Dawn creeps into the kitchens like a reluctant witness. The fog thins, pulled apart by the heat of cookfires and the grind of bodies returning from the line. She arrives before the others, as she often does, sleeves rolled, hair tied back with a strip torn from an old apron. The night still clings to her bones. There upon her station, precisely where her hands usually reach first, rests the tin. Clean.
Not merely scraped but washed. Dried. The faint sheen of oil gone, the edges wiped free of soot and mud. Even the hinge, which always sticks, moves smoothly now. It sits square on the table, aligned with the grain of the wood, not tossed or abandoned or hidden. Placed. Her breath catches so sharply it hurts.
For a moment she cannot move. The trench around her feels suddenly too open, as if the earth itself has drawn back to watch her reaction. She glances once, quick and terrified, toward the dugout mouth. There is nothing there but fog and the dim outline of sandbags. No note. No mark. No message. Only the absence of the food, and the certainty that it wasnāt discarded.
Her fingers hover over the tin, then withdraw. She presses her hands flat to the table instead, grounding herself in the rough grain, the familiar splinters. Someone else arrives behind her. Then another. Voices begin to murmur. The Master of the kitchens doesnāt shout at her for loitering. He doesnāt even look at her. He looks at the tin once, just once, and then orders everyone else to move faster.
By midmorning, the fog has burned away enough to reveal the scarred slopes beyond the trenches. The Death Guard come in ones and twos, armor fouled, movements heavy but unbroken. She ladles as she always does. Thin broth. Measured portions. Her hands know the work too well to tremble now, even though her heart still hasnāt settled back into her chest.
It is during the second wave of returns that the kitchens go quiet. A pressure creeps in, subtle and suffocating, like damp cloth pressed over the mouth. She feels it before she hears anything. Before anyone speaks. Her ladle slows. Someone is standing behind her. She doesnāt dare to look. No one orders him away. No one clears their throat. The Death Guard who pass straighten slightly, their movements tightening, becoming deliberate. One serf backs away from the fire without looking, eyes fixed on the ground, and vanishes into the trench. She knows who it is without needing to see him.
She feels his attention settle on her hands. The way she scrapes the ladle along the potās bottom to free the last thickened residue. The way she lets the broth settle for a breath before pouring, so the grain distributes evenly. The way she pauses, counts, then pours again. This isnāt cooking. its triage.
The sound of cooking fills the silence, pots boiling, a knife tapping wood. It feels too loud. She risks a glance, only enough to confirm what her bones already know. He is exactly as she remembers and worse for being closer. Towering, cloaked in rags that might once have been fabric, might once have been banners. His armor is dulled by grime and old corrosion, its green mottled like lichen on a grave marker. His mask reflects the firelight dully, lenses unreadable.
He steps closer. Not toward her. Toward the pot. The heat seemingly does nothing to him as he reaches out and adjusts the potās position by a fraction, nudging it so the thin flame licks the base more evenly. The motion is careful. Exact. He withdraws his hand without comment.
āThis is sufficient,ā he says at last. His voice is roughened, scraped raw by poisons and long silence.
She swallows. Her mouth is dry. āYes, lord Mortarion,ā she manages. It feels like a foolish thing to say. Too small. Too human.
A pause. His gaze lifts, briefly, to her face. Not lingering. Not unkind. Simply seeing her, as one might acknowledge a tool that has proven unexpectedly useful. Then he steps back, the slight movement eases the pressure. He turns and walks away into the fog without another word, leaving the kitchens to breathe again only after his presence has fully withdrawn.
That night, when she finally returns to her pallet, she discovers a small bump beneath the thin standard issue blanket. There beneath it laying wrapped in oilcloth, is something small and unmistakable: a single dried root, hard and dense, and a pinch of desiccated greens. Barbaran, if she had to guess. Potent. Bitter. Valuable due to its scarcity. She doesnāt bother the others with questioning its origins, keeping her assumptions to herself.
