Editing Toyhammer (section)

=Chapter 22=

"A twig is but a trifle to snap, as it is alone and weak. But a bundle will endure more than just the flex of a brute's muscles." - Anon.

My body felt… weird.

All the slashes, burns and wounds that I had been collecting during my time in the mindscape, all the injuries that had been carved into my mind's perception of my 'self'… they weren't there. I could still feel them, if I ran my hand over where they were supposed to be, but otherwise my flesh was unmarked by the grazes from various close calls inside of the mind scape.

I guessed that meant that Porthos was going to be missing out on his Windmill of Blade-shaped Doom, then.

Testing eyebrows and fingers, then down all the way to my toes, I found that each pulled muscle and strained joint was now perfectly fine (except for the ones that had been injured during my brief fight with that daemonhost). It was as if the last few hours of my life had never happened.

Even so, my body felt heavy, slow and cumbersome. My senses were dulled, and my skin tingled – the kind of sensation you'd expect from standing beside a big generator while its running. I guessed my mind was just exhausted.. Well, the fact that I had been physically curb-stomped by the daemonhost of Chaos didn't help, either.

Relatively speaking, considering injuries both mental and physical, I was in great condition. Less could be said to the people who had actually been hurt.

Or killed.

I froze for a moment, my breath catching in my throat as I remembered the battle that had raged about me. It was all exciting and all, but... people had died. Gone, forever. No way to call them back, and for some not even a body to be found. Shivering, I clenched my hands and balled them up into fists.

A tap on my shoulder made me jump. There stood Vincent, who had been standing beside me as he waited for me to re-adjust to consciousness.

No fluff, he launched straight into a report. "You were out for about an hour, then woke up long enough for me to tell you what happened, then you passed out again." He informed me. "It has been... oh, say about three hours since the end of the battle."

I nodded. It had felt like forever, but the mind war must have been happening at the speed of thought; far faster than real time. I had been thankful for the dreamless sleep. A rumble in my gut clenched my throat shut, and I gagged. Things felt like I was about to upchuck, and violently. I looked around until Vincent handed me a bucket – one that had been taken from behind the garden.

Good guy, he nearly thinks of everything.

He looked away as I regurgitated the contents of my stomach, paused, then emptied out the rest of my guts into the bucket.

Now that I was awake and puking, he said, it was the perfect time to get up so everyone could 'debrief' me and the others. Miles had insisted on it, having been drilled the habit of 'after action reports' to be done after every combat that he had been involved in. It was critical, he said, for learning and not making the same mistakes again.

That, and if I remembered, it had also been a habit of Vincent's to do the same after every session of tabletop games.

Vincent seemed to remember something, and reached around to my coffee table. He returned with a glass of water in hand, which he passed to me. Even though I had been puking only a little while ago, I felt too full already, my appetite and thirst long gone.

"Miles told me that would help." He insisted. "Make sure you stay hydrated, or else you'll probably pass out again."

A rush of heat washed over my face as I reluctantly reached out and grabbed the glass. I began to slowly sip at the water, and looked around for the missing friend. "How is he, anyway? What about Alice? Batel? The others, what about them?"

"Gee, thanks for your concern." Vincent chuckled grimly, and it wasn't until now that I noticed that the left sleeve of his jacket was gone, and his arm was covered in burns and scars. All over his legs and face were more injuries, and… well, it looked like he had been in a war. Which was true. He closed his eyes, as if recalling a memory.

"Alice has a nasty burn around her throat… I'm not sure about anything else. She can speak, but Miles told her to be careful, so she's staying away from talking for the moment. But she hasn't been pointing at anything else right now, so she'll be alright after her throat heals up. The Sisters are taking care of her now.

Miles is fine, although he kinda smells. His clothes soaked up most of the damage, even the cannon shells from that Defiler he stomped into the ground. I think Emma did something to it; like reinforced the materials somehow."

Vincent hesitated, and I could see him going through a mental checklist. "That girl… Batel. She's asleep. Actually, 'comatose' would be a better word for it, but Emma says she just needs rest before getting woken up again. An-"

I held up my hand, stopping him before he launched into a grim report about the armies. Looking him over, I gestured vaguely at him.

"What happened to you?" I asked. Vincent adjusted his glasses rather nervously.

"Stuff." He quickly answered. I cocked my head to one side.

Hesitating, he continued on. "I think the lascannon was the worst of it. Lost a toe in my left foot when it burned through my shoe." Vincent waggled his left foot, which had a hole in the shoe. He smiled weakly, and sighed. "Best thing about it is that the blast cut off the nerves, too, then cauterized the wound; I don't think Emma can grow it back, but that means I don't get to bleed out and aside from the gap it doesn't really bother me."

I nodded, cautiously.

"What about the neighbors?"

"Emma says that she used a weirdness-censorship spell-thing. Rubric, that was it. The Rubric of Ignorance." He explained, waving his arms around in the usual 'I'm doing googly magic' gesture. "She made sure that we had the entire battle in private, although it wasn't perfect. Your neighbor, that Collins woman, came knocking later on. I told her we were playing games. Y'know, Dawn of War. She asked about all the... well, the battlefield. Emma came along and told us that it was alright." His face grew serious. "Then she... Collins, I mean, just walked off. No questions asked, she just upped and left the place without another word."

Settling down, Vincent clicked his teeth together, making them chatter as he thought this one through. "Later on, I checked with some of the other psykers. That Jedi mind-trick kind of stuff is very hard to pull off unless you got some seriously advanced powers. Whoever Emma is, she ain't just eleven years old."

I nodded, having already figured that part of things out.

Looking at Vincent, then at my hands, I murmured to myself. "So, nobody's calling the cops on us?"

"They didn't see any reason to, after Emma went off and stuffed around with their heads." Vincent sighed, and shrugged. "Hey, I'm not used to all this weird stuff, but I know the fluff. That girl… she's one hell of a psyker. Probably up there with Librarian Tigrus or that dick... eh... wossisname... Eldar guy, started the whole Armageddon wars."

He licked his dry lips, and changed the subject. Or at least went to a different tack than before.

"And speaking of which, so are you, apparently. Jeezus, Mickey. You? A psyker? I mean... whoa. Just... dood, you don't want to have a daemon crawl out of your eyeball, so I'd say get yourself some wards or something, cuz... that kind of thing may be funny to read about, but with that stuff actually happening to you? Christ, that would hurt..."

I blinked, wondering.

How could you just accept these things? I mean, where was the denial? Or did he already get over that when they had first met the miniature armies a week or so ago? Vincent was sitting there, grinning. It seemed like an entire lifetime ago that I had been able to just relax and mess around with friends. But in reality, it had only been… what, a month? Two?

Looking at my hands, I wasn't even so sure now. It felt like forever and a day, actually.

Murmuring, my head still hung between my hands, I quietly spoke to my friend.

"You alright with this? I mean… why aren't you freaking out?"

"Oh, would you rather I started freaking out?" Vincent asked. He shrugged. "I guess I'm just insane already; it isn't like we were normal in the first place. But... hey, look on the bright side! It's freakin' epic, if you ask me." Grinned Vincent, his voice exalting.

"I mean… look at it! Warhammer 40,000. It's all real! Best of all, I'm still alive!" He sighed, and shrugged. "There are a few things rather inconsistent with the fluff and all, like how the bolter shells ain't made of deuterium, but what looks like a ferro-ceramic jacket built around a rocket motor, designed to fragment from the inside out, but… it's real. I mean… holy shit, the Space Marines, the Tau, Eldar… It's all here. Even… even orks and... and Chaos."

He slowed down, his fanboy rabidity fading as reality caught up to him. I guess that was his coping mechanism, then.

