Morningstars [Warhammer 40k] [Overpowered OC Fixes/Causes Problems] [Primarchs Involved]

[dragonsaffron]

The four Captains—Amphis, Ishtar, Kordant, and Titaneira—had a total of fifteen days to learn before the first proper test of the new 20th Host. Amphis's daemonkin had been scouring the atomic wastes around the camp for a rival war band in possession of a large number of heavy vehicles; when such a target was found, there was no time to delay. They had to sally forth immediately, readiness be damned.

For the 1st and 3rd cohorts, that was reasonable. Amphis had been commanding the Host in spirit for years, and Kordant's experience leading a unit of forty transferred quite well to a unit of three hundred. Titaneira and Ishtar were more difficult, though for opposite reasons. Titaneira knew nothing about proper tactics aside from what she had pieced together from instinct, and there was so much that Ksaiwon had to teach her. Ishtar, meanwhile, knew quite a bit about how a battle was to be fought, almost all of which was partially or totally wrong. He was exactly what Ksaiwon was afraid a space marine commander would be: brash, overly-aggressive, concerned more with glory than with victory.

Much of the fifteen days were spent, then, with not one teacher and four students, but three and two. Only three things prevented Ksaiwon from spending every single moment delivering as much information on tactics and leadership as they could: sleep, biological factors, and occasional breaks to actually keep the 20th Host running.

The target of this first trial by combat was a band of Dorhalxic Black Monks, entirely human but possessed of substantial numbers of team-operated guns and transport vehicles. Their trail through the wasteland passed close enough to the crashed logistics ship that there was little risk it would be attacked while the Host was away; only about a fifth of the 20th Host's number, selected by lot, remained behind. The rest formed up and lunged out into the dust.

Theoretically, in a straight-up fight, the sheer combat capability of the Astartes contingent would allow them to overwhelm the monks. In practice, doing so would result in unacceptable casualties. Instead, Ksaiwon's plan for the raid was a fast-moving smash-and-grab. The 1st Cohort, daemonkin under command of Captain Amphis, fanned out in front of the main body of the Host, moving swiftly to surround the enemy camp from every angle. They fought like a dust storm, attacking in individual squads but from every angle at once, sometimes only engaging long enough to kill an individual human combatant before retreating into the wasteland. The ire of the monks was roused, but simultaneously diffused, left uncertain of where it was best to be used.

Then the 2nd and 3rd arrived. This, by far, was the trickiest part of the operation, most prone to failure. The two cohorts moved as one unit at first, 2nd on the left flank and 3rd on the right, advancing steadily until the signal came to stop. This was the first hurdle; they had to advance steadily, not rush forward in a vicious charge, as was the prerogative of most Word Bearers. It was a show of Captain Kordant's iron command, and the immense respect the 2nd held for Captain Ishtar, that both blocs maintained cohesion. Then the signal rang out, a whistle followed by a storm of vox signals as the anti-armor 3rd cohort reached optimal range for their lascannons. There they stopped, the human auxiliaries setting up a defensive position around the core of Astartes heavy weaponry.

The second challenge came then: the plan called for the 2nd Cohort, using the 3rd as an anchor, to wheel around, bringing to bear its own firepower as it slammed into the force of monks rushing forth to attack the 3rd. As las-blasts and cannon shells tore through the air, as company after company of armored warriors charged out of the camp circumvallation, the 2nd Cohort made its move. Almost immediately, it showed the limit of its coordination.

The plan called for the Astartes to advance in blocks, with the human auxilliaries acting as both a skirmish screen and as fill between the blocks; but before the enemy had even arrived the formation fell apart. The wheel could not turn. Different groups of marines moved at different paces, and all moved faster than the humans could follow. When human groups fell back upon encountering resistance, the Astartes they supported advanced heedlessly. Captain Titaneira of the 4th memorably referred to it as a "clusterfuck" and Ksaiwon was inclined to agree.

