The worst day of her life was when her gods came from the heavens and kidnapped her from her home. The second worst was watching her brother be murdered in front of her by one of those same gods for no other reason than he could.

The third worst would be having to tell her mother.

Junior Bridge Officer Artemis held her lamp pack close as she walked the halls of the Savory Wound's lower decks. Her heart felt as if it were attempting to tear its way out of her chest so that it could flee to higher levels of the ship. She didn't remember the last time she dared venture this low. Her gods—the Astartes—freely hunted on these decks, as the labor was cheaper and easily replaceable. Artemis worried that she may be easily mistaken for one of these dispensable deckhands, regardless of her old and worn uniform. The upper decks were safer.

At least, they were supposed to be.

Artemis had heard of the carnage that had occurred the day before. Over two dozen men and women dead just for being in the way. It sent a shiver down her spine that she couldn't suppress. Every day she looked into the ghastly faces of her gods and wondered what sadistic thoughts were running rampant behind those ruby eye lenses. She lived every single day wondering if a wayward impulse or need to quench some inhuman thirst would lead to her death. She never expected that when it came, that they would lash out at Orion.

Every time she blinked, she could see him dying next to her. The Astartes gauntlet on his skull, the way it simply… deflated at the barest amount of pressure. The way his eyes bulged and popped from their sockets in that moment. The fear in his face just moments before it happened. Her brother's own blood and gore splashing onto her face and uniform. She still hadn't gotten the stains out.

Artemis staggered and found herself unable to breathe. She thrust a hand out and leaned on the wall for support, letting out loud pants that could have also been sobs—she wasn't sure—until she regained her composure.

Once she emerged from the corridor, Artemis found herself in a large, multi-levelled chamber made up of a massive network of tents, bungalows, and shacks that the ship's crew were able to scavenge together. They called the place Scab City. Artemis found the name disconcertingly apt, as there wasn't much cloth to be found aboard the cruiser and, therefore, much of the canvas used for many of the abodes were from stitched-together leather of the only variety that the Night Lords had in abundance.

The smell also reminded her of the sickly ooze that pooled and dripped out of an infected man's skin. Artemis could not suppress the urge to gag.

"Food for the miss?" a spindly man said as Artemis began making her way down the "street." He stood behind a rotten stand with a measly collection of cooked rats on skewers on display.

"No," Artemis said quietly. "Thank you."

The man squinted at her, his greasy eyebrows rising as he seemed to process her uniform. "An officer! Oh! Oh! For you, miss… one extra rat if you agree to trade! I think this one here was pregnant. Far more meat, eh?"

Artemis blanched, putting up a hand in refusal, not trusting herself to speak without bile spilling out.

"No? Oh, I see, yes. You Uppers are used to even larger portions! I'll throw in two- No, three extra rats if we trade right now!" He nodded excitedly, his matted hair looking as if it might just slide off from all the jostling.

Hands fell on Artemis's shoulders. She tensed for a moment before recognizing the gesture as protective. "She'll be fine, Phihks. Thanks," the newcomer said. It was a man's voice, but only barely. The hands steered Artemis away down the bustling pathways and she glanced over her shoulder to see the grimy, oil-stained complexion of a man with a young, boyish face. He'd grown a beard since the last time she'd seen him. Artemis didn't like it.

"You look stupid," were the first words she could think to say. That didn't embarrass her, though. They were true, after all.

The wiry man gave a nervous little chuckle and guided her to a secluded alleyway. Passersby gave them strange looks, but they were far enough for the conversation to be somewhat private.

"You shouldn't be down here. Word… word is some of the gods have been hunting," Jep said. His eye twitched a little. It did that frequently when he was nervous. His eye twitched a lot.

"I thought you would've outgrown that by now," Artemis said, ignoring his previous comment. Truthfully, it had made her skin crawl and had every one of her muscles poised to flee. She just couldn't show it. Not around Jep.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "O-outgrown it? Artemis, I'm your age."

"You look half it."

