Editing Story:Love Can Bloom (section)

===Chapter Eight===

''I should have left him there. He had served his purpose. 

He owed me nothing - yet he gave himself to me willingly.
 
Why? I know not. 

He is nothing more than a pathetic human. 

An inferior race. 

A mon-keigh. 

But still I broke off my wings so that I might carry him easier. 

I took him from that place, into the snowstorm where our tracks will not be found. 

He is heavy. And he is dying. And he is slowing me down. 

But I will save him. 

Why? I know not. 

He is still warm. I can feel his blood ebbing across me. For every beat of his heart, another, slight spill of heat. The heat blows away on the winter wind. His blood is still warm. But fading. And I have spilled scarlet myself. 

The snow laps greedily at our footsteps and our lifeblood, covering them without a trace as we fade away.''


----


Battle still raged behind them. Far off, in walls of steel and concrete, trenches of dirt and burning promethium, space marine and ork reveled in fire and bolter. Taldeer stopped a moment, breathing in and out, her lungs burning. She held the human over her shoulder, his feet still dragging in the snow. His rifle sheath, with frost covering it. She looked around. Disputed territory. Ork banners held up, some burnt, some empty, some shattered and buried under the snow. Exhortations of war broken and buried under the white blanket. The Vindicare beside her coughed, tensing for a moment, his hand digging into her own- then he slackened again. The blood warmth washed over her side again. She had no need to watch the skein of fate to see that survival was improbable. She was needed elsewhere. She shouldn't die, freezing, clinging to a weaponized man. She shifted his weight again, and pulled forward with her spear, panting again as she passed under twenty meter high declarations of war, pulling through the winter.

----

"Inquisitor." Inquisitor Madek snorted sharply, blinking away the sleep. He frowned. He was cold. He should have packed more clothes than just a cassock. An idiotic desire to empathize with the guardsmen perhaps. "I've heard tell that cleanliness is one of the signs of divinity," 

Madek roused, sitting up, slipping on an ill fitting gentle smile, "I don't think I have to fear any usurpation here. What is it, Felix?" 

"The storm," Felix pointed out to the wall, where some diodes sputtered, "The corpus mechanica would be better served if I-" 

"I can barely give a damn, we're on the road to the spaceport, we can get it fixed there." 

"That's another thing," Lieutenant Ardrin, resembling nothing more than a big black fly came into the room, holding a buzzing comm, "The city, currently our forces command it and will be reinforced, but, the agents of Chaos are attacking it. They hold the entrance to the city we're heading for." Veteran soldiers. No courage, no faithful bone in their body they. Merely the survivors, benefit of the brave souls of the Emperor's truest servants. A fine degree of cowardice uncaught by commissar, that's all that experience breeds. They that survive are just rewarded for their base desire of living. Disgusting. 

"I believe we'll be fine," Inquisitor Madek gave a serene grin, "The Emperor protects."

----

Sponge Weeds seemed to be an architect's dream come true. Plentiful, verdant, and tough, to early colonists of Kronus, they seemed to be a nightmare, great wide fields of sticky, dark, meter high reeds, choking swamps and rivers, ensuring most of the southern continent was a morass of stagnant water and painful to clear reeds. Chop them down, more would grow from the inevitable chunks that rushed out of the thing when it was cut, the water held within flooding out. They would gum up the irrigation, showing up in every single farm. "Spongeweeds," became synonymous with unwanted guests, and even became momentarily popular as a term for rapists before use of this term was purged and suppressed by the Ecclesiarchy. Until one ambitious young pioneer decided to attempt to use it to make a house. 

Foolish idea, was the universal thought at first. The soaking, stinking reeds would make for a great big mess everyone was convinced. At least until lacquer was applied to it. Cyanide, bacteria, toxins, as soon as the living reed felt under threat, it would stiffen up and hold, sometimes for years at a time if the rudimentary immune system sensed the poison was still there. 

