Dust and parchment, the silent secrets of the past - the Eyrie's library enfolded us like a musty cloak. By flickering candlelight, amidst the looming stacks and sagging shelves, we made our furtive sacrament. The books were our congregation, the shadows our confessional. Here, in this dry tomb of forgotten knowledge, I would shape my first true convert.
Adrian sat across from me, perched on the edge of a rickety stool like a bird poised for flight. His eyes were wide in the dimness, reflecting the dancing flame of the candle I'd set between us. An offering and a ward in one, holding back the dark.
"You said..." he began, then hesitated, gaze flicking to the shadowed rows of books that hemmed us in. "You said there were older truths. Older necessities."
I leaned forward, elbows on knees, the candlelight casting harsh angles across my face. In the mirror of his eyes, I saw not a child but a specter, a gaunt revenant clad in the rags of forgotten truths.
"The strong survive," I said softly, each word a hammer blow in the hushed air. "The weak perish. This is the way of the world, the only truth that matters in the end."
He flinched, but there was a terrible recognition in his eyes, a spark of kinship that belied his pious upbringing. I pressed on, shaping my words into a blade to pierce the veil of comforting lies.
"Mercy, compassion, forgiveness...these are the virtues of a world at peace, a world that can afford such softness. But we do not live in such a world. We live in a realm of blood and iron, where every breath is a battle and every choice a calculation of cost and necessity."
Adrian's hands twisted in his lap, fingers knotting around each other like snakes. But he didn't look away, didn't offer the rote denials of the faithful. Instead, slowly, as if the words were being dragged from some deep, hidden place, he spoke.
"The Seven teach us that all men are equal in the eyes of the gods," he whispered. "That we must love our enemies, forgive those who wrong us. But sometimes... sometimes I look at the world and I don't see love or forgiveness. I see only cruelty and chaos held back by the thinnest of walls. And I wonder..."
He trailed off, eyes distant, seeing something beyond the dusty confines of our shadowed alcove. I waited, scarcely daring to breathe, sensing that this was a moment balanced on a razor's edge.
"I wonder if the Warrior has the right of it," he finished in a rush, the words tumbling out like a confession. "If strength and vigilance are the only virtues that matter, in the end. If mercy is just another word for weakness."
In the guttering candlelight, his face was a mask of anguished uncertainty, torn between the comforting lies of his faith and the harsher truths that gnawed at his soul. I saw in him a reflection of my own journey, the slow, inexorable erosion of false beliefs in the face of unyielding reality.
"Mercy has its place," I allowed, choosing my words with care. "But it must be tempered with wisdom, with the understanding that some threats cannot be bargained with or redeemed. That sometimes the only answer is the blade and the bolt, delivered without hesitation or remorse."
His breath caught, a sharp hiss in the silent library. I saw the war within him, the struggle between the boy he had been and the man he could become. A part of me, the cold, calculating core that had been forged in the crucible of the Imperium's wars, saw only an opportunity - a potential tool to be shaped and wielded in the service of my own ends.
But there was another part, a smaller, quieter voice that I had thought long silenced. It stirred now, whispering of kinship and understanding, of the recognition of a shared burden. Against my better judgment, I found myself speaking again.
"You're not alone, Adrian. In your doubts, your questions... you're not alone. I have seen the face of a universe that cares nothing for our petty moralities, our self-serving pieties. And I have learned the hard truths that allow a man to survive in such a coldly indifferent cosmos."
His eyes met mine, searching, desperate. In their depths, I saw a hunger I recognized all too well - the longing for certainty in an uncertain world, for the steel-cold clarity of purpose that had sustained me through a hundred battles on a dozen worlds.
"Can you teach me?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper. "These truths, this... way of seeing. Can you show me the path?"
It was a dangerous request, heavy with implications that could damn us both in the eyes of this world's pious masters. To accept would be to set my feet on a road from which there could be no turning back, to forge a bond that could become either my greatest strength or most fatal weakness in this strange new life.