Not, of course, that it would stop them from winning. Because as the battle intensified with the 2nd and 3rd, the 4th Cohort, the most capable of them all, proceeded to complete the objective they'd actually shown up for. They lay in wait, hidden amidst a debris field, until the battle had begun proper, then charged into the Black Monk camp from the rear.

Ksaiwon, sitting astride Mags's back, led the 4th from the front. They had never fought on heldrake-back before, but it felt like they'd always been doing it. The greater bulk of the damage was done by Mags, claws tearing through entire squads of infantry, accel guns chewing through formations. Ksaiwon used Claw with pinpoint accuracy, vaporizing anyone who tried to turn an anti-tank weapon against their precious mount, with occasional breaks to bayonet those who had the smart idea of trying to climb atop her. Meanwhile, the thieves set to work. The vehicles which Ksaiwon wanted weren't the war machines, no matter how much Ishtar whined. They wanted the logistics vehicles, great tracked suids of the vehicular kingdom, slow moving but capable of hauling vast loads.

While the battle raged, the 4th obliterating the base's scanty rearguard, select squads of human auxiliaries with vehicle experience rushed the carriers, breaking through their door locks and hot-wiring the mechanisms. Within a few quick minutes, the brutes were moving, tracks digging into the dry soil as they raced to get out of shooting range as quickly as possible.

Ksaiwon fought on until the moment the carriers were out of the barricade, then turned Mags around and sent out the signal to retreat. That, at least, was a command that the entire 20th Host knew how to follow.

A successful first test, for the most part. The number of Astartes fatalities could be counted on one hand, and while many human auxiliaries had been sent into the warp by lasgun fire, much of the attrition was made up for by 2nd Cohort's insistence on taking captives. When given the choice between joining the 20th Host, where abuse against human auxiliaries was severely punished, and being sent out into the irradiated wastes to die, most of the captives chose to sign up.

But there was much more work to be done than just that. Marching orders had to be established, camping protocols conceived of and distributed, and logistical duties delegated out. The tracked carriers had capacities measured in the tens of tons, which meant that the 20th Host could go without resupply for up to sixty days, but also meant that a lot of people had to move a lot of ration packs very quickly. It was left to Ksaiwon to scrounge together a team to do that, though Titaneira lent her aid when it came to pointing out the auxiliaries with the strongest backs and the keenest eyes for resource management. The squad of Astartes who were still fully disarmed also helped a great deal, able to carry thrice the amount of ration packs as a human and do it for upwards of fifty thousand seconds without taking a break.

Ksaiwon thought about how space marines would be much better suited as pack animals than as soldiers, then promptly decided to keep that thought to themself.

And then, finally, the great leap. After so many weeks, so much preparation, it was finally time to leave the sheltered cradle of the wrecked cargo hauler and venture southward. With the huge tracked carriers filled to capacity with rations, promethium, and spare parts, Ksaiwon estimated that the 20th Host had an operational range of some two thousand kilometers, enough to make a lunge for the hive city Sagarmatha, which had been Ksaiwon's objective ever since arriving in orbit around Antilia so long ago.

The operational plan was simple: first thing in the morning, everyone would work together to pack up the tents and the field kitchen and all of the everything. The bulk of the Astartes, carrying all of the tents and one day's worth of rations, would range out ahead, their great size and endurance allowing them to lunge across thirty to thirty-five kilometers of terrain in a matter of hours. By mid-afternoon, a new camp would have already been set up and the evening meal was already cooked, at which point the exhausted, hungry human auxiliaries (and a less exhausted Astartes escort) would arrive with the ration carriers in tow.

Ksaiwon, not wanting to force the burden of their own tent onto anyone else, devised a system whereby the entire thing could be folded up into an enormous sheet-metal box, which Mags would pick up and carry on her back every day. They insisted on doing their own packing and unpacking, and would have insisted upon carrying the thing if it were small enough.