Furthermore, reeds cut together would eventually mold together, sealing the area with a near vacuum grip. The house would generate warmth in the winters and hold off the heat in the summers, as the still living yet paralyzed plants reacted to the climates. This architectural fad and art material lasted fifty years before a pysker wandered too close and felt pain. Other pyskers had entered houses, but registered no complaints, and the people protested, but to the Imperial Church this was evidence enough to burn the lot of the suspicious, ugly living buildings. They said the fires were responsible for the harsh winter and cold summer that followed. Standard imperial architecture was followed from then on, but on occasion, out in the wilderness, you found the occasional hut. Like this one.

----

Taldeer stopped, falling to one knee, the weight of the assassin driving her down. Her muscles were stiff cracking against one another, wishing only to lay down and die. She wheezed, staring down at the snow. Little red spatters filled it. Hers and his. She couldn't tell them apart, they were both bright hued and crimson. 

Maybe if she stared long enough, she would see one shrivel and crust and the other crystallize and powder. She slapped the ground with her hand, fighting the welcome hands of a sleeping death. 

She looked up. A small house. Wooden. Some shelter from the biting wind. Just a few more steps. She bit her lip as she rose to her feet, carrying her savior, blood spilling from her side as the wound broke once again. She dragged forward, heading for the leathery wood flap of a door. Her hand reached for the door knob. She hesitated. A slight scuff of a noise in side. The pistol is steady in her hand as she pushes open the flap with the barrel. The noises getting louder the whole time.

----

The door turned, squeaking and crackling on frozen hinges, the unfrozen edge flapping in the blizzard wind. Didn't look like there was anything. A gas tank stood in the center of the room, a line running into the cast iron stove, radiating welcome heat. Two doors, one ajar to a chair with the bottom cut out over a bucket, and the other firmly shut. 

Taldeer shrugged off the assassin, leaning in to whisper, "You'll be warm in a moment Liivi." She slipped inside, sweeping the room with her shuriken pistol, the singing spear unslung and behind her. The noise was coming from above. She was moving, her gun pointed at the ceiling, when she felt something catch her other hand from behind. Her hand- She whirled around, pistol raising to free her spear hand- The assassin's glove was wrapped around her own, slackening, as it fell down in the door way, shivering. The door opened as the Vindicare was dragged in, a slight trickle of blood running across the absorbent floor. Taldeer leaned next to him, leaning in close. His heart had slowed since last time. An occasional shiver would wrack a part of him. The gash- She gulped down the bile as she something shift and slither through the mess of blood and ribs. He shouldn't die. The door creaked.

----

"X-X-Xeno!" 

Taldeer spun on her heels, spreading her hands and kneeling before the Vindicare, her shuriken pistol and Singing Spear out. Someone stood, stark naked but for a sheet over his shoulder, in the door way, a primitive slug thrower at his shoulder. Underweight, hairy, and yellowed by liver failure. A shivering blue eye held between the bead, pointed at her head. 

"I-I-I never thought they would send another, to me, to my nightmares!" The gun rattled, parts scraping and clacking together, "I, I've killed before! I'm a veteran. A veteran of a secret war of soul and damnation. You won't have! Have! Have me! That's not yours to take, I never let you!" 

A madman. Dribbling in whatever local dialect that the humans paid courtesy too. She could barely glean the words meaning, much less the order. In all probability, she could move and slice him from jaw to groin before he could fire his pathetic gun in the wrong direction. But- Her brows furrowed together, she whispered in low gothic, "We only seek shelter from the storm, we are but mere travelers," couching her words in a recognized story, she tried to manipulate his mind. The discharge practically deafened her, and the human brought the black smoking barrel up to her eye. 

"Manipulations! Orienteering, on basic desires?! Fuck you bitch! No more," He leaned in, eyes furious, "No more. I used to be a good man, before you showed me! Emperor..." He whispered, "Emperor protect, are you my daughter? I can't tell. I thought, I thought I ate you earlier. I can't tell," he stared down, squeezing his eyes shut, yellowed tears leaking out of his eyes. The gun rose, the man inarticulately sobbing into a hand, it wavered above. 

