"When darkness surrounds you, light a match, and, for a little while,

it'll be a little less dark." -Attributed to Freya Foxway

M31.005 06:24/Volk, the Volk System/the Grand Palace, Vrantanius

Freya sat at a window next to the ruined wall for the rest of the night and relayed orders to HQ. At first, she had tried to stand in the ruined wall itself, but I shooed her away, pointing out that it would be much easier for a sniper to spot her there, and she capitulated, much like it seemed the defenders of Vrantanius were.

Watching a war from a high vantage point was an odd thing. At around 0020 Freya pointed out a duel between a Knight Questoris and a Knight Acastus that she told me was infamous. I saw as Baneblade and a Hellhammer cruised down the same street I had fought on just two months before, annihilating everything in their path; Freya told me that the Colonel of the 2nd armoured was in the Baneblade, and was directing his men from the front line.

According to her (an unreliable source on such matters), she had inspired the trend of senior officers accompanying their men into dangerous battlefields. I had thought that that was just a thing people rich and stupid enough to buy their way into senior ranks in the Auxilia and Royal Guard did naturally, but apparently, I was mistaken.

Later, at around 0100 a trio of Armigers showed up, which she told me fought in the duel with the two Knights. When I waved to them one of them, they awkwardly but enthusiastically waved their Chain Cleaver back. Freya turned to me with a smile and informed me that the pilot¹Knight pilot is an informal term, but only nobles and the incredibly pedantic will get on your case for using it. was Gentlewoman Agnes, which she noted probably meant nothing to me, and explained that Agnes was one of the most promising Armiger pilots of her generation.

I envied her a little, of course, I knew that there were immense challenges with becoming a Knight pilot and that there were some parts of the process that could kill you, but there were a lot of parts of being any soldier that could kill you, for the gods' sake, the life span of a trooper of the Solar Auxilia on the front lines was only four months! But she got to live lavishly, and have people listen to her, and she was bound to be someone actually worth remembering, and on top of all that, she got to be a girl! And everyone knows that girls have it better by default. Ok, well, maybe not everyone, sexism happened, but, like, they got to be pretty and soft and people wouldn't get on their case too much if they were weak.

Ok, maybe that last one only applies in some circumstances, but girls still have it better.

at about 0530, I stopped half occupying my mind with daydreams about being a girl and started pondering about how well boot camp trained me to be alert for hours at a time while also daydreaming about what my life would be like if I were a girl.

Wild how universal of an experience that is, among men of course, even if it was one of those things you didn't talk about.

"Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey-" Freya knocked on the back of my armour with each 'hey'.

"What? Seriously, I-" I turned to the infinitely annoying creature who called herself a princess, but my up-and-coming tirade was immediately stopped, "What's that smell?."

Freya held up a small metal cylinder, "Recaff."

"Thanks," I said as I took the still-warm receptacle from her and took a deep, warm sip. "How did you get hot water for this?"

"Portable water heaters, I usually only keep one on me, but I brought a second for you." She said, taking a sip of recaff from her water heater thing. "Good thing I did, I needed this."

I hummed in agreement and watched two of the Armigers patrol around the plaza, while the one with the twin autocannons acted as some sort of sentry, and simply stayed put, rotating slowly.

Around a platoon's worth of auxiliaries moved out from behind one of the buildings in a textbook advance pattern, and both I and the Armiger with the twin autocannons moved to shoot.

"Hold your fire," Freya ordered, "They're friendlies."

"They are?" I turned to look at her.

"Yes, they've come to relieve us."

About fucking time, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know" she inflected, frustration in her voice, I had clearly asked her too many questions.

When the troopers eventually got to us I lagged behind a still-frustrated Freya (she must have been pretty done with me after spending a night with me.) as she began talking with the ranking officer about the fates of Second and Third platoons. They decided to designate them MIA presumed dead, then moved on to the discussing search for where in the palace the command center could be.

A sound like the hum of electricity, though magnified a thousandfold, reverberated through my skull, but it seemed like no one else could hear it.

I heard the vox officer, who wasn't wearing a helmet, humming an old marching song, and distracted myself from the bad feeling by singing along in my head.

