I. REENCUENTRO*
The greatest of oceans is everywhere. It is searing ice; then scorching fire. Then it is neither but something else altogether. Slime; blood; fine dust; sour milk. It is at once soft and hard; a coil and a web. Many things – all impossible, but all present as one.
Izabella doesn't know why she is in this ephemeral expanse, how she came to be here, or even when she is anymore. She cannot see, cannot breathe. She drowns. She had been drowning for a long time; perhaps for her entire life.
We drown…
The raving, unnatural space around her is hungry as a wild beast; as the worst of her birthworld's hurricanes. It yearns for her, wanting to strangle, entangle and pull her down, to break her up like an oceanic predator breaks a twenty-mast galleon; to devour her bit by the smallest bit until even the matter of her soul is dissolved in these unnatural currents, never to arrive at the Padre d'Imperio's throne to tell of a life given to voidfaring without respite, hunting His myriad foes.
Drown…
The boundless ocean – warp – hates her, as it does each and every one of her fellows, her people, humanity at large: with all fibres of its non-being. And for this, for everything it brought and would yet bring, she hates it too. Her own hatred is pure, noble as the blood in her veins, and yet all that's left for her is…
…drown…
'So, is this some kind of a motto? A warcry?' The old, tired cleric asking young Izabella questions gives her a pointedly curious look. "We drown so that others may soar?" He checks his papers. 'Something to do with your… uhm… clan?'
'I bear the names of two… sir,' she replies with a trace of pride.
'Oh?'
'Yes. Maternal one was… had been… a clan of noble seafarers. Paternal was… one of lexographers and scholars. Ilustraciónes we used to call them… sir. But yes, this is the warchant of the former.'
Always drown…
'The battle we are waging has no end, acolyte Grácian,' Lord Kiernu tells her, condescending, for the hundredth time.
He never uses her full name. She thinks he is bored of it. Or maybe envious. She doesn't know where he comes from. He hadn't been taken by his deceased master from a schola progenium, though. But she doesn't give a damn. A scorn for a scorn.
'We must be always prepared to give our lives for the holiest God-Emperor beloved by all,' he goes on. 'Do you hear me, acolyte? Always. Our lives are nothing, our wishes immaterial before the demands of the Imperium. No one is, really, no matter how grand or noble or anything else. All that means is our struggle to keep the mankind alive. And believe me, the task before our own Ordo is the hardest of all.'
We drown so that…
But no, Sulth Kiernu did not consider his own life worthless. Her mentor was a Lethean, yet he didn't share in the grim ideology of his overzealous coworlders, professing instead a healthy cynicism and love of life – too strong for an Ordo Malleus agent, in fact – and so wasn't keen on spending that precious existence of his without a little fun. His newest acolyte he treated just like the previous ones: as a jewel to show her off before his comrades. He'd never intended to make her anything other than a source of his own pleasure; had not realised that she'd soon develop her own ambitions – and reasons – to stay within the Ordo. And still…
others may…
…and still it was her palm into which Lord Kiernu shakily placed his own rosette, on his deathbed, looking at her with sincere hope in his remaining bloodshot eye, all those years ago. Because she did indeed take to heart everything he had taught, despite his plans for otherwise. Because he did see, in the very end, what she had been and who she was yet to become. Because, frankly speaking, he had no other choice and had known that she would fight harder than he had ever fought; she would agree to the most unsavoury tasks because in this eternal war no task is pointless or in vain; would actually drown in the great aetheric ocean waiting for us at all times if only so the rest of humanity wouldn't for another day. And that in the end, in the very end, she might at last…
SOAR!
As if defying fate itself, Lady Inquisitor Izabella Olím-y-Grácian makes one last, desperate thrash for the surface… and then something takes hold of her wrist.
A hand. A huge one. No, not just a hand, she realises. A gauntlet.
It is much larger than a normal human's should be, and yet it holds Izabella's forearm with unexpected gentleness.
'No need to drown so soon, milady,' a deep, male voice booms at her from above. 'I wouldn't gladly see my own… ah… thirteenth labour… end up with the death of another loyal one, you know.'
She doesn't know what that means, or what the mysterious speaker is doing here. She gasps for air. She looks up. Blearily, she sees armour – turquoise-hued, gilded, ancient, covered with intricate patterns of waves and numerous traces of combat. Dappled with fresh bloodspray, to boot.
And behind this heavily armoured figure Izabella catches a glimpse of Amoz Qevéda, her elderly requaero-servant, watching the giant with something like terrified awe, but also hope, in his watery eyes. God, but he seems tiny compared to the warrior.
An Astartes, she corrects herself. The Ordo employs them from time to time, in the direst of situations. Those are called the Grey Knights.
This one, however, is different. Very different. And his transhuman face, battered and scarred yet still…
She thinks that she knows this face.
'W-what?' she manages, uncomprehending. There is no water of course – it was only ever in her mind – just the cold metal surface which a heartbeat later she recognises as the bridge of her stranded void-carrack. Little remains in her memory from just before the oblivion except the dour, spindly form of the silver-eyed bastard witch, and also… something dark and oily, like a sable kiss.
'Where am - '
'Aboard El Escorial,' the warrior informs her at once. 'You were in some kind of a trance, milady,' he adds, regarding the Inquisitor at once patronisingly and slyly.
How come he is on board my craft?
And then he smiles at her in a manner she never thought possible for an Astartes to smile, and something very nearly lost many decades before this moment, so deeply buried by the Ordo's psychic manipulations that Izabella is no longer sure it had been there at all, drifts to the surface of her mind, and finally she recalls.
How could she have forgotten?
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* Meaning: 'rendez-vous; reunion.'