Stulk had been blessed with the ability to sleep through anything. He had also been cursed with a wife who could not.

"Stulk," she whispered, lightly shaking him by the shoulder.

"Hm…" He pulled away, rolling onto his stomach.

"Stulk."

"What?" he groaned, suddenly feeling the sensation of icy toenails sliding between his ribs. He cracked an eye and attempted to glare at the woman beside him in the darkness.

"I heard something."

"Me too."

"Really?"

"Yeah, an old bat squeaking in my ear, keeping me from a good night's sleep." He closed his eye again.

"Stulk! This is serious," Mara huffed and jabbed her foot into his side again. "I heard something out there!"

"Just racks getting into the garbage again."

"It didn't sound like racks. It… it was loud. I think it came from the fields."

"Then go check it out for yourself," Stulk grunted, turning his head away to face their room. Silence filled the air and Stulk's brow creased. He knew that sound all too well. It was the silence of a woman heartbroken by her foolish husband yet again. Stulk sighed. He forgot sometimes that he did, in fact, love the woman he slept next to. Emperor-damned inconvenient, that was.

"The fields, you said?" Stulk sighed, already rising from the sweet comfort of the mattress. He checked the chronometer by their bedside. Three hours until sunrise. He'd have to leave for work in four. Stulk suppressed a groan.

"Yes… It's probably nothing, like you said. You can go back to sleep."

"Only for you to be unable to for the rest of the night? I don't think so." He leaned over and kissed the top of Mara's head. He felt the tension leave her as she relaxed back into the bedding.

"Thank you, Stulk. I'm sorry."

Stulk opened the wardrobe and rummaged through his small corner of it, fumbling in the darkness until he found his coat. He then reached for the emergency lamp-pack they kept on the top shelf whenever the power went out—which was far too often for his liking.

"What'd you say it sounded like?"

"I… I don't know how to describe it, but I think it was something big."

He raised an eyebrow. "Like a byor?"

"Like something you shouldn't have to look too hard to find."

"Good enough." Stulk shrugged and left out the back door.

Outside, he was greeted by the canvas of indigo and silver streaks that was the night's sky. He took a moment to admire the view. You couldn't see the starpaths up in the city for some reason. Someone smarter than Stulk once told him it was because of all the electricity, but he wasn't quite sure how that worked. It was the damn sky. How would what they did beneath it affect what it looked like?

He cast the thought aside for now and flicked the lamp-pack on. It flickered and shuttered until Stulk gave it a good smack and a cone of yellow light spilled out to illuminate the world before him. Mara would have had a fit seeing him treat the device so harshly. She just about treated every machine spirit she came across like a beloved pet. Damn woman.

Stulk stifled the smile that threatened to spread across his lips and began to trudge his way through the manicured grass that made up their home's property line in the direction of the wild fields beyond. With their income, they really had no business owning such a nice home, but they were fortunate to discover four years ago that Mara's uncle had left it to her when he'd kicked the pewter pail. There'd been some contention over it with her family—a few of which still refused to speak with her. Mara had been rendered to sobbing fits on several nights because of that. She likely would've given away her inheritance just to be done with the whole matter if it weren't for Stulk. She deserved the property. That bleeding heart of hers caused enough problems, it might as well reward her every once in a while. And… well, there was also the other reason.

Glancing over his shoulder, Stulk peered in the direction of the switchback road that led up to the city. He couldn't see it in the darkness of the night, but he knew it was there, looming. Stulk wasn't afraid of heights. God-Emperor knew he wasn't so damn cowardly to be scared of a thing like that. Hell, he worked up in Equinox Secundus every damn day. Would a man who's afraid do a thing like that? No, certainly not. Stulk just had a healthy concern for living so high up on the cliffside. You never knew if the whole thing would collapse and the entire city would just roll off into the sea. Not to mention the air being too thin. People said you got used to it, but Stulk was pretty sure they were just too oxygen-starved for their brains to work right and realize how dangerous it was to live up so high. He hadn't made it to his fifties by taking needless risks like that. So what if over half the isle lived up there? Over half the planet believed that dark forces attacked them in the night several years ago. Stulk knew better, though. He knew it was actually all just some scheme by the planetary governor to handle overpopulation. Brutal yet efficient, he had to admit.