But as I looked into Adrian's eyes, saw the desperate yearning there, the plea for a guide in the darkness... I found I could not refuse. Perhaps it was weakness on my part, a lingering shred of sentimentality that had no place in the cold calculus of necessity. Or perhaps, after so long alone, I simply craved the understanding of a kindred spirit, no matter how imperfect or untested.
"I can," I said at last, the words heavy as a blood oath in the hushed air. "It will not be an easy path. You will be tested, in body and spirit, forced to confront truths that will flay the comforting veils from your eyes. But in the end, if your will proves strong enough... you will emerge reforged, a blade tempered in the fires of unrelenting purpose."
He shivered at that, but there was no fear in his eyes now - only a grim, determined acceptance. His fingers unclenched, relaxing in his lap as if a great weight had been lifted from him.
"I'm ready," he said softly. "Whatever it takes, whatever I must do or become... I'm ready. Teach me, Verden. Show me the way."
I held his gaze a moment longer, feeling the weight of his trust settle around my shoulders like a mantle. It was a heady thing, laced with the bitter tang of responsibility. This boy's fate was mine now, to mold or to mar as I saw fit.
I opened my mouth to begin his first true lesson, to take the first step along the path I had chosen. But before I could utter a word, a shadow fell across our sanctuary. A polite cough shattered the air like shattering glass.
As one, our heads snapped around, hearts stuttering in sudden shock. A figure loomed over us, tall and gaunt in the robes of a septon. Hard eyes glinted beneath a deeply lined brow, a face carved by years of stern disapproval.
"Young masters," the septon said, voice deceptively mild. "The hour grows late. Should you not be at your prayers?"
I felt Adrian tense beside me, saw his face blanch pale as parchment. For a moment I feared he might break, might spill out our secrets in a flood of guilty babble. But to his credit, he held his tongue, jaw clenching tight with the effort.
Slowly, I rose to my feet, every movement carefully casual. "Forgive us, septon," I said smoothly, ducking my head in a show of contrition. "We became overengaged in our studies and lost track of time. We will make our way to the sept at once."
The septon's gaze bored into me, searching, suspicious. I met it blandly, a mask of childish innocence firmly in place. Inside, my mind raced, weighing options, calculating odds. If he pressed, if he demanded to know the nature of our 'studies'...
But he didn't. After a long, tense moment, the septon harrumphed and stepped back, gesturing peremptorily for us to precede him. "See that you do," he said gruffly. "The Seven wait for no man, and a mind neglectful of the gods is fertile ground for all manner of mischief."
Adrian scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking over our stool in his haste. I followed more sedately, pausing to pinch out the candle's wavering flame. Darkness rushed in, cloaking the library in thick shadow. It felt appropriate, a reflection of the veil of secrecy that now bound us.
As we made our way out, passing beneath the septon's gimlet eye, Adrian shot me a last, desperate glance. A plea and a promise in one, heavy with all the words he dared not speak aloud.
"Later," I breathed, the barest whisper as we stepped out into the corridor beyond. A vow and a covenant, sealed in shadows and silence.
His slight nod was the only reply - but it was enough. A bargain had been struck this night, a compact forged in the hushed spaces between the words of men and gods. And though I knew it would bring us both trials and tribulations unnumbered... I couldn't find it in myself to regret it.
For the first time since I'd woken in this strange, benighted world, I felt the stirrings of something dangerously close to hope. A sense of purpose, of destiny, that transcended the petty limitations of the life I'd been thrust into.
With Adrian by my side, a willing disciple to be shaped and honed... perhaps this second existence held more potential than I'd dared to dream. The Emperor's work was not yet done - and by my will and my blade, I would see it carried forward, no matter the cost.
Even if I had to rebuild my creed from the ground up, brick by treasonous brick - I would find a way. For in the end, that was the only choice that mattered, the only truth that held in a universe determined to grind us all beneath the uncaring heel of fate.