The fuel-loader spluttered for a moment, stuttering over a dozen sentences he was trying to say at once. He stopped and took a breath, then fixed her with a glare that forced Artemis to stifle a smile. "What do you want?"

"I'm here to see my mother," Artemis said. It came out as a whisper.

Jep's face fell. "She's… not doing well, Artie."

Artemis only nodded. "How bad?"

"Some days it's okay. I check in when Orion can't make it and she's… Well, she's herself. Just… sickly." He whimpered at the end of his sentence and looked at the ground. That was a bad habit of his, too.

Artemis tried to not let the heartache and shame show on her face as she put a hand on Jep's arm. "Thank you… for looking out for her."

He nodded. "I just wish there was more I could do." He smiled sheepishly, then looked down again and began picking at his cracked fingernails. Artemis frowned.

"What is it?"

"Nothing!" Jep said with a bit too much insistence. He still refused to meet her eyes.

"Jep…"

The man who should've still been a boy grimaced, then glanced around to ensure that they were truly alone.

"There's a problem. With the ship."

"When isn't there?"

"You won't like this one."

Artemis raised an eyebrow. Jep bit at one of his nails before leaning in.

"There's a leak in the fuel reserves."

She furrowed her brow. "What?"

"There… there's a–"

"I heard you, Jep. We don't have any record of that on the bridge."

Jep whimpered again and picked at his fingers some more. "That's… because we haven't reported it."

"Jep!" Artemis couldn't keep the edge of fear from her voice. "Do you know what the gods will do to you if they found out this was intentionally kept from them?"

He hesitated, then nodded.

"And they will find out."

"I know!" he said quickly. "We just… With everything else going on, we figured it was less risky to not say anything and try to fix it rather than report it while tensions are high. You won't say anything, will you?"

Artemis put her face in her hands and groaned. "How bad is it?"

"Not bad!" Jep chuckled nervously. "It's…" he mused to himself, eyes turned upward as his head bounced from side to side, "maybe a day or two less fuel than your current readings. We have everything we need to fix it. It's… just a matter of finding the thing."

Artemis let out a sigh of relief. That was manageable, thankfully. "Find it. Fix it. Got it?"

"Got it. Find it, fix it."

"Good." She gave him a flat stare as he just stood there, smiling at her like a dolt. "As in, now, Jep."

"Oh!" He started. "Right! Uh, you got it! Good seeing you, Artemis!" He turned frantically, as if unsure of what to do at first, then scrambled out of the alleyway. Artemis watched him as he went, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

That boy…

The smile faded from her lips as she remembered her original task. She sighed heavily through her nose, eyes cast downward, and set off once again.

Artemis pushed the tattered rags that served as a door to the side as she entered the round tent. It was large—as far as tents made from skin went—but still only about a quarter of the size of her and Orion's quarters on the upper decks. They had tried to get their mother to move in with them on numerous occasions, but she'd demurred and refused each time, insisting that her and her brother's place was on the bridge, while hers was amongst the people of Scab City. Orion always seemed to understand her reasoning far more than Artemis had.

"Orion?" the crone on the floor asked in Gothic. She was the only one Artemis knew on the ship that still spoke the language instead of Nostraman.

The woman sat cross-legged with a bundle of half-prepped herbal remedies in her lap, her milky, sightless eyes staring up at Artemis. How her mother managed to find or barter the supplies she needed to make her local medicines, Artemis had no idea.

"No, mother," Artemis said softly, forcing herself to use a tongue that now felt so foreign to her, despite it being the one she had first learned on a world so very far away now.

The woman visibly deflated. "Oh," she said flatly. "What do you want, o' thankless daughter of mine?"

Artemis bristled. "That's not fair."

"Mm?" her mother croaked, then proceeded to cough, her shoulders rattling and convulsing. Artemis dropped to a knee and put a concerned hand on her mother's arm. The hag, once her fit ceased, spat red-tinged phlegm to the side, then resumed her work. "So many years of effort, such little respect repaid…"

"Mother, that is untrue!"

"Isn't it though?" Her bony hands twitched and her eyes fluttered for a moment. "When I said that the stars would fall upon our world and burn us, you laughed at your poor mother. Orion believed me."