"I," am your daughter of course father, don't shoot me, and your son, you had a son didn't you, followed by a shot through the throat. Eminently survivable, reasonable action. "I am not going to play along with your delusion, mad one," Taldeer brought her shuriken pistol up, and into the watery blue eyes. One shot that would be it. "Leave us be. I do not wish infecting his wound with your blood. And for the sake of your family, get a hold of yourself." Stupid. The old man turned, the slugthrower up. She could get off two shots in the time it took him to get aiming. 

"Deat-" 

Whizz. The first nicked his hairline. 

"-h is the"

The second cut through his thigh born artery. 

"path to redempARRRRRGGH" 

The bullet fired, hitting wide, thumping into the ceiling, sending filthy half frozen water across the room. Taldeer moved back, and snapped her spear at his hands. The blunt end of the wraithbone snapped his hands like a carrot, the broken bones held within a sack of meat. The gun fell to the floor, discharging into the wall. The wraithbone blade was held against his neck. "Surrender." 

He opened his mouth to speak, and all that came out was blood. The shriveled old corpse fell back. Bullet had entered by way of the esophagus, tumbled through thalamus, hypothalamus, medulla oblongata and cerebellum, then, by his estimates, got lodged in the occipital lobe. His Exitus pistol lowered, the Vindicare let his head drop back to the floor. His mask was full of blood. He panted through it. His eyes closed. He was superficially aware of a presence standing above him. Through the numbness, a cold drop prickled his right arm. 

"He was hardly a threat." Primary. Taldeer. 

"It was necessary." 

"Well," her voice came closer, as hand fell on his chest, "I'm not about to berate the man nearly disemboweled, but somebody's going to have to clean that up if we're going to be staying here more than an hour. "Is there plumbing?" He heard the gentle sloshing of water. "I don't know about your species, or even about you yourself, but amongst my people," Splash. A fire ran down the numb line that the Grey Knight had cut into him, "Cold or no, the wounds need to be sterilized," the assassin, for his part only twitched. 

He stared at the pistol in his hand. He had never gotten around to reloading it.

----

The blade had started at the base of his bottom, leftmost rib, and worked up, ending at the right clavicle. It was a surface cut, the first rib was cut and the second broken, but after that no other bone damage. The muscle had been shorn off, and it looked like that where it had gone, the flesh had fried. The heart was barely visible, thumping and pulsating. 

Fortunately, she reflected, humans had a whole lot of space in their body as opposed to eldar. The blood loss was the most important thing. And sterilizing the room. The alcohol would help a little. And the corpse. Of course, the man had to be eating. Why did he shoot him? The damn silenced pistol, it could have been any time during that fight, and she wouldn't have known. But. It was only after she had told him to surrender. His mouth opened. The blood splattered. She shook her head, as she wrapped the body in the sheet it had been wearing, and dragged it out into the snow. He shoots a lunatic who was waving a gun at you. Most people would firmly place that under the pro column. It just means- 

She let go of the sheet on the corpse. As if on cue, the man splayed out, a shiver running down his veins and arteries.

Teeth. Teeth on his tongue. And two noses in his hair. 

Her eyes widened, and she turned back to the cottage, as the door slammed shut.

----

Her feet barely touch the snow. 

To Eldar, all mankind move clumsily, and slowly, kittens staring about in the dark, their arms blindly reaching to the sky like teetering towers, waving back and forth, unsure nerve and tendon spasming. 

Men looking upon Eldar see disquieting grace. Deliberate steps. The care of a surgeon in the movement of a runner. Even the enhanced assassins, and those among the Space Marines unimpeded by their armor seem to have no instinct about them, their speed the speed of a pneumatic press, or an out of control piston. All forcing through the air, no cutting. 

