#baseline

He had never needed to decide for himself, his existence had always been shaped by forces beyond his will. What to do, where to go, what to fight, how to fight, even how to think. Now there was no one left to tell him what he should be, and that freedom should have felt like deliverance.

Instead, it resembled a fall into a bottomless abyss with no walls to grasp onto.

Karneth sighed and lazily dragged a hand across his face, brushing aside the long black hair that hung over it. His weary ink-dark eyes wandered around the small room that served as his quarters.

On one side stood a locker and a metal desk upon which rested his armour undersuit and patched-up robe. On the other, two bunk beds built into the wall occupied nearly its entire length. Far too small for him, he had taken out the mattresses and spread them across the floor to fashion a bed suited to his size. The stripped bedframes now served as shelves. His chainsword, as large as a man, rested on the upper one. On the lower one lay his bolt pistol, dagger, and the smaller pieces of his armor. The largest components leaned against the wall opposite the entrance, most notably his breastplate, his dormant power pack, and his helmet resting atop it.

Karneth’s eyes lingered there.

The winged helm stared back at him. A beast-like skull frozen in an expression of eternal menace. Its red visor was dark, and in its reflection he saw that his own gaze was scarcely any better.

The abyss inside his mind widened a little more.

Karneth fully intended to keep using his armor, ceramite granted him overwhelming superiority over nearly anything he might encounter. Yet the mere thought of wearing it again deepened his unease: those colors and emblems were no longer his, no more than those worn by the dogs of the Imperium… and he feared putting the armor back on only to discover there was nothing left beneath it.

Nothing but an empty shell, incapable of understanding the very nature of free will or defining itself without outside intervention.

Nothing but a wandering servitor without orders.

As he did every morning, the Astartes turned his eyes away from the helmet in silent defeat.

The hold… he ordered himself, searching for a reason to drag himself from bed.

Karneth finally forced the mass of his body upright and grabbed the robe lying on the desk. As he slipped it on, he noticed one sleeve had come undone at the shoulder, split open by several centimeters. He stared at the tear for a moment before exhaling through his nose with weary irony.

I work human skin better than cloth…

Once, that thought would have amused him… But it had been a long time since flaying brought him any joy. That pleasure had faded the moment he realized his Legion no longer practiced torture to punish and restore order, but simply to gorge themselves on the screams of whoever crossed their path, with the hollow excitement of a dog distracted by the squeal of the toy it tears apart. He still felt a certain satisfaction when the soul trapped beneath his claws had truly been guilty of atrocities, like the politician whose face adorned his left pauldron. The satisfaction of punishing those who deserved it, frightening those tempted to follow their example, and bringing prosperity to worlds through this balance.

Vengeance. Justice. Order.

What the VIIIth should have been…

His thoughts threatened to mire themselves once more, and Karneth forced himself into motion. He picked up the medical kit he had found in the bathroom and pulled out the suture set. Just as he had stitched together clothes in his size from those found in the wardrobe, he used it now to mend the sleeve.

The needle looked absurd between his massive fingers, and despite his experience, he handled it with the clumsiness of a being whose limbs were strangers to gentleness. The motions were as repetitive as maintaining a weapon, yet this small, inglorious task brought him a quiet sense of comfort, distracting his heavy thoughts with a pleasant lightness.

He found himself surprised that something so small could bring him solace.

But the tear was quickly repaired, and Karneth wrapped himself in both his robe and his weariness before leaving his quarters.

The corridor was a narrow passage for someone of his size, barely navigable for an armored Astartes. In the distance, he spotted Milo hurrying along, likely on his way to the cockpit. The human had not noticed him yet, the dim lighting too poor for mortal eyes. Karneth could hear the nervous beating of his single heart beneath its fragile ribcage, accelerating sharply the instant he realized he was not alone.

The young man froze at once and paled when he saw him approaching. For a second, he seemed tempted to turn back, before instead pressing himself against the corridor wall as tightly as possible. He lowered his head in submission, drawing in his arms and legs to ensure no part of him might obstruct the giant’s path.

Karneth brushed past him without a glance, though he quietly breathed in the scent of fear radiating from him. A familiar and reassuring fragrance, soothing his numbed mind and offering him, within the abyss, something solid to cling to.

He continued on with the same indifference, but a hesitant stammer interrupted his stride.

“Uh… L-Lord Karneth?”

Uttering those few words seemed to demand tremendous effort from the mortal. The demigod stopped but did not turn around, tilting his head just enough to show he was listening. Behind him, he heard Milo swallow nervously before asking, with just as little confidence.

“W-Would you like me to… clean your quarters?”

Zealous little creature…

Milo always seemed eager to remind him of his usefulness. Karneth had never forbidden him access to his room, yet the human had still never set foot inside and instinctively refused to do so without permission. The caution of prey before a predator’s den, slaves being fully aware that Night Lords dragged their victims there to play with them.

Though such an offer was expected of a slave, it almost sounded daring.

“Not for now,” Karneth replied simply before immediately continuing on his way.

“V-Very well, my lord…” Milo answered before hastily returning to his own duties.

The Astartes listened absentmindedly to the sound of his footsteps as he disappeared behind him.

During his first days aboard, Karneth had regularly checked his work while he slept, compared every report against reality, searched for the slightest mistake, lie, or sign of incompetence. He had even deliberately sabotaged a nonessential and relatively discreet system simply to see whether Milo would notice. Not only had the young man found and corrected the problem, he had recalibrated the entire parent network and serviced the surrounding systems with perfectionist care.

Karneth could find nothing to criticize. His runt worked so well that some sections of the Mistralis seemed to have grown two centuries younger. At least he had not lied about his skills, and the Astartes drew from it the satisfaction of a worthwhile investment, proof that his patience and leniency had not been wasted.

Given that Milo was terrified by his mere presence, Karneth had little need to enforce his authority. Fortunately for him, the human had stopped butchering his name as well. It irritated him to communicate exclusively in Gothic, but now that Milo understood his duties and carried them out properly, they only needed to speak for reports.

So Karneth ignored him the rest of the time, one of the rewards he granted him each day alongside a ration and the right to rest. As long as the human respected his supremacy, he would be left in peace.

Karneth finally reached the cargo hold access. His fingers pulled a lever, and a floor hatch rose with a hydraulic groan, revealing a passage descending by way of a sturdy ladder. The moment it opened, a deafening din flooded the corridor, and Karneth grimaced in displeasure. The hold was the only section of the ship lacking sound insulation. The roar of the engines vibrated through the walls like a resonance chamber and assaulted his superhuman senses with irritating brutality.

Even so, he descended the ladder to the place where most of his days were spent.