He hadn't. He'd just been more gentle about the matter while Artemis preferred a more direct method.

"Because it was insanity! Your mind–"

"Is perfectly fine, thank you very much. And insanity or not, the apocalypse did come. The stars fell," her voice grew quiet, sending a chill down Artemis's spine, "and we've been burning ever since."

"A coincidence."

Mother snorted and brushed Artemis's hand away. "If you're going to pester me, you can at least make yourself useful." She pointed a rigid finger to the space in front of her and Artemis sat. An array of herbs and supplies to bind them were placed in her lap. Artemis sighed and began working.

"Just like coming home from the schola…" she muttered.

"I'm blind, not deaf, little lady."

Artemis smiled softly, then forced soberness to retake her. "Mother… there's something I need to tell you."

"Your brother's dead," her voice was hollow. Brittle. "There's no other reason you would be here."

The words stung—worse because they were true.

"Yes," Artemis said. "The g– the Astartes killed him."

"Emperor take them."

Artemis started and reflexively looked at the entrance of the tent, half-expecting a god in midnight power armor to materialize there. "You shouldn't say such things!" she hissed.

"Why?" Mother said and calmly continued making her bundles. "Or they'll torture me? Flay my skin? Electrocute my nerves until I beg for death? A meaningless truth." She set down her work and gestured around her with both arms. "This is everything, Artemis. This is our whole world. We cannot change it. We can only control our small fraction of reality. If they take me, then so be it. My existence will become pain. There will be nothing I can do to stop it. Best to just accept it and take back what little of my life I can in that acceptance."

For a moment, Artemis was a child again, sitting at the feet of the woman in front of her, listening in adoration at the wisdom being told to her. When had those words unveiled their true form? As the rantings of a madwoman.

"It's not that easy, mother. Fear is everything."

"Fear is nothing," Mother spat. "Fear is… is…" She groaned, leaning forward into her hands and massaging her temples with her thumbs.

Artemis quickly went to her side. "Is it a Symphony?" That was how Artemis's mother had always referred to her chronic head-pains. She'd never explained why.

Her mother nodded and closed her eyes. "We're going home, Artemis. We're going home."

Artemis frowned and stifled a sigh as she rubbed her mother's back. "If only we were, mother. But the Astartes would never allow it."

"We are going home," she insisted, jerking her shoulder away from Artemis. "Not them. Us. I know this."

Artemis's frown deepened. "What do you mean?"

Her mother let out a deep, guttural moan that sounded more animal than human. "It's so clear. It's never been so clear before." She looked up at Artemis, blood running like rivers from her nose and eyes, pooling and dripping from the old woman's chin. Artemis gasped, but found herself unable to move. Those eyes… Those blind eyes felt like they could see. Not her, not Artemis. But… something else. "Corpses of gods will litter the soil. And you will grow into a mighty, thorned flower. Their blood will be your fertilizer."

The muscles of the hag's face spasmed and forced her into a lopsided, black-lipped grin. Artemis did not recognize who she was looking at. She did not know this witch. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She leaned back to scuttle away, but her limbs were locked and disobedient. Her heart swelled and drummed harder than it had in the presence of any god she'd ever seen. This was something else. Something she once found profane and still did, but for an entirely different reason. This was–

Artemis blinked and the blood was gone. The terror was gone. The witch was gone. All that remained was a cold feeling in the room and the old loon sitting in front of her.

"What… what was…?" Artemis whispered. The details were already fading. She remembered the words, but not the visage. Had her mother actually looked so monstrous? Or had her statements just been too overwhelming? Perhaps Artemis missed home more than she cared to admit.

You are home. Accept that and you stay sane, she thought. It was the mantra that had gotten her through her first few years amongst her new gods. It wasn't comforting, but it was real—unlike the things her mother rambled about.

"What was that, dear?" The old woman asked.

"Nothing," Artemis responded. "Nothing at all." She rose then, dusting off her uniform. It made little difference to the grimy and rumpled fabric, but the ritual was familiar. It made her feel like an actual officer still. "I should get going."