The domesticated foliage quickly gave way into tall grass as Stulk entered the fields proper. His steps grew more labored over the uneven soil as he brushed through reeds and grass that reached up as high as his waist. Stulk began to curse under his breath as he swung the lamp-pack around in search of Mara's phantom noise. The wind gently blew through the plain, causing the fields to whisper and hiss into the air. Stulk shivered at the sound. He wasn't frightened or anything, it was just the kind of noise that made your spine prickle. Like nails on a chalkboard.

Stulk stopped in place as he heard something to his left. It was… a buzzing sound. Or something similar. Something like a giant, metal cat purring as it caught sight of a mouse. Stulk felt his face grow cold. From the wind, of course.

"Hello?" he called out, aiming his lamp-pack in the direction. He couldn't see anything through the grass. "Is anyone there?"

Just as quickly as the noise began, it cut out completely. Stulk narrowed his eyes.

"Is it you JenHung boys again? You know you shouldn't be out this late!"

Yes, that had to be it. The JenHungs lived just a few kilometers across the field from Stulk and his wife. Those children of theirs were probably out causing trouble with some kind of old, broken-down machine they found out in the fields. That was likely the noise Mara had heard earlier. An engine backfire from their tampering or something.

A twin pair of red glints reflecting through the foliage from the lamp-packs beam confirmed Stulk's suspicions and he continued forward. "Staying quiet is just going to get you into more trouble!"

The two ruby pricks blinked out and Stulk rolled his eyes. He'd probably scared them off. Still, it would be in his best interest to see what exactly they'd gotten all excited about. Stulk didn't need them coming back and…

His thoughts tapered off as he almost stumbled when he broke through the grass.

The fields had parted into a wide, circular clearing of burnt grass and reeds and overturned dirt that created a small crater. In the center of the clearing was a silhouette of something large and vaguely conical in shape—like a flower bud, almost. Stulk squinted in an effort to make sense of it before remembering his lamp-pack and pointed it at the object.

Immediately, light revealed the bud to be some kind of metal chassis with gangplank hatchways that lay open on all four sides that only further strengthened the illusion of it being some massive, metallic flower. The machine was dark in coloration for the most part, the only deviation the bright, forked lines of white and electric blue stretching across its surface.

Stulk had never seen anything like it before in his life.

"Throne of Terra…" he breathed. He went to take a step forward but thought better of it. There was no telling what kind of machine this may have been or what the JenHungs could have done with it. For a moment, Stulk wondered if they even had done anything to it. Those red lights had come from this direction, but he wasn't sure what on the pod could have emitted them. Then again, any other explanation would have been ridiculous. What? Did the thing fall from the sky?

Stulk snorted. No, of course not. There was all kinds of ancient machinery spread out across the planet from centuries past. The planetary governor had most of it harvested, but surely they missed some things here and there. Those boys must have found this one and somehow managed to open those massive doors. That's likely what made the noise that alerted Mara.

With a sigh, Stulk turned around and made for home again, hoping he could catch another half-hour of sleep if he was lucky, and perhaps even get a reward for reporting the machine to the Administratum officials. Despite that comforting thought, he couldn't help but feel like he was being… watched as he made his way back. Several times he swung his lamp-pack in an arc in an attempt to catch a sneaking JenHung and scold him with one of Stulk's infamous glares, but there never was anything to glare at. To another man, this may have been unnerving. To Stulk, it was just annoying. Especially when the sense seemed to follow him even through the doors and walls of his home.

