Hi :3

“You’re staring”, he chides me, but his tone is amused. My eyes trail once again over his form. Dark attentive eyes, the hooked nose, the curve of his lips, the lush curls flowing past his cowl over his gray armor.

„Let me see you”, I demand.

Xanthomonas smiles at me, radiant as ever. It hurts when he steps closer. The nails punish the proximity to the psyker and his warp-touched armor, but I am familiar with the pain. After all these years, I’ve grown more than used to it. “You see me just fine, my champion.”

I snort with fond annoyance. “Don’t play coy. You know exactly what I mean.”

His smile only widens. I have to force myself not to smile in turn or he will drag this out even further. For a few seconds we hold each other’s gaze. My head pounds.

Then I feel the pressure growing behind my eyes, pain boring even deeper into my skull. The illusion dissipates, like smoke over a battlefield, accompanied by the faint crackle of warp energy and a wave of almost unbearable pain. His true face is a war-torn ruin.

Flames had kissed the right side of his face, the skin stretched thin over the bone. Warped like badly dried paper. The golden script that had adorned his face, from temple down to his jaw had almost completely been eaten away by the promethium. Where his eye once had been, only an empty socket remains. The other flickers with the soft orange warmth of a candle.

His black curls have turned an ashen grey over the years. Jagged horns of bone sprout from his left temple and forehead.

His smile had been warped by time and the gods’ blessings as well. The ragged scar in corner of his mouth – an old wound gifted to him during the long war – extends it almost up to his ear, the gash overflowing with teeth. Predator sharp and gleaming in the low light.

A hunger rises within me at the sight, like the restlessness before battle, to feel those teeth break the skin of my neck, feel them tear and rend the flesh and sinew beneath, let him drink of my blood, claim what is already his.

I abandon the thought before the nails can sink their teeth in too deep. He must have noticed the way my heart rate has picked up. There is not much I can hide from him. Not that I would want to.

“Do you like what you see?” His voice is rough. The teeth make speaking clearly hard. I know he is only teasing. Still, I answer truthfully. “Yes.”

He laughs, caught off guard.

“I don’t understand why you hide yourself like this” I continue. Xanthomonas simply shrugs. “Appearances.” “It’s not like I follow you for your pretty face.”

He grins, remaining eye shining with intrigue. “Oh? Then why do you, my champion?”

“Loyalty. I did not take my oath to you lightly.”

Xanthomonas pauses. The look on his face is the same as the first time he took my confession and the many times after. “Do you regret it? Swearing yourself to me?”

“Why would I.” It’s not even a question. He does not seem convinced.

“Don’t you miss your brothers?”, he asks. “The ones you lost when you choose to bind yourself to me? The ones you’ve lost on the path that I’ve led you on?”