Artemis's mother hummed in annoyance. "And to think you would actually spend some time with me. Especially after telling me my son is dead."

"He was my brother, too," Artemis snapped.

Mother paused. "I suppose that's true. He lasted longer than I thought he would. Always had such a soft soul, your brother." Despite her words, the woman was smiling.

Artemis simply nodded and stepped to the curtain, brushing it aside in preparation to leave.

"Artemis?" the old crone's voice suddenly sounded so small. Scared, almost. That wasn't possible, though. Artemis's mother did not get scared. Never. "Will you stay tonight? Please."

Artemis sighed, then looked down in shame. "I can't, mother. I've already been gone for too long."

There was an uncomfortable silence that filled the room before Artemis's mother decided to speak again. "I understand. You're a busy girl." She sounded defeated.

The junior officer looked over her shoulder at the frail thing and felt her heart throb. "I'll… come back tomorrow."

Mother hesitated, but then nodded in acceptance. "Yes, that… that would be good. Now run along! You've kept me busy for long enough! Shoo, shoo!"

Artemis rolled her eyes, then left. As she maneuvered through the streets of Scab City, she wondered how many trips it would take before the old bat caused her to start pulling the hair from her head.

She would never find out the answer, as, the next day, she was informed that her mother had died in her sleep. And left Artemis all alone.

Taresh was going to betray his brother. It was not a matter of 'if,' but 'when.' It was also not a matter of emotion, but pure logic. Pyotr was eroding, becoming unreliable and progressively more sickening to the rest of the company. At best, he was stagnant. At worst, he was degenerating. Either way, he was a liability. Therefore, the decision was simple. He would betray his brother.

Just not today.

Sixth Claw stood in the Savory Wound's Strategium. Taresh stood in the back ranks of his claw's huddle so that he could better observe everyone present. Pyotr was at the front of their group, toeing the line between hanging back and being close enough to the monolithic display table to be considered a participant. Retrigan was at his shoulder, sheathing and unsheathing his lightning claws. Taresh did not like that tick of his.

And then there was Gyrthemar.

The idiot stood at Pyotr's other shoulder, grumbling to himself as he poked at the new bionic lens that had replaced the eye that his brother had wrenched from its socket.

"Quit poking at it," Retrigan said dryly.

"Would if I could. Damn thing keeps… twitching." Gyrthemar slapped the palm of his hand against the side of his face several times. "Bah! Wasn't doing this earlier."

Taresh looked at Pyotr. If the lord discordant knew what he was doing, or doing it on purpose, he didn't show it in his posture. He simply stood there, arms crossed and statuesque in his now fully painted armor. Taresh was not pleased his brother had avoided replacing his servo-arm. It made it far too easy for him to hide his profanity now.

"Where is that beast?" Anras barked. He paced impatiently in front of the hololith, looking to their sorcerer and his band of Atramentar for answers.

"Patience," Zseron said simply.

"We are sailing ourselves to death and you ask for patience?" The visionary snarled, then began to rub his gauntleted forearm. Strange. That was a new tick. Taresh did not like it either.

At that moment, the doors opened and the ground shook as a broad, bloated figure lumbered in, his gang of raptors nipping at his heels. Gargarhl's Apostles, they called themselves. Each one as rotten and overgrown with flies and filth as their king. Taresh watched as their jump packs coughed and sputtered out puffs of miasmic gas every few moments, despite not being activated. Fungus and tumorous growths adorned their armor and even sprouted from their helms.

"You're late," Anras said, his tone icey.

"A captain comes when he wishes," Gargahl wheezed casually. He scratched at a boil on his stomach. The sore ripped and a horde of maggots squirmed forth from the wound, falling and writhing onto the deck.

Anras did not rise to the goad. He had his own coterie of followers. His own coven of zealots. Both he and the daemon prince were messiahs. And that, above all, was the thing Taresh hated most.

Too much power for such little minds…

"All necessary parties are here. We may begin," Zseron said in an attempt to re-establish order.

