Trial and error.

The annoying problem

Waking up to a sunrise or falling asleep in a velvet darkness? This has been a dilemma ever since the great war of AC and DC had started, as if electrocuting elephants wasn't bad enough! Unless you live in a remote location. You are going to be either doomed to falling asleep under the bright glow of city lights or living in a perpetual winter morning time. Whichever is worse is unimportant, both options suck. So how should we solve this problem? That's easy, just automate it!

Automate EVERYTHING!

As usual there's a relevant xkcd.

However do not fret, this project will stay permanent once completed because there are no more permanent solutions than those that are supposed to be temporary.
In this spirit. Where should we begin? Assess the problem, build a plan and construct a solution? Lol, no. Just do the first thing that comes to mind. In my case that was to 3D print a simple gear that I would mount onto one of the scrapped DC motors I had lying around.

Just one small problem. How much torque will the motor need to have. And maybe even more importantly. How in the world am I going to figure out a scrapped motor's torque?

Let's ask sir Newton.

Hunger woke it. It did not know where it was nor did it care, for this savage creature there was only the hunt and then deep slumber. And luckily the underhive of the Choral City was sprawling with prey.

The beast shivered, stretching its stiffened muscles, scratching the musky concrete walls with the diamond shaped scales covering its body. The world around was but a smudge, its main two eyes had not yet adjusted from the long hibernation. As a lump of light came into focus it slithered towards the entrance of the den. Whole body still aching, tendons going taut and then loosening again, metabolism kicking into higher gear as waves of warmth spread from its spine, preparing for a good hunt. Soon there would be fresh meat in its belly. Soon it would enjoy the thrill of catching an unaware victim.

It crawled out of the long abandoned manufactorum building that had been its lair and instinctively followed the darkest path, avoiding unwanted attention. There were vibrations shaking up the ground, far too many to be a lonely wanderer, and an all too familiar feeling accompanied them... How long had it slept? Humans this close to its den? Dangerous. Its heart raced and the scales on its back made a rattling sound as it shivered. The creature usually knew better than to sneak around human settled parts of the hive but the hunger was a driving force not to be recon with, too primal not to take the risk. It took to the ceiling.

It climbed up the crumbling walls of the manufactorum. Above its head were only more and more layers of steel and concrete. Such was the creatures entire reality; a never ending mass of structures, supports and pipes. Or so the creature though. And because there had always been an abundance of food with no real danger in sight, it stayed within its small territory of the underhive. Occasionally venturing to explore new places, crawling and sneaking through the countless pipes and old ruins of the cities of the past that the hive was build upon, but never too far, never even thinking to. Hunting and slumbering for years at a time, that was its cycle, its law of things, repeated over and over for many centuries.

Yet the current cycle was unique. A gang of sorts had made its base near the predators den. Apparently a successful gang for it grew into a bustling city of its own. People were walking down the streets among the many shops in the market below, where the creature would usually wait for an ambush. Too many people. It couldn't see them properly with its two main eyes from all the way up the high ceiling, but it could feel their essence with a much smaller, almost vestigial, third eye sitting on its forehead. A burning lake of fire. Only a human's soul could burn this brightly, each individual like a bonfire to the beast's ethereal sense.

It could read their thoughts. Not words of course but images and feelings, partly alien but the majority was interpretable. Some of them were offering services of pleasure, almost blinding the creature with their lust. While others felt pure hatred, flashing with rage. There were those envious of the success of others, plotting to steal it from them. What they did not know however was that those others envied everybody around and were distrustful even of their own kin. And then there were darker images, from humans whose souls did not burn nearly as brightly but who desired the light of others. Images of pleasure killings, ritual murder, gore and violence.

Among them walked guards and thugs with lasguns wearing plated armor. The beast put its tongue to a hole where once had been a razor sharp fang. It had experienced preying on these types of shelled humans before. A hard lesson to be learned, its teeth had proven too brittle and getting the meat out of the shell was no simple task without any hands. A woman's shriek reached the ceiling, two of the dimmer fires were enjoying her anguish as they dragged her down an alley, away from the main street. The hunger was exhausting, but hunting here would have been impossible. The instinctual self preservation made it move elsewhere, reluctantly, into an unknown territory. Would it catch some prey or would it be preyed upon? It had only one way to find out.