The inventory was nearly complete. In truth, it should already have been finished a day or two ago… But Karneth had been dragging it out on purpose. Because once the task was done, he would have nothing left to occupy his mind.

No reason left to leave his bed.

Nothing left to do but brood over his misery.

_____________________________________

Milo arrived at the cockpit a few seconds behind his own thoughts, still slightly shaken from having merely crossed paths with his master. His mind was still struggling to perceive an Astartes as something ordinary, and he doubted it would ever truly manage to.

He settled into the pilot’s seat. His gaze immediately drifted to the cogitator and the crack running across its screen, a daily, silent reminder that his survival depended on his efficiency. He absently ran a hand over his cheek, brushing against the fading bruise. The pain had vanished, but a bluish mark still lingered. The giant had not touched him again since his mispronunciation, which suggested that, for now, he was doing well enough.

Milo took a slow breath to clear his thoughts, then began checking the readings and applying recalibrations where needed. His fingers moved across interfaces and instruments without hesitation. It was gradually becoming routine, something that demanded less and less time each day. As long as the work was completed within a twenty-four-hour cycle, his lord seemed unconcerned with method or pace.

He considered himself fortunate: the Mistralis was in excellent condition, and the Machine Spirit that inhabited it was remarkably docile. So far, he had encountered no malfunction requiring his master’s intervention… something he deeply feared, as it might be interpreted as incompetence.

Milo finished his checks and leaned back into his seat with a sigh of relief. As always, completing a task correctly brought a brief but reassuring sensation that his survival was secured, at least for the next few hours. The day had only just begun, he still had secondary systems to verify across the Mistralis, followed by maintenance, and if he did not cross paths with his master in time to be dismissed, he would need to find smaller tasks to occupy himself. It was a great deal of work for a single person in one day, but the quotas remained manageable compared to those of the battle barge.

He allowed himself a few seconds of respite, staring out through the armored cockpit viewport, the only window aboard.

Space stretched before him like a dark, infinite sea. The Mistralis drifted through an asteroid field, rocky masses gliding and colliding in total silence. Only a few months ago, Milo would never have imagined leaving his homeworld, let alone witnessing such a sight. He did not even know which star system they were in, the Night Lords had kept traveling since his capture, and such information never reached the lower decks.

Not that he expected to ever return home.

Yet being able to look at this view every cycle did him a world of good, pulling him away from the warship and its corridors haunted by monsters ready to pounce on him.

His own ignored him almost entirely, granting him attention only to receive reports or issue rations. Milo did not complain, on the contrary… but there was something deeply unsettling about serving a master whose sadistic impulses he could neither read nor predict. Night Lords were not known for needing excuses to torment slaves, physically or mentally. That restraint toward him gnawed at him, as if he were missing a crucial detail that would eventually come back to strike him.

But he knew nothing of demigods or how their minds worked.

His gaze drifted across the cosmic game of billiards unfolding before him, absently estimating the trajectories of colliding asteroids.

The Imperium barely maintained a presence on his neglected, fringe world, and he had only vaguely heard of the Emperor’s angels, loyal or fallen. No empathy, no mercy, no weakness. Living weapons of a God. His misfortune had led him to traitors, but he had no idea whether meeting loyalists would have changed anything for him.

To him, demigods were to humans what felines were to rodents.

A crude comparison, but not entirely inaccurate, given how their mere presence awakened primitive instincts, the most reptilian parts of his mind. Raw prey fear. And where humans were driven by survival, Astartes seemed driven by predation, even far from the horrific battlefields for which they had been forged. Mortals must be such easy, tempting targets…

And cats naturally enjoyed playing with mice caught in their claws.

Yet he did not see that predatory instinct in Lord Karneth. From what little he had observed, there was only silence and constant stoicism, no body language or speech suggesting cruelty toward him. A presence of brutal calm that nonetheless erupted at the slightest irritation, revealing its violent nature… but the blows he had received so far were not born of sadistic play.

Maybe Night Lords are more restrained with their serfs? he thought hopefully, watching one asteroid collide with another. Maybe I’ve proven useful enough that harming me would be counterproductive?

Another thought crept in.

Maybe now would be the right time to ask him to teach me Nostraman?

But as soon as it formed, the image of the feline and the rodent returned. In what better situation could a mouse approach a cat and ask to learn how to meow?

A nervous shiver ran down his neck.

Even if his master’s indifference toward him was reassuring, his pragmatic path to survival required him to find a way to draw positive attention. For now, he was no different from the other humans in the lower decks, nothing worth preserving long-term. His zeal would not be enough, it was already expected of any slave.

I should get back to work… he told himself, exhaling softly.

But something in the slow dance of rocks drifting through the void had been unconsciously holding his attention for several minutes, pinning him to his seat. An indistinct premonition. Some asteroids on the horizon formed an irregular chain, their arrangement giving him an absurd certainty: if one of them were struck, it would trigger a chain reaction, and the last one would be flung onto their trajectory at the very last moment.

And a rocky mass was drifting directly toward that cluster.

Milo knew nothing about navigation. He naively believed the Machine Spirit would be able to read such a danger and issue a proximity alert if it deemed it credible. Lord Karneth would then only have to adjust the Mistralis’s course. But… what if it didn’t? He could see the cluster clearly, and nothing on the cogitator indicated any detected danger on their path. What if the asteroid was only deflected at the very last moment? If the sensors only detected the imminent collision once the rock was already in motion toward them? Would Lord Karneth even have time to come?

Milo didn’t like that doubt. A conscious ignorance perfectly balanced with a visceral certainty.

His anxiety grew as the problematic rock bounced off another and followed exactly the configuration his mind had anticipated. A bead of sweat slid down his temple. His fingers twitched nervously over the console as he tried to bring up the trajectory readings. The data confirmed what he feared: the ship would pass directly through the zone where he imagined the future impact.

I must be wrong… he denied, nervously.

He had never piloted a ship, had no knowledge that gave him any legitimacy to claim he could recognize a danger in spaceflight. His concern rested entirely on an intuition he could not explain. To bother Karneth with this kind of zeal, and be wrong… at best he would look like an idiot, and at worst he would anger the Astartes for wasting his time.

The thought alone made him swallow hard.

Milo remained frozen in front of the cogitator, unable to decide, while outside the asteroid continued its slow progression. He was as much at risk as the Astartes in the event of an impact, perhaps it was better to take the risk and at least warn him. If his intuition was right, he might be able to prevent a catastrophe.

His stomach twisted painfully with anxiety.

Before he had truly made a decision, he abruptly stood and left the cockpit, heading toward one of the few places aboard that was forbidden to him: the cargo hold access. Milo stopped hesitantly in front of the metal hatch, deeply unsettled. Even standing at the threshold felt perilous.