"And some unnecessary ones too," Gargahl gurgled, then spat to the side. Taresh did not believe it was coincidence that the mucus landed as close as it did to Zasharr's boots. If the Eater of Worlds was enraged by the barb, he did not show it. The apothecary had come alone to witness the meeting. It seemed he did not trust his men to keep a lid on their tempers like him.

"The Sons of Manus continue their pursuit of us," Zseron continued, changing the hololith to display an approximation of the Savory Wound in the void with the Gorgon's Manacles following after it. "We maintain the minimum distance required to stay out of range of their weapons, but we have reason to believe that our vessel will lose that edge in the near future. We require a new course of action."

"This is what I have been called for?" Gargahl said, his breath a shrill whistle. "I thought this would be obvious. We fight back! It's only one ship."

Anras laughed. "Fight back? Do you wish to kill the entire warband, daemon? The ship is already damaged and we can assume their weapons systems are superior to ours. We would be asking for them to kill us!"

"We would be showing them that we are strong."

Anras waved the comment away. "We should enter the Warp. Its hazards will make pursuit more difficult. It'll give us a chance to evade them."

"The Sea of Souls does not care if we are more familiar to it than them. It will make our path just as treacherous," Zseron pointed out.

"If we die, we deserve to die fighting. Not whimpering and flickering out due to some Chaos catastrophe!" Gargahl boomed.

"It's still a better plan than yours. The Ferric Sentries may not even follow us!" Anras insisted.

All eyes turned to Pyotr.

"They will follow us," he said simply.

Anras snarled and began to pace again. "You and your blasted rivalry! It's the reason we're in this mess!" he snapped, pointing at the lord discordant.

"Yes, brother, blame me for this. That will surely get us out of this mess."

"A vision might," Gargahl chortled. "Perhaps you should make a forecast for us, Anras."

Murmurs rose amongst those standing with the visionary. Taresh could tell he was scowling under his helm. "You know it is not so simple."

"Ah, of course. I always forget that yours are so much more… unpredictable than the Prophet's." The daemon prince flashed his rotten fangs.

Anras slammed his fist down on the monolith's edge. "The Prophet and I both share our father's gift! We are no different!"

"And yet he foresees so much more than you."

Taresh could sense Anras seething. His eye lenses could have bore holes into Gargahl, if anything short of a bolter round was capable of piercing his hide. "The Prophet spoke and we listened. We stood united against the Eldar during the Fall of Cadia and we left once our part was done. Nothing more, nothing less. He is not so special. He is simply the one who happened to portend such an event. It could have happened to any other visionary."

"And yet you still call him 'Prophet.'" Gargahl let out a wet chuckle.

Zseron spoke up before Anras had the opportunity to retort. "Let us return to the matter we are assembled for."

"Of course." Gargahl smiled again. "Our best chance is still to take the fight to them. We may even catch them off-guard."

"Ridiculous!" Anras swept his hand through the air. "They are following us. We wouldn't even get into range for a volley before we were rendered to pieces!"

"And the same would not happen in the Warp?"

"There wouldn't be a certainty of it happening in the Warp. Against the Manacles, it would be."

"Why not land?" A new voice spoke, rough and jagged like a chainaxe against stone. All eyes turned to face Zasharr. "A ground assault would be more assured and less likely to cause an entire ship's worth of casualties. Our warbands would do well together with my company leading a front assault while yours skirmished and provided discord."

"A good enough plan," Zseron said. "However, there are no habitable planets within range with our current fuel supplies to attempt such a maneuver." He modified the hololith again, showing off a map of the sector and the immediate systems near their position. Just as the sorcerer said, none were close enough for them to reach before their fuel reserves ran out.

"It's also worth bearing in mind that the Sentries's vehicles and war machines will more than make up for our superior numbers," Pyotr chimed in. Taresh found himself completely unsurprised. "The fight would still be too even to be acceptable. We would likely have to pull out and flee again, which will just put us back in this same situation."

"All the more reason we should attempt to defeat them here and now!" Gargahl said. His raptors screeched and cawed their agreement, stamping their clawed feet on the deck.

