The Warp is, in many ways, a mirror of reality. Like a dark and fathomless pool, its surface ripples with the impact of momentous events, of great or unseen outbursts of passion and emotion or even memory. The arrival of Melkor was one such event. Like a teardrop touching a raging pool.
His arrival sent infinitely small ripples over the raging torrents of the Immaterium. Ripples that the denizens of the immaterium hardly heeded. Hardly cared for, but amongst a million that cared not, one noticed the arrival with either delight or hate. His presence was as Anathema to the warp as it was to the material universe. Something impossible even in this other sea, yet that was why its arrival rippled ever slightly its torrents. So momentous was this event than one that died rose once more, a tale borne of human´s imagination of a tale ancient now, but recent once. Tales rarely die, and when they die they never return, until now.
In the palace of hedonism sixty-six Keepers of Secrets scurried away as their master turned her gaze once more to the void between the stars. Such a beautiful soul, not as perfect as the prince the Anathema would gift her in time, but one so rigid in its mindset, in its hate, tempered still in its delicious love for the finest arts, indulgence in joy and sadness yet far to rigid in its stance on the most exquisite of sensation.
A beautiful soul that knew the lies of the Anathema, knew the truth of his crimes, of what he had stolen from her and her brothers, one that had felt her caress before a small appetizer to the revelation of her truth. He just needed to unshackle himself from his petty reminder and let himself free, free to enjoy his time, his art, his tastes. He just needed freedom, and she would be there to give that freedom.
In the great putrid garden, the Lord of Flies brewed its deadly and virulent concoctions as the preparations for the conflict against the Anathema drew closer to finishing. In his mind he had already taken his choice, the endurance filled with hate. Melkor did not matter to him, in truth he did not even notice him, the endurance was all that mattered. The oncoming conflict was all that mattered. He hated his brothers, but even in that hate the Anathema was a threat none could dismiss, a threat none could ignore. Such was the insignificance of the Voice of that Maddened Son not even the rot flies who hovered in his great garden with all the pleasure as the grandchildren of their jolly grandfather brought tides of his involvement.
In the crystal like walls of the Impossible Fortress, where madness and reality intermixed in an unknowable mixture of choices, of uncountable fates lining the icy blue walls only to disappear the moment an entrapped mortals and demons alike gazed at them. Whispers of glories yet to be earned, of possibilities to be grasped if only they reach for the whisper in their sleep, to the hand that gifts that dreaded twisted hope in the void. In that Citadel, in that Crystalline Labyrinth the laughter of its master echoed.
As the architect of schemes upon schemes, as the herald of change Melkor was a most delightful surprise, an appetite before the Anathema´s fall. Even if his schemes were primitive the mortal´s arrival had changed much. So much in fact that even as he laughed his servant scurried away seeking answers to every possible choice he could make, the eighty one Lords of Change seemed to be overworked as Fateweaver worded all possible futures. Even the Great Deceiver, the trickster, the Changeling amongst his servants was sent on his own mission to prepare the grounds for his master´s many schemes. Schemes that involved the mortal.
Schemes as unknowable as the ever changing mind of fate´s architect. Schemes heralding glorious change, though perhaps not as much glory as the Anathema´s inevitable fall. The servant rushed out of the crystalline walls of the greatest labyrinth in existance and all the while the laughter of fate´s own master echoed over his domain as the maddened thing he was.
In the blood filled domain, where the red vitae served as molten flame, where brass served as iron clad steel, where murder was hailed as the greatest action and war was ever eternal, the Hunter of Souls, the Master of Rage, the Lord of Skulls smiled with hate filled delight. The impossibility of the event, the rage of the reality at such violation while seemingly being the source of his amusement, was not. Melkor was no warrior, nor a hate filled creature, not even a great master of war, he was a schemer and he hated schemes.
However this time, he would seek his skull after, and only after the new worthy warrior was defeated. Its skull on his throne. The maddened son of the Anathema, a warrior before driven by the maddened skeins of fate, things his hateful brother might have more interest in than him, now turned to his undisputable martial prowess. Martial prowess driven by a cold and calculating mind, a worthy skull for his throne. He cared not to have him, he was not the angel with his restrained rage just waiting to be released or the gladiator Primarch of Nuceria, his skull was one he would possess for his skull. A repayment for the Anathema´s hateful attempt.
