The Imperial colony of Iloph II was as hospitable a world as any; ignoring the ceaseless, torrential pour that threatened to swell its seas and submerge the lesser continents that dotted its surface. The sun hung bright and hot above them in the sky, glaring off the blue water which lapped at both the sandy shores and rocky beachheads of the island planet. A constant misty rain dampened every surface save for the inhabited portions; not even grass grew well on Iloph II's uncultivated hillsides—a blessing for most since few wanted to spend time outside anyway, given the endless drizzle.
Yet despite the steady rainfall, the people of Iloph II had adapted well to the inclement weather, isolating themselves into a few sizable hab-blocks that mirrored the size and scale of Terra's smaller hive cities. Use of atmospheric generators and large scale humidification-regulators lessened precipitation to manageable levels within each individual block, making life in an Imperial agriworld almost tolerable. Almost.
Life persisted as it always had on Iloph II, gray and drizzled, until it didn't.
The citizenry of Iloph Center were first puzzled, then alarmed, when unexpected and tumultuous thunderstorms rolled across their skyline. The dark clouds of the untamed shorelines had seldom encroached upon the city's perimeter, kept at bay by its advanced weather technology; but now the sun had been blotted by the crackling, rolling haze. The planetary government, content with fattening their coffers on the citizenry's consistent, hydroponically-cultivated agricultural output, had failed to invest in the appropriate countermeasures to circumvent such a unexpected development. Perhaps the machine-spirits simply needed appeasement? Or some unknown astral phenomenon was shorting out the ancient equipment vital to the city's infrastructure? For the people of Iloph, the billowing clouds of charcoal were merely an ill portent of the grimness to come. Vengeance made manifest that stirred within the unnatural darkness. Us.
It was impossible to distinguish day from night as our transports made their unheralded descent, veiled in the deafening blackness of the storm; angels of death, we were.
"I am ready, brother," Razmus hissed through vox; the lens of his winged death mask flashed crimson-red, shading Razmus's vision in a bloody hue. The traitor space marine's voice crackled over my earpiece and cut into intervals from the interference of our nightmarish drop. "The captain has granted us leniency." 'Leniency'. The leash had been loosened. This pleased me.
"Very well," I rasped. Every strained syllable was deliberate. I'd long lost the appetite for conversation. For the yapping of jackal-jawed chatter. My veins were ablaze with combat stims and hearts pounded with furious bloodlust. All I wanted to hear were screams. "Let it begin."
Our landfall filled the waterlogged alleys of Iloph's cities with carnage and terror; decadent sprays of red blood painted the black-green paving stones. Honor guard or militiaman, aristocrat or dreg, the hunt was indiscriminate and unrelenting. There was a noble beauty in the universal cheapness of life. Young or old, flesh was flayed the same. Every act of inhuman cruelty was a feast to us. And yet I knew there was something more to carry out all of its dread and omen and pain: to realize our father's dream.
The raging squalls upon which we'd arrived only grew madder, spurred on by the maleficent energies of our warband's sorcerer, a coward who himself was far from the slaughter. These Warp-born tempests had disrupted communications amongst Iloph's pathetic planetary militia, undermining all efforts for the loyalist swine to mobilize any noteworthy defense. The unenhanced protectors of this world were as meek and fearful as the common citizen, and in their cowardice the Night Lords found vindication for the prolonged torment inflicted upon the guardsmen. Our prey were like livestock, wholly aware of their impending slaughter; the sweetness of their agony was almost intoxicating. There was such terror to be extracted from the populace that my brothers and I had nearly gone mad with delight. Infants, enfeebled, shriveled by disease—they were given to me and peeled alive in their mothers' arms, begging for mercy in guttural tones, choked by bile and viscera.
As earth-quaking thunderclaps threatened to tear down the megastructures of Iloph, the shadowy frames of our power armor were illuminated by blinding flashes of electric blue. For some, it made their last sights all the more terrifying: mountains of blue-burnt plasteel, galvanized with reliefs of fearsome lightning bolts and wreathed in blankets of desiccated, flayed flesh. The atmospheric crackle of my lightning claws springing to life harmonized sweetly with the throat-splitting shrieks of our prey.
Iloph II would have been like any other planet in our mindless quest for bloodletting glory, had it not been for the child.