The town seemed to stretch as far as the layers of concrete above and the hunger was wearing it out but finally the beast reached its outskirts. Only there seemed to be too much light coming from further away from the city. Along with the hunger, another instinct had surfaced: curiosity. It moved towards that brighter place, climbing up a fallen clock tower and once it made it to the roof the creature saw the outside for the first time in its long life.

Fear gripped it as its scales rattled again. The confines of its entire universe had fallen apart to reveal a world so unfathomably large. A desolate ring was surrounding the Choral City's base walls, it was a toxic wasteland, but further beyond there were vast stretches of occupied territory. Ancient forests growing in regions that had been deemed sacred hundreds of years before and stayed as such because of the Imperiums convoluted bureaucracy. However those were far and few between in the grand landscape. Among them or rather surrounding them were even more cities. Flat, unlike the hives, but still enormous, each stretching to the horizon. The beast slithered off the roof of the half collapsed clock tower and towards a concrete overhang. It looked up and saw towers upon towers, a gargantuan structure that was the Choral City. Its peak disappearing in the clouds above. And right below where the creature had stopped. Prey. A bunch of human children in tattered clothes playing in the warm sunny day. None of them in armor, non of them with guns. Perfect.

It slithered back to the fallen clock tower and took a more stealthy approach. As it climbed down the vibrations became more clear and regular, the children were busy playing. Good. The beast hid on top of a large pipe leading out to the wastelands surrounding the Choral City and crawled all the way to the bent beneath which the prey was playing.

"Paper!"

"Stone! Ah, damn it!"

The children were laughing. "It's Tommy! Run!" One of them shouted and all but one had scuttled away.

The lone child sighed and started counting aloud. "Twenty. Nineteen..."

Now was its chance. With the other children out of sight, it could paralyze its victim and be gone before anyone noticed. It could feel the warm blood on its tongue already which was only driving the hunger more urgent. The creature dropped, slowly, from the arching pipe to the concrete platform below.

"Ten. Nine..."

It moved silently towards its unsuspecting victim. The third eye started glowing, first red as power started to gather inside of its skull then yellow. Once the eye glowed white it was ready to strike.

"Three. Two. One. Here. I. Come!" In that moment the boy in a tattered leather jacket turned to face it. No matter, the beast let go of all the energy from its third eye. Only it wasn't glowing anymore, all the power was gone. It panicked and tried to run but could not move. It fully opened the third eye but alas could not channel any energy. And that's when it noticed. This boy, this... monster did not have any light.

The boy let out a cheerful laughter. "A new pet! Wonderful! Momma forbid me to control humans so you will have to do."

Chapter I

Protected by the Gellar Field from the volatile forces of the Imaterium Marcus Goliath of the World Eaters legion had a dream that became lucid. It was quite rare for an Astartes to dream, for they needed little sleep if any at all, and rarer still for the dreamer to become lucid. As it was, he returned to a very vivid memory from his childhood. One of blood and horror, inducing a familiar feeling of fear even in his now gene enhanced body.

In the memory he'd been playing with other children on his home world. A type of planet he would later learn was classified as a death world. It was his and his brother's turn to skid the sand dunes of the great Miamabi desert. They and their friends had been waiting for the winter festivities to start so they'd be relived of their duties and let out for longer than a few hours. There was Rizark the son of Gotmoth of the traders guild, Lilly and Garza, sisters from a respected farmer family but also Shanko a child beggar and Rosse daughter of a corrupt Administrator. And of course there were Marcus and his brother, sons of a retired general and his late wife who, according to their father, used to travel the void between stars. Each of the children lived a harsh life which could have hardly been called a childhood and so they took every chance they got to go out and do something stupid. This time it came to dune surfing in an abandoned sector far away from the city walls. They were no fools, this zone should have been secure, but they were so horribly wrong.

"Wait! The ramp keeps falling apart!" Called the large bodied Rizark from the bottom of the dune. "It wouldn't be fair. When I was going the ramp was at least twice as high! At least!"

Marcus laughed. "Make it as tall as the spires of the palace for all I care Riz. You wouldn't have eaten sand today, if you weren't so damn fat." The rest of the children started giggling and tried to hide it, looking away as Rizark's gaze snapped at them.