Will he be angry if I open it but don’t go in?

He bit his lip and stayed still for a few seconds, unable to act, his heart hammering in his chest. He hated this situation. Whatever he chose, it felt like he was brushing against dangerously thin boundaries.

Time continued to pass, indifferent.

He turned back and ran to the cockpit to check outside again. Nothing had changed. The solitary rock was still drifting toward the cluster, and nothing seemed able to alter its trajectory. Perhaps three minutes until impact…

This time, certainty overcame fear.

Resolved, Milo returned to the hatch. He took a shaky breath, bracing himself for speaking to the Astartes and whatever consequences might follow, then activated the release lever.

The hatch lifted and immediately, a deafening roar burst up from the depths of the hold, making him flinch. Even the engine room was quieter! He glimpsed a slightly tilted ladder descending into a darkness deeper than the corridor. He could barely make out the floor below.

“Uh… My lord?” he called hesitantly into the turbulent void.

Seconds passed. No answer. Milo wasn’t surprised, his voice was likely completely swallowed by the noise.

“Lord Karneth?” he tried again, louder.

Raising his voice was not something he was used to, especially not in front of an Astartes. He tried again, as loudly as he could, but his uncertain voice cracked each time.

The seconds kept slipping away, and his stomach tightened further when he realized he would never be heard like this. Since raising his voice was not enough, Milo leaned further into the opening to try to make it carry farther. He reached for the ladder, his upper body dangerously tilted into the void.

“Lord Karneth!”

Still nothing.

“My lord, please!” he pleaded, descending another rung to lean further.

His fingers clenched around the ladder. Then his palm slipped.

For a fraction of a second, Milo felt his center of gravity shift without understanding. Fear shot through him as he felt the void open beneath him. He tried desperately to catch himself, hands scraping uselessly at the rim of the hatch, but gravity won.

He plunged headfirst into the cargo hold.

He hit the ground hard on his back, and a cry escaped him as a protruding edge dug into his shoulder blade. A sharp, intense pain shot through his left shoulder, but it vanished almost immediately, drowned out by the realization: he was in the cargo hold. In a place he was forbidden to enter.

However unintentionally, he had disobeyed his master.

Horror seized him at the thought of having so stupidly ruined his slim chances of a better life. His breathing turned erratic as he scrambled upright, instinctively searching for the Astartes’ silhouette in the darkness.

The cargo hold was immense, stretching beneath the entire upper deck of the Mistralis. Thick straps ran from the walls, securing enormous transport crates partly concealed under dark tarpaulins. But Milo was already no longer aware of the environment, his eyes had locked onto his master’s silhouette at the far end of the chamber.

The Night Lord was bent over one of the crates when he lifted his head, drawn by the movement of his fall. Even in the dimness, Milo clearly caught the brief flash of surprise that crossed his face before it hardened into something far worse.

His heart skipped a beat as the Astartes strode toward him with a furious pace. His lips moved, spitting words drowned by the ambient roar, but Milo didn’t need to hear them to understand. He was doomed.

He scrambled upright, hands raised in a pitiful defensive reflex, then instinctively backed toward the ladder as the murderous mass approached. Yet even through his panic, he knew it was useless. His mind sank into the dull, suffocating sludge of terror, but he managed to cling to a thread of lucidity: the asteroid. His only chance now was to have been right.

His master reached him, and Milo opened his mouth to explain despite the chaos, but a gigantic hand closed around his throat. His frail body was lifted effortlessly from the ground, the air violently forced from his lungs as his feet dangled helplessly. His face came level with the furious demigod, whose words he could barely distinguish over the muffled ringing in his ears.

Instinct took over. His body thrashed in blind panic, clawing at the wrist around his neck, unable to loosen it. Yet he still managed to extend a trembling hand upward, desperately pointing toward the upper deck.

The Night Lord seemed to restrain just enough of his fury to understand that communication here was pointless. Without releasing him, he turned and began climbing the ladder, carrying Milo one-handed. Each movement tightened the grip around his throat, his vision blurring as he tried to ease the pressure by clinging to the wrist holding him.

When they finally emerged into the corridor, the giant silenced the deafening roar by slamming the hatch shut with a violent kick before setting Milo down on his feet. He did not release him, but loosened his grip just enough for him to breathe.

Milo gasped in painful lungfuls, coughing violently as his vision slowly returned.

The voice of Lord Karneth rumbled through the narrow corridor with barely contained calm.

“I was very clear about which rooms are forbidden to you. There had better be a very, very good reason for this obvious insubordination…”

His fingers tightened slightly around Milo’s throat to underline the words. Milo fought desperately against the primal urge to struggle or beg.

“The a-asteroid field… my lord…!”

Each word came out as a ragged fragment as he tried to recover his breath. With a trembling hand, he pointed toward the cockpit.

“…One of them… is going to hit us… I-I tried to call you but…”

The Night Lord bared his teeth slightly, and the pressure on Milo’s throat immediately increased, drawing a strangled sound from him.

“You disobey me for this?” the Astartes hissed, leaning closer. “What do you think proximity alarms are for? A few days aboard and you think you’re a navigator?”

He didn’t know what to say, and tears welled up in his eyes as he kept desperately pointing toward the cockpit. The giant growled something under his breath, then moved, dragging Milo down the corridor with him. The young man barely managed to keep up on tiptoe, half-lifted off the ground, unable to match the Astartes’ pace.

When they reached the cockpit, he was thrown without ceremony into the pilot’s seat, collapsing into it and curling up instinctively, dragged back to the memory of the last time they had been here together.

“Show me!” the Astartes barked sharply.

Milo forced himself out of his defensive posture and pointed toward the cluster of drifting rocks that had brought him here. His master placed his hands on the console in irritation and studied the asteroid field, muttering words in Nostraman.

In the meantime, the Mistralis had drawn closer to the threatening formation, and the moment he focused on the area Milo indicated, what he had predicted came to pass.

The wandering rock struck a first asteroid in complete silence. That one immediately collided with another, setting the entire cluster into motion. A final impact hurled the last mass out of the field… sending it directly toward the Mistralis’s future position, its approach deceptively slow due to its size.

The Astartes immediately understood and cursed under his breath. He grabbed Milo by the arm and yanked him out of the seat, taking his place. The young man staggered to the doorway but miraculously remained standing. With swift, practiced movements he could not follow, the giant manipulated the instruments. The moment he took the control stick, the proximity alarm triggered, a piercing wail that assaulted their ears, and the cracked cogitator display showed the imminent threat: impact in 158 seconds.

