Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Three (section)

===Closed to the Public===

As Freya awoke the next morning, she noted with some relief that Alex was still quietly snoozing away behind her.  She took a moment to savor the feeling of his body behaving the way it was supposed to; as opposed to the way it had been the previous night.  Eyes still shut, she relaxed into his unconscious embrace.  He had been so tired that he had fallen asleep with his arm still slung across her chest.  After a while, she slid silently free, letting his hand fall to the bed, and moved in silence to begin her pre-workout bathroom routine…then paused.  She looked back to him, wondering.  She reached out and switched the alarm off, so he wouldn’t have awoken in an hour and a half like he had planned.

Outside, Venus and Remilia were already dressed and ready to head to the modest serf’s gym in the castle when Freya stuck her head out the door.  “Hey, you two, go ahead, I’m going to stay here,” she said.  Her freshly-washed hair glimmered red from Venus’ eyes as her cousin tilted her head.

“Are you all right?” Remilia asked for the two of them.

“Alex needs me, today, I think,” Freya said.  She looked at them both.  “Or am I being paranoid?”

“Just come run for a while, then shower off and get back in bed,” Venus counseled.  “Let him wake up to you, if you think it will matter.”

Freya nodded.  “All right, I’ll do that.”


Several hours later, Jake wobbled out of bed, feeling his back ache a bit, but otherwise feeling as good as new.  He glanced at the clock at the side of the table, noting that he had actually woken before the alarm went off.  “Oh well,” he said, making for the showers.

As he emerged in the gym, he noted Freya’s and Alex’s absences with a resigned sigh.  He wasn’t surprised to find them absent.


Alex fell onto his back as he awoke, jolting him awake.  He lay in the darkness for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling as the previous night’s misadventure returned to him.  “What am I going to do?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Shhh,” Freya whispered from beside him.  “Go back to sleep.”  He started.  She was never there when he woke up.

“What…what time is it?” he asked, searching for a clock.  He couldn’t see one.

“Middle of the night,” Freya lied to him.  She had covered the little red clock with a shirt.  “Sleep.  I’ll be here when you need to get up,” she promised.

Alex lay in silence for a moment, his emotions returning to him with lucidity.  “All right.”  He sighed in guilt as the night came back fully.  “Thanks for being there when I needed you to be,” he whispered into the darkness.

Freya silently shifted.  A warm, soft weight descended onto his chest as she leaned on him, pressing her bare skin to his, and captured his lips in a loving kiss.  “Shhh.  Sleep.  I told Venus to let you sleep in, we’ve got the whole day to do whatever you want.  Work out, explore…stay in bed,” she added coyly.  “Rest.”

Alex smiled and let his eyes shut.  “All right, baby.”  She squeezed his shoulder, settling back down beside him.  “What did I do right to get you?” he asked of the room.

“As I recall?  Compliment my ass after a wrestling meet,” Freya noted.  “You’re lucky I didn’t rip your arm off.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Me too.”  She rolled over to face him in the dark.  “Now…shush.  Sleep.”

He obeyed, closing his eyes and settling back into the mattress, his brief emotional turmoil evaporating.  Freya nodded at her successful deception.  “Job well done,” she muttered.


Jake stared in absolute awe at the magnificent sculpture on the pedestal before him.  “It’s…breathtaking,” he said.

The Assault Marine that had volunteered to lead the unusual group through the catacombs beneath the city nodded.  “Isn’t it?  One of our Chaplains made it, about four hundred years ago.”

“It’s beautiful,” Jake said, taking in the twisted metal column.  Visible hammer marks on its sides were the only marring of an otherwise symmetrical five-sided pyramid, which had been beaten into the middle of an iron column, with only a slender strand of metal keeping the precarious-looking upper half of the column stable.  “I wish my grandfather could see what his students made,” he said quietly.

“I beg your pardon?” the Marine asked.

“My grandfather, Carmine Seager, taught in the same seminary on Mars where most of the Legionary Techmarines trained,” Jake explained, slowly circling the structure.  The entire granite hallway was completely lined with magnificent pieces of technology, art, and design that could have found a home in any up-scale Terran, Macraggian, or maybe even Martian gallery.

“Ah, I see.  He had an artistic side himself, then?” the Marine asked.

“He was a very talented designer of the Adeptus Mechanicus Artisan’s Order,” Jake explained.  He smiled at their towering host.  “I got my own love of design and artifice from him, as did my father.”

“Truly?  Good on you.  Here on Nocturne, metalworking is one of the oldest and most sacred professions,” the Marine said, spurred to explanation by the open confidence of his guest.  “Our greatest tribal lords before the coming of King Vulkan were those who could best balance metalcrafting and politics.”

“A wise combination for a leader,” Jake said, leaning to examine the statue more closely.

“Indeed,” the Marine replied.

Venus and Remilia were a pace back, looking at a tiny block sculpture.  It looked like it had been made from rock turned liquid, tapped with mallets into a certain shape, then left to cool just so.  An impressive feat, given that rock was so much more brittle than metal.

“I wonder how many tries that took?” Remilia murmured.

“As many as needed,” Venus replied.  She glanced at the row of similar sculptures beside it, noting that though they had all seemingly been made by the same person, none were signed or stamped.  “They wouldn’t just give up if it didn’t come out right.”

Jake had moved on to examine a large, nearly hollow ball of volcanic glass, held aloft by iron rods.  “Now that’s impressive,” he said, leaning as close as he dared.  “How in the world did they get the rods to bend inside the shafts?”

“I do not know,” the Marine confessed.

“Must have run a current through it while shaping the glass,” Jake muttered.  “It’s a nice design.  How do you get the larger ones into the gallery?  This is bigger than the door.”

“There’s a crane we can use in the ceiling,” the Marine said, pointing into the inky blackness above them.

“Very cool.”  Jake’s eyes drifted to a Power Sword hanging on studs from a wall.  “And…just to pose the question, why don’t the Salamanders actually use the weapons they make here?”

The Marine’s voice carried a hint of amusement.  “We do.  These are the weapons of warriors who make spares to keep in practice.”

Jake processed that.  “Ah.  That’s, ah…a hell of a hobby,” he quipped.  The Marine grinned behind his helmet.