"Do I just squee about it and have fun? No, I don't. But it's distracting me, which helps me cope with... the things that are going on. Also, it helps that I can laugh at them, or else I may as well risk going all bat-shit crazy. And the second one ain't the best of choices, if you ask me. Being normal is boring, but going insane is just not fun either. Oh, and hey, like I said: I asked that Librarian... uh, Vasili. I guess this is a cursed blessing, huh? With you being a mindscape psyker and all?"

"So what should I know about me being a psyker?"

"Be careful, really. Think of it as burning bandwidth; you can only use up so much before they start billing you for extra usage."

Smiling sadly, I motioned out to the armies.

"Is that it? I'd have figured as much."

Vincent gave a bitter laugh, and sat back.

I nodded, silent but glad of the change in subject. I wasn't sure if I could have said anything else.

"You don't have a lot in the way of baseline skills, but once you level up a few times you'll start pulling in the feats and tricks."

"..." I stared at him blankly, falling back into a familiar and comforting routine of straight man and dope. "Vincent. English, please."

"You got a steep learning curve ahead of you."

"Ah. Okay then..."

We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence then, with me staring at my feet while Vincent picked up a pen and began to idly twist his fingers around it, sending it flipping up and down his row of knuckles.

Looking around me, I spotted a squad of Tau Pathfinders and Space Marine Scouts patrolling, a silent Devilfish drifting behind them as they made their way across the doorway.

"How are they all holding up, anyway? The minis, I mean."

"Well enough. They're used to it… well, more used to it than we are."

Vincent stood, adjusting his glasses (which were chipped on the left lens), and walked out of the room with a slight limp. He was still feeling the loss of his left toe, then. My black-haired friend turned around, and looked back over his shoulder, beckoning me forward. "C'mon, Mike. Miles wants his AAR."

Hauling myself up, I set the contents of my stomach down on the floor and then staggered along, following Vincent's wake as he moved us off into the kitchen.

Miles and Emma were there. For simplicity's sake, everyone shorter than a foot tall referred to us 'Terrans' since there were basically none amongst them that were from Earth and 'humans' tended to include a force that covered roughly a third of the miniatures.

"Michael. Over here." Miles was the first to greet me, having settled down onto a stool and poured himself a glass of water. He was drawing out a second one, which found its ways into the pale skinned hands of Emma, who wandered off before I reached the kitchen counter.

I slid onto a stool, and looked around me. Alice was not here, as was Batel. Vincent had already settled down onto the last of the three stools here, and was now nursing a glass of water.

Running my hand over the edge of the counter, I looked around for a little while, taking in all the battle damage around this part of the house. There were scorch marks and craters all over the place, and I knew that it would be a lot of work to get this place back into presentable conditions. It seemed like even my kitchen had not been spared from combat, as there were dents and scorch marks on the counter top where bolter shells and grenades had gone off.

"Water, Mike. Get hydrated."

Cold glass was pressed against my knuckles, and I jumped at the sudden chill, knocking over the glass of water that Miles had touched against my hand. The glass of water fell onto its side, smashing the lip.

"Damn." I sighed, hands trembling as I reached out to grab a cloth and gather up the shards of broken glass, apologizing as I dumped them into the trash can (which had suffered a blast of some sort near its base).

"Sorry, Miles."

He looked shaken as well, and I guessed I didn't look to good. His face was etched with worry, and he quietly studied me as I worked away, gathering the remains of the glass.

"Mike... you probably should get more water into your system. Dehydration dulls you down, and I guess its also making you a little more jumpy than usual."

"Uh-huh." I agreed, and filled up a new glass for myself. Having topped it up with water, I brought it to my lips and slowly, steadily drained the glass as Vincent began going over some basic questions.

"How the hell did you meet up with Emma, Miles?"

"She kinda jumped me at the store, told me that there was something important that she needed me to do and then told me to go for my gun. I didn't know much else after that, since I kinda packed up and left"

I looked at him, frowning. Had she done the same as she did to Collins, and Jedi mind-tricked him?

"Then?"

"Well, I went for my rifle and my pistol... oh, hey, while we're still on that subject; can I have my M9 back sometime soon?"

"Yeah, sure. Think I left it by my bed. Go on, though."

"She jumped into my car and we drove off. On the way there, she was whispering something under her breath, and my clothes started feeling lighter and stuff."

"So she probably did something to them. I'll check her on that later on, but the important thing is that they're okay now, right?

"Yep." He confirmed, and took a deep breath.

"Also. You wanna go over this? What went right, what went wrong? Basically, let's start from the beginning; everyone was caught off guard. Whoever was on station at the time had broken contact with that vehicle and were heading off to unprepared hidey holes. Not good. We'll have to keep them on guard and reporting what's going on until they step through the doors, and have prepared places to hide in until the visitors leave."

I nodded.

"Then came the actual combat; it seems like the Chaos forces had a free ride out from the curb all the way up to your front door. Nobody contested them in open, flat terrain from a superior position, and by superior position I mean every goddamned window on the front side of your house. It should have been a fucking turkey shoot for us. Assuming we stuff up and this happens again, that means that we need to make that front yard of yours an absolute goddamned killzone for anyone that's stupid enough to try it."

Miles had a more serious mask on now, his voice becoming a series of snarls emphasized with sharp gestures. He had sketched out a rough diagram of my house, and was stabbing each of the locations as they came up in the discussion.

"Then there was the breakout from your front door to all over the living room. We did good there, boxing them in: that let us contain the Chaos force and lock them down. Everyone got together, and with the charge of the fucking mini brigade, the minis did the good old divide and conquer. Could have done better, though, from the reports I've been getting; everyone wasn't communicating, and we slowed down enough to let them recover and get their feet underneath them again. We lost momentum and the initiative of that battle, and the opposing forces turned it into a meat grinder."

He sighed, gesturing at the front garden.

"Basically, that's all I got for now. But the general things are this; better preparation, more cooperation – maybe a universal comms system would help – and if we get the change fortify the fuck out of your front door. Do it subtly, though. Potted plants with false bottoms, maybe? Don't know, don't care, just do it."

I blinked a few times, and nodded.

"Yeah... this never happened before, though..."

"And it won't happen again!" Miles snapped, and gritted his teeth. "Casualty rate was at about twenty to thirty percent. We don't exactly know how many are around to get an actual figure, Its higher amongst the Orks, lower with the upstairs people, but the Tau got hit the hardest. Imperial Guard lost the most at about a hundred eighty odd casualties. We have about fifty percent wounded or incapacitated, and basically won't be fighting anytime soon."

The words struck me like a gut shot.

"I... I see."

"You wanna visit them all, Mike? It's probably the best thing that you can do right now."

I nodded. "The armies, then. First the Imperials, upstairs."

But before that, I needed to throw up again.

The aftermath of a battle – let alone a war – has never been pretty, for the field or for the warriors involved. 'Tired' was actually the best physical or mental state you could be in. What smiles there were amongst the Guard that were to be seen all seemed forced, their laughter hollow or bitter. Most were silent, going about their duties with the knowledge that their friends were gone, and would never be back.

Standing in the domain of the Imperial Guard – up in one of the bedrooms on the first floor – I then noticed that things had changed. There had been a need to skip the second-to-top step before the landing halfway up my stairs as the Imperials had begun to fortify it; Miles had offered his skills to help construct better defenses, and they had readily accepted him, but for now the small outpost and the huge climb was the only thing keeping any new attacks out of the first floor.

The Hammer of the Emperor had once made their barracks from bricks; lego bricks, to be exact. Now, their habitations had evolved from the lego brick bunkers that had been their initial billets; the modular nature of lego had been a welcome sight, and they had adapted the 'technology' into their new buildings; each grey brick – to me almost as fine as sand at their smallest – would take longer to combine into a building, but was infinitely more adaptable to the needs of expanding to allow more space.

Or, I grimly reminded myself, to shrink back down after taking losses.