Even then as the Powers of that fallen pantheon either eyed the mortal or the son of the god that he is not, every single one of them. Not the gods or his servants, perhaps only its rebellious lord, noticed that shadow in the warp growing, in a forgotten corner. A shadow so impossibly there that it almost is not. Like a mountain under the great sea, impossible to see, hardly mattering as it remains unmoving through the ages, but this mountain is hollow, hollow and empty. Hollow empty and hardly a threat to the pantheon should it erupt.
.
Melkor sat at a table, four cards in his hand, cards with specific meanings. It was a basic card game, something he could join very easily after a simple explanation. He played in the muddied trenches beneath the starlit sky, in a windless twilight. The robes he wore, crafted from fabric far more expensive than the soldier´s garbs, were thick with the dust and the mud from the floor. He played with three other men, a cat seemingly walking around the men's backs, licking his paws from time to time.
The man before him pulled a card and put it on the stack. The Kraken, that was the card he played, the card his opponent played and now he had to play a higher card.
He looked at his cards. He could play any, all of them were more powerful than the kraken, yet he had to think which card to play because his opponent might have a bigger, more powerful card and if so he would be forced out of the game.
The Blind Seer, the Harlequin, the Winged Angel, and the Dark King, those were the cards he possessed, and these were the last four rounds of the game.
The Seer was the weakest of these, but even then it would save him, however if he played a stronger card he could take out the man at his left, the next player out of the game, saving the extra card for the last moments.
The Harlequin and the angel were comparable, though the latter was slightly stronger, the Dark King was one of the two strongest cards. It and the Emperor, and to see which won was through a roll, pure chance, no predetermined points, just pure chance.
Melkor did not know that, he hardly knew a tenth of the cards, much less all of them.
His hand skimmed over the clown clothed Harlequin, the man in front of him laughed.
"Come on, my Lord. Afraid of a little laughter?" He said calmly and smirking. When Melkor turned his gaze to the man he started whistling with false sincerity all too common to Nostramans.
On his back, Melkor felt a furry pressure touching him, he turned behind, carefully to not reveal his card, and the cat was there, calmly licking his paw. When he noticed he was being stared at the animal with what seemed like a grumbling face moved away with a pace that could only be described as glacial all the while the whistling sound started to reach a screeching peak.
He gripped his card, the blinded man, he would not risk it, but before he put it in the stack something threw him with a few meter back, his body crashing against the trench walls as men quickly went into cover and grabbed their Kalibrav V-1, lasrifle, a higher quality lasrifle compared to those issued in the 41st millennium, however it was also more cumbersome.
With his head ringing from the concussive impact of an artillery shell a few meters away from the table he slowly got up and moved to trenches underground shelters.
In the stress of the situation he didn't even notice his wounds, his back seemingly receiving the brunt of his punishment, like a strange counterbalance to the chest wound he had received five years ago when he had joined the legion. One wound that had broken nearly every bone in that section and made him meet the Bloodless.
His back was bleeding profusely almost like a torrent of red liquid that almost made him scream in pain with every second it continued. He had to get to a medicare the moment the artillery barrage, from the hive´s gun batteries stopped. However even in pain, even with his back filled with extreme amounts of shrapnel he couldn't help but noticed the cards on the floor, the cards of the same deck that they had been using to play the game, resting silently above one of the player´s corpse, a psyker´s corpse. He knew that it was one sanctioned, one belonging to the Scholastia Psykana, that served alongside the Nostramo Damnatii regiment, as an auxilia to a regiment that served as an auxiliary formation itself.
The Dark King was half burned, a card face down just beside it. However that was what picked his interest, what picked was the Blind Seer, just besides the Angel, their images strangely complementing each other in a way he had not noticed, and a few centimeters away from those was the Harlequin, that Clown that was as mysterious as it was random besides a card he could swear had not been in the deck before, when he had been given a basic rundown of the deck.
Besides the Harlequin was a card with a dark hooded figure, his face veiled by indescriptive shadows and clothed in muted dark robes. Behind him however was a merry landscape with living grass and happy colors. Like an outsider in another unexpected place.
That had piqued his notice.
Slowly the cat, seemingly being unharmed and uncaring at the occurring bombardement. Ignoring the boom of artillery shells landing all around them, their thunderous and eathshaking explosions that made the ground move beneath their feats, the cat seemed completely unbothered by it, picking with his muzzle a card. The one that had piqued Melkor´s notice.