The days that follow donāt announce themselves as different. The war continues in its grinding, methodical way. Artillery pounds the ridgelines. Trenches deepen. Bodies are dragged from the mud and replaced. She works, sleeps, wakes, and works again. The kitchens breathe smoke and steam. The broth thins further as supplies tighten. No one mentions the gift beneath her blanket. She doesnāt use it. Keeping it wrapped, hidden beneath her pallet, its bitterness sharp enough to carry even through oilcloth. She tells herself it is being saved for a moment that will demand it. She doesnāt know what that moment will look like, only that it will come.
Mortarion does not return to the kitchens. Not openly. She feels him sometimes, an absence where noise should be, a hush that ripples through the trench lines, but he does not stand behind her again. The Death Guard continue to eat. Continue to fight. The routine grinds on.
On the fourth night, after the last wave of wounded has been fed and the fires banked low, she is washing out a pot when a shadow falls across her station. Not heavy. Not immense. Closer to human sized. She looks up to find a Death Guard marine standing there without his helm. His face is pale and scarred, eyes sunk deep into flesh gone waxen from chem exposure.
āYou,ā he says.
Her spine goes rigid.
āYou will prepare food,ā he continues. āNow. For the Lord.ā
The words land without ceremony. Without explanation. Her mouth opens. Closes. Unsure what to say to the command.
āUse what you must,ā the marine says. āIt will be accounted for.ā
The kitchen is empty when she begins. Fires coaxed back to life with scraps of fuel. Pots scoured thin of residue. She moves quietly, as if sound itself might summon punishment. From beneath her pallet she retrieves the oilcloth. Unwraps it with care that borders on reverence. The root is hard as bone. She shaves it down slowly, conserving every sliver. She heats the pan until it smokes, wasting no time once the flame catches. A scraping of rendered fat, no more than a thumbās worth, hisses as it touches the metal. She adds the roots first, sliced thin enough to cook through without burning, spreads them flat, lets them seize.
Upon seeing the pot of water she set on the stove has begun to boil, she tosses in the greens. Keeping an eye on the greens as she stirs the roots in the pan. Getting cold water and transfers the greens into it, successfully blanching them. Giving them a quick pat down to get excess water off once she transfers them to the cutting board where she cuts them into matchsticks and tosses them into the pan to join the root.
She works by instinct more than thought. She stirs constantly, not for comfort but for control. Every movement is measured. Nothing is allowed to linger. She renders a trace of fat, reduces the liquid as she sprinkles in pinches of seasonings. It isnāt much. It is everything she has.
Carefully she serves it into the tin while itās still steaming, knowing it wonāt stay hot long. When she sets the lid in place, her hands are shaking. A different marine arrives to collect the tin. He doesnāt inspect it nor question it, simply takes it and leaves, footsteps already swallowed by fog before she can think to breathe again. She doesnāt sleep that night. She expects punishment. Reprimand. Reassignment to corpse detail or worse. Displeasing a Primarch let alone giving subpar work could easily mean her death. Morning comes instead. Then another day. Then another. On the third night after that, the same shadow falls across her station.
āAgain,ā the marine says.
No praise. No explanation. No refusal allowed. She understands then. This isnāt a favor. Not gratitude. It is habit forming within what her duties entail. And habits, once noticed, are dangerous things.
The strategium is quiet in the way only an Iron Warriors chamber ever is, no wasted sound, no ritual trappings. Just stone, steel, and the slow ticking of chronometers counting down a war already solved. Perturabo stands over the hololith, arms folded, eyes tracking the last red marks flickering across the projection. Enemy bastions blink out one by one, reduced to static symbols and predicted rubble. He doesnāt look up when Mortarion enters.
āThe southern trench line has collapsed,ā Perturabo says. āEighteen minutes ahead of projection.ā
Mortarionās boots come to a stop behind him. The air shifts, not dramatically, not theatrically, but enough to make the lumen strips dim by a fraction, as if the chamber itself is aware of the newcomer. His respirator hisses softly with each breath, the sound patient and enduring.