Rizark's cheeks flushed red, but he showed a malicious smile of small white teeth. "You'll be eating sand once you get down here Marcus, I'll make sure of that!" He rhythmically stomped on the sand next to the ramp and yelled with a wide grin and an overly wide armed gesture. "I summon thee, o' great sand worm of the Miamabi wastes! The rhythm attracts!" Upon which he proceeded to do a little dance like the foolish old man who was eaten by a worm from the tales they were told when they were little. This time Marcus joined the other children in their laughter which put an end to their boyish banter. Still laughing, Mark looked at the girls and saw Lilly eyeing him. With the boosted confidence of a young teenager doped with hormones he turned to his brother and nodded. No words needed to be said, his brother handed him the plank. One last glance at the girls and a wink at Lilly and down the dune he went. Gaining on speed, the wind started whistling in his ears. He must have looked like a smudge to anyone else observing his descend, that's how fast he was going down that sand dune. Finally, moments before the ramp, he crouched down, letting the palm of his right hand braze the fine golden sand. And as he jumped off the ramp he grabbed the plank that had been his sand board and flipped backwards in the air. He would have nailed it too, surely, if he was going just a bit faster. But he'd miscalculated. As much as he felt like a lightning going down that hill, he'd only gotten four fifths of the flip before the plank got knocked out of his hands and Marcus was sent into a never ending spiral. His ears were ringing from how hard he'd hit his head and when he looked at where the other children were standing he wasn't sure if the concussion had not been too severe. Because there were no children anymore. Ringing in his ears slowly faded away and had been replaced by something far worse. Screams of terror resonated through his skull as if he had hit it on the ground again. Marcus looked at the tangled, sand covered mess in front of him and saw what remained of Rosse and Garza. He looked further and saw Lilly screaming at the top of her lungs, looking towards something behind the bend of the dune. Marcus got up, struggling to keep his knees from shaking too much. The world went into a spiral again but only for a moment, when it had passed he dashed for Lilly and immediately stopped when he saw it. A Sand Lion. Native beast of the Miamabi desert.

It was feeding, giving no thought to the wailing Lilly or the agonizing screams of Rizark, whom it was eating alive. Marcus was star stricken, he wanted to move but he couldn't. And that's when the dream became lucid. Suddenly he wasn't a teenager living on a death world anymore. He was a Space Marine. Human made demigod by the Emperor of Mankind himself. He looked at the horrible scene not with pure fear, but with a mixture of wonder and amusement. Amusement because back then he'd naively thought that, for the rest of his life, he would have never had to witness anything worse than this. And wonder, because he saw his brother charge at the beast with only the wooden plank in hand. But it wasn't his brother anymore. For all lucidity he could muster, he had never seen this boy that was charging the Sand Lion, yet he seemed awfully familiar. Like recognizing a friend in a crowd just by their style of walking, but not being absolutely sure. The boy finished his brave charge and, unsurprisingly, the beast merely impaled him on its giant claws. What stuck with Marcus the most however were the boys eyes. They were looking directly at him. Damning eyes as if blaming him for taking no action. And that was it, then he woke up.

What a strange dream he thought. And not entirely true either. They had killed the Sand Lion that day, he and his brother, through cooperation and cunning just like their father taught them. A deed which would catch the eye of a Legio Astartes recruiter on their planet, earning them a place in the Legion and changing their lives forever. His brother hadn't died that day, he would die years later, strapped to the Apothecary's table while getting his Butchers Nails implanted.

The battle hardened space marine got up from his bed and as usual went to wash his face in the bathrooms sink. A servo skull had come to life and flew over to Marcus, hovering next to his head when he looked up at the reflection in the mirror. "Schedule!" He commanded and the skulls unmoving jaws answered in a robotic voice: "Twelve o'clock: Train neophytes in combat. Sixteen o'clock: The pit."

He scowled at the hovering servitor. "Leave." The skull happily abided its master's wishes and soon the buzzing of its anti-gravity generator had stopped as it landed on its platform. Training neophytes today, Marcus thought, a bunch of kids no older than he was when he had gone through the initiation. No doubt barely standing after undergoing gene therapies and organ augmentations. But such was the way. Weed out the weak so that the legion would grow ever stronger. He still pitied the boys who didn't make it however. Well, today was their lucky day, trainings with Marcus Goliath had their own procedure as had many other things because none would dare to oppose him. None in the eleventh assault company anyway because that's where the undesirables had always been sent.