With calm paces and dexterous movements, the small animal reached Melkor´s feet where he dropped the card and expectantly looked at him, with a strange knowing glint in his eyes.
"You want me to pick up the card?" Melkor whispered, the sharp pain in his back held back by simple pride, broken then as he reached down.
With a groan that sounded much more like a scream he grabbed the card. The hooded man, the outsider.
.
Nostramo, that world, that most cursed world, where the Nighthaunter came from, had its shackles torn off, its limits broken, and yet even amidst the boom of gunfire in the endless night, the breakdown of order and the end of the veneer of peace. The Nighthaunter did nothing. He simply listened from the spires of the city, in the tunnels of the underhive, or the streets of City´s Edge. He had broken the gang lords, removed the heads of the snakes, many of parts of its body had been apprehended by his sons, what remained now. What remained were the small cronies, the children of the gang, those who joined so recently they hardly had a reputation.
Still, he hadn't gone after them. He had not gone after any. He had pulled the enforced back, doing the bare minimum to prevent a societal collapse. In a part of his heart he wanted to intervene, to enforce order again, in the other he wanted to turn this world to glass, to shatter its adamantium core into a thousand pieces so that these animals that called themselves human could never be seen again. In his mind however he restrained these two desires with sensible action, a test. A test to see if after a century of him gone, a century of him absent yet his laws there, if the people would fall into madness or there would be someone who proved worthy, proved that there was hope for this world, to prove the snakes were the gangs and that these people, almost like Melkor claimed, were like any other simply desiring a life they could be safe and happy in.
That was the reason Curze remained in Nostramo, the reason why the Primarch jumped from gothic spires listening to the people below, seeing if they committed crimes, reading their actions with deadly judgemental intent. And just as he read his people, whenever he returned to his throne, to the Palace where the Lord of Nostramo Quintos took its seat, the Palace that he had simply occupied after his crowning, he read also Melkor's knowledge in that written and uploaded form, so that the hololithic table showed that to him.
"Justice is merely the construct of the current powerbase" - Darth Maul.
Whoever this Maul was, the quote was interesting, if not intriguing. Justice was intangible, uncared for unless one sought it or needed it. He always had killed for that… He bathed the streets of this hive in blood so that there would be justice, an order amongst the senseless chaos, and when he was here, that justice held, his justice was undeniable. It was untouched while he was in this world.
When he left the world it slowly eroded until it became non existent. Until they were naught but laughing matters for the powerful and rich…
When he had been in this world he had been the powerbase, that was why it vanished when he left and endured while he had remained.
Then it all made sense. It made sense why it hadn't lasted, why Melkor said his method, him clutching them too hard did not last. It relied on him being there, without him there, the hand that clutched the order was gripping it too tightly and in answer the people, not all but those that matter, pushed back, the sand that was order slowly sliding through the cracks of its fingers.
For two weeks now he had removed the shackles. At first it that had turned the city, no the world into the lawless reality it had been when he had first entered the city. However this sudden spike was noticed by the people and even if gunfires continued, there seemed to be a silent appreciation for the enforcers, for the police force. Even as crime remained, especially in the underhive, the sudden shock in its upper echelons seemed to have made everyone appreciate and cooperate. Sometimes they even turned on criminals themselves. These were few and far between but the very fact that they were fighting back, even if weakly against the sudden criminal spike told much about his people.
By the Throne, there were even people who spread those words of sentimentality he had told the lady almost a month ago. Why he had said those words he did not know, but it seemed that slowly and quietly they had spread, and each night more had turned to that. Believing this to be a test of their worthiness.
The green hololithic light, quoting mortals he had never heard flickered making his face seem almost like a phase shifting unreality.
Justice was merely a construct of the powerbase, something built by the powerful. He always believed he was meant to enforce it, to bring it. He was made to bring fear, but Melkor had put him as the judge. Perhaps he had been made to make them just to enforce them, or perhaps he was merely to craft them. He innately knew law, he inherently knew that in ancient times self murder had been punishable by an even more hideous death. He knew that crime was meant to be punished, he had been born with that, his father had made him like that.
His eyes gazed at the next line of text.