But the Vindicare had seemed different. It wasn't speed, as much as being in the right place at the right time. She should've known damn it. She rammed into the door, the half frozen bark, far from its native swamp, dully creaking. She pounded into it again, pulling at the door. It warped and stuttered, held shut by something. 

More foolish than a human, she thought bitterly. Her spear was still inside too. 

She glanced around, running around the house, as she felt the pull of the sea.

----

Back, a bare hour maybe, that's when she should have seen. (shortly after the Grey Knight fight)

"Come on!" by instinct, her hand reached up, flicking away the blood on her face. She felt more warm blood smear on. The rain was turning to snow, and his breath had started to turn irregular. Shock? He had to live. From stem to stern it had cut, running more shallow along the way. His bottom two ribs, one was cut clean, the other hanging by a sliver of bone. The metal plating had done little good, still bubbling where the marine's glaive had touched. Fried nerves, cooked skin- Human. Mon-keigh. 

There were more of them than the stars. Why should she care. A hand slipped under his head, and another one ran across his back.

She shouldn't be caring. 

His body shuddered, as he hacked. The mask. Blood was catching under it. Flooding it. He couldn't breath. Her hands ran up the synskin collar, reaching under it, pulling it up as it went along. The mask fell into the snow, taking a lot of blood with it. It dribbled across the snow, and she gently tipped him over, as he hacked, bloody froth coming clear. 

"Liivi," she whispered. His eyes were squeezed shut, as he fell back, breathing, coughing occasionally. Dark hair. Short cropped. His cheekbones stood out. What wasn't a smear of blood was- No. Nothing to think about. The snow was falling quick and fast now. She had to go. 

She grabbed the mask, and pulled it back onto the Vindicare as gently as she could, but in the middle, he leaned in. Lips brushed. And maybe. Just maybe. They might have held together, a little longer than was appropriate for a bleeding man's comfort. 

He fell back into the snow, immediately, as if by some miracle, calmed. She stared. Through the blood, she could taste something else. Lemara. He tasted like lemara. 

She carefully pushed the mask back on his face. Around them, the storm begin to howl. She lifted him to her shoulders, and then fell back. There was a cracking noise. The wraithbone had had enough, evidently. How carelessly then she tore off the other spirit stone mounts. Leaving her with just one refuge, in case of death. She had reasoned, she could come back for them. Isolated place. Wouldn't be that hard. They were just getting in the way anyway. 

She hefted his arm onto her shoulder, and he had just barely enough life to push with his legs. She stood. 

’"WHY-"’ The hollow roar of the Grey Knight's audio must have been malfunctioning, she heard something else whispered. She probably should have been listening. 

"He saved my life." 

’"YOU-"’ more hollow whispers ’"YOUR GREAT ENEMY?"’ 

"No more words," She turned, dragging the Vindicare off into the snow storm with her, "You should die soon out here."

----

The Grey Knight had sounded confused. She had chalked it up to his ego's breaking at defeat. He had been beaten severely. And his attempt to kill the enemy of the Imperium he had seen had been foiled by another agent of the Imperium. The Grey Knights are the greatest weapon mankind has against Daemons. 

In all their years, they have never had one fall to chaos. They are the few to be entrusted with the full secrets of what the Imperium knew of daemonology, chaos, and the warp. Their very presence pains demons, makes them sluggish, ineffective. They hunt daemons, first and foremost, and in this task, they must be expected to be the best warriors that humanity can dredge up. 

Taldeer ran around the hut, looking for any entrance, as the wood boards creaked at her presence. Why would he engage a farseer alone? Her fingers ran across boards merged together, one flesh over another, warm and twitching to the touch. Why would he try to finish off the Vindicare, if there was another opponent in the field? The Great Enemy. 

"Wake up Vindie," the Assassin blinked the sleep from his eyes. Taldeer entered the door, shaking the dripping snow from her spear, smiling serenely at Liivi. 

She Who Thirsts.