"Set your foolish pride aside and think!" Anras shouted. His followers also broke into impatient shouts and arguments on his behalf. The Strategium quickly degenerated into a cacophony of petulant screams and squabbling, each individual trying to be heard over all others. Taresh watched as Zasharr shook his head and simply left the room. The Night Lord found himself inclined to do the same, but remained still as his vision was drawn back to the center of the room.

Zseron looked at Pyotr with an odd expression. He almost seemed to be expecting something of the lord discordant. The Astartes in question refused to meet the Atramentar sorcerer's gaze, instead fixating on the monolithic display. Taresh wondered if he noticed Zseron and was avoiding looking into those black eyes, or was too distracted by the fantasy of eating the monolith's machine spirit—or whatever it was he did—to be aware of them. Either way, Taresh itched to draw his chainsword and cleave his brother's head from his shoulders.

Finally, the sorcerer gave up and slammed his stave down onto the deck. A dark aura washed across the Strategium and everyone fell silent. They did not stop yelling and squawking. No, their voices simply stopped emitting noise altogether. Once they began to notice this, each member present began to fall still and pacify themselves, turning their attention to the Sorcerer of Stars.

Zseron sighed, bringing an annoyed hand to his temples and leaning on the hololith's edge. "We cannot go on like this. Kicking and screaming like children without leadership." Taresh could tell that both Anras and Gargahl wanted to speak up against that statement, but neither were able to. "Three days. We will decide our course of action in three days. If the decision is not unanimous, I and the Atramentar will begin executing the members of this company one by one until it is. Meeting adjourned."

With that, the sorcerer departed from the room, the other five members of his clique following after. The loud thrum of their terminator armor purring in the silent air. Moments after they left, the darker-than-night shadows that haunted the room diminished and speech was made possible again.

"So," Gyrthemar said, "that went well."

Taresh was inclined to agree. Zseron's ultimatum was swift and effective. It would force them to rally behind someone, to finally agree on a single leader. It was almost clever.

He still felt like strangling his brother for the comment anyway.

Artemis wasn't sure how much time she'd spent staring blankly at the door to her chambers, only that, by the time she'd exited her stupor, her feet had begun to ache and a thick sheet of sweat had coated her forehead.

She didn't want to enter her chambers and couldn't understand why. When Orion had died, the place felt hollow but manageable. Now that her mother was gone too… for some reason she had trouble finding the will to enter her own lodging.

I didn't raise worms. Slap yourself around a bit and get to work. One of her mother's mantras from Artemis's childhood came back to her at that moment. It almost brought her to her knees. She slapped her hand on the wall panel instead and the door slid open.

Artemis stepped in and found her chambers to be exactly the same. A little cold, a lot empty, but just as she remembered. Her side of the room was neat, orderly, and spartan. Orion's side was disorganized and cluttered with baubles and trinkets that she had no idea where he'd managed to get them from. Their lesser hololithic display table sat in the center of the room. Normally such a thing in a living chamber went exclusively to senior bridge officers, but Artemis and Orion had been lucky with their lodging assignment.

So alone…

She hadn't realized how much of a role her family played in keeping her sane amongst her gods. Now she had no one. The other bridge officers had been around longer than Artemis and Orion and were just shells as a result. Barely more than servitors. She couldn't rely on them to be her friends, to be there for her. And Jep… He was a good man, but he wasn't blood. Artemis couldn't take this to him.

Staggering over to her brother's side of the room, Artemis found herself sitting on the edge of his cot and staring at the empty space between her eyes and the floor. Her hands moved on their own accord and she felt something smooth and round grasped by her fingers and placed into her lap. When she looked down she found herself holding a glass bottle with a miniature strike cruiser trapped inside. She let out an involuntary laugh that turned into a choking snort. Artemis remembered when Orion brought this back to their quarters. He'd been so proud of himself, saying it was an exact replica of the Savory Wound according to the man he traded for it with, only for Artemis to tell him it looked nothing like the Savory Wound and was, in fact, the completely wrong design. Her brother had kept the thing anyway.