"Those who judge condemn themselves" - Morgana
Another one that struck far too close at home. He had become a monster, not because he had been born as one but through his judgement he had bathed Nostramo, the void and the countless worlds he was set to conquer in the thick red liquid that courses in everyone's veins. In blood.
"It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive." - Unknown.
Another of Melkor´s little words. Just as he spoke about clenching too hard, he spoke as well as the intent behind the act. That not all criminals are the same. He honestly was unsure about it. The laws were written and they were meant to be obeyed as such. They were made with a purpose, to prevent an unjust action, nothing more. The law dictated what punishment was meant to be delivered when the act was undertaken, and all should be accountable, no matter station or means. A beggar should receive the same punishment as a lord, no matter the crime. That was what he believed, what he was made to believe since birth, what he imposed on Nostramo, what served Nostramo, until Nostramo chose to not be served by it anymore.
"Mercy is a human luxury... and responsibility" - Aatrox
Mercy… Such a strange thought, to spare a man, to pardon him… He had never done that. He had never forgiven a man, for a crime or something else. Sure he tolerated omission, if it got him more than he would have had he not.
"Mercy"… He whispered to himself, raising one of his clawed gauntlets up. His sons had named his blades Mercy and Forgiveness, a cruel ironic twist on the meanings of those words, for he never had mercy for another, or forgiveness for himself. He couldn't have forgiveness. He could only move forward, with the weight of his sins on his shoulders, yet forward only forward.
Melkor told him to forgive Nostramo, told him there was hope for himself. He did not believe in that, not truly. What justice would there be in that. Still He had given a chance to Nostramo for them to prove themselves, he had given them a slight hope… slight.
Mercy was a luxury he never received and never gave, and whatever responsibility this mortal meant he had no understanding of it. Why was it a responsibility when none ever deserved it?
He continued reading, now unlike the quotes before who were single lines now were plain text. With lines written in that imperfect methodology that Melkor had, with a Nostraman superficially understood, lacking the subtle tack the language was so apt too, still he had improved with time, even though it would take another half decade before he could be called a master. For now Melkor was mostly conversational, his runic understanding still scraping on the barely tolerable.
These lines, while seemingly separated, all converge on something, and that is the thing Konrad has yet to understand. Mortality is far different from the apparent godhood the Primarchs possess.
The word of his title was highlighted, a bold lettering as if to indicate something behind, another course of information to read beneath it, speaking about them, about him and his brothers.
Perspective is a great way to think about. He is effectively a god compared to mortals. With gifts many would kill for, but yet he lacks the most human qualities, or rather lacks understanding of them. Empathy, Mercy, the Spirit of things, the intent, Konrad can read a room, understand underlying motives under a man´s words, pick up the barest lie, but his upbringing made him numb to all things that can make mankind great. Like in the Allegory of the Cave from Plato, of Greece who speaks of the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.
In it they use a small group people who lived their entire lives since infancy in the depths of a cave, with a fire as the only source of light. They have spent their lives witnessing the shadows of that light, the animals in it, and figures their shadows made upon the wall. However one day one of the men decided to explore more of the cave and finds its entrance and the sun´s light. He is filled with such wonder that he goes to tell it to his friends, yet they are not glad or excited as their friend. In fact they are afraid of that which they never knew, of what it meant for them and so with fear in their eyes they kill the man who brought such news. The fear driving them to willful ignorance and blindness.
Now, I do not say Konrad is blind, nor ignorant, however he is haunted. Haunted, like his title, he is haunted by the things he never knew, by the scars the world of Nostramo cut in him. Those scars are slowly healing, first with fate´s cage being unlocked, but there is still a lot that remains to go through. For the Primarch to feel the entire emotional spectrum and with it understand humanity enough so that his will not be delivered from a pedestal of theoretical and absolutes as human life is hardly made of absolutes. Life for a man is hardly made of black and white.
After all, what good father would not do to protect its children, what lengths would they not go to protect them? Even if such lengths are well, against morality, of legality. Men have thrown rationality out of the window for emotion, and who cannot say the things humanity has not done out of love and hate?
The world for the common man is not simple, it is not a question of logic, it is not a mathematical sum they can trust to endure. It is the most complicated thing, and sometimes, sometimes men do things they will regret later knowing full well how it will end not out of lack of wisdom but because there is nothing they cannot do. It is their only option.
Konrad is brave to acknowledge his weaknesses, none of his brothers have ever done so. accepting the sins or taking in the fact that they are far more human than they ever wished to admit, but there are many things to do.