The motor pool was – like the many aid stations around me – a buzzing hive of activities, with red robed cogboys and their newly instated adepts, were busy in the process of getting everything back into shape for combat; thankfully, a lot of the tanks had been stored up here while the Chaos incursion had flowed into the living room, and had been out of the most brutal fighting, at least, until they were gathered together with the rest of the heavy armor for the crushing counter-assault that followed that first terrible half hour of battle.

Even so, their lighter vehicles were the ones that had fallen prey to wandering Chaos tank-hunter teams. Chimera APCs were the hardest hit, although these workhorses of the Imperium had fared well, and their parts were durable enough that they didn't need much in the way of repairs before they got back to running around. Fighting, however, was out of the question for some, with great rents in their armor and gaping holes in engines.

I sat down as the Imperials crowded around my knees. Turning to a Lieutenant – his name was… Ambrose, wasn't it? Second Lieutenant Ambrose - as he walked about on the bookcase beside me, I motioned him over.

"Who's in charge?"

"Seniority falls on to…" He checked his dataslate. "Major Drai is in charge now, until General Faust recovers. His second is… Commissar Tomas, by seniority."

I nodded, numbly. "How is he, anyway? Faust, I mean."

A few more taps as the Lieutenant called up the data. "Wounded, but stable. He's got shrapnel in his right leg, arm and chest, and lost two fingers on his right hand. Recovery time is… two weeks, at most. The xenos have offered their own medical technologies… he ordered us to accept. We refused the Orks, though."

The two of us shared a nervous chuckle. The Orks' grasp of medical technology was… primitive, at best. For example, 'anesthetics' and 'concussion' tended to be the same thing, and delivered via a mallet.

"What about everything else? If this happens again…"

The Lieutenant shrugged, continuing to thumb through the dataslate he held in his hand. "An expeditionary force is being dispatched with elements from the Adeptus Mechanicus, to gather more resources which can be used to replace our losses. Your friend… Vincent. He offered to transport them to a mineral repository."

Again, my head bobbed up and down. "Yeah. Probably headed out to the junkyard. That sounds great. So, we'll be having replacements?"

"Men? No. Machines, maybe. Our fabricators aren't exactly in top condition at the moment, so…" The LT hesitated, and sighed with a frown on his face. "I'm not sure, but the summary is that it will be difficult. Logistics has always been the General's field. We just made sure to use up our supplies at the rate he projected, or else we'd have some trouble transporting it around."

I arched an eyebrow, and shrugged it off. I wasn't used to all these supplies and whatnot. My job did not involve much in the way of logistics; moving things around, sure, but… well, I was an artist; sketches, commissions and such stuff was my main trade, rather than… well, this. Miles was probably the one better asked about this.

"I see." I replied, rather lamely, and turned away. "Look… I'm not sure if I should be the one you're talking to about all this logistics, Lieutenant. Tell your commander, go see Miles. He might be able to help you with logistical problems."

"Sir, yes, sir."

I stood, feeling a little awkward. The man, probably a good decade older and a lot more experienced in the ways of war, considering that he was a Cadian, had called me sir.

"As you were?" I ventured, touching fingers to temple.

He smiled, clicked his heels together again, saluted back and nodded.

"Sir, yes sir."

I stepped outside, and let out a long sigh. Next up...

"I didn't think that a Cadian would have done that for anyone but an officer." Miles observed as I stepped out of the Imperial fortress.

I snapped out of the daze of thought, and looked up at him. Miles was a good deal taller than I was, and the differences between us were what you'd expect from a recently retired combat engineer and a reclusive just-out-of-college artist.

"Hmm?"

"You've earned a lot of respect, Mike." He simplified for my sake, and I nodded.

"Yeah... thanks? I don't think you've got You helped us a lot out there today."

Miles shrugged, and pointed at my laundry cupboard. "Broom in there, right?"

I frowned. "What do you need it for?"

"Cleanup, remember?"

"Ah... yeah..." I had just assumed that Emma had taken care of that as well.

But hey, life isn't perfect, is it?

"So..." I paused, a little unsure. "How is... cleanup... going?"

To that, Miles let out a massive sigh of relief. "Thank God you have a fireplace, Mike. We've been burning everything we can in there. Bodies, mostly. Half a dozen of those meltaaaW weapons have been helping us with the rest. There ain't much left of that disintegrated guy, so it wouldn't be much of a problem... although there's the van. Maybe I could see how well these guys can disintegrate something..."

"Give it to the Orks." I replied instantly. "Clear it with the psykers, Eldar and the Inquisitor first, but see if you can get that thing scrapped by the Orks. The van probably wouldn't be 'tainted' and they could take it apart easily." I looked at Miles, who nodded his agreement. But something was missing... a crucial det- ah. Right. Fuel. "Although I'd appreciate it if you got rid of the gas in the tank first. We don't want them finding out that there's huge tanks of stuff that burns inside of every four-wheeled vehicle around here."

"Righto, Big Boss." Sighed Miles. "You got a hacksaw, too?"

"Garden shed, should be. I'm off to see the Space Marines. Back in a bit."

The Space Marines, living in the room next door, were in a similar state to the motor pool; they were a buzzing nest of urgency, with the armored figures hurriedly making their way from place to place. After seeing the Guardsmen, and glimpsing everyone else, I understood why they did this. Work already tired soldiers to the bone. They didn't want them to rest, didn't want them to think, didn't want them to remember their dead friends and fallen brothers and sisters.

A dreamless sleep to the exhausted, and no allowance for time to think for those that weren't; it was a cruel act, but a merciful one.

I stepped in amongst the stoic warriors of the Imperium. The Adeptus Astartes regarded me through their hard stares and emotionless eyepieces. A few put down their work as I shuffled into the room, careful not to raise my feet above the ground; it was better to be pushed out of the way rather than crushed.

Sitting down at my usual spot, which was by a table that had become the main command center, I looked around at the casualties.

Though their armor was incredibly tough and made them much less vulnerable to enemy fire, this also meant that the Marines were throwing themselves into more dangerous situations than the average Guardsman. That also meant that the Marines had taken some rather brutal losses when faced up with their corrupted counterparts. Red-armored Techmarines and their hastily recruited apprentices walked from Marine to Marine, overseeing and aiding the repairs. I saw a pattern there, the reverse of what I saw with the injured: The suits of armor with minimal damage were the first to be repaired, given precedence over the more mangled armor.

The cold logic in that was clear; the sooner they could be repaired, the sooner a Marine could fight.

I looked to my left, meeting the sound of approaching footfalls.

"Chaplain Morteus." I spoke, sitting beside my usual spot.

"Michael." He greeted, making his way up a ramp to stand level with my head. "We are faring well, all considering the battle that had just taken place."

"How is everyone?"

"You ask the right person." The black-armored battle-priest sighed, and looked out at the Marine-village beyond. "We are Space Marines, Adeptus Astartes. We are used to battle, to fight for every breath we take from the worlds we protect. We are the Emperor's finest and we will not sully the memories of those who gave their lives for this place with tears or grief. We shall mourn their passing, that is certain, but they have achieved a glorious death performing the duties befitting of a Marine; a death in battle, with their brothers at their sides, their enemies in front of them and the ones that they died to protect safe behind them. That is all any of us could ask for."

"I don't see Eizak around… how is he?"

To my surprise, the Chaplain began to laugh.

"He almost died, yes, and he is still alive. We were about to administer the Final Rites, but he knocked the apocetharion's aide out, and sat back up. Well, tried to, anyway. His body is… gone. Legs, arms, internal organs are all a mess, according to Asclepius – our Apocetharion – he will need to be in kept in stasis until Techmarine Abelus can prepare a Dreadnought for him. We'll rebuild him, eventually. He'll be stronger, tougher. More deadly." Morteus chuckled. "Although, with Commander Eizak, 'tougher' is a rather hard goal to set."

I stared at him, not quite understanding what the hell he was going on about. "So…" My words failed, and I sighed as I sat back down.

"Morteus?"

"Yes, Michael?"