"I'm going to need to have a talk with the parents of those boys," Stulk said as he entered the bedroom. "Always causing trouble in the middle of the night as if no one else is trying to get some sleep."

Stulk shook his head in irritation as he hung up his coat and tucked away the lamp-pack. "I guess they found some kind of machine out there that woke you up. I'll report it in the morning."

Mara didn't respond. Stulk frowned as he turned back to the bed. Had she fallen asleep already? That wasn't like her. She hardly blinked when she was left alone, damn skittish thing that she was. How exhausted had she been to go right back to sleep after he left?

"Mara?" Stulk asked as he approached the bed. Fumbling through the darkness, he reached out and gently shook her shoulder. No response. Stulk's frown deepened. Her nightwear was damp for some reason. Sweat?

Stulk's brow tightened as he slowly pulled away and wiped the accumulated moisture from his hand onto his pant leg.

"Mara… wake up," he found himself saying. He wasn't quite sure why his voice quivered so much.

"...Mm? What is it?" she said groggily. Stulk felt something within him unclench and a dam of pressure released itself from his gut. He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"The noise. It was those boys. Didn't you hear me?"

"I suppose not."

Stulk shrugged despite knowing his wife couldn't see him and laid down fully, only to be met with more of that slick feeling all along the sheets.

"Did you wash the bedding and forget to let it dry while I was gone or something?"

"I was worried."

Stulk gritted his teeth and sat up again. His skin that had been touching the sheets came away feeling sticky. "Well, I can't sleep like this."

He stood up and reached for the room's lumen switch. Only, nothing happened when he flicked it. Stulk flipped the lever up and down in vain multiple times. Of course the electricity would be out again. Of all nights.

He felt his heartbeat quicken another few ticks. Out… out of annoyance.

"Dear," Mara said, "please just come back to bed."

Stulk froze. Something clicked in his mind as a realization struck him. One that took far, far longer than it should have.

His… his wife's voice. It wasn't coming from her side of the bed. It was… it was coming from the far corner of their bedroom.

Stulk slowly turned around to face the direction where Mara had spoken, even though he knew her body was lying on her side of the bed.

The silence grew thick in the room. Until, horrifically, two red lights appeared in the air just beneath the bedroom's ceiling.

"W-what…?" Stulk stammered.

"Such a poor, pathetic creature," Mara's voice said and Stulk began to hear the familiar noise of mechanical purring.

The floor shook as something moved in the darkness, drawing nearer. Stulk couldn't move. He didn't know why.

The lumens overhead suddenly flashed for not even the duration of a blink. It was enough.

It was enough to see the headless corpse in a blood-soaked bed. It was enough to see his own hands and limbs covered in Mara's gore. It was enough to see the monster in midnight armor in front of him, his wife's missing appendage grasped in his claws, cables and wires snaking from the stump of her throat and into the monster's vambrace. Stulk looked up to see a white skull with glowing eyes grinning at him before all went dark again.

"Are you afraid, Stulk?" the monster asked, still using Mara's voice.

Tears streaked down Stulk's face as his throat tightened and his blood burned with electric torment.

"Y-yes," he whimpered.

"Good."

Stulk did not even have the time to realize that the final word uttered by the monster was spoken in its own, terrible voice and tongue before he felt its talon reach forth and pluck out his life with a joyful, bloody squelch.

Artemis could hear the screams even through the hull of the thunderhawk. She could hear the destruction and terror and deaths of the planet—of her planet—echoing dimly even past the thick metal of the gunship. She questioned how that was even possible. Was their terror really so palpable? Or was it simply all in her head?

For nearly a half-hour, the massacre raged on as the city was torn apart by the Night Lords. And it was because of Artemis. She had chosen the landing sight to be Equinox Secundus. She had deliberated its strategic value with her masters. And this was the reward for her twice-over betrayal. To sit and listen to the horror that she had caused while the gullet of the thunderhawk remained cloistered shut. The guilt was only made so much worse by those she failed surrounding her, casting pleading or hollow glances her way. For a moment, she wondered if that was the point. If Pyotr had sent her here for no other reason than to listen and suffer. She was proven wrong when Phihks abruptly moved from his rigid stance and began to speak.

