The visionary knelt in his chamber. His eyes were closed and his forehead pressed to the floor. He ground his teeth and breathed in silent hisses. Meditation, he called it. Or a pale imitation of the kind he had witnessed from other Legions. Anras found no peace in it. He was most calm, most receptive in the euphoria of a blade in his hand, blood between his fingers, and screams serenading his ears. But even that was flavorless to him now.

For four hours he had laid prone here, groveling at the throne of his own mind. He willed the prophecies to come, pleaded with his geneseed to grant him but one vision so that he may save his brothers. It was his only option. The dying gasp of a fleeing prey animal too exhausted to keep running.

Nothing. Nothing but the darkness behind his eyes that mocked him with imagined images of his brother, the one that Zseron gambled the entire galaxy on, walking away with his tail between his legs.

Anras's hands rolled into fists and his face contorted into an expression of rage and exertion. Veins throbbed on his brow and his mind ached from tensions that had no release.

Snarling, the visionary rose to his feet, refusing to further grovel to a spirit that defied him. His vision narrowed as he turned and focused on the Widowmaker that hung from a hook on the wall alongside Anras's power sword.

"Pathetic," he said to the knife. "That is what they call me, apparently. Placed into a position of authority because of no other reason than my resemblance to you. A figurehead, a puppet to be manipulated and seen but never heard. Have I not saved them time and time again? Have I not used your gifts to preserve us while others lead us to death? Am I not your truest son?"

The blade did not reply.

"No," he sneered. "No, I'm just a disgrace to you. We all are! And for what? The crime of our birth?" Anras laughed derisively. "We are made in your image, father! The infection you saw in us was no different than the rot you harbored! That taint you carry as you screeched for order! That fear was the only weapon worth relying on! It came from Nostramo. It nurtured and curdled your mind, just as it did the same for us. And we're the disappointments? We failed you? As you raved and maundered in those final years… 'Sevatar! Bring me Sevatar!' As if none of us could be your council. As if we could not also possibly understand your strife."

Anras began to pace then, began to release his agitation in the quick, jerking movements of his feet. His lips pulled back to reveal saliva-coated teeth. His vision began to blur and darken as he pounded a palm onto the side of his head.

"Poison, you called us! But did the other Primarchs not say the same things of you? Are we not the perfect sons to a most noble father? Should a lawkeeper not take pride in his work? Should a peacemaker not find joy in his achievements? We are what you made us to be! And yet you are dead while we yet live! Because we understand that there is more work to be done! We understand what you could not!" He stopped, breathing heavily. "We have risen above you," he sneered at the combat blade.

The Widowmaker still remained silent.

Anras snorted at his own rambling tantrum and turned to grab his helm. He grasped it, only for it to tumble to the floor out of weak fingers. The visionary stumbled on suddenly-weightless limbs. He gasped and choked, unable to breathe as pain seeped into his brain like a bleeding wound.
Anras fell to his knees, his eyes wide but unseeing as images passed across his gaze and strangled the present away from him. All the visionary was and had ever been became memories of ash as what was to come became what was now. He watched in horror, too petrified by the odious curse of his Primarch to move or act.

It felt as if days had passed once the visions released him, but a glance at his chamber's chronometer revealed that not even a full hour had elapsed. Anras breathed, face dripping with perspiration as the scattered and fragmented thoughts of who he was and what he had seen slowly began to coalesce once again.

"No!" he bellowed, then began to slam his fist down on the decking. "NO! NO! NO!"

Anras continued to pound and claw at the floor beneath him, screaming and thrashing his denial as he rose to his feet and proceeded to turn his chambers into ruin.

"NO!"

The visionary had glimpsed the future yet again. And it filled him with nothing but misery.

When Artemis returned to her chamber after several festive hours at the bar, she found that she was not alone in her rooms.
The first figure she noticed was her master. Pyotr sat on a stool that was almost too small for him, directly across from the door. He sat as if holding something in his enormous, ceramite-encrusted hands. The metal and his grip made it impossible for her to identify what exactly it was that he possessed.

Next, she noticed the odd servitor in the corner. It stood rigid, magenta lenses for eyes buzzing with a dim glow.

"You reek of oil and alcohol," Pyotr said.

"I was in Scab City," Artemis replied. Fortunately, she had evaded her compatriot's several attempts to pressure her into indulging herself and was still predominantly sober. "I didn't think you would need me."

Her master grunted, his expression unreadable behind the skull and red eyes of his helmet.