Lord Karneth maneuvered and the Mistralis responded at once, shuddering under the strain as its trajectory curved, carrying them away from the asteroid field. He continued adjusting the controls, refining the course, then at last, the alarm fell silent. He completed the manoeuvres and came to a stop.

The cockpit fell into an uneasy moment of stillness.

His master stood with his back turned. Milo could not see his expression, but he already knew that the silence concerned him. It no longer mattered that he had been right about the asteroid or that he had come to warn him. He had disobeyed by entering the hold.

When the Astartes finally turned, Milo instinctively stepped back into the corridor, but he was upon him almost instantly. A massive hand slammed into his chest, pinning him brutally against a wall. The impact drove the air from his lungs. His knees buckled, no longer able to support him, but it no longer mattered, his body was now pinned to the wall by the sheer force of the demigod leaning over him.

Milo froze, eyes wide with terror. Lord Karneth’s face was only inches from his own, staring down at him in anger.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” he repeated in a breathless loop.

He could feel his own heart hammering against the enormous hand crushing his chest, and he could not stop himself from imagining how easily that hand could push just a little further and cave his ribcage inward…

Yet the Astartes did nothing more, simply holding him there as if searching for his words. After a few endless seconds, he pressed slightly harder and leaned in closer. A sharp pain shot through Milo’s ribs, compressed to the limits of what they could withstand, drawing a groan from him.

“If I ever see you down there again, only your skin will come back up through that hatch.”

Despite the unmistakable horror of the threat, his voice was calmer now, measured. Still lethal, but stripped of the earlier rage.

“Next time, you throw something down the ladder to get my attention, instead of throwing yourself in…”

Milo nodded mechanically, and the massive hand released him. His legs failed, and he slid down the wall. Lord Karneth inhaled lightly through his nose, as if scenting the air, then turned his gaze to the metal wall. He pointed at something with cold detachment.

“You will see to that.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked back toward the cargo hold.

His overwhelming presence faded down the corridors, and Milo remained on the ground for a few moments, unable to do anything but breathe. Then, mechanically, he lifted his head toward where he had been pointed and saw a long smear of blood staining the wall where he had slid down. But in his dazed state, he did not try to understand where it had come from, nor why a dull pain pulsed at the back of his left shoulder. He simply straightened up, grabbed the cloth hanging from his waist, and carefully wiped the blood from the wall.

And once it was done, he resumed his work like a servitor, his mind obeying the reflex of usefulness.

Because being useful meant surviving.

_____________________________________

I should have punished him.

Since returning to the cargo hold, the thought had been looping through Karneth’s mind, like a clumsy attempt to channel the frustration fraying his nerves. With a sharp motion, he slammed the lid of a wooden crate shut, the entire structure creaking in protest.

Milo had disobeyed.

The human had dared threaten his reassuring hierarchy, the only stable reference point against the uncertainty of his future. He was the master, and in the face of that loss of control, a near-instinctive anger demanded that all resistance be crushed, something familiar, structural, ingrained by the Night Lords. That vermin had gone where he had forbidden him to go, this simple fact called, at the very least, for a punishment leaving lifelong aftereffects! On the barge, it was a system failure, grounds for immediate execution and replacement.

But Karneth had not been able to punish him.

Because when he accounted for the circumstances that had led to the disobedience, Milo had, in fact, made the correct call… and part of him still refused to admit it. Perhaps the asteroid would only have grazed them. Perhaps the proximity alarm would have been heard in time despite the hold’s infernal noise… But he could not deny that the mortal had been right to take the risk and warn him.

And punishing him might discourage that kind of initiative in the future.

So Karneth remained there, trapped within a frustration he could not properly discharge. On the barge, he would already have killed the man and replaced him, sparing himself this dilemma entirely… but he was no longer on the barge. It was only his conditioning that felt attacked by these events. He had to reason for himself, not depend on a system he was no longer part of and whose logic would not work here.

“I did well not to punish him…” he forced himself to murmur, the words instantly swallowed by the roaring hell.

Milo had not disobeyed out of defiance. He was still terrified of him, perfectly submissive. He was no threat to his authority.

He was the master.

I am superior…

However, he had to acknowledge that in the midst of this incident, Milo had, despite himself, asserted his usefulness and reliability. It had been either outrageous luck, or a latent talent for anticipating the asteroid… But for sure, his death was appearing more and more like a waste of resources, and he already lacked too many to afford losing this one in a fit of anger.

That fragile little creature, trembling and weeping at the slightest pressure, might possess capabilities that had gone unnoticed at the time of his capture. He might prove more useful than expected. Perhaps he could be given other tasks…

Now that I am alone, it would not hurt to have someone to rely on.

The thought surprised him. Or rather, the way it had formed did. He almost let out a short, uneasy laugh.

Someone to rely on…

Karneth did not believe in trust. It was nothing more than a brittle construct, an open statistical door to betrayal. True loyalty did not exist. The only reliable constant, the only true lever, had always been fear. Everything could be obtained through it, and with brutal efficiency. He would certainly not rely on a slave. Without the terror he inspired, without the lie of his desertion, at the slightest exploitable weakness, Milo would betray him. It was human nature, corrupted, seeded with vice waiting only for the right moment to bloom.

Nostramo had proven that much.

Karneth suddenly realized that, distracted by his thoughts, he had inventoried the same ammunition crate twice. He exhaled sharply in irritation, tearing the extra page from his notebook.

Coincidentally, he had been reviewing human weapon crates when Milo had fallen into the hold. From where he had landed, he could only have seen a vague mass of tarpaulin-covered cargo… yet the coincidence grated on his already frayed nerves.

He could not keep spending his days here.

If it had happened once, it could happen again and next time, it might genuinely compromise both their safety and his authority. It was his responsibility to ensure Milo no longer had to brush against such limits.

His gaze drifted over the remaining crates awaiting inspection.

“…Let’s finish this.”

_____________________________________

Milo had resumed his work like a lobotomized slave. His body carried out its usual tasks while his mind remained stuck in adrenaline. It took him several hours to finally break out of that state, pulled back to himself by various pains. First in his neck, where every swallow brought a sharp discomfort. Then another pain gradually emerged, more subtle, lodged in his shoulder blade.

Still half absent, Milo stopped working and went to lock himself in the Mistralis’s bathroom. He turned on the light out of reflexive utility, feeling no comfort, no protection, no apprehension. After a few painful seconds of adjusting to the brightness, he finally lifted his gaze to the mirror.

The imprints of Lord Karneth’s fingers still marked the skin of his throat. The sight violently pulled his mind out of its daze, and his thoughts regained their lucid coherence. The recent events came back to him as though he were slowly emerging from a bad dream. Milo hesitantly placed a hand on his neck, brushing the marks left by the Astartes. He had not even truly strangled him, he had only held him, and these injuries were merely secondary consequences of simple contact with a monster designed to massacre.