Marcus stopped the tap of the sink and went to grab a meal. In his living room, right next to the trophies he had brought from numerous battles, stood a refrigerator. It was technology from a bygone age, it's mechanical workings long forgotten. And it kept his food fresh. Marcus gabbed a flak of cooked meat and some algae. It was dull and tasteless but it was high in calories, essential to support his unnaturally overgrown body.

When he no longer felt hungry he had donned the usual ship attire: a white robe with a dark blue cloak, a belt to hold his knife and a pair of slippers. He opened the doors to leave and paused, thinking, then he reached over to the left, grabbed his power sword, swung it over his shoulder and left. It was nearly noon.

The training pit had a sand floor just like that of the star ships main Colosseum except for the cavea to seat the spectators which was replaced here by cold metal walls. A group of twenty odd Astarte initiates was standing in a line waiting for their tutor to show. Under the blueish light of the pit's fluorescent tubes they truly looked like the angels of death some of them would one day become. Each a stone hard face sharpened by shadows cast by the lights above, one would almost be fooled to think they were mere life like statues, not living things of flesh. And in a sense, they too were chiseled by the hand of a masterful craftsman, elevated above mortal men by the grace of the Emperor of Mankind.

When Marcus finally stepped through the doors and entered the pit none of them turned or showed any motion whatsoever, just like they had been trained to. And so even as Centurion Marcus Goliath of the eleventh Assault Company lifted his sword which had sparked to life with incandescent light and plunged it into the sand in front of him, the neophytes stood still.

"At ease!" He started and finally the recruits looked at the weapon laid before them. "Whoever touches the hilt gets to keep it. The only thing standing between you and one of only a handful of power swords in the entire legion is me." He threw his blue cloak to the ground and widened his stance.

The initiates looked dumbfounded for a moment before the first few started looking at each other and the sword in front of them. Although they were not yet full fledged space marines their reflexes and abilities still far outmatched that of an ordinary human. The second boy from the right gathered enough courage and made a small cautious step forward eyeing the weapon. In a heartbeat he covered the distance between himself and the sword. He stretched out his arm so close as to almost touch it, only to have it be grabbed by a blur and be sent flying at the nearest wall. Three others, who were planning on using the distraction provided by their brother, stopped in their tracks surprised by the sheer speed of the sole defender. They circled Marcus, weighting their options, surely no single man could defend an object from all twenty of them.

"Come on! We all know why you've been assigned to eleventh! Use everything you've got!"

The boy positioned behind Marcus decided it was worth a shot and attacked. At the same time the two others went after the sword. Marcus kicked his cloak at the boy behind, blinding him, causing him to stumble and miss the sword entirely. Then Marcus simply used the boys momentum and redirected it towards the closest challenger leaving them both mangled on the ground. Sudden tingle touched his brain and the Butcher's nails writhed. The third neophyte closest to the sword was an illusion. Marcus punched into empty air, extra hard to teach a lesson. The punch was met with a meaty thud and the gasp of a man getting the wind knocked out of. A figure appeared to materialize out of thin air and be thrown against the metal wall.

"Use your gifts, but be smart about it. Remember who you're fighting!"

The rest still remained in their trained lines, but Marcus could feel their eagerness to fight, their blood lust. He grinned. A war cry resonated through the training pit as the young initiates ran forward. A strong sixteen of gene enhanced super humans charged at the sword in front of Marcus. They believed they had a chance since it only took three of them to get a width of a hair close, but their hope was false. Marcus didn't even break a sweat as he predicted each assault and redirected the attackers away from the unmoving sword sticking out of the sand floor, punching and kicking where he knew it would hurt, so they wouldn't get back up so easily. But when the pit was filled with moaning bruised novice space marines there was still one left standing, barely. He clutched at his stomach where Marcus had landed with his fist. The last man standing spat blood to the side and swiped it off his lips, slowly straightening up. His brown eyes were burning with battle hunger, with viciousness own only to the World Eaters and their gene father Angron. His muscles went taut and he charged. Marcus was ready to defend his prized possession but he was caught off guard. The lone neophyte didn't go for the sword, instead he grabbed Marcus's cloak off the ground and prepared to whip it at the power sword, no doubt hitting the hilt with its end. The Centurions blood had flushed with adrenalin, he hadn't expected this much clarity from an enraged neophyte. But he couldn't allow the boy to win. He let go of the Nails. Red anger had gripped his mind as the mechanical tendrils drove ever deeper into his brain with each heartbeat. Thump thump. He could feel a tingle at the back of his skull as his opponent or one of the lying neophytes tried to cloud his mind with sorcery. That only made the Nails more irritated. The poor novice had barely gotten half way though his attempt when Marcus had already caught the hand that held his cloak. And with a horrible sound he crushed the boys bones like a bundle of twigs. Thump thump. Marcus didn't stop there, he couldn't, the Nails drove him. He punched the boy, not with a sparing punch, but with the full strength of a demigod. The boys jaw came loose as it was torn out of its left joint into a right angle and he tumbled through the sand before stopping at the far end of the pit. Thump thump. Finally, three heartbeats later, Marcus regained some control. He focused his own gift upon the raging waves of emotion driving his battle hunger and crushed it into a tiny volatile pebble. The Nail's became agitated, as they always did when they were denied any more bloodshed. He unleashed a storm but as a prize had to withstand a hurricane. He stood still for a couple heartbeats more and then turned to address the defeated neophytes.