Adamantium talons, wreathed in electric tendrils of energy, shredded a man in an instant. His beloved was soon made intimate with the inner workings of her lover, and the scream had barely caught in her throat before I could reunite them in oblivion. One could only imagine the lifetime of memories they'd eked together in the squalid shack they'd called home; nothing more than a crypt, now. It was in my departure of the hovel that I noticed her, this infant bag of pulp that stared blankly upon my handiwork, upon the steaming piles of sanguine-rich entrails that splayed around her feet. My brothers and I had transformed this world into a whirlwind of terror and death, yet the silence of the girl filled my soul with ice. My bladed gauntlets were already slick with gore, dripping with the fluids of her kin. Yet I dared not take my eyes off her. Pallid flesh, cerulean eyes that perhaps resembled the occasionally calm waters of her homeworld. The child couldn't have been older that 5 solar years. Her parents' screams hadn't even reached her ears yet, but she watched me from afar with a solemn, disinterested gaze.
"Brother," Razmus reminded me of his presence, of our task, over a shared communications channel, "The harvest has been good. Slaves, supplies, many supple playthings." Jubilance dwelled behind his cold, calculative speech, "We return to the transports at once; the captain commands it."
"Understood." I acknowledged, captured by the unusual gaze of this defenseless child. It was not disgust, or fear or any other emotion you might expect from one who stood witness to such horror. She seemed utterly unaffected by the carnage and depravity all around her—as if watching her first rain shower pass through clouds as though nothing happened beneath them. As if standing amidst an ancient forest fire and being undisturbed by its rage. For all that we did, for all that we took from them, for all that they screamed in abject terror, she was content with the results: the empty shell that now littered the streets with a smattering of scattered limbs and severed heads that had fallen into pools of their own blood. If anything, her look of placid serenity only made me curious. Curiosity was enough. Many of my 'brothers' were mere neophytes compared to my tenure and brutality amongst our traitorous ranks. They were children when Curze slipped into his final state of madness, unborn when the legion first fell into exile. I had been there, and bore witness to the Primarch's descent more so than the greater host of the Night Lords.
"Come." I knelt low, extending a bloody claw towards the anomalous little girl. There would be use for her, that I knew.
She cocked her head curiously at the proffered limb of plasteel before finally taking it within her grasp; with great care I lifted onto my armored shoulder, cradling the small creature against my armor. As the lamentations of Iloph's surviving citizenry echoed across the pitch-black bowels of massive transports, I remained enamored by the curious dispassion of my little pet; the lackluster stare as she stared out over the heaving sea of death below us for a final time. My little one.
***
Aboard the 'Dying Light', dim lit corridors were illuminated in mute scarlet hues and were soundless save the soft whirring of servos and mechanical humming. The lamentations of the tortured were sequestered to certain parts of the ship, for those of our brood who still reveled in such needless prolongation of pain. For the ancient ones, such as myself, preferred was the silence. In our secluded dormitories, the tongues of slaves were promptly cut out to avoid their pitiful whining. This was good, as the child and I would have no distractions in our acquainting of one another.
"What is your name." I spoke flatly, maintaining my booming but steady stride through the narrow corridor while carrying her on my shoulder. This was no place for a child, sharp-edged and cold; serrated instruments of agony hung loosely from blood-rusted chains. Yet she seemed unaffected gruesome sights. Enthralled, if anything.
"Mara," She answered flatly, more enamored by the bolt-streaked pattern of my tactical dreadnaught armor than fearful of the chaos-touched halls. Her flaxen hair, simple clothing and pale skin was still tinged red with the lifeblood of her parents, yet she she paid it no mind. Awe, or perhaps some other emotion that I couldn't fathom, drew a quivering smile from her face like a reflection in a pond. It had been many centuries since I'd seen any real joy.
I knew then that I had chosen right. Though Mara may not have understood what a miracle had been bestowed upon her by fate's capricious hand, she didn't fear me either; nor did she cower at my imposing presence. My brothers could take an entire planet under the cover of darkness, ripping and ravaging for a purpose long lost upon them, though they would tremble at the thought of taking her from me. She was mine to protect and mold.
"Mara. A name." My words were low and heavy, given an insidious, metallic din through the tusked faceplate of my headgear, yet held within them was the promise of comfort and protection. "Come. Let me show you something of our home." I lead her away from the shadowed halls of our dormitories towards my chambers, where my collection lay: plunder and relics gathered over thousands of years of slaughter and conquest. The skulls, both human and alien alike, stared out impassively into their eternal prison; each a trophy, a symbol of glory. Their empty eye-sockets looked out on my worldly achievements as a warrior; the bloodless remains that bore testament to the depths to which one man can sink in pursuit of his ambitions.
The child had stopped dead in her tracks, however—her wide eyes staring up in abject awe as the skulls adorned every inch of wall space.
"This is…" Her voice trailed off weakly, "amazing."