"Armory crate maglocks have been released," the skitarius said. "Please select a weapon."

There was a hesitant shuffle of feet, but no one moved.

"Please select a weapon or all will be punished for insubordination," Phihks stated. His arm twitched yet again and sparks flew from the artificial limb. It created a rabid, malicious image that encouraged everyone to scramble for the crates lining the walls. Autoguns and autopistols were produced with only a few scant grenades and heavy weapons scattered about their meager armory. There was enough for everyone to have some form of weapon, but only just. Artemis watched several slaves reach into the dregs of the crates, only to produce an archaic bludgeon or rusted blade.

Artemis didn't move. Instead, she buried her face into her knees. She already had her weapon. Her master hadn't revoked the firearm he'd bestowed her with—as if even doing that was providing her with more attention than she deserved.

"What… What happens now?" Jep asked.

"We fight," Phihks said in his mechanical, rote tone, the vocalizer in his throat buzzing with vox corruption.

"Fight? F-fight who?"

"The Ferric Sentries."

Artemis wasn't looking at him, but she could feel Jep's eyes sweep across the crowd, lingering on her as if willing some form of resistance from her that no longer existed. He inevitably gave up and continued on.

"How?" his voice was quiet.

The question was meant to be a weak, pitiful plea. An answer to a question that everyone was thinking but no one spoke: Are we going to die?
Phihks took it far more literally. "We will accompany the vanguard force in the city alongside the Astartes."

Artemis couldn't stop the wracking sob that escaped her lips and the convulsions in her shoulders as she heard those words.

The vanguard. The frontlines. They would be fighting alongside the berzerkers of the Carnage Stitchers and the raptors of the Night Lords. They would be just as likely to die by their own allies as they were by their enemies.

What was left of their feeble morale shattered with Artemis's own despair. Cries and wails broke out again in new fervor. Fists and weapons slammed into walls, crates, other people. Demands to be set free echoed all around, only to be eclipsed by twice as much begging. The hold of the gunship lost all semblance of reason and discipline, its thread snapped like twine.

At least, up until Artemis heard the first shot fired and a body hit the floor.

Her head snapped up and she looked on to see Phihks pointing a las-lock pistol into the crowd. Its muzzle was still smoldering and a slave with a burnt hole in their throat lay on the ground. Artemis stared at the corpse, its face frightened and stunned. She recognized the dead slave. It was Krasper. The leathery man was dead, caught in the crossfire of Artemis's own incompetence.

Artemis half expected more chaos to ensue, for the slaves to start using their own firearms, but none did. When this became evident, Phihks lowered his weapon.

"It is time," the skitarius said, not even acknowledging what had just transpired. "Cult Squad One, prepare for battle."
With that, the mouth of the thunderhawk's hold slowly began to creak open. Despondent and hopeless, those within shuffled forward to meet their doom.

Artemis saw a hand lower in her vision.

"Come on, girl. Let's go die."

She looked up at Brelja, her face impassive and stoic. An autogun rifle was slung over her shoulder and a belt of explosives hung from her waist.
"What's the point?" Artemis asked, her voice cracking.

"You owe it to us," Brelja said, her own voice without emotion. "This is all your fault, after all."

Artemis looked up into the Fenrisian woman's eyes. She expected to see hatred or anger or despair or any other like emotion there. Instead, she found a blend of something else entirely. Something she couldn't quite identify.

"Okay," she whispered and took the hand.

She rose just as the maw of the thunderhawk finished opening, revealing the battlefield beyond. Only, that's not what Artemis saw. The looming spires and towering buildings that were nothing more than silhouettes in the night; they looked like tombstones to her.