One of the things that puts Roboute Guilliman apart from his brothers is how human he is, he had dealt with loss, lived in joy. He has gone through all the human emotional range understanding that sometimes life is just cruel and unforgiven before the Emperor gave him his legion and claimed him as his son.
Roboute Guilliman in fact does not consider the Emperor his father, he considers Konor Guilliman his father, the Emperor merely his creator, and that is something deadly apparent after one knows his story before the Imperium. He knows humanity even better than Vulkan in that sense even in the trans-human body he has and the multitude greater capacity he was born with. That is a greater part of the Ultramarines success compared to the rest of the Primarchs. Roboute understands humanity the best amongst all, perhaps even more than the Emperor, thought that now is theorising and I say it with no certainty.
Just as before, when his title, his brother´s name was highlighted with an unblinking line underneath, indicating that there was more to the story than what was revealed here.
Whatever Curze thought of these words he knew better than simply dismiss them. After all, no matter how irritating Melkor was, with his strange language he spoke from time to time in his sleep. His respectful disdain of the Mechanicum who more than once ended up with thinly veiled passive aggressive insult filled conversation with adepts that he had to fix or force it through. No matter that something was undeniable. Something was undeniable now that he had spent so much time here on Nostramo, both checking on his people, seeing if they were worthy, and reading the greater part of Melkor´s annotations. Something was clear, but he did not exactly know how to define it.
It was something concerning him, for having dragged him out of that pit. After all, if he had not his end would have been far from what he had wished. He knew the Emperor would have ordered his death, he knew the assassin's name, the one who would kill him in his father's name, but he did not know what would lead to that. The Heresy.
Sure he read mostly what concerned him, ignoring the paragraph long detail and explanation both on his brother´s events and the desires of the immaterium that he would ask personally to the mortal with his chief librarian present, but too read the possibility of the first found falling to treason, to learn about the events of the Istvaan System, to hear in his mind the words, the conversation he would most likely have with the Lion upon the Carrion World as they waged a war in Nostramo´s own backyard… No, not Nostramo, there would be no Nostramo in this timeline.
To see the letters telling him that even then as he had become madder and madder Sanguinius would try to bring him back out of the madness. Only for him to spare his mad future into the fate he so richly deserved. It was like having a knife stuck in his heart slowly twisting with cruel emotional precision as his brother proved again and again why he loved him, why he was the best of them all. Why he was the growing light of hope and he was the diminishing shadows of despair.
Melkor never lied in his text. He never lied to him. He omitted, he confessed to that before, but he wrote without that limitation. If he wished he could learn more about his brothers in these lines than what he would find speaking with them. However much he could go through, himself was the only one he had ever bothered to read about alone.
He would not see whatever was written about his brothers unless absolutely needed. He did not wish to know about them in this manner. He was not Alpharius to seek these secrets in this way.
Still whatever future this was, something was clearly lacking, his personal confrontation with Corvus Corax in that dusty world. The pillar of light that he had seen, or that terrible voice screaming at him over and over so much that he couldn't stop it until he spoke it out loud about that King which he had no idea about. Yet something he felt that was terrible. Even then, while missing those things, something had started to connect. Over the years he had seen himself killing Dark Angel, Raven Guard, Salamanders, and Ultramarines, and this account written by Melkor of a mad version of him filled most of the context about it.
He did not look for the events concerning his brothers in this text, he would rather ask that to Melkor himself. He needed more context about this, much more and only he could give him that. Even then in the back of his mind, he felt as if this was far more crucial than he was giving credit to it. Something in him told it to be so.
Melkor was an outsider with far too much knowledge if his mortal mind still held it. Melkor was an outsider with far too much insight if his mortal still remembered it. Melkor was an outsider who somehow irritated him more than any, and still somehow he did not hate him. For all intents and purposes he should. He was evasive, he kept much about himself to himself, like a man with secrets. However he knew he had not many secrets, well not personal ones at least, and his secrets… He had told him or written them for him to read over time, almost as if he started to trust him more and more, even if he was a Primarch.
Melkor… The thought lingered in his mind, his hand clicking a button on the table, the light flickered before it disappeared leaving him in the perpetual gloom of Nostramo sunless existence, his snowy face lit by fear strict lumens, as if touching his face was something to dread.
