is his job."

The Warsmith gave a dismissive wave. "Roberts is the head of the Consortium."

Hector laughed derisively. "Stathis… we both know that isn't true." He shook his head, wry humor in his voice. "Still, if you're sick of him, I'm sure we can be rid of him very easily. Maybe trade him to one of the other Battalions…" Stathis glared at him balefully. Hector just sighed, and placed the data-slate down. He turned to leave.

"Wait." Stathis called out. "Hector…"

The retreating man's footsteps halted immediately, and he turned back to look at him curiously. "Yes?" he replied in a carefully even voice.

Neither spoke for a long moment. The Warsmith's eyes didn't betray a hint of what he was thinking. Finally he spoke. "Schedule another set of drills for decks four, two, and seven. I'm not satisfied with their combat readiness, and I have a raid on an Agri-world planned soon."

Hector's posture didn't seem to change at all, and yet somehow, imperceptibly, he seemed to deflate. "Yeah," he responded flatly. "Yeah, I'll do that." He turned to leave, and Stathis didn't stop him.

The sound of paper crinkling under his boot was what greeted Roderick Vivar as he stepped through the doorway into his friend's quarters, bottle of amasec in arm. Dozens of discarded papers littered the floor haphazardly, another being tossed away as he watched by the man in question. Sitting behind a large desk, Jonas Roberts flipped through the loose sheets he was holding, chuckling occasionally as he did. He looked up at the Techpriest's approach, as unsurprised by his presence as you'd expect of a sorcerer.

"Ah, pardon the mess," He said to Roderick in a casual and only slightly apologetic tone. "I've just been leafing through my follies."

"Reading your old experimental logs again?" Roderick replied, as he dusted off a page he had trodden on. "You should be more careful with these. Preservation of such documentation is important."

Jonas waved a hand dismissively. "These notes aren't worth anything beyond idle amusement. I don't even know why I keep them." He looked down at the page in his hand. It was the one where he tested out a very small variant of the warptime field, confined to a single limb on his test subject. A surprisingly fruitful test, that one. One of many he performed with that particular power. He snorted, and tossed it aside. "Perhaps to remind myself of how I used to be, so long ago. There must be a million of these. All that research I did, the experiments, the hours of practice every day… I really was passionate back then, driven, ambitious." He shook his head and let out a laugh, genuine mirth in his voice. "I was such a damned fool. I had no idea just how absurd it all was."

"Absurd?" Roderick queried. "What's absurd about that? It hardly seems dissimilar to the work I have been doing. Taking a critical eye to that which we take for granted. Taking things apart, seeing how they work, and putting them back together the wrong way round to see what will happen. And documenting absolutely everything, of course. That is what all of science, real science, is built upon."

"Of course you'd think of it like that," Jonas replied with a wry chuckle. "You and your scientific advancement and your Omnissiah and what have you. I'm sure your goals are noble and worthy." His mirthful smile faded a little, and he let out a wistful sigh. "Mine… were not. Oh yes, I had ambitions, but they were, frankly, pathetic. I'm gladly rid of them. They would have led me nowhere at all."

Roderick gave him a warm smile. "Take heart, Jonas. Most people spend their whole lives pursuing their 'pathetic ambitions'. The ability to recognize them as such, and more than that: the will to admit it to yourself, without hiding in self-deception… well. That is noble and worthy in itself." He rounded the desk treading over the scattered papers as he did, and slung an arm over his friend's shoulder. "If nothing else, at least you now know what not to do"

Jonas barked out a sardonic laugh at this. "Oh yes! But that's far from the same thing as knowing what to do!"

"Well, what do you want?" Roderick replied. "What do you value in the world, and where do you want to be in it?"

"Truthfully?" Jonas replied. "I don't know. I haven't for a very long time. That's the trouble, isn't it? I excised so much that was worthless and malformed from my mind, and I am better for it. But… what do I have to replace them? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing at all."

Roderick said nothing at this. He simply pulled another chair over to the desk and sat down. Wordlessly, he proffered the amasec bottle to Jonas, who smiled gratefully and cracked it open. In a moment, the two of them were leafing through the scattered pages, mugs in hand. The sounds of laughter echoed away into the corridor outside.