"Enough whining, stand up! As usual nobody bothered to teach you how to utilize your talents. I am not going to be responsible for you killing your own squad just because you don't know your true potential. Make groups of five! We'll be practicing cooperative combat for the rest of the day." He scanned the room and immediately picked out the strongest psycher. A red haired boy with green eyes who was already on his feet.

Marcus locked eyes with him. "Do you know what to do to help him?" He asked and the boy nodded. "Then do it and take him to the Apothecary before his jaw fuses like that." The neophyte ran towards his moaning brother, kneeling beside him and placed his hand on the poor boys forehead. He winced and his face changed into a pained expression. The injured novice calmed down, smiling at his brother. "Nearly got him Vlad. We did good." A faint thought carried over to Marcus. They really did, he thought as remorse ate at his soul, perhaps he didn't have to use the Nails. But the body of an Astartes heals incredibly fast, the boy will be ready to make planet fall by tomorrow morning.

When the lesson was over the neophytes stood back in the same line as when it had started. But they hadn't resembled cold stone statues anymore. They were brothers, even if resented by their own legion, they would have each others backs. They were taught that sorcery was used by cowards, that their own gene-father would murder them on sight if he ever found out. But here, at last, they were among their own kin. They were the sliver that remained of what the World Eaters were meant to be, each of them an empathetic caring individual scorched by the mad rule of Angron. They were all silent, but Marcus could feel their communal spirit. An ability he had taught them just as his master had taught him. A gift from their gene-seed which was all but eradicated in the rest of their legion. He looked at them and the vibrant aura of calm surrounding them one last time.

"Tomorrow some of you will join us as scouts in the assault on the rebel planet. Remember what you have learned today and do not let your hot temper get the better of you, else your first battle may well be your last. Dismissed!" With that Marcus picked up his power sword and turned to leave.

On the way back to his quarters he wanted to stop at the Colosseum. The hallway leading there was dark and damp, as they all had been. Not particularly busy but not empty either, dozens of the ships crew walked by, mostly normal humans but he had passed a couple of tech priests closely followed by their own servo skulls. And as he walked beneath the high stretching arches of the hallway he couldn't help but notice another kind of a being, a servitor. Unlike the servo skulls these things still had flesh attached to their bones, heavily augmented by cybernetic implants and lobotomized, they tended to those tasks even normal humans weren't inclined to do. They walked comically in spasms, almost as if they were puppeteered by some invisible madman. It had stopped as Marcus neared it, he locked his eyes with that thing for a second and though he had seen a plea in them but the next moment it was gone. The servitor kept it's blank stare following Marcus as the enormous space marine walked by, it got pushed here and there by people flowing through the hallway, but it kept its eyes on the Astartes lieutenant. The two meters tall super soldier stuck out of the human crowd like a sore thumb. As he was nearing the exit, the light coming from the end of the hall way formed a sort of a halo around the marines head before it engulfed him whole. An electric shock from the mind impulse unit drilled into its brain compelled it to move and so it did, slowly but surely continuing on its way to get the new shells ready for orbital bombardment.

Marcus emerged into the Colosseum and was struck by the cacophony of a large crowd. Down below in the sand stood two of his battle brothers. Marcus descended the steps of the enclosure until he spotted a familiar face sitting in the fifth row.