The first three weeks of the journey were a sort of an easy trial run, giving the Host the time to get used to the new marching order. The irradiated hell which had been created by the Forge-Master's bombardment made for flat, open country, easily traversed. The presence of twelve hundred space marines meant that, though the area was crawling with scavengers and cultists, nobody felt the need to be particularly aggressive toward the 20th Host. Then, at long last, they reached the edge of Antilia's true self: the endless, hostile rainforest.

Radiation levels indicated that, even in the six months since the initial bombardment, the forest had already reclaimed some one-hundred kilometers of terrain. At that rate, the irradiated waste would be gone entirely within five years, subsumed under brush and creepers, blooming with fast-growing grass trees and shadowed under the petals of colossal sky-flowers. The choice to bring along promethium fuel proved a wise one, as flame was a crucial tool there. Mags's baleflamer paved the way for the Astartes in the first crew, in the same way that the rolling bodies of the ration carriers re-paved it for the humans of the second.

Insects and disease became a constant threat, requiring Ksaiwon to work long hours in order to devise chemical means of driving them off. Predators, as well, both animal and vegetable, would regularly seek to pick off those they perceived as weak or vulnerable. Not a day went by when the rattle of gunfire did not signify the attack of some huge beast of the forest. If the 20th couldn't adapt, it was likely that they would lose more troops to the forest than they had to the battle against the Black Monks.

It was all a fascinating scientific experience, from Ksaiwon's perspective. Insects causing problems? Well, as it turned out, there were several species of tree which produced repellant chemicals in their leaves or bark, ready for harvesting! An entire squad gets eaten by mobile vines? Investigation reveals that the species uses ultrasound to communicate, the right frequency and volume of which causes them to instinctually retreat. It was a proper challenge with real applications and proper stakes. Ksaiwon's enhanced biology may have rendered them immune to most of the travails of the journey, but intellectually it was the most difficult problem they'd ever faced.

It was in the evening, during one of those long periods of bootleg chemistry, that Amphis approached Ksaiwon with a strange proposition. The two of them did not speak casually to one another; when they spoke, it was almost always in the form of commands or advice. Thus, when Amphis appeared at the entryway to Ksaiwon's private shipping container, the skitarius turned around at once, expecting bad news.

"No, no bad news," he said. "I had… an idea. Something that might help to clarify the questions about your identity."

Amphis was speaking as though under duress.

"You don't sound too sure about it. What sort of idea?"

"There are certain rituals with which I am familiar. Sorcerous ones. Rituals that can peer through the warp to see a thing's true nature, unobscured. I could use such a ritual on you."

Ksaiwon folded their arms, frowning. "But there's a risk to this?"

Amphis nodded. "Two. Firstly, the same risk to myself as any time I make use of my power. Secondly… I worry you may not like what you find, if we carry this out."

Ksaiwon crossed she shipping container, intending to clap Amphis on the shoulder but being forced to settle for the upper arm on account of the height difference. "I don't want you dying for the sake of my curiosity."

"I do not intend to. And I shall try not to wound myself, either. Are you prepared to face the risks on your end?"

"Of course I am," Ksaiwon said with a grin. "What do we need for this, then?"

"Only a flat, open space. That's why I'd been waiting to bring it up: we've finally made camp near to an acceptable location."

It was evening on Antilia, and the forest was absolutely alive with noise when Amphis and Ksaiwon arrived at a flat shelf of bare rock by the bank of a river, Ksaiwon wearing nothing but their robe and a set of underclothes, Amphis burdened with charms. The sorcerer bid Ksaiwon sit down roughly at the center and focus their thoughts inward. Ksaiwon themself was, after all, the ritual's subject.

