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Lamina Imperator

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Hail brothers. Amongst a few other things, ive fell back into working on my Templars. This has filled me with the urge to get a little story about our favourite knights in space down on paper. This is a little taster i churned out today, a tad naff but its a prologue to the main story i'm working out. Comments welcome as always.

 

PROLOGUE:

A PARTING

 

 

Amongst the bones of a world, a knight was being led on his final journey. A procession of warriors stepped together with terrible precision as they hefted a great silver catafalque on their shoulders. Citizens of the ruined city fell from the warrior's path, whispering conspiratorially amongst themselves, clutching their tattered robes about their bodies and hiding amongst the shattered remnants of hab blocks.

A few of the more daring wandered over to the procession, shaking hands laying crude silver trinkets of faith onto the aloft body. One reached out with palsied hands towards the parchment, chained to the fallen warrior's armour, until a harsh growl from the helm of one of the bier bearers deterred him and he fell back, shaking.

“Disgusting” Growled the knight, his vox clicking as he spoke internally to his brothers.

“Patience brother Reynald,” replied the warrior behind him “they wish to show their devotion to their champion.”

“They are not worthy Tancred” Reynald voxed, his jaw clenched beneath his helm.

“They have bled for this world as much as we have brother. Allow them this.”

The knight simply clicked his vox once in acknowledgement, not wishing to pursue the point further. Tancred always had something of a humanist streak in him. That rankled the younger warrior. It was...unbecoming of a knight of Dorn to concern himself with the affairs of mortals. He let out a quiet sigh of disgust into his helmet grille, keeping his head aloft, staring off into the distance.

 

The six Astartes stepped unerringly through the mass of twisted metal and shattered rockcrete that lined the roads, their heads always held up right and proud, as if remaining defiant in the face of some far off, unseen foe. Behind them, a ragged procession of citizens began to fall in to step, muttering soft prayers to the emperor as they kept a respectful and fearful distance from the silent knights in their midst.

Over head, a group of servo skulls hovered above the Black Templars, devotional scrolls and parchments hymnals clutched in chrome mandibles. Bobbing on some unseen current, the skulls slowly descended, draping the scrolls on the knight's bier.

 

Adhelard watched the skulls as they departed, flitting through the throng and heading over the broken spine of a hab block. He watched them until they were little more than barely distinguishable specks on the horizon and only when he was certain that he could see them no more, did he allow his eyes to look back upon his master's body. The knight was bareheaded, the helm laying at his feet. His pitted and scarred face was framed by a short shock of silver hair cut close to the scalp. Despite the terrifying bulk of the man, the knight could be said to look almost serene in death. To see his teacher laying so unmoving, so vulnerable. It was an anathema to everything Lanferelle had been in his life. Adhelard closed his eyes against the blackened and broken world before him and remembered his master as he had been in battle, when time had seemed to slow down to a singular point as Lanferelle parted his foes- a quicksilver force of holy rage.

For someone who had left the trappings of their mortal birth behind, it was the one thing the neophyte could still truly call beautiful.

 

Now he found himself lost amidst a rolling turmoil of black rage that seethed and churned inside his head. He railed against his master's passing, not because he mourned Lanferelle's death. The knight had fallen amongst a thicket of enemy blades, his sword leaping and flashing down to rend and tear flesh even as the foe had borne him down with over whelming numbers. With his dying breath he had taken dozens of the enemy with him. It was a sublime end, a death to be celebrated and everything a Templar aspired to.

 

No, Adhelard raged for the many lessons that Lanferelle had left untaught in the wake of his passing. Unconsciously, the young warrior found his fingers tighten around the hilt of his combat blade, kneading the grip as he recalled the dozens of worlds he had trodden with his master.

He unsheathed the blade, the pale sunlight catching on the fractal steel edge. He turned the blade over in his hand, carving a slow figure of eight before him, remembering lessons learned in the shadow of ceramite clad knights.

A lifetime ago on the burned remnants of some distant moon, Lanferelle had once told Adhelard of the training regimes of other Astartes chapters, their predisposition towards practise drills and the cold, bloodless environs of logic cages and training servitors. The neophyte had looked askance at the knight as he tried to fathom the logic of such sterile conditions.

“I don't understand.” He had said after a while. Lanferelle had looked down upon him, flashing a wry smile, his patrician features covered with xenos blood.

“I confess that after centuries of warfare I still cannot find the same appeal in these....safe methods as our distant cousins.”