As the slaves of the newly formed Cult Squad One maladroitly marched their way out of their shuttle, each one of them stepped onto soil that was destined to be their final resting place.

Calk Morgana was eager to spill the blood of traitors.

It would not be his first time, of course. But it would be his first time as a full Astartes, and that was something that held far more ceremony to him. His first bloodening as a true warrior of the Omnissiah, a rite of passage that would be his first steps in the long path to glory. No longer was he but an acolyte of the Imperium, but one of many divine hands guiding and cradling it.

Calk doubled his pace, shouldering his boltgun as he marched his way to the hangar of the Gorgon's Manacles. The rest of Seventh Squad would be waiting for him there, made up of old and new brothers alike.

The corridors of the strike cruiser thrummed with righteous fury and a desire to sublimate their enemies, expunging them from the face of the galaxy. Calk grinned behind his helmet in agreement.

Yes, a glorious battle this would be for Calk Morgana, indeed. To think he had still been nothing more than a scout, attached to First Company for further training and reconnaissance, when this all began. That had changed on Exodus Station when Calk purged a heretic—a vile worshiper of Chaos—at the cost of his right leg from the knee down. He'd been rewarded by the chapter master himself for his valor by being gifted a new augmetic to replace the weak flesh that he'd lost and the red robe of a full brother—both of which bestowed upon him by the chapter master himself.

The ceremony was hasty, yes, and Calk was reassigned to one of the several contingency squads that belonged to the chapter's other companies. He was not so impressive as to immediately earn himself a place amongst the veterans of the First Company, but it was still so very, very glorious.

Calk slowed in his zealous pace as he passed a squad of his brothers traversing the ship in the opposite direction.

"A grand day to slaughter heretics!" Calk said with good cheer. The squad addressed him, their expressions unreadable from behind their helms.

The response came after a long pause, as if the more senior Astartes weren't quite sure how to address Calk. "...That it is," one of them said, his voice low and with little inflection. "Brother."

Calk bowed his head respectfully to one of the squad members that he noticed sporting multiple blessings of the Omnissiah in the form of mechadendrite limbs. To be in the presence of such a venerable brother. Glorious.

"But, brothers," Calk said with sudden surprise. "You are heading deeper into the bowels of the Manacles. The hangar is this way!" He finished with a laugh.

Another appraising pause. "We are on the way to the armory," the same brother as before said. "The chapter master has authorized us with the duty and privilege of wielding the chapter's relics on this night."

"Glorious!"

The squad shared a look with one another through red-tinted eye lenses before turning to look at him once again. "You should not keep your brothers waiting. The sooner you reach the planet, the sooner you may squash this filth in the name of the Imperium."

Calk nodded and saluted the Astartes that must have been the squad's sergeant. "Of course," he said with far more solemnity.

The sergeant nodded and pointedly glanced over his shoulder down the corridor. Calk saluted once again in response and quickly pivoted to continue on his way. All the while, his brother who had been deemed worthy of being blessed thrice by the Machine God continued to stare at him. Calk could not read his expression, but he was certain that such attention would spell nothing more than glory for him in the future.

Pyotr Kravis watched the Imperial whelp retreat down the corridor away from him and Sixth Claw, disguised as they were in the gray armor of the Ferric Sentries. He did not look away until the Astartes had rounded a corner and Pyotr was certain he had truly departed.

"Ha!" Gyrthemar barked over the Claw's private vox-link. "Never have I been more thankful that you do not bear the accent of our legion, brother!"

Gyrthemar clapped Taresh on the shoulder. The thinblood snarled as he pulled himself free from the wolf-killer's grasp.

"We should move," Anras said, resting his hand on the pommel of his power sword.

"Agreed," Retrigan added. "It is only a matter of time before someone discovers that we do not belong."

All eyes turned to Pyotr.

"This way," he said, and marched onward.