āThey resisted longer than first expected,ā Mortarion replies. His voice is rough, eroded by toxins and long campaigns. There is no pride in it. Merely observation.
āThey always do,ā Perturabo says. He gestures, and the hololith redraws itself, clean lines replacing chaos. Siege vectors. Pressure points. The inevitable narrowing of space. āThey mistake endurance for strategy.ā
Mortarion steps closer, pale eyes reflecting the tactical display. Stained gauntlets rest at his sides, relaxed. āYou sent my sons into the low ground.ā
āI sent them where the ground would kill slower than the enemy,ā Perturabo answers immediately. No apology. No softening. āYour Legion can withstand it.ā
A pause. Not anger. Not offense. Calculation.
āTrue,ā Mortarion says at last.
Perturabo finally turns. His expression seemingly carved from the same stone as the walls, severe, intent, utterly uninterested in ceremony. āWithin a day,ā he says. āAt most. The last fortress will fall by morning rotation. The war is decided.ā
Mortarion studies him then, the lines of tension in his brotherās posture. The way victory hasnāt eased him, only sharpened him further. āYou sound displeased.ā
āI sound accurate,ā Perturabo replies. āVictory is not an achievement. It is a temporary conclusion.ā
Mortarionās gaze drifts back to the hololith. The enemy symbols flicker weakly now, cornered, doomed. āMy sons will hold the breach until the end.ā
āThey will not need to,ā Perturabo says. āThe artillery will finish it.ā
āAnd the survivors?ā
Perturaboās mouth tightens. āThere will be fewer than expected.ā
A faint sound escapes Mortarion then, not quite a laugh, not quite approval. Something closer to understanding. āYou reduce suffering by ending it quickly.ā
āI reduce resistance,ā Perturabo corrects. āSuffering is incidental.ā
Silence stretches between them, heavy but not hostile. Two brothers forged for different kinds of attrition, standing at the edge of an ending neither finds satisfying.
Mortarion inclines his head a fraction. āWhen it is done, my Legion will require time to purge contamination.ā
āYou will have it,ā Perturabo says. āThis world will be stripped to bedrock anyway.ā
Mortarion turns to leave, cloak whispering across the stone. At the threshold, he pauses, not looking back.
āYou have planned this war as if it could not fail.ā
Perturaboās eyes return to the display, already moving on to the next problem, the next equation. āBecause it couldnāt.ā
Mortarionās hand rests on the edge of the strategium door. He doesnāt turn, but his voice comes again, lower, almost submerged beneath the respiratorās hiss.
āWhen the campaign is concluded,ā he says, āthe auxiliary allocations will revert.ā
Perturabo doesnāt look up. āOf course they will.ā
āSerfs. Labor cadres. Non-essential personnel,ā Mortarion continues, listing them as one might list damaged equipment. āReturned to their parent Legions.ā
The hololith redraws once more, the battlefield dissolving into after-action schematics. Perturabo nods once. āThe Iron Warriors do not lend what they do not reclaim.ā
Silence again. Thicker now.
Mortarion remains where he is, as if the words themselves require endurance. āYour logistics officers will want inventories.ā
āThey already have them,ā Perturabo says. āNames. Skill sets. Reassignments.ā
Mortarionās fingers curl slightly against the metal frame. A pause, long enough that it almost becomes a question.
āThere is one,ā he says, carefully, āwho has beenā¦ repurposed.ā
Perturabo finally glances toward him. Not curious. Assessing. āA cook.ā
āYes.ā
āShe has performed adequately?ā
Mortarionās answer is immediate. āShe has kept my sons fed.ā
Perturabo considers this. Not the implication, only the value. āThen she will return to my Legion when this world is pacified.ā
āAs ordered,ā Mortarion says.
The words are correct. Proper. Unassailable. Yet he doesnāt move.