“Always remember,” He had continued, striding over the gutted skeleton of a smouldering greenskin vehicle, his sword, flicking out, spilling the innards of his foe onto the dusty roadway. “No lessons are remembered more keenly than those that are taught in the fires of battle.” He swept his blade deftly beneath the clumsy strike of an Ork warrior, batting the crude iron weapon aside with contempt, before shearing the Xenos' scalp with a backhanded strike. “We are Black Templars,” He continued, flicking alien brain matter from the blade with mild disgust. “We do not concern ourselves with the preamble of war like those of other chapters. We alone have taken it upon ourselves to continue the duty of the Legiones Astartes, to take the light and truth of the Holy Emperor to the blackest corners of the galaxy.”

 

Lanferelle turned to Adhelard and the neophyte had found himself frozen as he caught the zealous light that shone in his master's eye. He saw the purpose and the passion upon the knight's face and he hungered for the same enlightenment.

“That is why our lessons are always taught upon the battlefield, amidst the screams and the mud and the vitae. We are knights in his name and the alien and the ignorant and the corrupt are too numerous for us to ever rest. Our swords must always be slick with the blood of our foe, to fall into laxity is the greatest shame imaginable.”

 

The acrid stench of smoke assaulted his senses, drawing him out of his reverie. He opened his eyes and watched as his teacher was carried towards the looming white splendour of the Basilica.

A wondrous structure of pearlescent stone, the building stood proud amongst the drab uniform hab blocks, it's towering frame slopping like the ribcage of some ancient colossus.

The Basilica of St Jermaine Was a a remnant of the first colonists of Styx. Though the planet was now a mass of grey industrial complexes and munitions silos, the Basilica had remained a glorious monument to imperial faith, bringing light to the pall of manufactorum smog that blighted the planet.

 

Chaos cult's seeded within the planetary work force had flourished in an uprising that saw the planet consumed in war. Those citizens still loyal to the Imperium had sent out an astropathic distress call which, by the Emperor's providence had been answered by the knights of Dorn- The Black Templars.

As the black knights fell upon the cultists with bolter and blade, their zeal inspired the loyal workers to rise up and after a month of hard fighting, Styx was cleansed.

Amongst the ruins of Praxis, the capital of Styx's most Northern continent, the Basilica had remained largely undamaged by the heavy fighting, though the hab blocks around it lay broken and gutted by fire. This was taken as a sign of the Emperor's favour and in the wake of the fighting, Reclusiarch Bram had bidden the body of the only Templar casualty- Brother Lanferelle, be carried to the Basillica and lain in state for a while, to honour the sacrifice made for the people of Styx.

 

Adhelard trailed behind the procession as they carried the bier to the centre of the nave. The aisle vaulting loomed above the knights, engraved with glorious carvings of the Emperor casting aside many headed beasts said to represent the sin of mankind that led to the devastation of Old Night. A spear wreathed in lambent flame was grasped in his hand as the lord of mankind plunged it into the breast of a towering hydra. Adhelard lowered his head respectfully, feeling the eyes of the immortal Emperor staring down upon him from the towering arches.

 

At the Nave's centre, a carved stone platform sat, waiting for the body of the fallen champion. The Templars carried Lanferelle to it, solemnly lowering the champion before parting to either side of the bier, stepping backwards in perfect, silent lockstep. The basilica was still, completely soundless, save for the occasional gentle sobs of the citizenry that filled the cavernous aisles.

The knights of Dorn stood like silent Obsidian guardians, filling the nave with their terrible mass. Slowly, the eyes of every Templar in the Basillica fell upon the young neophyte in their midst.

Adhelard exhaled, the weight of import on his shoulders feeling like a millstone around his neck. He took a step forward towards the bier, unsheathing the burden wrapped in cloth that hung against his back. From beneath the bundle of old surplice, he pulled out Lanferelle's chainsword. The weapon had been cleaned of the heretic blood that had coated it and the Crusade's Techmarine- Brother Domme had anointed the weapon with Thrice blessed oils and unguents to appease the machine spirit within the blade's motors.

The toothed blade remained as torn and shattered as it had when it had been retrieved from the field of battle, Reclusiarch Bram forbidding the Crusade artificers from repairing the teeth, claiming that the weapon had been shattered, rending the flesh of the unclean and that it was a fitting tribute to Lanferelle's end.

 

With the eyes of his brothers upon him, Adhelard stepped forward, the blade held out before him as he reverently placed it onto the fallen Templar's breast. With the deed done, he took a step back, bowing solemnly.

“Goodbye teacher, may the Emperor's light find you well.”