"My lord," Artemis said hastily. "Is there something wrong?"

"Many things," Pyotr responded with a sigh, his shoulders sagging. "My brother aims for us to die on Kleos."

She resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow and smirk before asking for elaboration. Instead, she continued to stand at attention, her hands folded behind her back as she waited for Pyotr to speak on his own time.

"Gargahl is a simplistic creature," the Night Lord finally said, "with obvious goals that he is very poor at keeping hidden. He wants us to die. At least, those who oppose him. It's all in the name of that god of his," Pyotr spat the words.

"May I ask what has led you to believe this, my lord?"

Her master stared at her for several, long moments before leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees. "When I was a child, my mother approached me and said that someone had been stealing from the safe in her bedroom. She told me that it was my job to find out who…"

Artemis nodded along, but her eyes caught the servitor in the corner again. It was… an odd design. One she couldn't quite place. In fact, it didn't seem to fit any model she was familiar with. Servitors tended to be bulky and singular in their designation, but this one was sleek—almost elegant, even—but still crude, as if it had been put together in a relatively short time frame and had just recently been finished. It sent a chill up her spine that she couldn't explain.

"So, I investigated. We employed a number of pauperized citizens that we allowed to enter and clean our halls and chambers. Any one of them could have risked such a thing. The downtrodden often are so very desperate.

"I began with my mother's personal maid. She seemed the most likely culprit, as she would have been present around the same timeframe of the theft and I had learned that she'd abruptly come into a minor influx of wealth. Selling drugs on the side, she claimed. I reported her to my mother and she had me kill the woman for her betrayal. I complied."

The servitor's mouth and jaw had been replaced with an ovular vox-speaker, wires and cabling snaking out and burrowing into the face and skull. Its frame had been encased with metal across the breast and shoulders, its limbs replaced with specialized prosthetics. It wore a midnight blue robe that hid most of its silhouette, but Artemis still felt that it had once been male.

"A day later my mother came to me again, saying that more of her protected jewels and finances had gone missing. I went to work yet again. This time, I suspected my uncle. He was a slobbish, distasteful man who flittered by whenever he needed to beg for money or men to protect him from that week's latest enemy he had made. It would not surprise me if my mother had refused him this time, only for him to take matters into his own hands. When I snuck into his home one night and searched his belongings, I found a pouch of diamonds resting on his bedside. He screamed and begged how he knew nothing of it when he was brought to my mother. I felt far less pity killing him than I did the maid."

Artemis listened, but continued eyeing the bionic figure. She frowned, still feeling something off about the design. Then, it hit her.

She remembered being dragged to one of the mines as a child by Orion. He had heard that an Adeptus Mechanicus cohort had arrived to inspect the planet's efficiency. The magos in charge had ultimately decided that the planet met tolerable parameters, but had nothing of further interest for the servants of the Machine God to invest their efforts into. That had still been enough for her to witness him and his retinue of mechanized bodyguards. It had still been enough to mesmerize her. It had still been enough for Artemis to see the skitarii.

That is what this thing was. A warped, perverted version of a skitarius, but a skitarius nonetheless.

Rather than her realization abating her unease, Artemis only felt it grow further. She was missing something. Pyotr had created a skitarius, that meant he had a purpose for it, one she couldn't ascertain yet.

"I thought that was the end of the matter," the lord discordant said, never quite pausing from his story. "And yet, more of the contents of the strongbox continued to go missing. I toiled again, and again, and again for potential culprits. Until I came to a realization."

Artemis stared at the metallic soldier, unable to shake an ominous feeling from her mind. The creature of dark armor and greased cables no longer resembled the being of flesh it once was, but there were remnants.

"There was only one person who knew that the safe was hidden behind her portrait in the room. Only one person with open, unlimited access to it. Only one person who even knew its combination."

The shape of the nose, the crease of the forehead, the diminutive, hunched posture. They were all so eerily familiar to Artemis.

Pyotr shifted in his seat, his hands opening just enough for her to spot what he held from the periphery of her vision. The item was small and fragile—a blood-stained, paper carton of some kind. The type that would be used to carry lho-sticks.

Artemis continued to stare into that inhuman face until, abruptly, recognition crashed into her like a cyclonic warhead. She knew that face. Even past all the butchery and implants and augmetic surgery, she knew the face of her friend.

Phihks.

In one, fluid move, Artemis drew the stub revolver from her side and pointed it directly at Pyotr's head. The Astartes didn't flinch.