Once the moment of mirth faded, a sob escaped her lips and Artemis brought the bottle close to her chest. "Oh, Orion. What am I going to do?"

A memory began to dance within Artemis's mind. She'd been sitting in front of the hololithic display, idly reading the entries they had on her homeworld. It had been recently after their capture and she still hadn't released those ties that bind yet. Moments later, Orion burst through the door in his usual affable nature, as if oblivious to the eternal nightmare they found themselves living in.

"I have a plan!"

Artemis didn't respond.

Orion cleared his throat. "I have a plan!"

She sighed and looked up at him. "For what?"

"To escape, of course."

Artemis only rolled her eyes. "Just saying that will get you killed."

"Aye, but it's such a good plan. They won't even have the chance, you see." His eyes twinkled.

Her lips tugged upward at her brother's expression and Artemis shut off the display and leaned up against its edge. She looked at him a moment then gestured widely with her hand. "Go on."

"I," he said, leaning in conspiratorially. "Am going to make the gods like me so much, they'll make me an Astartes like them. Then, I'll be strong enough to get you and Ma out of here."

Artemis couldn't stop herself from laughing. "You don't believe that will work."

Orion's eyes widened with outrage. "Well, of course I do! It's a great plan!"

"You're an idiot." She slapped him on the shoulder as she continued snickering. Orion's brow furrowed in annoyance, but Artemis could see the grin he was trying to suppress. He didn't believe a word he was saying, he just wanted her to feel better. It was working.

"I don't see how!"

"For starters, you're too old to become one of them."

Orion rolled his eyes. "Oh look at Little Miss Schola here, using her brain to ruin my perfectly good idea!"

"It's not a good idea. Besides, it wouldn't suit you anyway."

Orion curled an eyebrow upwards. "Oh?"

Artemis shook her head. "Not at all. You're too… flabby." She poked at his gut that had, admittedly, been shrinking since their arrival.

"Oh, I'll get you for that!" Artemis shrieked as Orion grabbed her and tossed her over his shoulder. He began to spin around rapidly, Artemis banging her fists on his back and demanding to be set down. All the while, the two were laughing like they weren't in the deepest dregs of hell.

The memory faded and Artemis was back in a cold, empty room, clutching a glass bottle to her chest like it was the last lifeline she had of her brother.

What are you going to do? Orion's voice floated into her mind. You're going to make a plan. That's what you're going to do, Little Miss Schola.

Artemis snorted, setting the bottle to the side and standing up. The idea was ridiculous. There was no escaping the Astartes. This was her life. There was no point in thinking otherwise.

She stepped up to the hololithic display table anyway and activated it—at minimum to get the notion out of her mind and prove it worthless. She pulled up the ship's current position in the sector and looked at the immediate area, as well as the radius it could reach with its current fuel reserves. Empty void, just as she expected.

Rolling her eyes, Artemis went to turn off the display while chastising herself for her foolishness but paused. She looked at the hololithic image of the Savory Wound and thought for a moment. She pulled up a new display and began to run calculations. Upon completion, she widened the range of the ship's travel radius to meet her approximate results, blacking out the central area of useless space. Still nothing. Not even a single habitable system. Artemis tapped a finger to her lips then ran a new series of calculations as an idea came to her. She shrank the scope to meet her new results and smiled slightly. There, a single system revealed itself.

Artemis spun the floating, hololithic disk with her hand and widened the display of the system once it was near her to get a closer look. Just because it was there, didn't make it habitable.

This is so stupid, she thought.

The system was unlabeled within the ship's cogitator banks. It only held four planets, three of which were unusable gaseous spheres, and, therefore, unworthy of labeling. Artemis frowned at that. Something tugged at the recesses of her memory. Strange…

She turned her attention to the fourth planet, a small world that appeared to be adequate enough to support life. There was record of it within the ship's memory, as well. Artemis pulled it up and her lips parted in shock as she read the name, soon followed by a wave of nausea that brought her to her elbows on the display table.

Kleos.

She knew that name. She knew it very, very well.

Her mother had been right. They were going home.