The heavy silence of the basilica was broken as the cacophonous, sibilant din of a hundred swords being drawn from scabbards echoed among the tall arches. The Templar's held their blades close to their bodies as the Reclusiarch stepped out in front of the Bier, his eagle headed crozius held aloft.

 

Though the citizens of Styx wept for their fallen champion, there was no sorrow from the knights. Their brother had died an enviable death, the blades of the enemy upon him and his sword arm strong and fell unto the end.

 

The chaplain's weapon hissed, incense from a brazier built into the pommel, slowly wreathing the knights. His hawkish features tightened into a mocking sneer, ancient scar tissue, pulling the skin of his face taut as he began to recite the litany of devotion.

“Where there is uncertainty, I shall bring light. Where there is doubt, I shall sow faith.”

Amongst his fellow neophytes now, Adhelard, solemnly intoned the Reclusiarch's words along with his brethren.

“Where there is shame, I shall point atonement. Where there is rage, I shall show it's course.”

He looked over once more to his teacher's body, the incense looking for all the world like the spirits of the dead coming to claim him.

“My word in the soul shall be as my bolter in the field.”

 

The chaplain's words hung heavy In the air, silence falling on the congregation.

 

A crashing of a hundred blades into a hundred breastplates broke the silence, startling the humans as the knights intoned a final prayer in a singular, growl of devotion.

 

“AVE IMPERATOR!”.

 

#

 

Back in the shattered hub of Praxis, Adhelard found himself consumed again with doubt. With Lanferelle's passing, he was without a tutor and unable to continue his training in the ways of a knight of Dorn. He could ask for Reclusiarch Bram to petition the Marshal on his behalf but he knew enough that he was aware of the staggering bureaucratic demands that the command of a crusade entailed and it was not unheard of for mentorless neophytes to wait for years before another initiate was able to continue their tutelage. The thought of such inactivity galled him.

Kneeling in the broken remains of a hab block, Adhelard whispered a soft prayer to the lord of mankind that that would not be his fate.

 

“Rise Neophyte.”

 

The voice was booming, enthralling in it's rumbling tonal quality. It was a voice that had filled entire churches, carried across sweeping devotional decks upon Astartes Battle barges and carried itself above the relentless din of a thousand battles.

Rising from the dust of a wounded world, Adhelard turned and faced Reclusiarch Bram.

“Reclusiarch.”

 

“You are without a teacher.” The statement came as a harsh bark from the vox grille of Bram's helmet. The chaplain had come to him girded for battle and the death skull on his helm leered with unchecked menace at the neophyte.

Adhelard nodded, ashamed that he could not meet the skull's gaze.

If the chaplain noticed, he said nothing. He clambered deftly on top of a jutted spar of plasteel, part of the framework of the worker's habs that littered this district. He stared into the distance where small columns of smoke could be seen rising.

 

“We go south. Small pockets of cultists remain and it is the Marshal's wisdom that decrees we shall not leave this planet's surface until the taint of the ruinous powers is expunged permanently.”

 

Turning back the neophyte, Bram motioned with his crozius at the citizens of Praxis as they filed out of the Basilica.

“They don't understand how blessed they are.” Bram continued.

“We have set entire worlds to the flame for signs of corruption half this severe.”

Adhelard watched as the “Blessed” mortals picked their way, spluttering through the smoke, towards the burned out skeletons of their homes.

“Lanferelle was a knight of great purpose. As a warrior and a teacher he shall be missed. We can only hope you paid heed to his teachings neophyte.”

 

Adhelard nodded, forcing his head up to meet the chaplain's gaze.

“You are not ready.” Bram spoke without malice and yet his voice delivered the words with the force of a mattock into Adhelard's chest.

“Your master was a superlative warrior. I can sense the doubt that plagues you Adhelard and it has no place within a Templar.”

“He taught me well.” It was all that the neophyte could manage, despite knowing he should protest. He was ready for his initiation, his blood sang for it!

“We must be of purpose, we must be steel, we must be ruin. Our mission is sacrosanct and to let emotion colour that duty would be our ruin. You may rise to be a great knight one day Adhelard, but it is not yet.”

 

The Reclusiarch strode away, leaving Adhelard with his head downcast. As he headed for a waiting Thunderhawk, the Reclusiarch halted, turning back to the neophyte, his voice carrying above the howl of the gunship's engines.

“After morning devotional's you will report to Brother Reynald to continue your tutelage.”

Rising from his knees once more, Adhelard acknowledged the Recluisarch with a nod.

“And perhaps,” Bram added “We may be able to instil some humility into young Reynald aswell.”