But Ksaiwon didn't like thinking about themself too much, so they watched Amphis go to work instead. He, too, meditated, though only for a moment. Then a transformation came over him. His left eye, the maelstrom of supernatural light, grew brighter, illuminated from within, while his green-tinted right eye became cataracted and dim. When Amphis stood, he moved differently, the patterns indicating that he had genuinely gone half blind. That done, he silently set to work tracing hieroglyphic shapes onto the ground with lines of greyish powder, performing rhythmic gestures and careful steps. It was totally unlike any of the magic Ksaiwon had seen Amphis perform in the past. That was all direct force and willpower: this was sorcery.

Finally, Ksaiwon settled and focused inward. They thought about their body—inefficient, with too few limbs, too much mass around the shoulders, not enough around the hips—then switched to something else. Their mind, perhaps. That, too, was flawed, albeit more subtly than the physical. Ksaiwon's knowledge was gapped, moth-eaten. There were pieces of themself that had seemed fundamental only a year earlier, but which were now distant, only echoes remaining.

Ksaiwon didn't like having to think about themself, but thankfully it wasn't for long. A horrible sensation passed through them, like fingers prying into every strand of sinew and bone, but felt only with the same sense which detects that one has forgotten something important. They sucked down a shocked breath at the sudden sense of violation. That, then, was the spell. Amphis had spoken a phrase of proper, ritual magic, unheard due to Ksaiwon's own meditation.

And then he stumbled back, scowling.

"What? A corpse? No, damnable ritual, that was supposed to work!"

Amphis didn't sound like himself. Not only were the words not his, but the accent was strange, all the vowels rotated around a quarter-turn. Ksaiwon knew that accent, knew its place of origin, but even as they rose to a crouch Ksaiwon could not understand.

Amphis turned away, hunching over himself as much as was possible in the confines of his armor. "Of course there was an interference, it could not be so simple. The ritual must have some edge case, yes, that would be it…"

Ksaiwon advanced a step, reaching out to grab Amphis as though he were not eight meters away. "Amphis, what…? Why are you…?"

He wheeled around, glaring at Ksaiwon with the rage only a true academic can hold for one who interrupted their work. "The ritual has given impossible results. I shall have to… consider them, for a while."

"Amphis, why do you have a Prosperan accent?"

Amphis froze. Ksaiwon, too, fell still, though their mind was on fire with contradictory thoughts and questions.

"What?"

"You're speaking Gothic with a Prosperan accent. I recognize it. Why?"

Amphis completed the turn, his expression dark and soaking in horrible curiosity. Though more and more Ksaiwon was getting the impression that they were speaking to something else inhabiting Amphis's features.

"And what do you know about that, hmmm?"

"Lots of things," Ksaiwon said with a shrug. "But you're still doing it, that's a Prosperan accent. I don't understand, you said you were made a neophyte by the 20th."

Rage flickered through Amphis's features. "Who do you think you are, to claim to know Prospero? But fine. I'll have to do this the direct way."

The thing that was not Amphis raised one hand, twisting the fingers into a clawing gesture. With an exertion of will, it began to tear Ksaiwon's mind in half.

 

[dragonsaffron]

Ksaiwon collapsed to their knees, screaming in abject agony. They had thought that the eldar psykers had been the peak of their craft, but no. No they were not. The deconstruction of Ksaiwon's mind was almost surgical, razor-sharp whips of psychic energy flaying their very existence away layer by layer. Resistance was worse than useless, every drop of mental energy poured into forcing back the grasping claws of the daemon's attack being immolated at once, accelerating the consumption.

But Ksaiwon had begun to learn. The lessons taught in that mysterious flash of memory were lessons which they had spent months testing and practicing. Ksaiwon forced down panic, and in the last unviolated refuge of their mind, organized the counterattack. They forced emptiness of thought, demanding that the attacker follow deeper and deeper into their brain. As the flensing whips suddenly found themselves cut off and devoured, their powers were added to Ksaiwon's own.