"How can you laugh about your commander almost getting killed?"

"Simply because he did not die." Morteus answered, with a definite confidence in his voice. "However, I cannot say the same about many of my battle-brothers." He turned away, and slipped his helmet back on. The Chaplain tapped the nose of his helmet a few times, before returning his gaze to me.

I decided to question him some more. "Do you ever get used to it? To seeing people you know, people that aren't there anymore? How do you deal with that?"

"A wise question, and one that will be answered." There was a bitter chuckle. "We are the Emperor's finest, and they finer than we. The fallen have given their lives to defend Holy Terra itself; from the forces of Chaos, no less. The Sons of Dorn – The Black Templars, that is, and we Imperial Fists - are honored indeed, to be able to aspire to the greatness of their forebearers." Morteus sighed, his hand reaching out to idly touch the yellow shoulder plate, which was adorned with the clenched black hand of the Imperial Fists.

"We will carry on our duty, Michael. We shall defend this place, your home. For Terra, and for the Emperor."

Another voice approached. "And the next time we meet, we shall be prepared for them." Vasili rumbled, clad in loose robes as he advanced. I assumed his armor was being sent in for repairs, so it was only now that the heavy musculature of a Space Marine was truly emphasized. These guys must have been hopped up on steroids since the beginning of their training or something…

"It is fortunate, brother, that we have not acted rashly; though Chaos may taint this place, and a crusade of purgation is appropriate according to dogma and doctrine, we will have to stay our hands for the moment. They will be purged in due time, that is without question… but we must act cautiously, for though our current status with the Warp may stifle their powers, it also acts to dampen ours as well. The senses of our psykers are dull, though the majority of our powers remain… we will need more than just our current forces to effectively work against the machinations of Chaos."

Looking at the two as they continued to debate, I turned to watch the rest of the Space Marines. To my surprise, there was a pair of skimmers entering the normally sacred territory of the Space Marines; a Tau Devilfish and a Wave Serpent, both hovering just above the carpet, wheeling around as it dropped their ramps.

A series of small barrels, filled with burn cream, were wheeled out of the Wave Serpent, and the Tau landing just in front of the main supply dumps to bring out miscellaneous boxes out of their transport. Most surprising of its cargo were the gun drones – with their pulse carbines swapped out for cargo nets – along with a mechanic.

The techmarine stopped them, and there was a brief moment of chatter. The Tau mechanic shook hands, and the crimson armored Marine lead them off, chattering incessantly with his slimmer xeno counterpart.

"It's funny, huh?" Asked Vasili, again by my ear. "Two months ago, we would never have done this."

"I know. I had to keep cooling you guys off."

"Especially the Adepta Sororitas, Michael. They had a preference for flame weapons that you most certainly did not appreciate."

"Did you just tell a joke?"

We shared a brief, much needed and (with a hint of guilt) slightly enjoyable, laugh, then began to bid farewells. I still wonder how these people can even smile, after losing so many of their friends and brothers over their years of service to their Emperor.

"Well, now that you mention it... I do owe those S-O-Bs a visit. Good night, everyone."

"Good night, Michael. Vasili has told me of your mind-war exploits. You would have made a fine Marine... you may still do, actually. You are not yet old enough to be discounted for service." Morteus grinned, his face matching the white mask of his helmet.

"Good luck with that." I replied, straight faced in a rendition of Vincent's style of humor. The two laughed, and bid me good bye. I stood, and headed back outside into the hallway, where I would then pull down the ladder up to my attic. But before I left, I turned around to face them.

"Oh, yeah, before I forget; anything you guys really need that I can possibly get a hold of? Food, water, anything?"

"Our current priorities are centered around the restoration of our war-making ability." The Space Marine answered. "We require raw materials, which can then be used for producing new parts for our damaged equipment."

"Aye aye." I replied. "I'll see what Vincent can do about that."

Of the many factions living under my roof, the Sisters of Battle were the least hit; they were sited primarily in the attic, and their fortress-abbeys didn't so much as get scorched by the forces of Chaos below, which was why the most serious cases out of the human forces – simply a matter of biology rather than dogma now – were being treated up there. Since the ladder was pretty much the only way of getting up there without extensive climbing or tunneling through walls, it was a given that the bastion of the Adepta Sororitas would become the haven of the humans.

I ran into a tall, rather lanky white haired young woman halfway to the Sanctuary, as they were calling the place now.

"Alice?" I asked, not quite recognizing the girlish friend of mine beneath the hollow stare and sunken eyes. She had just exited out of the bathroom, and held one arm loosely in the other as she stared off into space. A cold, mechanical part of me listed off her symptoms.

Shock, most likely.

Emotional trauma like none before. Between the members our group of friends, Alice was probably the most normal. She hadn't been shipped off to a warzone, she hadn't been raised by the internet nor had she been utterly traumatized by her father. As for me, I had long ago ended the 'being normal' thing when these miniatures rolled up in the house. Possibly before even then, too.

"Uh... hey, Alice?"

It took another try before Alice looked up at me, once bright eyes blank and dull as she met my gaze. Her neck came into view, and... I was glad that I couldn't see the scarring in detail. The daemonhost had literally branded the shape of his palm onto her neck, the flesh all burnt as her flesh had now had become a mottled pink-brown color.

She had rubbed burn cream over it, and had now moved her hand to slowly massage the skin just past the marred flesh. Briefly, I wondered why Emma had not already healed it, but it was likely that more serious injuries were being treated by her as Alice's wound settled in.

Looking at the scar tissue now, I wondered what it must have felt like for such a thing to happen. Alice's eyes darted away as she followed my gaze. Just as quickly, I turned away as well, embarrassed. Ashamed... guilty? Maybe all three, as I was the sole reason of her being in this mess. If it weren't for me, she would never have met the miniature armies living in my house. Because of that, she had been involved in the battle of Belmont street.

"You alright?" I asked, desperate to end the awkward silence that had settled in between the two of us. Obviously, she wasn't, because as soon as those words left my lips I found her starting to tremble. Not physically, but it was something that I felt.

"Alice... look, I'm sorry I got you involved in all this."

A nod,a simple acknowledgment of my apologies. I nervously rubbed the back of my neck, trying to feel out the words that had to be spoken. Sighing, I approached the nearest wall and pressed my forehead against it.

"I'm sorry. About all this. I mean, I almost got you killed." I choked out, my fingers trembling as I looked across the hallway, towards the pale haired young woman.

She looked at me, again, and her expression said all that need to be with the tightening of the corners of her eyes, the slight, sad smile that crossed her face for just a brief heartbeat, the blink-and-miss it tilt of her head to the right. It all communicated one fact, stated with unshakeable confidence; it wasn't your fault.

I sighed, and nodded. I was being irrational about this.

"I'm sorry."

She laughed, bitter and sad. Though she did not speak, making no sound, I knew what she would have said: "I know."

Alice stepped forward, wrapped her arms around me, and gave me a brief, tight hug. I fumbled through my thoughts for a moment, before returning it. We shared a small, wonderfully comforting moment where I had no worries in the world, but then we returned to reality.

Letting me go, she reached up, and pulled down the ladder from above. Motioning me forward, she gestured for me to go, up into the domain of the Adepta Sororitas.

I let out a long held breath, and climbed upstairs.

Up in the attic, things had become considerably more well ventilated – in the good way – since my last visit. It had been a rather long and dusty morning and afternoon, all spent moving junk and bits and bobs out of the attic (and mostly down to the basement, a decision which was met with much glee from the Orks down there), and now there was plenty more rooms upstairs.

However, out of all of the camps I had most recently visited, Sanctuary had to be the most... festive. It was an extended religious sermon, with hymns raised up in prayer that stirred the very soul as a hundred voices were raised up in prayer, and while the dead were mourned, their deeds were what was being celebrated.