āYou understand,ā Perturabo adds, āthat nothing assigned here is permanent. This was a campaign. Not a covenant.ā
āI understand,ā Mortarion replies.
Another pause. Then, quietly: āShe will not be informed until the withdrawal.ā
Perturaboās jaw tightens by a fraction. āNo.ā
Mortarionās head turns slightly now, just enough that one pale lens catches the lumen light. āNo?ā
āShe will be informed when orders are issued,ā Perturabo says. āNot before. Iron Warriors serfs are not coddled. Nor are they distracted.ā
A beat.
āVery well,ā Mortarion says.
He steps out into the corridor then, his presence ebbing from the strategium like poison mist drawn back into the earth. Perturabo remains where he is, hands braced on the edge of the table, staring at a war that no longer requires him. Within a day, the planet will fall. Within a day, the Death Guard will relinquish what was never truly theirs. Somewhere in the trenches, a woman who has begun to learn the Fourteenth Legion will be returned to iron, stone, and siege lines. Whether either Primarch considers that loss acceptableā¦ Isnāt a question either will voice.
You're writing gives me so much joy!! Every day I go check your blog, and every time I see something new i flop down and kick my feet like a teenage girl giggling!
I offer you this.
that head cannon You did about the beloved winding up on the ship When they really shouldn't be, What if the opposite happened? What if it's a home alone situation? How would the Primarchs react?
Awwww thank you <3 Honestly I didn't expect people to really like whatever I do, so it brings me such a great joy to know about it! Thank you! <3
The children will never know
How the ocean used to flow
They'll never miss the whales
They'll never believe the tales
But I will remember, I will tell
Of all that lived and their great farewell
Lorgar walked the burning plains of Sicarus, but in his mind, the sands were redder, the sky softer, the winds laden not with the taint of the Warp but with the incense of a thousand shrines. Colchis, in its death, had branded itself upon his soul more indelibly than when it lived.
She walked beside him.
She always did.
Barefoot, her robes fluttered in a wind only he could feel. Her smile was the same - warm, patient, maddening. Her voice, her voice, wove through his thoughts like a prayer he could never forget.
"Youāre walking too fast again, my Lorgar. Slow down. The wind has tales to tell, if only youād listen."
He turned his head slightly, just enough to show he heard her. His golden eyes softened.
āI must hurry,ā he murmured aloud, though no one stood beside him in truth. āThere is work yet unfinished. You know this.ā
"You always say that. You never rest, not even now. Look at what itās made you."
Her presence was a knife and a balm. For centuries, Lorgar had endured war, betrayal, daemonic revelation, and the murder of gods. But her, her loss, remained the only wound that had never scabbed, never scarred. The fire that consumed Colchis had not burned her body, it had consumed something deeper, something in him.
And so, she remained.
At the edge of his vision. In the flicker of every flame. In the echo of incense swinging from silver chains.
She is not real, said the rational mind. The daemon mind. The part of him that had been remade by the Eye.
But he silenced that thought.
Because she was real. She had to be.
The others noticed. They always did.
Erebus, ever the watchful vulture, dared not speak of it often. But Kor Phaeronā¦ he had always been more blunt.
āShe is gone,ā the old priest hissed once, as Lorgar spoke to her during a war council, his voice gentle amid roars of blood and conquest. āYou shame yourself before the Legion. Before the Pantheon.ā
Lorgarās gaze fell on Kor Phaeron like a titanās shadow.
āShe is here,ā he said simply. āAnd she is listening. You would do well to speak with reverence.ā
The silence that followed was colder than the void.
Even the Word Bearers who would tear stars asunder for their Primarch did not meet his eyes. Not then.
In private, Erebus whispered to his cabal. āHe sees ghosts. He speaks with ash. How can he lead us into the Age of Truth if he cannot escape his past?ā
But none dared confront him again. The last one who tried was a dark priest of Serrix, a proud zealot who declared Lorgar blinded by sentiment.