Ksaiwon opened their eyes, but kept them closed. Ksaiwon rose, but stayed kneeling on the stone. And all at once, they were back in the forest again. It took a second for them to realize that; at first the flat plane of stone, the river, the trees, all looked like the same Antilian jungle with which Ksaiwon had grown so familiar. But no; the air was cool, and the sounds of the wildlife called out to Ksaiwon's very bones. This was the wood that they had seen in their visions, the homeland of their mind where everything played out. And sure enough, what was metaphysical had become literal: all around them, the machinations of the assaulting daemon were made plain.

And what machinations they were. Ksaiwon was surrounded by a small army of fiendish machines and beasts. Constructs like springs prepared to lash out in spiraling arcs, birds made of crimson fire spun through the air on suicide runs, the ground was bedecked in land-mines and pitfalls, spider-like machines lurked in between hovering crystal cannons. The daemon possessing Amphis and now trying to vivisect Ksaiwon's soul was limitlessly clever and possessed an impossible rapidity of thought. Every angle was covered, strengths and weaknesses overlapping to produce an invincible weave of attack and defense. A million tiny schemes and plots and plans all at once, overwhelming Ksaiwon's ability to defend themself through sheer complexity.

This new rendition, this new angle of observation, did not grant Ksaiwon the sudden strength that would lead to an easy victory. But it wasn't as though they were going to give up so easily. Ksaiwon manifested their six additional limbs and went to work.

All of the daemon's machines, all of its attacks, had a logic to them, a logic which could be unwound. A bird could be knocked aside and made to collide with another bird, their combined momentums leading both to destruction. A spring-powered thing did not know which way it was going, so by simply reaching out and turning it, it would launch into its own allies. The crystal cannons only fired in a single line, and the spider-things would be just as easily destroyed by the land-mines and pit traps if tricked into walking into one. With eight working limbs and a keen mind, Ksaiwon made sure that they could not be deconstructed easily.

But there were simply too many to stop. For every attack that Ksaiwon could thwart, another would strike home, tearing yet more pieces of their soul from them, opening up more mental wounds to bleed onto the forest floor. While they were surely depleting the reserves of their attacker, it was simply not happening quickly enough to avert inevitable destruction.

And then that thought inspired Ksaiwon to look directly at their attacker, that thing possessing Captain Amphis; and all of a sudden everything clicked together. For the being Ksaiwon saw in the illusory wood was no daemon, no beast from the pits of the warp. It was someone they recognized, someone they had never met in person and yet someone whose personality they knew with intimate familiarity. Recognition and kinship blossomed amidst the pain of the mental battle. Ksaiwon knew exactly what to say to make this stop.

"Knock it the fuck off, Magnus!"

That wasn't precisely the name Ksaiwon used, of course. The Prosperan language in which they spoke, a language ten thousand years extinct, spoken only by sorcerers, daemons, and madmen, did not have any sound approximating the letter "g". But the name had the same meaning in either tongue: Great One. A fitting name for a demigod fallen from the sky.

Everything stopped. The psychic assault vanished as though it had never been initiated, and Ksaiwon's vision collapsed back into reality. They were on their knees, wracked with pain, and after a couple of seconds of refamiliarization, Ksaiwon keeled forward to vomit up a gobbet of half-congealed blood.

"What?" said Magnus the Red.

Ksaiwon stopped choking for long enough to take a look. Even through the distortion of Amphis's facial structure, the look of offended shock set off a tiny alarm light in the back of Ksaiwon's skull labelled "Classic Magnus Expressions". They would have laughed if they weren't so completely fucked up.

"You arrogant son of a bitch," they said, still in Prosperan, "did you assume that you would be able to peer at me without me peering back? I saw your real face. Unless there's a second one-eyed red-skinned Prosperan running about the galaxy, I know who you are."

The expression of shock faded away, replaced by disdain. "You know to whom you speak, and yet you still decided the best thing to say was 'knock it the fuck off'?"