And for a moment I felt a little better until a searing pain shot through my skull and begging, screaming voices drowned the world.

And for a moment I was a raven in a tree in a snowy forest clearing, looking down at a snow-white wolf whose fur was matted with blood.

And for a moment I was singing to the voices.

And for a moment I saw a map of the palace, and a single room in one of the basements glew red-hot in my mind.

And for a moment I saw myself and I wanted to tear myself apart more than ever.

And then I was on all fours, and vomiting onto the floor at Freya's feet.

I wiped my mouth and looked up at her, "Sorry."

All eyes were on me, Freya's eyebrows were raised, and her mouth hung open, "Are you ok?" She asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I reassured her as my nausea quickly faded. A look of perplexity crossed her face for a moment, and she opened her mouth to say something, but quickly closed it again. I rubbed my forehead and a thought dawned on me, "Freya, could you pass me your dataslate for a second."

Still confused, she wordlessly handed me her dataslate, and I quickly pulled up the map, I made the basement show on the screen and saw the room which had burned hot in my mind. I turned the dataslate back to her and pointed at the room, "I'm pretty sure the command post is there."

She studied the dataslate, her eyebrows scrunched up together.

"Hmm," She hmmed, before turning to the officer who had come to rescue us, "I think my Einherjr is right. All the data points to this basement."

The officer put his hand up to his chin, "Well then, once we evacuate you two, we'll bring in some more men and-"

"I'm going down there with them." I interrupted the officer. This was important, I needed to do this, I felt it in my bones.

Taken aback, the officer sputtered, "A-are you sure that's wise?"

I turned to Freya, "May I go down there with the breaching team?"

She thought for a moment before replying, "Only if we can get you a new helmet² The Void-Carapace and Storm-Carapace patterns that were far more standard across the galaxy during the Horus Heresy were well known amongst soldiers to become useless the second the helmet took a serious blow, the Volk-Pattern Storm Carapace bore a lot of prototype features that would be later incorporated into the modern carapace Tempestous Scions wear in the 42nd Millenium. One of these features was a detachable and easily replaceable helmet, which sought to combat the aforementioned problem.."

"You can have mine," a voice next to me said. It was the master vox operator, who reached to their belt to detach their helmet, "I don't need it, I'm just a vox-op."

"Thank you," I said, genuinely, as I lowered the helmet towards my head.

* * *

Lasbolts flew from the blast doors as they slowly opened, but were quickly stopped by the flamers on our side firing jets of burning promethium through the narrow crack. when the gap in the door was wide enough I ran through, glad that the standard on my back was coated with a flame-reppelant.

I became a fire magnet as I rushed towards the first visible target, a vox officer who fired off panicky bursts from a laspistol. My axe crackled as it separated his arm from his body. The other three dozen or so officers retreat to the other blast door was cut off by a squad of purple-and-silver-clad troopers with lasrifles. I rushed toward the most senior officer in the room (whom I identified via the time-tested formula of tassels-per-square-inch-of-uniform) who had just dropped a plasma pistol after firing it at me.

I dropped my axe as I charged. Then grabbed the man's collar in my left hand and drew my volkite pistol to his head.

Around me, the various officers and command staff started dropping weapons and raising their hands in the air.

The officer whose jacket collar was in my hand sputtered, "W-w-w-w-w-what? W-w-who are you?"

I smiled beneath my helmet, and when I spoke, my voice came out tinny, "I am the Gheist of Volk, and I have come."

The officers around me went pale. And for a moment, I thought that going down in history like this, wouldn't actually be so bad.

Trans_nerd

In this chapter I decided that I would let MC be a little less depressingly dysphoric and just let them be comically eggy. You know, before the horrifying visions. Im not that nice after all. Also! You all are getting three chapters in total across all my works! Two on this one and one on The Embers of Prospero!

Also, I just saw that Heresy Thursday announced Arvus Ligters in plastic, and now my dreams of running a 3000-point Legions Imperials game with all airborne infantry seem more real by the day.

Also also, I have a newer more secreter project that I'm working on (it's not Warhammer again, I swear I can write things other than Warhammer), I hope you all go as buck wild for it as I did.