His body now lined the Basilica of Eternal Fire, twisted into a sculpture that wept blood.
In the solitude of his sanctum, surrounded by tomes of daemonology and relics of a thousand heresies, Lorgar found peace. Not in the knowledge, nor in the divine madness, but in her.
She sat beside the brazier, legs folded beneath her, eyes half-lidded.
"You remember what I told you when we were young?" she asked one evening, voice low.
āYou told me many things.ā
"That the fire cannot touch the soul, only the skin. That belief is a flame brighter than the sun. That even when the mountains fall, faith will remain."
Lorgar closed his eyes. He could hear the fire crackle, could smell the myrrh on her skin. He wanted to believe he only imagined her, but it was too complete. Too vivid. It was easier, kinder, to let himself drift in it.
āItās not faith that remained,ā he said at last. āOnly the pain.ā
"Then youāve stopped believing."
He opened his eyes.
She looked at him, disappointed.
And he couldnāt bear that.
He saw her on the battlefield too.
Amid the firestorms of Atharax, she stood among the ruins, untouched. In the blood-drenched temples of the false Emperorās lapdogs, she walked barefoot through the corpses, never flinching.
"Too far, Lorgar," she would whisper. "You were meant to bring light, not become the pyre."
And he would lower his mace, even as the daemon within snarled for slaughter.
His sons obeyed without question, though they did not understand.
They saw only the shadow of the man who once had stood on Khurās steps and preached a unity forged in flame and verse. Now, they saw a haunted figure, speaking softly to someone who wasnāt there, pausing in sermons to gaze into corners empty of all but memory.
Years passed. Or centuries. Time was fluid within the Eye.
She aged. Not in body, but in presence. Sometimes she was the girl he had saved from the burning monastery. And sometimes, too rarely, she was what she might have become had Colchis not burned: a priestess, serene and wise, perhaps even Empress of a world that never was.
"Youāre holding on to a ghost," she said once, her voice almost bitter.
āThen let me,ā he said. āYou are the last of my home. The last of my heart.ā
"And what of your gods?"
āThey speak too loudly. You whisper.ā
"And you still hear me?"
He touched his temple, then his chest. āAlways.ā
Sometimes, she asked if he remembered the day the sky turned black.
How could he forget?
The orbitals fell first. Then the firestorms swept through Vharadesh like a second birth. The oceans boiled. The mountains cracked. And in the smoke of the apocalypse, her hand slipped from his, and he couldnāt find it again.
He had called her name then, not as a Primarch, not as a prophet, but as a lover.
And no one answered.
Until now.
Now, she answered always.
The daemons began to mock him.
They danced in her shape, wearing her face, twisting her words. He destroyed them with fire and fury, one after another, shouting her name in rage and devotion.
"You are not her," he spat, standing over a writhing horror wearing her eyes. "You do not speak as she speaks. You do not know me."
But the thing only smiled.
"Donāt we?" it whispered.
He burned it to ash.
And stillā¦ that whisper lingered.
One night, if time could still be called such, he broke.
He screamed into the void, tearing through the walls of his sanctum, tearing pages from holy books and hurling relics into the abyss.
āI know youāre real!ā he roared. āTell me Iām not insane! Tell me Iām not damned to see you forever while the rest of the galaxy forgets!ā
The silence that followed was deeper than any Warp storm.
Then, from the shattered shadows, she stepped forth. Calm. Radiant. Real.
"Would it matter?" she asked. "If I was a dream, would you stop loving me?"
āNo,ā he said, voice cracking.
"If I was only in your mind, would you let me go?"
He fell to his knees.
āNo.ā
"Then what does it matter?"
He never asked again.
He never searched for truth, or for healing. He let her be whatever she was: spirit, memory, echo, illusion.
She was his. And he would not give her up.
Even as the galaxy burned, even as his brothers fell or ascended, even as gods rose and broke and screamed his name in vain-
He had her.
His last piece of Colchis.