And yet… the monster had released him.

The realization struck him fully: despite his disobedience, his master had let him off with only this.

Milo remained motionless before his reflection, deeply confused. The previous times the demigod had been violent, it had been in response to an error on his part, a mistake or incompetence. But this time… this time, he had disobeyed! Even unintentionally, it was still a legitimate reason for any Night Lord to punish him however they wished. It was the first time in his life Milo had seen an Astartes choose not to make someone suffer when he was more than justified in doing so. His master seemed to have taken into account the reasons for this disobedience, and had settled for a warning.

He slowly lowered his eyes in disbelief.

Lord Karneth had not been merciful.

He had been just.

The young man would not have believed such a concept could exist among the Night Lords. Yet he was evidently in the grasp of a monster that was a little more rational, predictable, and psychologically stable than the others. Perhaps even… reasonable.

Something slowly loosened in his chest. For the first time since his capture, and perhaps even long before that, Milo glimpsed something he had long desperately sought.

Security…

He immediately qualified his thought: Lord Karneth remained a monster, capable of tearing a man apart with his bare hands. A constant threat to his existence, which depended entirely on his will and tolerance.

But for the first time in months, he felt as though a semblance of a healthy dynamic existed in his environment. He could rely on the balance his master had established aboard without constantly fearing for his life. Thanks to his obedience, there was between the monster’s paws a safe place in which to exist. This perspective activated the most primitive parts of his brain, those reminding him that he was nothing more than a mouse between a cat’s claws… and he simply chose to believe it. He needed too much to soothe the anxiety that was constantly corroding his mind like acid, so he convinced himself: he could trust the rightness of this monster.

This time, it was not relief that overwhelmed him, but gratitude.

Please, let me become his serf and serve him until my death! he prayed, without knowing to whom.

The young man felt no madness in thinking this way. To him, it was nothing more than pure survival logic.

He had never known freedom, nor ever believed in its existence. Even before his capture by the Night Lords, he already lived under the yoke of oppressors, barely managing to survive day by day. He knew what it was to be alone and weak in the face of entities too powerful, condemned to be exploited… and he was resigned to the fact that, in the indifferent vastness of this galaxy, no one would ever come to change that.

So he clung to what he could.

At least, in the service of Lord Karneth, he knew where he stood: obey him without fail, and in return be assured of having food, water, rest, and not being killed or injured if he did not deserve it. For someone who only desperately sought to survive, this arrangement was the safest and reassuring he had ever known.

Certainly not joyful, but reliable, promising him a future.

Milo did not know how he had managed to anticipate that asteroid. In his eyes, it was more a matter of luck than skill… Yet perhaps that small display of usefulness had given him what he was seeking: attracting positive attention.

Maybe now is the right time to ask him to teach me Nostraman?

It was still a little early to think that his master had fully moved past his disobedience… But since his behavior toward him was supposedly consistent, he told himself to wait until the end of the day: if he was given a ration, it would mean without a doubt that the incident would have no further consequences for him.

A brief but sharp pain suddenly seized the back of his left shoulder, making him clench his teeth. The young man turned toward the mirror and noticed a partially dried stain of blood covering his shoulder blade. Carefully, he removed his clothing and awkwardly twisted to examine his back. A thin cut in the skin, likely caused by a metal fragment when he fell into the cargo hold. Only when he saw it did he realize that the trail of blood he had cleaned from the wall earlier had come from him.

The cut was neither wide nor deep, and his shirt had not even torn.

This clothing is stronger than my skin… He managed a weak attempt at irony as he rinsed the blood off with tap water.

He searched the room’s storage for a medical kit, without success, and had no idea where else on the ship he might find one. Lord Karneth might not have brought any… and he could hardly imagine a demigod needing disinfectant.

Well, it’s just a scratch… he reassured himself as he pulled his damp clothing back on.

The wound had already stopped bleeding and its edges had begun to clot together.

Milo switched off the light and prepared himself mentally to return to work. He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the low ambient light, and in the silence of that pause, his thoughts drifted back to his fall in the hold.

His memories were blurred. A vast room, straps holding countless transport crates partially covered by tarpaulins… A mysterious cargo whose contents were clearly valuable enough for its delivery to be handled personally by one of the Masters. This shaky deduction gave him an initial answer as to why the Astartes had traveled alone aboard the Mistralis, but he forced his curiosity away. If he had been forbidden access to the hold, there was a reason. And it was probably better for him not to know it.

That might even be the explanation for why he had neither been punished nor executed.

_____________________________________

Karneth wrote a final word at the bottom of the list before closing the notebook with a dry snap. The inventory was finally finished.

His emotional conflicts had ended up sinking into the abyss of his weariness, and he went back up to the main level wrapped in gloom. After a brief stop in the storage room, he sat at the high table in the lounge, which, for him, was closer to a normal table, placed his notebook down, and began his meal. Now that the inventory was complete, he estimated that, in case of any delay during the journey, the food resources in the hold would allow them to last at least another month. A relatively comfortable safety margin.

Karneth bit into the soft nutrient pouch to push the paste up toward his mouth. A discreet frustration crossed his mind: his teeth could easily shatter bones, and yet here he was eating this damn bitter puree. Under his feet lay far more appetizing provisions. Refined supplies intended for corrupt nobles or wealthy smugglers, stasis-preserved meats he could sink his teeth into…

He pushed the thought away as he swallowed another bite, surprised by his own whim. Had he ever cared about the taste of what he consumed? Among Astartes, comfort was associated with weakness, so he examined this strange and sudden fancy… and after a few seconds of introspection, he concluded simply that he was hungry. More than usual. He had not felt this in decades. His metabolism was probably beginning to feel the lack of calories in his rations.

Thinking about the contents of the cargo hold brought back a realization that had been growing for several days already.

He had a considerable amount of useless goods on his hands. Jewelry, alcohol, luxury items whose function he sometimes did not even understand, surely superficial… but he had no sense of their market value.

Trade was foreign to him, escaping his warrior logic, which recognized only three kinds of value: military, strategic, and symbolic. Monetary value and other economic logic were the least of an Astartes’ concerns. A reflex thought simply whispered to him to discard anything he would not need, then go and plunder what he required from an Imperial institution. That was how the Night Lords had solved their logistical problems since the Heresy and their ideological independence.

But that solution belonged to a way of life he could no longer afford.

For what awaited him, he was going to need money.

His situation was far too precarious to allow himself violent solo raiding, to attract attention, or to waste any sellable goods. Money would make it much easier for him to access resources, and he would need to learn to rely on it, on black markets, smugglers, human networks he had spent years either despising or terrorizing. Finding buyers, negotiating, understanding the value of all these absurd things…

Learning to live like a human.