Of the sixty to seventy Sisters that had come here, perhaps twenty had fallen in combat, or otherwise rendered unable to fight. Each of their names were now engraved upon the memorial that was the pillars of the doll house. I felt a little queasy, knowing that each of those names represented one life that had been given up for the sake of this house. They may have been glad to give it, as some Sisters had said, but that fact still niggled at the back of my mind.

Reaching out, I gripped the sides of the trapdoor and pulled myself up. My muscles still ached in places, but for the moment I ignored my protesting arms as I lifted myself up.

My entrance was far from quiet. There were at least a dozen Sisters turning around as I planted my feet in their domain.

Sister Samisha Ludmilla, Canoness of the Sisters of Battle, stood with a hand on the hilt of her sword, an escort of other Sisters about her. As she stood there, the story of her battle came into view her armour pockmarked and scarred by bolter shells, and the tabard about her waist was scorched by the promethium she so loved to spray around.

"Michael." She nodded her greeting, expression hidden behind the metal faceplate of her helmet. Samisha strode forward, all confidence and poise as she let her hands rest at her side.

"Hey." I greeted back, and looked around to the others, exchanging hellos with those that I knew already, and got to know those that I had not.

Sister Yolanda, Sister Brita, Sister Tellanel, Sister Annette, Sister Olivi and Sister Vera.

By the end of this, I wondered how many – if any – of these women-warriors would still be alive. I shivered, a motion that had no chance of slipping past the sharp eyes of the Adepta Sororitas.

"Something troubles you, Michael?"

I nodded.

"Yeah."

The dead and wounded were still being moved about, the more stable cases being shifted out for less able hands to take care of them as more serious injuries were tended to. However, it seemed now that there was a stability in them, where most of the serious cases had been taken care of already – either by the physicians or by the psychic – and it was just a matter of time before the injured were back to being upright and fighting. So that they could again risk their lives, gambling their souls for a greater purpose.

Samisha turned around, and followed my gaze. I suppose she understood what I was looking at, being a veteran of however many wars by now...

"How is everyone holding up?" I asked.

"Well enough. We are servants of the Emperor, Michael. I am sure Brother Morteus or Marty has already explained this to you, bu-"

"Excuse me? Marty?"

There was hesitation from Samisha. "Er... I meant Justicar Amadeus. His full name is Martello Amadeus, and..."

She stopped, leaving the rest of her sentence hanging in the air.

I sighed, and shook my head in my amusement. Miles himself had explained this to me. Give soldiers any respite from death, and they more usually than not seek out life in its fullest. Life-making in particular. I suppose those sworn to the Emperor's service would be a little more subdued, but... well, if something looks like something...

The best answer that I could come up with that wouldn't see me immolated was: "I see."

Now it was Samisha's turn to sigh, the sound echoing out through the audio filters in her armor.

"Well, either way I suppose we should appreciate the timely arrival of you and your supply party."

"I suppose." I replied, and couldn't help but start smiling. I remembered running over that daemonhost with the car with an intense satisfaction. "We flanked them. By accident, too."

"Quite fortunate, then." The Canoness responded, amusement beginning to creep into her voice.

"Oh, before I forget." Swerving the conversation out to my real purpose for being here. "Anything you particularly need in the way of supplies?"

Samisha turned around, and gestured forward another Sister – the leader of the Hospitallers, a veteran combat medic named Sister Tellanel – who rattled off items from the top of her head; I struggled to keep up, but got the gist of it: Medical supplies, mostly. Water, disinfectants and suchlike. "We can't go wrong with those," she said. "... as well as anything we could use as extra bedding; the wounded need to be made more comfortable."

I nodded again, noting it down, and then said my farewells.

With clumsy old me around, I didn't want to accidentally hurt anyone by galomphing around here for too long.

"I'll be going, then, 'll get a hold of that stuff for you."

The Sisters saluted, and bowed. "Thank you, Michael. We shall see you soon."

"I hope so."

Back on the ground floor and in a quieter corner of my living room, the Tau were by far the most heavily hit of the crews; because of their location, the Tau base had become a prime target for any wandering Chaos troops seeking 'blood for the blood god'. Though the Tau combat doctrine's preference for delivering large quantities of hot plasma in large amounts at long range served them well in the flat open space that was my living room - they possibly tacked up the largest amount of kills in terms of heads, with the inescapable danmaku-style light show that they and the Imperial Guard were giving the enemy – their armor and structural engineering were poorly suited to receiving fire in equal amounts.

The conical, domed structures typical of Tau architecture were devastated by artillery potshots, despite even the unimaginably huge volume of firepower that had been expended to protect this place, and as such an untouched building was a rare one; smoking craters (my carpet!), chunks of ceramic wall and wrecked vehicles were being cleared up even now by the duty-bound Fire Caste. My eyes quickly scanned the skeletal remains of vehicles, many of which also belonged to Imperial or Eldar forces (the Orks had already dragged whatever wasn't being actively protected back down to their basement).

I approached the ever growing graveyard of vehicles, arranged carefully in neat rows, whatever parts belonging to them carefully placed beside or behind them; sometimes, I saw a Chimera APC, its turret having been blown off by an explosive shell (that had, it seemed, struck where the turret had connected with the main hull), was now nestled haphazardly atop the broken vehicle a crude parody of what was once a proud war machine.

The Imperial tech-priests were clambering over everything, scavenging what parts they could extract to be inventoried then re-distributed to other machines, putting them back into operational capacity. The clang of hammers, the hiss-buzzing of plasma welders and curses of disgruntled tech adepts, however, could not camouflage the most prominent sound; music. It was a tune that touched the soul; a slow but strong song played by the massive flute-pipes of the Bonesingers, which followed a set and precise cadence as the player swayed gently from side to side. They were growing a long, narrow barrel to replace one damaged in battle, the Fire Lance's tip having been snapped off by enemy fire.

Turning to the edges of the vehicular graveyard, I saw more of the gracefully slim, black-armored figures darting between the vehicles. The Eldar were mixing in with the cobalt blue, more 'chunky' battle-armor of the Tau as their bonesingers talked with the Earth caste support crew, or otherwise sung to the wraithbone, building new parts that were – unlike the slim and smooth Eldar construction, held the more rigid geometries of Tau and Human parts.

It seemed that cooperation between Eldar and Tau were a little less strained than that between human and xenos, and in the eve of battle the hesitant allies were starting to gain some ground.

Unity, it seemed, was a journey made upon a river of blood.

Sitting down at the edges of the graveyard, I watched a group of mixed engineers with interest. A bonesinger and a helmetless Warp Spider conversed with each other, tinkering with a Frisbee of Doom – that is, a Tau Gun Drone – as they were given the run down with a blue-armored Tau Fire Warrior; probably a combat engineer or something similar.

The top plate – the only thing Drones could consider anything like armor – had been melted, the layers of armor burned away by the miniaturized sun.

Something round was being produced by the two Eldar, and soon the Warp Spider reached across, picked the newly made armored dome up, and set it on top of the Tau Gun Drone.

Nodding, the Fire Warrior reached underneath the Frisbee, and seemed to play with a few switches. A few moments later, and he stepped back. A thumb was applied to a button. Nothing happened. The Drone was then upended, and the three worked furiously at the circuitry.

There were a few sniggers from the tech-adepts off to the work-group's left. They were clearly enjoying the frustration of the xenos, and took little effort to hide their amusement. Chuckling over, they returned to their work and went about tinkering with the Chimera, carefully threading each link in the tracks together to replace the one that had been salvaged from the disabled APC's hull.

However, one was still staring. A red robed tech-adept pushed past his fellow cogboys, limping slightly as his charred robes billowed about in the wake of a passing Devilfish's engines. He strode out, uncaring of the questions that were thrown at him from the other machine-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus as he joined them.

Two seconds later, a boot was swung back and then forth, connecting with the FoD with a sharp clang, and the Drone was hurled into the sky, propelled initially by the force of the impact, and then – with a sputter and a cough - by a jet of blue ionized gases as the drive engines kicked in.