We would endure. We would prevail. And from the ashes of our former lives... something new and terrible would arise, forged in the unquenchable fires of dire necessity.
It was, I reflected grimly as we stepped into the sept's smothering hush, an oath worth living for. And if need be... an oath worth dying for.
But those were thoughts for another time, another shadow-cloaked communion. For now, there were prayers to mouth and pieties to mumble, a mummer's farce to maintain before the eyes of the blind and the credulous.
In the depths of my mind, in the secret spaces where no septon's gaze could reach... the gears of destiny were already turning, the seeds of a glorious, bloody future taking inexorable root.
The Emperor's will be done. In this life, as in the last. Until the very stars burned cold and the void itself swallowed all...
Blessed be the mind too small for doubt. Blessed be the heart too strong for fear.
Blessed be the blade that strikes in the dark, and the will that guides it to true purpose.
The Emperor protects. And we, as ever, shall be His instrument.
So mote it be.
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Night lay thick over the Eyrie, a velvet cloak studded with cold, unfamiliar stars. In the stone-walled courtyard, hemmed by crenellations and wrapped in shadow, we danced the warrior's dance. Wood cracked against wood, boots scuffed on ancient flagstones worn smooth by generations of forgotten feet. Breaths came hard and sharp, white plumes in the moonlit air.
A year had passed since that fateful meeting in the library, a year in which Adrian had become my shadow and my student, a diligent disciple in the arts of war. By day, we played the roles assigned to us - the dutiful sons, the pious penitents, mouthing meaningless platitudes in the sept and nodding gravely at our tutors' droning lectures.
But by night... ah, by night we cast off the chains of pretense, emerging from our cocoons of falsehood to stretch newborn wings beneath the watchful gaze of the moon. In shadowed corners and forgotten halls, we carved out a secret world of our own, a place where the hard truths of the universe held sway and the comforting lies of the Seven were put to the sword.
"Keep your guard up," I snapped, my practice blade darting out to rap sharply against Adrian's exposed ribs. He flinched, sucking in a pained breath, but adjusted his stance obediently, shifting his weight to better absorb the blow. "Your enemy will not hesitate to exploit any weakness."
He nodded, jaw clenched tight with determination. In the year since our covenant had been sealed, he had grown - not just in height but in skill and spirit, his once-soft body hardening into lean, wiry muscle beneath my relentless tutelage. The change was more than physical, though - there was a new light in his eyes, a hungry, calculating gleam that belied his gentle mien.
It was the look of a boy becoming a man, a dreamer shedding the veils of complacency to face the world as it truly was - cold and cruel and utterly without pity for the weak. Under my guidance, Adrian was learning to embrace that merciless reality, to shape himself into a weapon forged in the fires of necessity.
"Again," I ordered, falling back into a guard stance. Adrian mirrored me, his movements still a touch stiff, a hair too slow - but improving, always improving. We came together in a clash of splintering wood, trading blows with a speed and ferocity that would have left our boyhood selves breathless and bruised.
The courtyard echoed with the din of our mock battle, a staccato rhythm punctuated by grunts of effort and hissed breaths. Sweat slicked my brow despite the night's chill, plastered my tunic to my back in clammy folds. Still I pressed on, driving forward, battering at Adrian's defenses with a relentless fury.
He met me stroke for stroke, his teeth bared in a snarl of effort. There was no room for mercy in this dance, no quarter asked or given. In the crucible of combat, all pretense burned away, leaving only the molten core of true character exposed.
And there, in the heat and the hammer blows, I glimpsed the man Adrian was becoming - a blade beaten into razor sharpness, a spirit tempered by the unforgiving demands of a world at war. With each bruising impact, each ringing parry, I felt the chains of his past crumbling away, replaced by the steely weight of grim purpose.
He would never be a son of Krieg, never know the cold purity of an existence stripped to the bone of all save duty and death. But perhaps, in the fullness of time and the fires of adversity... he could become something more. A brother-in-arms, a kindred soul forged in the unrelenting crucible of this strange new life.