"White Eyes!"

Shabran Darr looked at the intruder and a smile appeared on his pale face. "Centurion Goliath! Good to see you brother."

"You too Captain. What is going on down there?"

"You haven't heard? We have a guest from the Conqueror. The equerry himself."

"Kharn?!"

"Indeed, he's visiting every legion vessel in preparation for the assault. And taking on challengers from each ship as he goes. The man on the far left of the pit is Neothed from the fifteenth company. He's the eighth so far to challenge Kharn."

"Eighth? How long had Kharn been fighting?"

"Not long at all actually. The previous challengers were new blood. But Neothed is a veteran, I suspect this fight will be worth a watch. Anyway, what brings you here Marcus? I know you don't fancy the Colosseum duels very much."

"I don't. It's damn barbaric."

The two legionaries below picked up their chain axes from where they had been layed in the sand before them. The hulking form of Kharn gave a subtle nod as to greet the challenger but Neothed instead charged without hesitation. Chain axes revved and soon after, the pungent smell of burnt prometheum fuel had reached the fifth row where Marcus and Shabran had been watching the duel. Kharn was a giant of an Astartes but still his opponent towered over him. Neothed was no ordinary veteran, he had been recruited over a century ago back on old Terra and was one of the few who still remembered the days when the World Eaters were called the War Hounds and when they were much more than just a legion of maddened savages. Yet he too bore the Butcher's Nails like the rest of his comrades.

"I wanted to talk to you Shabran. Did you know the new scouts are psychers?"

"So they keep sending them to us, huh? How many?"

Marcus took a deep breath. "All of them, as far as I can tell."

"All of them?! But... Damn it that is going to be a problem."

Metal teeth grinded as the two marines in the pit crossed weapons. The crowd cheered and in that momentary pause Neothed's lips moved as he spoke something to Kharn. The words could not be heard over the screaming crowd but their meaning became clear once the eighth company's captain merely shrugged in indifference. That instance Neothed's face had changed and the outcome of the duel had been sealed. Ony one of them would walk away from that pit alive. Neothed's composed grimace had been replaced by a seething face of red anger. He tried to exhaust Kharn under a flurry of his chain axes, yet seemingly no matter how much more enraged he had become, Neothed couldn't land a single blow. During all of this, Kharn seemed calm, almost tranquil, tough that could not have been the case thanks to the mechanical tendrils that clung to his head. Then, finally after only a brief fight, one of the warriors made a mistake.

"I know Shabran, this will have consequences. The other companies already don't like us very much. You, me and the handful of us who have the Nails are exceptions but I can see the looks when one of ours without the Nails walks by. For Emperors sake, they have to hide Shabran, our own people!"

White Eyes turned his ashen face to stare into nothingness. "And what am I supposed to do about it?" He turned back to face Marcus. "Do you want me to go talk to Angron on the Conqueror? Maybe you could come with me, so that I won't even have to speak a word before he kills us."

Now it was Goliaths turn to look away. He shook his head and slouched. "Sometimes I wish I'd died along the other librarians. At least I wouldn't have to witness our downfall."

"And why haven't you?"

Kharn swung one of his axes with enough force to make the exhausted Neothed stagger and buried the other into the old space marines chest. Awful wet sound shot throughout the Colosseum like a bolter bullet as the chained teeth shredded the black carapace underneath Neothed's skin and struggled to get through the Astartes reinforced fused ribcage. Neothed grabbed the axe embedded into his chest and kicked the equerry in his right thigh. Kharn's leg have away as his opponent's chain axe came to life descending onto his neck. He ducked under the blow, only to find Neothed's knee flying towards his face. Kharn slipped from Neothed's grip and stumbled through the sand quickly regaining his stance.

Marcus paused. "I wasn't strong enough White Eyes." He turned to face Shabran. "My powers developed only after the implantation. You know the consequences of drilling the Butcher's Nails down a psychers brain. You thought I survived thanks to some strong will? No." Marcus sighed. "I was just lucky. Learning to use my gift was painful. But because it had only started manifesting when I already had the Nails the episodes of losing control couldn't have killed me. My brother took me as an apprentice, but even then I knew I would never be able to use my powers to the extent the Librarius required. The Nails had stripped me of any control over outside usage of the warp so I had stopped trying after the first failed attempt. And when my brother died, there was no reason to remain so I joined out company instead."