Ksaiwon shrugged, tried to stand up, failed, then said, "It got you to stop trying to kill me. I consider that effective communication."

Magnus chuckled. "I assure you, to kill you was not my aim; I have much more efficient means of that. I merely wished to learn what that ritual could not tell me."

"It certainly felt as though you were trying to kill me. Something of a vivisection of the soul." Ksaiwon tried to stand up again, and succeeded only in falling over onto their side. "Did you learn anything?"

"Not directly. Though I did learn that you are familiar with both my face and my mother tongue, for reasons entirely unknown to both of us."

"I guess I'll ask the questions, then, while we have the time. What's a primarch doing possessing a minor sorcerer, of a different legion, at that?"

Magnus frowned; the colors of his eye shifted and darkened. "What do you know of Prospero?"

Ksaiwon had to concentrate to answer. "It's a fairly nice place, from what I remember. Hot, dry. Fascinating wildlife. Best libraries in the galaxy." From Magnus's increasingly-dark expression, they gathered that there was something obvious they were missing. "Did something happen to it?"

Magnus's fist clenched around Amphis's staff, both his eyes shutting as he lost the ability to continue looking at Ksaiwon. "Yes, Ksaiwon. Something happened to Prospero."

"Would you like to… fill me in on it?"

"Some things should be kept secret," Magnus said through gritted teeth. "But alas, I have come to discover that I rather like you. Here's the story."

The much-reduced primarch crashed down onto the stone with Ksaiwon, and folded his armored legs underneath him. He inhaled as though about to begin a recitation when he was rudely interrupted. Half a dozen figures, some human, some Astartes, plunged through the foliage, brandishing bolters and plasma guns. Behind them, moving much more quietly than a heldrake had any right to, was Mags.

Ksaiwon realized, an instant before the yelling started, that having both a "Magnus" and a "Magnesium" amongst the inner circle was going to get somewhat confusing.

"Commander!" Titaneira shouted. "We heard screams, what's happening?"

"Are you alright?"

"Captain Amphis, what is the meaning of this?"

"He's bleeding, someone get a medic."

Magnus's eye flicked between the new arrivals and Ksaiwon with an intense look that crossed panic with anger. If Ksaiwon didn't take control, it was likely that he was going to do something he would regret later.

"It was an experiment," Ksaiwon said quickly. "Amphis put forward an idea, a means by which his sorcery could enhance my performance. As you can see, it did not work, and I shall not be attempting anything like this again. I'm in quite a lot of pain right now, but diagnostics indicate no lasting damage. You are all dismissed."

Ksaiwon repeated the statement in scrap-code and sent the signal to Mags, who promptly turned around and wandered off. It took a few seconds for the relief squad to realize that it genuinely wasn't an emergency. The general reaction was one of disappointment. From the space marines, this was expected; not so much from Titaneira and the one other human who accompanied her.

Titaneira mumbled something about "exploring each other's bodies", the sort of comment which Ksaiwon would be deeply offended by if they were not exhausted. She turned, letting her pistol drop onto its holster, and waved for the others to follow. Both Ksaiwon and Magnus tracked them as they left, waiting until they were too far for their footsteps to be heard.

"You could have betrayed me to them," Magnus said. "Why keep the secret?"

"I wasn't thinking about it. And besides, you did just say that you liked me. Unfamiliar to a traitor primarch as it may be, I tend not to betray people for no reason."

"Hmph. Now then, where was I? Ah, yes. The Fall of Prospero."

And so Magnus told a story. A story of secrets and betrayal; a story of impulsive action and terrible violence. A story of a wolf and a cyclops. A story of rage and sadness, of brother turned against brother, of prejudice and abuse and suicide. Ksaiwon didn't pick up on all of it, Magnus clearly assuming that they possessed more of a background knowledge in the events of the Heresy than they did, but the gist was understood. They also earned the impression, very quickly, that this was a story which Magnus had told to himself a thousand times over the years, but equally one which he had never spoken aloud.