Bewildered and bemused, the three aliens turned to the smug human.

"I do wonder, mon-keigh, is how are you able to simply hit the thing and make it work?" Asked one of the Eldar.

"It may take two seconds to learn how to hit a machine, xenos, but it takes two decades to learn where to hit a machine." Smugly answered the Tech-Adept.

There was a laugh from the more light hearted Tau engineers. "Oh really?"

"Yeah, really." Grinned the Techpriest of Mars. "I can assure you of that."

Smiling, I left the group of technicians to their work.

The Eldar, as we all know, weren't too happy about being sited in the toilet when I had dispersed the armies of the 41st millennium across the various rooms of my house. However, the white ceramic of the bathroom (and the fact that I never really used it unless it was an... er... emergency) had been enough like their home – the massive Craftworld of Ulthwe – that they didn't murder me while I slept. Either that, or it was the literal army of humans between the stairs and my room that kept them out.

All considered, I tended to bet on the latter.

Opening the door to the bathroom, I found the place eerily still, but not dead. The Eldar were all arrayed about a massive wraithbone tree, their armor and helmets gone. Instead of vaguely bullet-shaped helmets, their hair was flowing freely in the artificial wind of my passing. The vibrant rainbow of colors that I saw amongst that of the Eldar was breathtaking; there were the common blacks, browns and blondes, but also blood red hair, pink and green and orange and... well, you get the idea. They had been gathered, formed into a silent ring around the center of their room, where something had been built.

I peered closer.

A small shrine had been erected near the center of the alien settlement, the inscriptions of battle-poems arrayed around a wraithbone 'tree' that was still growing as Eldar survivors formed into a procession in front of it, each laying a glittering red stone at the roots of the tree, and patiently watching as the red stones were absorbed into the glowing white . Tiny warp spiders – the real ones, not the warriors – skittered across the pale, smooth surface, watchful as they guarded the souls of the Eldar dead. Unlike the others, this race of ancient psychics were not going to let go of their fallen as easily as the other races.

The constant amongst the alien settlement was the music; like the songs of the bonesingers, this one was slower and more mournful than my usual fare. It was a beautiful piece and I would have enjoyed it were it not a tribute to the fallen. Psychically charged, it was music that tore at the soul, a requiem that made me want to listen to it forever, yet at the same time want to shut my ears and lock it out. Kind of like death, really; fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

I blinked, remembering what I was supposed to be here for.

Focusing my mind on my sight and blocking out the sounds of the musicians, I searched the white bone-architecture of the Eldar and amongst the many space-elves that populated this bathroom-turned-wraithbone forest. I gave up on doing anything meaningful; with the crowd gathering – and none at all in their Aspect Armor – I couldn't do anything but sit down, lost in admiration as the reverential procession continued, each soul slowly and lovingly integrated into the mass of the fallen spirits.

But... why?

"It is our afterlife, mon-keigh. Our paradise." A voice answered my silent question, coming from behind me. It was a familiar tone, haughty with an irritatingly sharp inflection on the words 'our'.

I turned around to face the Farseer, who had her trusted aide and fellow psyker Yoza in tow, both adorned in white robes – much like the rest of the Eldar – and carried with them long, slender staffs that were a lot less pointy than the singing spear and witchblade/spear that both usually carried.

"Zara... I... uh... what's going on?"

She was staring at me, her eyes connecting our minds with a pseudo-telepathy. Mostly because I couldn't do the 'sending', she was helping me along with that half of the conversation.

"We honor our dead, Michael. Too many Eldar have been killed."

I nodded. "Far too many have died... can you explain more? Why the big tree and the red stones?"

A nod. "The Prince of Excess – Slaanesh – fights with his rival Gods for dominion of the warp and the materium. He was... he was born of our decadent ancestors, and his birthing scream consumed so many souls to be consumed... and..."

She stopped, waving things off to Yoza. "Explain this to him. I find this too demeaning a task, to have to explain such lore to him. I shall meet you later, with the rest of the bonesingers."

Yoza politely stepped out of her way as Zara stomped off – no doubt I felt that she was going off to shove that staff of hers up someone's nose -

"Scattered, the Eldar gods were." He sighed, and shook his head a little. "Not the time to be silly with word-games. Enough of the history lesson. Here's the basics: When a being with a connection to the warp dies, its soul is released from its body. With no Eldar Gods to act as a beacon for Eldar souls, they are instead consumed by Slaanesh or whatever nasty happens to be around."

I nodded. Yoza continued.

"These spirit stones – we call them 'waystones' – are the Tears of Isha, a gift to us as a people and a race, given to us by our Goddess of Healing. They, at the time of their wearer's death, call to the soul of their wearer, sheltering it from the warp and the predations of Slaanesh."

He waved me forward, and I followed him as he sprinted – I moved at a crouch-walk – over to a new building I had not noticed before.

"Specialists called Spiritseers, usually imbed these souls inside of the Infinity Circuit, an amalgamation of every Eldar soul which is found at the center of every craftworld. For the moment, we have a rather smaller version – we call it the Forever Tree, for lack of a better name."

Another stone had been placed at the center of the tree, and now it slowly traveled up the trunk with an escort of the crystalline warp spiders. We both stopped, watching as it reached the tip of a branch and split the wraithbone into two new paths.

"However, we cannot keep it safe like this. Because of that, the Spiritseers have been working with the Bonesingers. We are loath to do this, to deny our brothers and sisters paradise, but... I do not think they wish for paradise, while we are still out here, in this place."

Yoza turned again, beckoning me towards one of the windows for the new building.

Inside, I saw a Wraithlord. It was colored bone white and midnight black. The teardrop shaped 'head' was easily one of the largest components on the machine of war, and featured a pair of stones set into either side of the bulb, both glowing a dull red as the bonesingers and spiritseers worked with a skeletal construct – I realized that it was another Wraith-soldier - and a pair of gun-drones rigged with hooks to ease the left arm – with a massive power-fist like weapon attached - onto the mount that had been prepared for it.

There was movement to my right, and I turned to Yoza, who had been joined by a pair of Eldar. They weren't dressed in the slender armor of warriors, but instead were in the robes of artisans.

He introduced them; one was a woman named Adora and the other a rather more eccentric looking fellow going by Zain'han. The latter was the most senior of the bonesingers, having mastered the path of the Singer more recently than the others and – as everyone else admitted – possessed a deft touch with the shaping of the wraithbone, which I presumed meant that he was the Steve Jobs of Eldar bone-shaping.

The introductions were concluded with a smile and a nod. "Well, nice to meet you."

Zain'han grinned, a small flute-type attachment for the bonesinger's... instrument whirling about his fingers, his deft digits twirling it around in a complex pattern of flicks and flips.

It was then explained to me; what I was seeing was what humans would call a 'dreadnought', a machine in which a fallen warrior could still continue to fight for their people. Constructed from the psycho-reactive 'plastic' that was Wraithbone, the souls of the fallen were attached to this matrix of organic circuitry and thus a Wraith was born. As I watched, the Eldar bonesinger placed both his hands on the left arm of the Wraithlord, and pushed.

"And now," Chuckled Zain'han, "it begins."

The bonesingers below gave way to their spiritseer cousins, and the two chanting Eldar artisans walked up to the two eyes, held pale hands over the smooth red stones, and sliced open their hands, letting a few drops of blood dribble down onto the stones. 'Eyes' glowed a blood red in response, and the wraithlord shook and trembled as power surged through its many limbs.

"Rise, wraithlord of Ulthwe."

A rumble, like that of an elephant's, shook the small building and my eardrums. The Wraithlord stood up from where it once knelt, and then stood stock-still as a statue.

Silence and stillness, that was all that existed for a minute.

The red stones glowed. "... So... Our Guess Is That This Means That We Have Died, Then?"