That thought left a more bitter taste than his ration. The worst part was that he did not even know where to start! He felt as though he were facing an enemy whose language and rules he did not understand, on a terrain he had neither been designed nor prepared for.

His thoughts slowly began to sink back into his abyss of defeatism…

But his mental descent was interrupted by the sound of Milo’s hesitant footsteps approaching in the corridor, likely having heard his own footsteps coming here. The mortal appeared in the doorway and froze upon seeing him. He still bore the red marks of his fingers around his neck, as well as a metallic scent of dried blood. He did not seem to dare approach any further, a cautious restraint that was understandable given how their last encounter had ended.

But Karneth had let his anger subside. He swallowed a bite of his ration, then gestured with his head for him to report.

Milo swallowed hard. His stammering voice came out broken, rough from his injured throat.

“There… there’s n-nothing to report today, my lord… The Mistralis is… f-fully operational…”

There was in this sentence an obvious attempt to deny recent events, or at least to lessen their importance. In another context, Karneth might have found it amusing… but he was not in the mood for that, still too stung in his pride by his disobedience. However, he now knew Milo was competent and disciplined enough to believe him if he claimed that the Mistralis had encountered no malfunction today.

Then he grabbed one of his ration packs, but instead of throwing it to him as usual, he held it out to force him to approach. The Astartes knew the human feared his proximity, being within his immediate range of action… and he felt in the mood to rekindle that feeling in him.

The mortal’s shoulders immediately tensed, fully aware there was something going on behind this behavior. Eyes lowered, he advanced toward him with obvious apprehension, then slowly extended a hand toward the packet. His fingers curled around it gently… but Karneth did not let go.

He immediately sensed his single heart speeding up in his chest and his body chemically reacting to the stress of not knowing what to do. Milo instinctively looked up to find an answer and froze upon meeting his gaze, Karneth staring him down harshly. His limbs began to tremble under that simple implicit pressure, and soon the familiar scent of fear filled the room. The demigod subtly inhaled the air with satisfaction, reassured by this undeniable proof of his authority, and finally released the ration. The mortal quickly stepped back to get out of his reach.

“Dismissed.…” Karneth simply decreed, as at the end of each day aboard.

The human’s shoulders visibly relaxed in relief. He quickly bowed, stammering a thank-you, then turned away to return to his quarters in a movement that betrayed his urge to run out of the room. The Astartes was already beginning to forget him and sink back into his thoughts.

But unexpectedly, Milo stopped, visibly hesitating. Karneth gave him his attention again as he seemed unsure whether to continue on his way. He clearly wanted to say something but did not know how to begin.

“Speak,” he ordered sharply, both out of curiosity and a desire to end his hesitation.

The young human jolted, then slowly turned back toward him, clutching the ration in his hands. He seemed to gather all his courage, then asked in a broken voice.

“My lord, what does… coulva mean?”

A brief but dense silence immediately fell over the room. Karneth blinked several times, taken aback not by the question, but by the fact that such a clumsy imitation of a Nostraman insult had been so unexpectedly spoken by his small runt. He then remembered having insulted him that way when the human had mispronounced his name… and he answered, not to satisfy his request, but from a visceral need to correct his pronunciation and enforce his language.

“It is not pronounced coulva, but Khul’var.”

Milo immediately tried to reproduce the sound despite his hoarse throat.

“Cool…vaal?”

“Khul’var!” the demigod insisted sharply.

“K-Khul’var…” the human quickly corrected himself.

A genuine amusement pierced through his weariness, and Karneth briefly broke his stoicism to snort softly… because of all the Nostraman words he had hissed since their meeting, Milo had remembered an insult referring to the idea of “a creature too slow to adapt to survive.”

This is surely the first time a human has said that to me face to face… he amused himself one last time before his thoughts returned to their cold irony.

After all, perhaps he too was a khul’var, struggling to adapt to his new life. Karneth absentmindedly bit into his ration, once again sinking into his gloomy thoughts. He was pulled out of them again when, seeing that he was not responding, Milo cleared his throat to remind him of his presence and searched for his words as if he were about to say something unpleasant.

“I… I am aware that forcing you to speak Gothic with me is… inappropriate, master. I was wondering if… perhaps… th-there would be a way for me… to l-learn… Nostraman…”

Karneth immediately understood the favor the human was asking… and he had indeed just heard something unpleasant. His body tensed in his seat as if he had this time been consciously insulted. His features hardened into an intense and threatening expression that immediately made Milo pale and step back.

His first thought was to order him to immediately return the ration for having dared to ask such a thing. On the barge, such a request would not even have reached his ears, slaves learned Nostraman among themselves. Their masters had wars to wage, far more important matters than teaching their language to fleeting mortals. Yet just as he drew breath to give the order, his body defused. The tension within him lessened second by second, and his expression gradually lost its hardness. Karneth looked away, letting his gaze drift into the distance, genuinely considering the request.

The inventory was finished, and Milo was already handling the essentials of the Mistralis…

He had nothing aboard that was more important to do.

Nothing to fill every hour of his existence until Ashmire.

Karneth could not find anything negative in this request other than the offense he associated with it. He hated Gothic, and Milo himself acknowledged the absurdity of a master constantly having to make the effort to speak his slave’s language. Teaching him Nostraman would solve that problem, for which there was scarcely any other solution. The human had already finished his work for the day, teaching him during his rest would not penalize the ship.

The only thing he had to lose was time, and that he had in abundance. Time that would otherwise be spent alone in his quarters with his thoughts.

His attention returned to the young man in front of him, who was literally holding his breath, fingers clenched around his ration while awaiting the consequences of his audacity.

With a calm, almost noble composure, as if silently gathering every fragment of his dignity, Karneth straightened in his chair, set down the ration he was eating, picked up the notebook on the table, and with his other hand pointed to the seat opposite him in a tacit answer.

He could not tell whether the expression that crossed Milo’s face was relief or anxiety.

_____________________________________

Milo did not truly know what he felt when he sat across from the demigod.

On one hand, the indecent joy that his master had accepted his request, the privilege of being taught Nostraman by a Night Lord in person, and the increased chances of being kept near him as a serf.

On the other, the visceral terror of having to remain within his immediate range for more than a few minutes, enduring mentally and physically the pressure of having all his attention directed at him.

And between the two, the constant stress that Lord Karneth would grow tired of hearing him continuously butcher his native tongue… and decide just as easily to abandon the lesson as to punish him violently to force him to succeed.

The first hour passed without the slightest incident.