"But my wounds were grave, and the spell to allow my slaughtered legion to flee was… taxing, to say the least," Magnus continued. "I was broken, my soul shattered. And in the warp, where position has little meaning, my fragments were scattered from one end of the galaxy to another. I, the true Magnus, awoke on a paradise world known as Mykenon, near the galactic core on the far side from Terra. Have you heard of it?"

"I have," Ksaiwon admitted. "A pleasant place as far as I'm aware, at least by Imperium standards, though I think we've just learned how out-of-date my knowledge can be. Please, go on."

Magnus nodded in acknowledgement. "Another one of my shards arrived at the Planet of the Sorcerers with my sons. He is… a corrupt thing, the shell of who I pretended to be in front of my legion, but inhabited only by craven lust and greed. Perhaps if I had been a better father, my sons would have been able to identify him as an impostor. But they did not. In the name of this false idol, the Crimson King, they have spent ten thousand years hunting down every other shard, attempting to feed us all to the monster wearing my face. I have reason to believe that I am the last survivor."

"And this is why you possess Amphis? It's a method of stealth, hiding your warp signature from those who pursue you."

"Precisely! He and I met about… twenty years ago, now. I was on the run, and he yearned for a tutor in the ways of sorcery. We came to an arrangement. And then…"

Magnus smiled, a mix of vulgarity and warm nostalgia playing across his features. One of his hands—Amphis's hands—felt at Amphis's chest, starting at the collar and drifting downwards. Ksaiwon grimaced in disgust and looked away before they could be forced to find out where that touch was ending up.

"Suffice it to say, one cannot spend so long inside a man without feelings becoming emotionally complicated."

"Disgusting," Ksaiwon said. "I'd slap you if I were strong enough to stand."

"How very pre-adolescent of you," Magnus said. "Come now, you must admit that these Astartes are quite… strapping."

"I prefer my sexual conquests to be somewhat softer-edged than a las-cut slab of reinforced meat, personally. Besides. I'm not…" Ksaiwon grimaced. "I'm not going to have this conversation with you, of all beings in the cosmos. Now then, as your… eromenos's commanding officer…"

"Husband!"

"As your husband's commanding officer, please get over here and help me up. Your bloody clumsy psychic vivisection appears to have damaged the neural interface with my legs."

Magnus sighed, but did not resist the request. Once Ksaiwon was standing up again, strength returned. A moment after that, a change came over the face before them, the luminous eye dimming at the same moment its green partner un-dimmed. Amphis was back in control.

"Commander, I must apologize deeply for my partner's actions. By the time I realized what he was doing, his passions had flared too brightly for me to regain control. If you must—"

"I forgive you," Ksaiwon said. "And I forgive him, too, while we're at it. Can he hear me when I talk to you?"

"Yes," Amphis said. "He rarely chooses to rest while I'm conscious."

"Good, good. Then listen well: Magnus, that was your final serving of forgiveness. If you do anything like that ever again, if you so much as touch my mind without asking? I will turn the whole of the 20th on you, and then we shall see who comes out on top. Understood?"

There was a second's hesitation. "Yes. He says… something extremely impolite, but the gist has been received. Speaking for myself, thank you. Such impulsiveness is… not becoming of the man I fell for."

Ksaiwon chose to believe that Magnus had spent ten thousand years improving on that front, and did not press the issue. "Now that I'm aware of your situation, I must ask: will I be able to rely upon his expertise? He would be very useful to have as an ally."

"Of course, Commander. I think, despite everything, he has something of a fondness for you."

"Good, very good. Captain Amphis, and, er, passenger, you are both dismissed."

Ksaiwon took three steps in the direction of the main base camp before nearly collapsing and having to call on Amphis to help him make the journey. Their first order of business upon returning was to down a large dose of analgesics and have a nap in the dark.