"Yes."

"Noted." The Wraithlord articulated, flexing slender fingers and slim legs as it tested out its new body. The massive bulb of its 'head' shifted this way and that, before fixing onto the bonesinger and spiritseer below.

"When Do We Go Back To War?"

Gently, as if the wraithbone were newborn flesh, the bonesinger caressed its knee.

"Soon, Wraithlord Laesar." He replied. "Soon."

As the last of the acclimatization was being completed, with the modular weapons being fitted on as the Wraithlord adjusted his/her/its limbs to the large sword in its right hand and the 'bright lance' on the left shoulder.

I turned again to the two wraith-constructors.

"Hey... could you do this kind of thing for a human?"

A shake of the head from Adora. "Their soul would have been released already, and not trapped within a waystone. We cannot retrieve them, a-"

I interrupted the Eldar woman with a sharp hand gesture. "The people I have in mind are still alive. I think they just need something like a dreadnought. A body from which to move with. Can you do that?"

Zain'han was still grinning as he laughed. "Of course. Prosthetics and the like are easy with wraithbone, so long as they have something of a psychic presence. I've also been wanting to try some new designs as well... so, who exactly did you have him mind?"

"Many of the wounded. Tau and Human."

Adora fell into a sly and thoughtful smile. "Oooh, I've never tried that before. The Tau may be difficult, with their lack of psychic presence, but their own technology will compensate for that. As for humans, we may need to do some experimentation first..."

We fell into speculation after that, as the procession went on behind us, the plans were laid down between the more eccentric Eldar bonesinger and his spiritseer partner.

At the end of the quick planning, the foundations had been laid; , the forces under my roof may not have been returned to their absolute 100%, but we were getting there...

Quite unlike the others, the Orks were having the equivalent of an after-match booze up, shouting and jovially recounting their exploits during the previous battle, with re-enactments aplenty. I came downstairs, and called out for Madork.

The under-boss and my right toe Ork in the hierarchy marched up to me, his pointy stikk decorated with a pair more heads and hollowed out helmets. And, curiously enough, a blob of blu-tack. One belonged to a Chaos Marine, while another seemed to have come from a Chaos cultist.

Madork Gunna, Scourge of the Basement, under boss of Big Boss Michael, Biter of Ankles (his latest title) and the proud owner of the Waagh!-Gun, stomped on the ground for attention. "Oi, Big Boss! Dat Deffgunna boy of yerz sez you'ze gonna give us a scrap!"

"Scrap metal, Madork. As in, stuff to make armor from."

"Uh... wot?"

"We'ze gonna giz ya a big trukk, soz you boyz can take it to smalla bitz an' make sum trukks out of it."

"Ooooh." Madork grinned, and began rubbing his klaw in his hand – the equivalent of a squeal of joy – and his (normal) left eye twinkled with a mischievous delight. "Oi gotcha now, Big Boss. I'll send my... er... dat is, yer mekboyz ta start takin' dat Gargant-trukk to bitz."

"Yeah, and make sure you do it quickly, or else someone else will get the trukk. 'kay?"

"Right, Big Boss! See, boyz? Big Boss Mikkey'z gone an got us a big trukk to take ta bitz! We gets ta make ourselves some stuff! Now get off yer chair crushas, an' grab some metal!"

Following the Orks as they made their way outside, I let them out like a long cat that was green and stretched between my basement door and the van outside.

"C'mon, boyz! Let's get it!"

The Orks attacked the van with a gusto that could only be compared to ants taking apart a recently deceased animal, carrying off chunks of metal that they had managed to chop off – I already saw some Big Meks holding the scraps of metal and fitting it onto their newly built shields.

"Oi, boyz, lookit this! It's like a zzap gun!"

Spark plugs were gone, then.

"Ey, wots dis? Its loik a button or summat..."

"Naw, you'ze can pull it out! Ere, gimme a hand with dat."

"Gorkanmork! Dis 'ere iz 'ot like me tailpipe!"

There went the cigarette thingy...

"Oi, Madork! Oi bet ya ten teef dat you can't make that honkin' noise from 'eadbutting the middle of dat big steerin' fing."

"You'ze on, 'Ardenuff."

There was the sounds of someone getting a run up from the top of the driver's seat, the faint 'Waaaagh' of a single ork flying charge, then the sudden and sharp honk of a horn.

"Daim, you'ze did it? Alright, ya want me mouth open or shut?"

"Don't matter much to me, 'Ardenuff."

"Roight, then. Ten teef, wazn' it?"

I decided to walk back inside with the sounds of teeth being punched out of their owner's jaw.

"Michael." Emma poked me in the left eyebrow, waking me up.

"Hmm?"

"I require your assistance."

"How so?"

"The witch... that girl named Batel. She is ready to be awakened..."

Here's what happened, in less words: After busying herself with the wounded, Emma had given Batel a psychic examination, checking every corner and cranny of her mind for any further taint of Chaos.

"... I have removed the more malignant psychic taints within her mind."

"Okay..." I ventured, unsure of what to say now. "So how do you need my help?"

"Wake her. She knows not of me. I wish to keep it that way for the moment. Alice should not be speaking, and has no significant psychic talent. Miles knows not of her either, which leaves just you and the boy."

I cocked an eyebrow, cutting off the other names until one remained. "Vincent?"

Emma nodded. "Yes. Him. Of the two of you, she... trusts... him more. Bring him upstairs, and see if you can calm her when she wakes."

"Calm her?"

"She has been... traumatized." For the first time, I saw hesitation in her eyes. Emma was... worried? "Her sleep is unsound, and her dreams less so. I am... concerned... for her safety."

I nodded, and sat down.

"We'll take care of her." I promised.

Emma closed her eyes for a brief second, and I felt a flutter of energy as she let out a deep breath.

"Thank you."

Vincent let out a breath, through his nostrils in a gushing jet of warm air and frustration.

"Okay, you being around when she wakes, I can get, but what about me? Why do I have to get dragged along here?"

"Because, out of the four of us, you were the one that has spent the most time with her, Vince."

"Uh huh. And that's important... why?"

"From what I hear from Emma, you're the one she trusts the most out of everyone here." Now, a sly grin shot across my face. "As bad as an idea it is to trust you with anything, Vincent, you got point on this one. I'm not so sure of myself right now."

Grumbling something about other people being just as untrustworthy, my friend sighed again as he fell into step behind me.

Despite that logic, it wasn't the only reason I wanted Vincent around. It was that if I trusted anyone to be able to put her down if need be, that would have been him. He may have been running on adrenaline at the time, but it was still him that had nearly toasted Batel earlier with a packet of flour, without so much as a blink. Screams, maybe, and swearing, but that was unflinching instinct that had allowed him to fight under stress.

If she went ape shit on us, I wanted him to have my back.

There were a few suspicions and doubts about this girl in the back of my head, particularly because the first time I had met this particular person, it had been with her driving a knife into my shoulder. Which – despite Emma's medications – still hurt like a psychic son of a bitch. It was the daemonic component of the wound, she had explained. It was like how it had corrupted a small part of my soul, and was now still hurting despite being excised, as that part of me was still gone.

I jiggled the doorknob to open my bedroom door, and slowly crept in. It was an uncomfortable feeling, seeing Batel there on my bed. Even in her sleep, she was obviously terrified. Even though she had been forced to stay asleep by some psychic lock, her dreams were anything but controlled. You didn't need to be a mindscape psyker to tell that. I didn't know much about her dreams, but from the vibes that I could feel from her, they weren't pleasant ones.

My gaze tracked across and up, locking on to the bedside table. Raquel and a squad of Guardsmen – who were nervously looking from one witch to another - were sitting beside an Eldar grav-tank, a 'Falcon' tank-hunter.