As if conjured by the thought, a flicker of movement caught my eye - a shadow detaching itself from the deeper darkness beneath the courtyard's arched colonnade. Instantly, I shifted into a more innocuous stance, letting my blade drop to hang loose at my side. Beside me, Adrian followed suit, his breath coming sharp and fast with more than just exertion.
The shadow resolved into the cloaked and hooded form of one of the Eyrie's guardsmen, his boots scuffing softly on the flagstones as he made his rounds. Passing the mouth of our little courtyard, he paused, head cocked curiously at the tableau before him - two boys, wooden swords in hand, faces flushed and streaked with sweat.
For a moment, I tensed, ready to spin a lie or a misdirection. We had become adept at such deceptions over the past year, cloaking our nightly training in a shroud of harmless play. To the eyes of the guardsman, we were naught but a pair of highborn lads, safe in the Eyrie's stony embrace, playing at the games of knights and heroes.
He could not see the deadly intent that lurked beneath, the grim purpose that drove us to embrace the way of the warrior in a world that had forgotten the true meaning of the word. In his eyes, we were children - innocents, untouched by the cold, hard truths of life and death.
I saw the moment he dismissed us, a faint smile cracking his weathered face as he shook his head and moved on, boots echoing softly into the distance. A boy's games, his posture said. Naught to worry about, naught to see.
If only he knew the truth of it - the dark and desperate paths we walked, the covenants we had made in the secret spaces of our hearts. But such truths were not for the likes of him, the comfortable and the complacent, sleepwalking through their lives in a fog of shallow pieties.
No, the bitter cup we had chosen to drink was ours and ours alone - a draught of icy clarity, shorn of all comfortable lies. It was a lonely path, at times - but there was a fierce joy in it too, the savage exultation of a purpose found and embraced with every fiber of one's being.
And so, as the guardsman's footsteps faded into memory, I turned back to Adrian, my blade rising once more in mute command. He answered in kind, his own sword leaping to the guard, his eyes alight with that now-familiar fire.
We came together again, wood meeting wood in a splintering crash. The dance continued, as it must - a warrior's waltz, brutal and unforgiving. Thrust and parry, dodge and weave... the old, familiar rhythms, etched into muscle and bone by endless repetition.
There was a purity in it, a clarity that cut through the fog of deception and compromise that shrouded the daylit world. In the press of combat, stripped to the essentials of life and death, the universe unveiled its true face - stark and cold and utterly without mercy.
It was a truth that Adrian was learning, bleeding into him with every bruise and every battering blow. A truth that would serve him well in the years to come, when boyhood games gave way to the bitter realities of a world at war.
I saw the shape of that future in the determined set of his jaw, the granite certainty in his gaze as he launched a flurry of attacks that forced me back a step, then two. He was learning, growing - a seed cracking open in the dark earth, straining towards the cold, pitiless light of a truth unbound by the petty dictates of gods or men.
And I...I would be his guide in that harsh new world, a lodestone to steer by in the gathering storm. It was a heavy mantle, fraught with perils both spoken and unguessed - but it was a burden I bore gladly, the weight of it a comfort and a spur.
For in the end, it was all any of us could hope for - a purpose to cling to in the face of an uncaring cosmos, a light to steer by in the darkness between the stars. The Emperor had set me upon this path, though His designs wereveiled and inscrutable. I could only trust in the rightness of it, the cold certainty that had sustained me through a lifetime of war and death.
The Eyrie's bells tolled the hour, distant and mournful in the night's hush. By unspoken accord, Adrian and I lowered our blades, chests heaving with exertion. Sweat painted cold trails down my face, plastered my hair to my brow in lank runnels.
Wordless, we made our way to a stone bench set back against the courtyard's wall, legs trembling with fatigue. Adrian sank down with a hissed breath, cradling bruised ribs with tender fingers. I settled beside him, tilting my head back to trace the unfamiliar patterns of the stars wheeling overhead.