Neothed ripped the chain axe from his own chest and fell onto his right knee. With great effort the veteran space marine got back on his feet, a bloodied mess. He gave someone in the audience a knowing look and turned back to Kharn. For a moment silence descended upon the arena. Then came a roar: "For the Emperor!" and Neothed charged one last time. Kharn didn't even have to try very hard as he dodged the veterans desperate attempt at a ruse and tore open his gut.

Shabran Darr laid his hand upon his friends shoulder and spoke with a somber tone. "Your brother was a brave warrior and a talented sorcerer Marcus, I'm sorry."

"Thank you. I'll try to talk to the remaining librarians. See if they can persuade the equerry to reason with Angron but... This battle has been lost a long time ago White Eyes. The day we got our primarch back was the day we all died and; now, only wraiths roam this legions ranks." He looked at the brothers from the eleventh company sitting at the bottom of the Colosseum. "Don't let them down Shabran. If we can't make it better than at least let us die with honor." And with that he stood up and left the pondering young captain behind.

Servitors emerged from sides of the pit and lifted the fallen on command of the Apothecary. As they walked away the Apothecary picked up Neothed's intestines which hung from the stretcher. I'd rather not die at all. Shabran Darr thought. But if it has to be this way, than we will be ready.

That night Marcus had another dream. But this time it was no memory of his. He saw a boy sitting on a metal throne. Hooded figures lined the trail leading to it. Not of his own volition he started walking towards it. As he moved he noticed he wasn't walking at all, he was being dragged. The two man dropped him at the boys feet. He looked up at the person before him and saw a mutated creature. What had seemed like a crown in the dim purple light of the room were in reality horns protruding from his head, the symbolic scepter was no scepter at all but a horribly looking tentacle in place of the boys left arm. He was dressed in robes with a steel collar around his neck connected to several chains covered by the robe.

The monster looked at Marcus with its unnatural purple eyes and licked its lips. "Yes! I am going to enjoy this one."

It smiled with perverted parody on a boyish grin, picked him up with one hand and looked into his eyes.

"P-please." It muttered, obviously confused. "Please help me. HELP ME!" It dropped Marcus and continued screaming. The hooded figures in the room fell to their knees clutching their heads as one by one they fell to the floor creating an ever growing pool of blood. The screaming kept going and Marcus could all but take his eyes from the now floating creature in front of him. It's flesh was tearing open, glowing with purple fire. It started mutating more horrific features: claws, hoofs and even more tentacles. He saw glimpses of a city, dreams within a dream, visions of a great serpent hunting young children, a collared mutant with claws instead of its hands. The monster reached the ceiling and then suddenly the dream collapsed and Marcus was left in the dark void between consciousness. The Deliverence had entered real space. In a few hours they would meet up with the other Legions and the campaign would begin. In a few hours Marcus would make planet fall with his brothers from the eleventh assault company on the planet of Istvaan III.

Chapter II

FIGHT WITH ANGRON or KHARN

Marcus walked towards his former brother with a solemn face of a man walking towards the executioners block. He had no chance of survival and he knew it well. Still, it would buy his brothers and the boy some time to escape from the surface. Kharn watched him approach, the captain of the twelfth legion was a brute and as unpredictable as a ball lightning but today he was respectful towards the old comrade coming for a challenge. The huge figure, clad in white armor, raised his axe. There was a twitch in his right eye and when he spoke, white spit sprinkled the carnage that laid all around.

"Marcus! You knew this day would come. We both did."

With ten paces between him and his adversary, Marcus had stopped.

"Yes. What I couldn't know however, was that you'd be the traitor, Kharn."

It haven't moved the captain. Perhaps the accursed nails had rid him of concience as well. Kharn let his right arm, holding the axe fall to his side, mirroring Marcus. The two marines slowly closed the distance until they were both an arms reach of one another's weapon. There'd be no guns, no flame throwers just the pure brutality of promethium powered chain axes. The moment seemed to stretch forever. Silence seemed to descend upon the world of Istvan V. The air was humid and thick with a scent of blood that left a metallic taste on ones tongue. Then it all fell into a choreographed chaos.

Marcus ducked, dodging an axe that flew just a few centimeters where his neck was just a mere millisecond ago.