They were working together, sure, but I noticed a few things that worried me; they were on entirely separate sides of the tabletop, and had a few weapons pointed in each others' directions. Working together in a battle was one thing. Working together in relatively peaceful times were another can of worms altogether. They were professional, at least, and hadn't been going for the others' throat... yet. A gruff sergeant seemed to be the leader of the ten-man section, while the Eldar were being oversee disturbingly blunt in their assigned tasks, however, with all of the weapons available ready to be brought to bear on the young girl's head; if necessary, they were here to kill Batel.

He must have noticed, because now my bespectacled friend stepped forward and forcibly rotated the Falcon around, to point at the wall. I followed suit, doing the same to the heavy bolter of the Guardsmen, ignoring their protests.

"Stay there." I warned them. "We're looking after her, now."

The guardsmen were already on their vox set, asking for confirmation of this development from their superior officers. The answer must have been blunt, because soon they were hurriedly packing their gear back, moving away from both the Eldar and Batel.

"Vince, with me."

Vincent nodded, and sat down beside the bed with me as I nodded to Raquel.

She closed her eyes, murmured something, and then drifted off to the mindscape.

One... two...

Batel's eyes shot open, and immediately filled with tears. There was a hoarse, croaking cry from her as I reached out, grabbing onto Vincent's shoulder. She catapulted upright just as I pulled my friend between Batel and myself, her arms thrown up high and wrapping around his chest.

Vincent found – to his surprise - that Batel had pressed herself against him, crying uncontrollably as everything caught up to her. Without the psychic mind-screwing of Chaos, the rush of adrenaline from going all out with her powers (supercharged by a God, as the hypothesis of the psykers guessed) or forcibly kept asleep, her dammed up emotions burst like a balloon pricked by a high velocity AP shell.

Clinging onto the heavy denim jacket and my friend for dear life as she sought comfort, Batel dragged him down to the floor, where both knelt as she exhausted herself again with the outburst of emotion. Awkwardly, he reached up and cradled her in his arms, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, he went for the standard 'just hold her' option.

Zara 'hmpf'd in amusement, her psychic presence crystal clear even though her body was still in the Eldar bathroom bastion below.

She needs a good cry, that girl. The Farseer admitted. It seems like she has and will continue to see the boy as a source of comfort and protection. Her mind may be a turbulent place, dazed and confused, but with him... well, at the very least you will have less on your hands.

Batel's sobs quietened down, with Vincent gently cradling her head, rocking her back and forth as she began to calm down a little more.

Zara, I find that – sometimes - letting out your emotions can be extremely therapeutic for us. I replied, smiling to myself as she finally looked up and then went a deep red. The fear was still there, that much was obvious, but now it was overridden by the sudden embarrassment of her situation. The distressed damsel wasn't quite helpless, but the comfort of a friend – someone who had (as Emma had told me) been one of the few people who she could vaguely trust – was definitely helping her recovery along.

Oh, and his face... that expression of absolute confusion about whether to enjoy this embrace or not, the perfect expression of pants-crapping and agonizingly hilarious worry...

Yeah, it was worth it. He was going to hate me for this, but it was going to be worth it.

Back in the kitchen, I refilled the glass of water, and drained it for the third time since I had returned to this hub of activity.

Rinse, repeat.

Topping it up again, I noticed that someone's eyes were on me.

"Emma?"

The girl nodded, her long black hair rising slightly as the static electricity in the air began to move around. I could feel something like electrical currents humming as the small girl in front of me stared into my eyes. They were an electric blue, held a maturity and hardness far too old for any normal human, and quite frankly scared the shit out of me.

Yes, she scared me, but for a good reason: Two or three hours ago, she had just curb stomped a daemonhost without breaking a sweat, and managed to utterly wipe the floor with anything else that challenged her. If what the Eldar had told me was true, she had also been responsible for halving the casualties during the battle.

Still, she looked about ten years old, twelve at the very most.

Hopping off the tall stool she had been perched upon, Emma regarded me with a focused but neutral gaze, having to tilt her chin up slightly to make up for the rather noticeable gap in our heights.

"Michael."

I nodded, for the fifth time wondering how I should treat this young girl: She was obviously something capable of incredible amounts of power, but... well, she still looked like a little girl. The kind that went skipping off to their grandmothers in red hoods kind of thing.

Sucking in some fresh air, I breathed out a sigh. "Thanks."

Confusion briefly twitched across Emma's face. I hurriedly explained why: "For your help, I mean."

Understanding dawned, and the girl nodded. "The servants of the Chaos Gods had overstepped themselves, threatened people and risked destabilizing the planet's balances of power; as the one who holds dominion over this earth, I acted accordingly. Either way, they should not have been allowed to spread as they have; the forces of Belavich the Shadow-Caller are threatening indeed, with how they have been gathering."

Wait... what? I quickly gestured for her to stop.

"Whoa, whoa, back up there. Belavich is that Chaos Sorcerer who we just handed his ass to on a nice silver platter, right?"

"I assume so, but this force was but a raiding party; it was a large force, for sure, and a tax to his resources, but far more mighty engines of war have been brought to this world by the ill advised servants of Chaos. The Gods they will soon come to know are much different, here in the past."

"Like Slaanesh."

"Slaanesh – according to my future self – has not yet been born in this era, and will not be for another twenty-five millennia at least, but his influence can still reach us here, across time and space."

"Where are they, anyway?"

"They?"

"Chaos. Human ones, not the gods."

"They are... wait a second." She reached forward, and snatched the glass of water from my hands.

Whispering into the edge of the clear glass, she closed her eyes, and I felt a ripple of power expanding, like a brief blast of wind. There was a sensation that a million ants now crawled over my skin. In the haze of her scrying, Emma spoke. "The main concentration of Chaos forces are situated in the house of Batel, to the north. They are primarily Tzeentchian and Slaaneshi, although we also have Khorne's forces present in there. There is another 'faction' – Khornates and worshipers of Chaos Undivided – who have entrenched themselves in the slums south-east of here."

Okay. That got me lost now. "So..."

"I will have to take care of the lackeys of the Blood God." Emma informed me. She wasn't asking me if that was the correct course of action; she was telling me as such, with the unshakable confidence of a grizzled war veteran. "Of the Dark Gods' servants, they will be the ones to act first, and so must be intercepted before their rampage begins."

"Alright, so you're gonna go do your superhero vigilante thing. What do we do?"

"Hold the line, and hold this house. Rebuild your war machines and restore your men and women to full fighting strength. Keep Batel safe. She is the key to their warp portal, and so must be kept out of Chaos hands."

There were a few grim nods amongst the miniature soldiers around me, and I also found myself nodding with them.

"She'll die before we let that happen." Hissed a grizzled officer from the Imperial lines.

I gave them a sharp look, which they decided wasn't worth defying, and then turned back to Emma.

Looking out at the gathered friends, I looked to each one in turn, before sucking in a breath and started doling out instructions.

"Vincent. You're going to be doing scavenger runs with the Mechanicus and Tau. Let's see what you guys can make to replace what we lost."

"One step ahead of you, Mike."

A nod from my bespectacled buddy came as he looked up from a sketch, the tech-adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Eldar Bonesingers, Tau armorers and an Ork Big Mek surrounding the square of white paper, also nodding as they readily received their task.

I moved on.

"Miles; go and liaison with the Space Marines and Imperial Guard; they'll be in charge of securing the house; fortify the fuck out of this place."

Miles nodded as he cleaned his rifle, a small crowd of Orks looking up appreciatively at the huge 'Waagh-cannon' as it was handled as easily and as deftly manipulated by 'oomie 'ands as one would see a chef prepare a meal.

"Roger."

The Space Marine leadership grimly saluted, along with their Imperial Guard counterparts.

"Alice, you're in charge of getting the consumable supplies and stuff; food and medical equipment, mostly. You just might be able to grab some for them at the stores... the tab's on me, by the way."

Alice looked up and nodded as she fished out a scarf for herself.

"Alright... that's most of us... so... let's get on the warpath, then."