The Astartes remained perfectly stoic in the face of his linguistic difficulties, calm and upright on his chair. Milo had expected to learn basic everyday words first… but the way he taught him took him by surprise: he wrote words in a notebook and presented them to him without even trying to explain their meaning, making him repeat their pronunciation until the sounds came closer to the correct ones, as if his mouth were an instrument to be tuned.

The words had a hissing, cutting texture, consonants that seemed to demand centuries of inherited violence. Each attempt gave him the grotesque impression of trying to wield a weapon too large and complex for his body. His wounded throat did not help, the roughest sounds painfully strained his vocal cords, sometimes breaking his voice in the middle of a syllable… but he could not afford to ask for a break or a delay, not after the demigod had interrupted his own meal to accept his request. That would be more than disrespect, and it would be wasting a chance he probably should never have had.

His master might have been taking his condition into account, as he showed himself infinitely more patient with him than during his training in the cockpit. He let him fail and try again without consequences, without getting angry or raising his voice, until the result seemed acceptable enough to continue the lesson.

But in the second hour, Milo felt that this tolerance was beginning to wear thin.

The Astartes remained a difficult being to read, showing no emotion. Yet, sitting opposite him, constantly instinctively watching for the slightest threatening sign in his posture whenever he made a mistake, Milo had begun to perceive cracks in his stoicism. Slight furrows in his marked facial features, twitches in his fingers, longer silences after each correction. Fractures in his patience, which he seemed to be struggling to contain.

And now that he was aware of it, Milo felt his stomach tighten each time he repeatedly failed the same word. The fear that this repressed irritation might turn into something else… such as taking back the ration resting on his knees to “motivate” him. The young man silently prayed that he had forgotten its existence, hidden beneath the table’s edge.

Lord Karneth wrote a new word in the notebook. The pen looked out of place in his enormous hand, as if the object should have shattered long ago between those murderous fingers. Even his handwriting expressed aggression, angular, letters drawn like slashes.

He pushed the notebook toward him and pointed at the newly written word.

“Vkelkrath,” he demanded.

Milo swallowed loudly. His saliva felt thicker and thicker, sounds clung to his tongue like a poorly sharpened blade.

“Vv… Vke… Vkellecrass…” he stammered awkwardly.

The demigod struck the table with the flat of his hand, making the young man flinch. The blow itself was not violent, but it clearly marked an alarming break in his patience. A cold sweat ran down Milo’s back, and it was no longer his ration he worried about.

“Vk-v-vkelkrath!” he corrected himself, remembering the dental fricative.

“…Khul’var,” the giant sighed in weary exhalation.

The word left his mouth as if it had slipped out of his thoughts. Milo still did not know its meaning, having never received an answer to his question. The Astartes pulled the notebook back toward himself to write again, indicating that he had more or less salvaged the situation. His stomach tightened further, because he already knew that his anger would erupt explosively. He had the very concrete impression of walking into a minefield with unclear boundaries, unable to distinguish which mistake would trigger his impatience and what form it would take.

His master pointed to a new group of words in the notebook.

“Grshzvan svelth.”

His apprehension twisted his insides so much it made him nauseous. His eyes categorically refused to read what they saw, the consonants blending together. He tried to cling to the Astartes’ pronunciation, but he knew in advance he would never manage to reproduce those sounds in one attempt. Nor even in two.

He fell into the certainty of fatalism that these two words would be the catalysts of a disaster. So instead of running toward it, he tried another approach.

“M-My lord, I am terribly sorry, I… I-I didn’t hear properly...?”

The demigod blinked slowly, then, with terrible calm, set his pencil down on the table as though he would no longer need it. Milo’s heart violently accelerated as he watched him lean toward him, bracing himself on the table and letting his mass weigh upon it. He instinctively sank back into his chair to increase the distance, ignoring the pain in his shoulder blade as he crushed himself against the backrest.

“Grshzvan svelth.” the Astartes repeated.

His tone aimed for impassive, but his ink-black gaze burned with restrained intensity, as though daring him to make him repeat himself again. The young man began trembling unconsciously, and placed a hand on his throat to beg it to cooperate.

“Grrr... Grrr... Grsh...”

His tongue stumbled on the beginning of the first word, the sound remaining trapped in his throat, knotting there beneath the growing fear of failure. The pressure of that dark stare made every attempt harder. He could see his master’s features hardening and his brows furrowing more and more.

“Grshzvan svelth.” he repeated more slowly.

He tapped the table with a finger as though trying to force a confession out of him. Milo shrank even deeper into his chair, knowing perfectly well it was only a matter of time before stepping on the mine.

“Grrrrr... shezva...”

“Grshzvan svelth!” the Astartes barked furiously, finally breaking his stoicism by raising his voice.

Milo whimpered in fear, beginning viscerally to fear for his life. His breathing became shorter and faster, his body preparing itself to face what inevitably awaited him. He insisted desperately.

“G-Grrsh... Grrrsh...!”

Lord Karneth bared his teeth slightly and leaned further toward him, the table creaking beneath his weight.

“Who do you think you’re impressing with your growling? Grshzvan! It’s pronounced in a single breath! You do not stop halfway when unsheathing a blade!”

Knowing himself to be at the center of his anger made the hairs on his arms stand up, and tears began filling his eyes. His breathing turned into erratic panting and his throat suddenly felt as though needles were piercing through it.

“I-I’m sorry!” he broke, curling in on himself and giving in to panic. “Greche... Grshzevv... zvan!”

The demigod inhaled through his nose with a furious grimace, and Milo immediately shut his eyes tightly, resigned at last to suffer the consequences of his failures.

But after several seconds, no blow came.

He heard the monster sigh in exasperation, then heavily slump back into his seat. The young man remained motionless, keeping his eyes closed, still waiting to be physically struck in some way.

But still nothing. So he cautiously dared reopen one eye.

The Astartes had his own eyes closed. One of his hands partially covered his face, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as though trying to restrain its furrows. He had leaned back as well, sprawling in his chair in a careless posture.

No explosion of violence, only the ship’s ambient silence.

Milo gradually felt emptied of his fear, not out of relief at not being hurt, but because all the tension saturating the room had suddenly fallen away. His master remained slouched in his seat without even looking at him anymore. What he radiated no longer resembled anger, but fatigue. As though the giant was… frustrated.

Disappointed.

That realization tightened his throat in an unexpected, diffuse, and humiliating way: shame. The shame of remaining forever that inferior thing ignored aboard the ship, incapable of producing even a sound worthy of being listened to by him. The danger no longer seemed physical to him, and Milo suddenly feared far less being punished by the Astartes than seeing him give up on teaching him Nostraman.