His last shard of innocence.
And in the end, when the stars themselves wept blood, Lorgar Aurelian could still be found walking the quiet halls of a ruined temple, listening to a voice that no one else heard, smiling gently at someone no one else could see.
Iām reblogging again because I did it myself and added pictures for those who have trouble learning from the video.
First take a standard rectangular piece of paper (I used one from a small notebook which I ripped out then cut the holes off)
Then fold in half touching the shorter side to the opposite shorter side.
Fold again making the new shorter side touch the other new shorter side
I did this one more time, but this time I unfolded it right after to get back to where it was only folded twice. It should have left a crease in the paper.
Using this crease, fold the corners up alongside it to look like this
This are also going to be unfolded, but this time youāre going to push in alongside the triangular folds you just made and undid.
Doing this once will result in this
Hold tight because tumblr wonāt let me add more pictures. Iāll reblog will the rest of the instructions
Thanatos knows that I hecking love cute origami, and moths, so really, what was I supposed to do, scroll past and not take the opportunity to make butterfly and moth page markers???
My viera lass, Saira Ashwalker (she/her/they/them).
Got a bit of lore for her tribe that Iām still working on expanding (also English isnāt my first language so pardon any grammatical errors) ;
Itās an old, almost ancient, tribe of Viera...
Many generations ago their forest was burned to the ground in a horrible forest fire.
The neighboring tribes believed that they had all perished in the flames... But behold, through the ashes and smoke came the survivors, walking proud and strong through the ashen remains of their ancestral home. Carrying the seeds they protected to the very last. Ensuring that the spirit of the woods would survive for many more generations to come.
Those survivors became the first of the so called āAshwalkersā. Their hair, skin and eyes had taken on an ashen appearance. A sign for their strength to survive such a disaster and still carry the burden of their peopleās legacy.
Many centuries have passed since then and the tribe thrives. Their numbers have recovered but they would still be considered one of the smaller tribes.
Theyāve become reclusive, extremely hostile to others who dare to come close to their territory. Even other tribes are given no mercy or leniency should they accidentally wander too close. For it is their duty to guard the Eden-esque forests and gardens that they cultivate and nurture. They posses rare and beautiful vegetation/flowers that have to the rest of the world believed to be extinct.
They have a little bit different way to view the traditional views of the gender seperation normal viera have. Thatās simply because there are just so few males being born compared to females. And for some reason it is more often than not that they are the ones born with aetherical gifts. Theyāre viewed as equal to females, if not a little bit more important. Theyāre pampered and itās to the great pride and honor the one chosen to be the mate of one.
Now whatās even rarer than the males is the appearance of an Ashwalker.
The other of the tribe have the normal colourations of hair and colour like they all once had before the great fires. Though sometimes, not every generation, there is one born ashen.
Itās always the females who are born as Ashwalkers and they are seen as a sign. For these have the soul of those who wanders through peril and ash to bring prosperity and life for the tribe. They are the only ones that are allowed to leave the territory and go out on vast pilgrimages to collect information and stories from the outside world and bring back. But most importantly, bring back new flora for the forestsā¦ to protect and nurture.
Like I said!! WIP!
Saira is veeeeery very curious about the people and cultures of the world outside the forests. Doesnāt quite understand everything, is a little naive at times as she canāt understand people who talk too fancy or eloquently. To the point and honest is the way for her. Sheās learned to put on an act though.
Loves to listen to people, be friends (despite her scary looking aura some times) and lays her ears flat when people get mad at her when she doesnāt understand what she did wrong.
Iāve never been great at drawing super realistic art, and I think itās because it never really held my interest. I just love stylized characters which is why Iāve been drawing them obsessively for over 20 years! Because of that, Iāve got a lot of ideas about how you can approach stylized anatomy - hereās a snippet of a longer video I made on this topic āØ
ellievsbear
janainaart
jbbartram-illu
pixelskylines
origamiaround
annaxmalina
titsay