With heavy steps he slowly walked to the palatial balcony, gazing with eyes, weary of this world at the city below, breathing in the polluted air, the boom of gunfire, the distant scream and cries of anguish reaching his ears. He sighed.
"Nostramo." He whispered as he slowly sat on the balcony, legs hovering in the air as the feathers of cloak shielded them from the cold wind, it was almost like a child unaware of the danger of such colossal height, simply wanting to feel the air on his face.
Twin footsteps approached him from behind, one soft like a mortal's rushed pace, the other heavy, an Astartes laisure heavy stroll. Both stopped behind him, silently waiting for the Primarch to address them.
"Zharost, Trez," the Primarch spoke, almost too melancholically, motioning with a hand to approach the balcony´s edge where he sat. The Sineater and the Chief Librarian, the mortal who used his psychic gift since he joined the legion to calm the primarchs mind through his violent visions until recently where he felt far more in control with the visions he received, and the psychically gifted son of his that had fought for the legion even before he had been found, since its first deployments before the crusade had even left Terra.
A Nostraman mortal and a Terran Astartes, those were the two who joined him, who saw him seated on the balcony, his legs hanging on the wind, something that was far too childish for them to notice.
Trez looked to the Chief Librarian unsure if he was supposed to speak up, fortunately he did not, Zharost spoke up instead without even glancing at the mortal.
"You called us, my Lord?" He said, as he reached the balcony´s edge a few centimeters besides the Primarch.
Below them the streets of Nostramo rang with the boom of gunfire, and it was to that the Primarch´s gaze was seemingly locked in, and not to those who had heeded his summons.
"What do you think of it, Zharost?" He asked seemingly absentmindedly. The Primarch´s head rose slightly, his eyes shifting from the streets below to the vastness beyond the city, shifting to the fault line in molten flame where his pod still remained after all these years.
"I do not understand, my Lord?" Zharost answered, confused at the question. What was there to think? This was Nostramo, a world like any other… No not like any other, it was his father's home, but not his, there was nothing to think of it. It was dark, sunless, much like the prison beneath Terra he lived in before becoming an Astartes. It was also much wetter, the rain seemingly never stopping. However these were hardly things to think about. It was also lawless now, but that was hardly a comment he needed to give to the Nighthaunter.
"This is my home." Curze answered seemingly unbothered by the librarian´s answer. "My home, unrestrained from my laws after a century of my absence and without the heads of organized crime. And even then knowing full well I am here it is chaotic. It is lawless." He brought his hand up, seemingly presenting the city to him, indicating wordlessly to the chief librarian what he spoke of, what he truly meant.
"It is disorganized, chaotic." Zharost answered seemingly unsure if that was what the Primarch wanted to hear.
Curze audibly smirked. "It is my failure." He said calmly, almost as if it did not bother him, even then in his chest he felt an immaterial knife twisting in his heart. "Nostramo is the only Primarch homeworld to rebel against its Lord… Not betraying the Imperium, betraying its Primarch…"
Ekra Trez´s face turned to Zharost, just as the Librarian´s turned to the Nostraman mortal almost in unison.
"I want to crush it… To destroy it. To repay their betrayal with Exterminatus. That is what I would do if I wasn't restraining myself." The Primarch continued, strangely confessional, seemingly oblivious to the reactions of his summoned subjects. "What do you think would happen, Trez, if I sent a declaration saying exactly that?"
The mortal´s eyes drifted to the streets below. The gunfire, the lawlessness, the chaos. It both strangely normal and yet unnatural. It looked so different from the time he grew up in. His eyes remained there for an eerily long time before he finally answered the Primarch, with his lids shut with what he was about to say. "We would stop, my Lord Nighthaunter. We would gaze toward the unseen stars, to the void where your fleet lingers, and we would remain silent. Waiting. Accepting our execution. Contemplating the weight of our failure." The Nostraman, spoken in Trez's tongue, carried a somber, poetic cadence. Each word seemed to rhyme with the next, weaving a melancholic response befitting his lord and king.
The Primarch audibly sighed and left the balcony. He had a planet to fix.
Another chapter, tell me what you think. I am curious.
I know next week its christmas week. I am unsure if i will have a chapter ready by then due my availability and that of my editor but we will see.
Hope you like it, comment at your pleasure and in case we dont see each other before it, happy Sanguinala