He stared at the page where those two cursed words blocked the path between him and his goal. He had been monstrously lucky that his lord had yielded to his request. He could not let him decide he was not worth the effort and close that notebook. He wanted to succeed. He had to succeed!

A shred of determination made him place his hands on the table, then, almost defiantly, he straightened up and sent all the pain torturing his throat to hell, forcing the sound from his stomach.

“GRSHZVAN SVELTH!!!”

The words burst out louder than he had expected. They echoed through the room, leaving behind a deafening silence, and the Astartes reopened his eyes between his fingers to stare at him. It was only beneath that ink-black gaze that Milo widened his own eyes and realized he had just raised his voice at a Night Lord.

He felt his blood freeze in his veins, and sat back down in his chair, horror-stricken, slapping his hands over his mouth. He tried to articulate something, to dissolve into apologies, to beg him not to rip out his tongue and teeth for daring such an affront.

“I-I...!”

But no coherent sound dared cross his lips anymore for fear of worsening his situation.

The Astartes continued staring at him intensely. Then, almost imperceptibly… one corner of his mouth lifted.

“At last, some conviction… Again.”

His voice had regained its calm timbre. Milo at first remained frozen in disbelief, struggling to believe that the mine he had just stepped on had not exploded.

“G-Grshzvan svelth!” he finally dared repeat, forcing more from his stomach than from his painful throat.

The pronunciation was still imperfect, but the consonants flowed more naturally. The demigod lightly exhaled through his nose, then settled back into his seat with dignity, taking up his pencil again as though the previous tension had only been a minor interruption. Milo, meanwhile, was still absorbing the shock of having nearly shouted in the face of one of the Masters without having his own flayed.

His lord resumed writing in the notebook.

“Gothic is a language spoken the way one pulls the trigger of an automatic weapon and empties a magazine: monotonous, repetitive, hissing, and without nuance...”

His hand moved down the page line after line, gradually tracing a column of words.

“Nostraman is a blade unsheathed and sliding through the air, rustling, then cutting sharply like lightning. You must put tone and force into it when necessary.”

“Y-Yes, Master Karneth...” the young man agreed mechanically, still incredulous.

The giant tore the sheet from the notebook with a sharp motion, and the sound made Milo jump, finally pulling him from his stupor. With the tips of his fingers, he slid the sheet across the table toward him, where Milo could make out around twenty words.

“These words contain all the most complex sounds and structures of Nostraman. What I taught you today is enough to know how to pronounce them. We will continue when you have mastered them.”

He stared at the words, and his brain quite literally refused to process the succession of consonants that seemed to have no business being crammed together like that. Wanting to make sense of all this, he hesitated to ask for their translation… But he judged that he had already pushed his luck and audacity far enough. Evidently the lesson was over, and the demigod was assigning him exercises while already mentioning the next lesson. So Milo timidly left his seat, clutching both the sheet and his ration tightly against himself before bowing humbly.

It was the first time that gesture was not performed out of submission, but out of sincere gratitude. Gratitude that he had accepted, gratitude that he had shown patience, and gratitude for his fairness toward him.

“Thank you infinitely, my lord...”

He straightened up and saw the Astartes staring at him, eyes slightly narrowed, as though suspiciously analyzing something in his posture... Then he simply let out a grunt before closing the notebook and resuming his meal where he had left off.

Milo hurried off to take refuge in his room. He turned on the light and hastened to eat, not motivated in the slightest by hunger, but by the need to immerse himself again in his Nostraman lesson as quickly as possible. He was exhausted but had no intention of sleeping, driven by the urgency of mastering the pronunciations of the words on that list as quickly as he could.

Despite the protests of his throat, the young man began reciting them like a new litany, drawing the force from his abdomen to make them emerge. He shivered as he heard himself pronounce them, as though he were invoking some ancient forbidden magic.

_____________________________________

Karneth finished his meal in the restored silence of the lounge. Almost restored. His inhuman senses could still faintly pick up Milo’s voice from the maintenance room despite the soundproofing of the walls. He was training instead of sleeping.

He had fought against each of his mistakes and frustrating hesitations, each urge to carve Nostraman phonetic rules into the flesh of his back, each urge to cut short the absurdity of placing such precious knowledge in the hands of this mortal… One of the last remaining cultural remnants of his dead world.

But above all, he was uncomfortably fighting against psychological mechanisms burned into his Astartes mind, structured to optimize every second, every movement, every spoken word… They were not relevant here. There was no urgent need for efficiency. Nothing would be better if Milo learned faster, his mistakes compromised neither the ship nor his authority as master. Humans were simply slower… and for once, that slowness was useful to him.

He listened distractedly as Milo struggled to pronounce a word from his list and started over again and again. With the distance gained from the past two hours, he now realized with a certain perplexity that he had not entirely hated that moment with him. It had been terribly frustrating to watch him fail continuously… but not for the reasons he would have expected. Not the irritation of a human wasting his time, but the thought that he simply might not succeed. That he might lose this respite that the lesson had offered him, this escape from his morose thoughts.

There had been something strangely calming about returning to the basics of Nostraman, to its foundations, to that ancient knowledge… predating even his life as a Night Lord.

As if, for a few hours, he had touched a forgotten fragment of himself.

That thought unsettled him. This feeling had already brushed him that morning, while mending the shoulder of his robe. A discreet but genuine satisfaction, a comfort drawn from something so small, so unglorious, so disconnected from what he was… He struggled to identify its origin. Was it simply the contentment of repairing an object and improving it? The same way he was improving Milo by teaching him Nostraman?

Do other Astartes feel this when training their serfs? he wondered, having never had any.

The idea seemed absurd. Night Lords had no need for serfs except to perform useful, essential tasks. No one aboard the barge would burden themselves with teaching a mortal for personal satisfaction or entertainment, free time was too rare a resource to waste like that. In his case, it was merely a pastime, with the eventual comfort of once again being able to speak his native tongue with someone… and the possibility of striking or punishing Milo to force improvement contributed nothing to that distraction. Especially since he was clearly making efforts despite his limits.

The little human had been quite bold to make such a request, even as his throat still bore the marks of his recent transgression… and even as his very presence terrified him. Yet he appreciated that he had found the courage to do so.

“Grshzvan svelth!” he heard echo faintly in the distance.

An amused grin crossed his face.

He was looking forward to the moment when Milo would realize that these words were all particularly vivid Nostraman insults.

_____________________________________

Notes This fic is essentially an exercise to improve my writing, and I would be very grateful for your thoughts and feelings on the following topics:

Do I linger too much on obvious details? Are the descriptions too long or unnecessary? Do you notice any elements introduced that might have an important impact later on? What do you find boring? What do you find enjoyable? What are your theories for what will happen next?