"The first bullet," he began, his voice low and growling but calm, almost bored, "would only fracture the outer layer of my helm. The second and third would be needed to pierce the plate fully. The fourth would only daze me."

"Good thing there's five," she spat, clicking back the hammer of her gun. She eyed the skitarius that had once been Phihks in the corner, but he didn't move.

"Yes," Pyotr agreed, "but then you would not have one for yourself, should you miss." He leaned forward further, the servos in his armor whirring and purring.

Artemis's hand trembled.

"When I went to my mother that final time," Pyotr said, continuing his story as if nothing had occurred, "and stated that she was stealing her own riches, she cooed and congratulated me for my intellect and said how proud she was of me. Then she beat me for getting it wrong so many times initially. I was ten years of age then. She called it a lesson. A lesson that even those closest to us can be culprits of treachery."

She did not lower her gun, but her shaking intensified as fear began to course through her in earnest. A cold web spread across her internals, painting everything a shade of primeval horror.

"Why?" Pyotr hissed.

"Swallow shit and die, bastard," Artemis said, her voice strained and far less confident than she had intended.

If the words had any effect on him, the lord discordant did not show it. "Few humans are heeded within this Legion, few trusted and respected. You could have had that, yet you throw it away on a pointless rebellion. Explain yourself."

"What? Do you want me to thank you for padding my collar and lengthening my leash? We're still slaves. You took away our lives. I was taking it back."

"We took nothing from you," Pyotr said. His tone was matter-of-fact, condescending. It was as if he were lecturing a troublesome child rather than a traitor that had cost him the lives of his entire warband. "You were slaves since the day you were born. The Corpse-Emperor's light is in the shape of shackles, his love an iron maiden that accepts no other thoughts beyond his."

"Liar," Artemis hissed, her knuckles white around the grip of her gun.

"And how would you know, Artemis Maralli of Kleos? You hail from a planet with little influence from the Imperium, trained in the scholas of your world, and never left its surface before we came for you. How would you know what horrors lurk in the galaxy beyond the walls of this ship?"

She said nothing.

"Lower the weapon, Artemis," he ordered. She did not. "Put. It. Down."

He put no further emphasis on his voice, but each word still felt like a thunderclap in her mind. Pyotr rose to his feet and Artemis's arm shook further, her finger hugging the revolver's trigger, but seemed incapable of making the final motion.

She lowered the gun, tears streaming down her cheeks. "You're dead. You're all dead. I got exactly what I wanted, escape was just a hopeful secondary."

Her master said nothing as he regarded her, peering down his nose at her like she was the source of some sour stench. He began to approach and Artemis cringed. There was no reason for it, as he only placed his hand on the door control, the sound of sliding metal emitting from behind her.

"Move," he said. She obeyed.

Pyotr stopped in front of the open door, not bothering to look at her anymore. "I told you of one of our traditions. I will now introduce you to another. The ink is laced with a minor toxin. It will not kill you, but it will be very, very painful."

"What… What are you going to do to me?" she asked, incapable of keeping the quiver from her voice.

The Night Lord turned to look at her one final time. Somehow, that passive, unemotive skull that adorned his faceplate was infinitesimally worse than whatever expression may have lurked behind it on that cruel, scarred face and its deep, black eyes.

"'Do to you?'" he said quietly—or perhaps it was just the blood in her ears that made it seem so. "I am going to give you exactly what you wanted, slave. I am going to let you be the hero."

He exited the chamber and, as the door slid closed, Phihks– the skitarius began to move. He stepped towards Artemis with bloodless, mechanical limbs and drew something from his robe. As he did, the motors in his arms sputtered, causing his hand to twitch erratically and knock something off of the hololithic display table.

Orion's cruiser-in-a-bottle clattered to the ground and cracked. Artemis watched it with hollow eyes and barely noticed the hand on her shoulder or the hum of the needle-gun near her ear.

"Sit," Phihks said in a voice that was not his own anymore.

Artemis did not have the will to defy the command.

Pyotr waited silently on the other side of the hatchway until he heard her screams begin to rise and reverberate from within the chamber. He savored the sound of her agony for a few moments, but did not relish or enjoy it. He no longer knew if he would have if his soul was still in-tact, nor did he care. The problem was dealt with now—it was time to move forward.

Turning away from the traitor's room, he began to make his way to the apothecarion once again. As he did, he forged a vox-link.

"Sixth Claw," Pyotr said. "Meet me in the Strategium in three hours. We have much to discuss."