For a long moment, we sat in companionable silence, letting the night's chill leach the heat from our aching bodies. Adrian's breath misted in short, sharp plumes, the only sign of the pain he would not voice aloud.
"The pain is a lesson," I said at last, my voice soft in the hush. "A reminder that the universe will break you, if you let it. The only choice is to break yourself first - to callous your mind and your flesh against the agonies to come."
He nodded slowly, absorbing the words like rain into parched earth. I could see the shape of his thoughts on his face, the struggle to reconcile the comforting lies of his upbringing with the harsher truths I had shown him.
"You don't pray to the Seven," he said suddenly, the words more statement than question. "Even in the sept, even when the septons are watching... you don't pray."
I smiled thinly, a bare twist of the lips. "No," I agreed. "I don't. The Seven... they're a fiction, a fable for children and fools. The universe is colder and harder than their trite pieties would have us believe."
He frowned at that, a flicker of the old uncertainty rising behind his eyes. "But... if not the Seven, then what? What do you believe in?"
For a moment, I was silent, weighing my words with care. There was power in belief, a strength that could move mountains and shatter worlds - but only if tempered by wisdom, honed to a killing edge by the whetstone of truth.
"There are older gods than the Seven," I said at last, my gaze fixed on the uncaring stars. "Older powers, vaster and more terrible than the petty concerns of men. Powers that demand everything of their servants... and give nothing in return save the cold comfort of duty fulfilled."
Adrian shivered at that, a bone-deep tremor that had little to do with the night's chill. I could see the struggle on his face, the war between the comforting lies of his past and the bitter truths of the path he had chosen.
"I don't know if I'm strong enough," he whispered, the words raw and painfully honest. "To walk that path, to serve those... those powers. I'm not like you, Verden. I'm not..."
He trailed off, eyes wide and haunted in the moonlight. I reached out, gripped his shoulder with fingers that dug deep into flesh and bone.
"You are," I said, each word a hammer blow of certainty. "You are strong enough, Adrian. Stronger than you know. The path we walk... it's not an easy one. It will test you, in ways you can't begin to imagine. But I have faith in you. Faith in the man you will become, if you hold true to the course."
He stared at me, eyes searching my face as if seeing me for the first time. Something flickered in their depths, a light kindling to life behind the veil of pain and exhaustion.
"I will," he said softly, the words a vow and a prayer in one. "I swear it, Verden. By the Seven and by the... the older gods too. I won't falter, I won't fail. I'll walk this path with you, to whatever end awaits us."
The words hung in the air between us, heavy with the weight of destiny. An oath, sworn in blood and starlight, binding us together in a compact that went beyond mere friendship or fealty.
"Brothers, then," I said softly, the words strange and sweet on my tongue. "In the light and in the dark, in the eyes of gods and men. Brothers, now and always."
"Brothers," he echoed, his grip finding mine, callused palm to callused palm. A seal and a sacrament, a bond forged in the crucible of shared suffering.
We sat like that for a long moment, hands clasped, heads bowed beneath the weight of the oath we had sworn. The night wind whispered around us, carrying with it the scent of winter - of hard truths and harder choices, of a world poised on the brink of upheaval.
But for this one shining instant, none of that mattered. The future could tend to itself - its wars and its woes, its bloody tides and its bitter harvests. In this moment, in this place... we had each other, and the bond we had forged in the secret spaces of our hearts.
Brothers, now and always. A vow to cling to, in the darkness gathering at the edges of the world. A light to steer by, as the stars wheeled overhead in their cold, uncaring dance.
The Emperor's will be done, I thought, as Adrian and I rose to begin the long climb back to our chambers. On earth as it is in the heavens, until the very stars fall from their spheres and the void swallows all.
So mote it be.
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A/N: The Older Gods Verden mentions, from his perspective, is the God Emperor and his sons. While he would know of the Chaos entities, he would not hold them with any count on the same level or of his praise.
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