----

"Wake up." Liivi started, sitting up, as a flustered Taldeer approached, with a smile, shaking the wet off of her spear. "How are you?" 

"I'm-" the Vindicare tested himself, and set himself back, "I'm going to need a moment. The nerve endings are still broken." 

"Good... We'll have to pass the time then, won't we?" 

"The inhabitant. I don't smell him." 

"I took him out," Taldeer shrugged, setting her arms straight and jamming her hands between her feet as she sat in a position of mock meditation, "Figured we wouldn't like any dead guy laying around here." 

"The defecation," the Vindicare turned his eyes towards Taldeer, "The blood." 

"Shh, I was just lucky to find a mop and soap in this hick's place," Taldeer placed her ungloved hand on Liivi's shoulder, pushing him gently back down, "Just go to sleep, hmm?" The wood groaned under the Vindicare, as he lay back. A fresh magazine was struck home into the pistol. A nervous system of wires and thrice blessed metals kicked in, as the pistol rose to Taldeer's face. She grinned. 

"Do you get off on this?" The pistol made six very good points in reply, while the Vindicare kicked himself back. 

Taldeer started, as she felt the ocean kick, before stepping back. Two large, holes burst through the wood, the rubbery sacks burst and making a squealing, squelching noise. The problem with the architecture of Kronus, that caused the Ecclesiastical purge was the pysker's report. The pain he felt was purely sympathetic, a crude intelligence, but an intelligence en masse was inside the homes. The local Arch Cardinal had wanted any reason he could find to burn the homes, as disgusted as he was at the concept of living houses, and he had found it. They were aliens, possibly intelligent aliens. As the homes burned into the night sky, and the reeds, already depopulated by the rapacious desires of the colonists, were uprooted wherever the crusaders could find them, they were nearly driven into extinction. Whether they had gone on this path for centuries and they had somehow managed to keep it in secret, or it was started in response, no one can ever be sure. 

But the plaintive, stupid, mewling minds of plants turned their thoughts to Chaos. The shaking reeds vomited forth the filthy, turgid water into the snowstorm, as Taldeer leapt back. They rustled and undulated, swearing and cursing in ways only the grass and wind could respect. They called upon a goddess that had long grown bored of them. The weeds shriveled and shrunk desperate to hold onto what water they could. Taldeer reached with her hands, and broke and tore the twisted remnants of an empire that never was, and broke through.

----

"Hah... Haha..." The pseudo Taldeer fell back against one of the walls, as it twisted in vegetative joy, she spread her hands, "You wound me." 

"That was the intent," an empty mag thudded across the floor, as the Vindicare reached for another. 

"Do you like it?" The Taldeer fell forward, her eyes watering, her delicate, pale hands reaching for the hole in her throat, she stared upwards, mouth running blood, at the Vindicare, "Is it better, when you can just kill those that you make the object of your affections? Simplifies the fun parts, I bet?" 

"Quiet," The pistol coughed, ramming a bullet through the forehead, blood spattering against his visor. Small lasers immediately evaporated it. The Vindicare stood, hand at his side. He switched through the spectrums. All of them showing the same thing. 

"Something wrong?" whispered the heap from the floor, "Would it have been better if I didn't talk?" The visor was in error. The sounds weren't matching up right. The gun was too loud. There wasn't that much blood. He didn't smell death. 

"Witch." 

"Close," Thermal signatures rose in the shape of a smiling woman, covered barely by black stained leather, "It-" 

The pistol coughed too loud again as a round black hole appeared in the forehead.

----

The house shouldn't be this big. Taldeer stepped forward, her shuriken pistol drawn. A small comfort. The wood walls seemed to pulse and breath, as water passed down the reeds. They pressed in, weak, minds drawn together by some human that wanted a place for the summers. Her ocean was dark. She was in the waves. She was strong here. 

The Great Enemy. She had been a fool. 

No one falls in love outside of their species. Not without some manipulation. 

"So, why are you going back?" Mused a voice. Taldeer held, her pistol raised, her hand squeezing, crackling with energy. 

"I have no reason to explain to you, or your ilk." 

"She was bored, you know," Something stepped out of the shadows, something that was a color and a smell and a industrial accident, "She has been waiting soooo long, to finish what you started. You can't tease a girl forever," A hand touched Taldeer's shoulder. She shot up. Something hissed and shrieked, and for a blink of a moment, Taldeer was standing in a kitchen, strange, viscous blood dripping across her. Then, she was somewhere else. 

"I know you are impatient beast. Your kind always are. When you come back, I will kill you." 

"Oh, I will be entertained," The voice had changed pitches, almost recognizable, on surrounding on all sides, "I will be entertained by your other. Your savior, as we jerk him by the chains we gave him and he shoots you full of holes!" 

As if on cue, a buzzing noise of a hundred bullets whizzed at Taldeer. She held still, and waited for the thing to get bored.

----

General Governor Militant Lukas Alexander rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Inquisitor Madek, I do not know anything more than what my trusted officer Ardrin has told you. If you will pardon me, I have a war against those beloved space marines you invited into the pass my men softened to run." 

"There is something more, Governor. There must be." 

"Your Grey Knight declared somebody reeked of the warp, he was next to an Eldar, he could have sniffed the warp enchantments she used on him." 

"It is not the same, neophyte. Tell me again, where you deployed him." 

"Initial clearing of Victory Bay, deployment along with Operation Hammerfall as a spotter-" 

"Details." 

"He cleared a house, used it as a firing position, dropped hundreds of rioters before they surrendered." 

"Inhabitants of the house." 

"A family, family of six." 

"Hm. Last of the reports on the kill roster for him-" 

"Oh good, that makes me ecstatic. I'm so glad you found that out. Beautiful. I'm going to get back to my war, that you helped my enemies with now." 

"The weight will be upon your soul if you do not hel-" 

"What else can I do? I'm not going to recite records that Ardrin has already told you about all day. Governor Militant, out." 

"If you-" Inquisitor Madek stared, stunned as the vox buzzed silent. Then frowned. That would require retaliation. He turned to the Enginseer, "Brother Felix, if I could have a word with you about the newly deployed unit..."

----

Lukas switched off the comm, panting a bit. That was unwise. He closed his eyes, and sighed, before crawling back into the tank. He stood, taking the third door down the corridor, where the technicians saluted, pointing him to his seat. He gave a nod, before sitting down in the command chair. "This thing is checked right? I don't feel like going through a long checklist of what works and what doesn't." 

"All eleven weapons, check, fuel check, tracks check out, everything is good to go my lord." 

"Good," Lukas Alexander shifted uneasily in his command chair, glancing across the technicians. He had been a bit rude. He licked his lips, loosening the bolt pistol at his side, "No one in here leaves, no one in here enters, until this battle is over, you read?" A wave of nods, "Good. Set course for the space port." A deafening crunch of ice on steel, as the many engines in the Baneblade roared to life, pulling the tracks forward across the snowing landscape. Eleven guns waved over the horizon, searching for targets, seeing only the flanking forces of the Imperial guard, rolling behind. Greasy black smoke sailed up into the sky joining their brethren above the Kronus spaceport. Strangely, the assurances of Midilv seemed even less comforting, at the end of a tank column.

----

"It's not going to be of any use," The Daemon stood, shaking her head, blood and brains dripping from two dark red holes. 

"True," The Vindicare lowered his weapon, his hand pressing against his side, the adrenaline was fading now, and he could feel something drifting in his body, "Leave me then, or kill me abomination. I shall not be diverted from my duties." 

"No, of course not. You have the Farseer for 'diversions' from your duty, don't you?" The daemonette spread her hands, approaching the assassin, "You didn't- You didn't think these feelings were genuine, did you?"

Snap. 

"If we're going to have a conversation, you REALLY must stop shooting me."