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Second installment here folks. Moving away from the knights for a chapter but fear not as it's always nice to get to know our enemies a bit better.

 

 

CHAPTER ONE:

 

HARRAN

 

The Chamberlain was woken at midday. The young local boy his party had hired as a runner and messenger, bounded into his tent, speaking excitedly and at length in the high pitched tongue of his people.

The Chamberlain sat up with a grimace and stared distastefully at the open flap of his tent, as the acrid desert wind blew a covering of sand on to his bedroll. The boy continued to babble, Sweat ran down his olive coloured skin in rivulets and his dark hair hung lank over his face. He panted slightly, worn by the sudden sprint through the searing midday heat. The chamberlain halted his excited chatter with an out stretched hand and the boy fell silent, waiting patiently as the man reached for a fine pair of wire spectacles, placing them upon his thin, aquiline face.

 

He nodded to the boy who started up in his tongue once more. A withering glare over the delicate lenses stalled him in his tracks and the boy switched into his clumsy approximation of Low Gothic, making a hasty gesture of apology.

 

“Many apologies Sahib. The men, they dig. They say they have found something, a....” He struggled as he dug into his limited vocabulary to no avail. “Quabbat”

 

“A tomb.” The Chamberlain corrected him.

 

“Yes, yes!” The boy answered excitedly, his eyes wide.

 

The Chamberlain reached for his robes, climbing out of his bedroll with a grunt of effort. He was no longer a young man, his youthful years over a century behind him and he felt everyone of the years working their way into his bones this day. The sweat collected uncomfortably at the small of his liver spotted back and he grimaced as the Sal'shytha material of his garments clung to his body.

 

“Show me.”

 

#

The sand cutter was an appalling ride. It jarred the Chamberlain's bones with every tremor of it's bodywork as the wide bellied vehicle pitched and dived over the towering sand dunes. The Hal`nyra head scarf was wrapped tight around his head as were the sand goggles that saved his eyes from being shredded by the planet's vigorous and frequent sandstorms.

Harran itself was a largely desolate planet, a blasted wasteland of endless desert broken only by the occasional remains of the planet's last great civilisation. The natives referred to the Abbid Juntira, that loosely translated into Low Gothic as “The Alchemist's cleansing.”

 

Slipping a palsied claw under his robe, the Chamberlain retrieved a data slate- slightly scoured by the planet's aggressive climate, and ran up a fragmented stream of data concerning the local belief system. Nominally Harran was of Imperial denomination, to the wider framework of the Imperium, it existed only on myriad bureaucratic slates and very irregularly did the servants of the Ecclesiarchy descend onto it's surface. And so like a weed steadily pushing it's way through a crack in a road, the old way's of Harran and begun to re-emerge.

This had been a process of slow centuries, gone unnoticed by the rest of the Imperium because as an entity- Harran was irrelevant. A desiccated husk of a world, only the mineral wealth buried at it's centre granted it any worth to the empire at large. So whilst the core of the planet seethed with countless labyrinthine tunnels and excavation sites, it's surface remained a mass grave to history.

 

The core of the old beliefs centred around a figure called Ibn Abbid, The great alchemist. A deity linked to the first settlement of the planet, it was said that the Alchemist could transmute matter into any form it willed and that at the birth of Harran's first civilisation, Ibn Abbid had held the planet within a pocket dimension of his own making. The Alchemist Toyed with the forms of the inhabitants and their surroundings, moulding and burning down entire continents with but a thought, until settling on the form of the first civilisation.

 

The first inhabitants were gone. Their world empire all but wiped in a single cataclysmic event that left only a small pocket of life. Harran legend has it that Ibn Abbid had grown bored of his creations and had chosen to sweep them away in order to cleanse the pallet.

 

Something of the old ways had remained with the people of Harran and the legends of Ibn Abbid still permeated the planet's civilisation. The elders spoke of remnants of the alchemist's teachings that lay buried amongst the bones of the old cities, out in Harran's endless desert. A few coins spent at the local markets had managed to sift through some of the more unlikely rumours and he had yielded information concerning a hall of worship that lay buried beneath the sands somewhere along the planet's western continent. Local legend had it that the ancient inhabitants had crafted hundreds of pieces of artwork in tribute to the great Alchemist and that as a sign of his favour, Ibn Abbid had instilled his favourite piece with a scintilla of his power.

 

The locals were wary of this outsider who seemed to be so versed in the history of their ancients. Perhaps they feared he was an Inquisitorial agent, sent to Harran to uncover signs of heretical worship? Fortunately, his master's resources were significant and The Chamberlain was able to allay the fears of the elders with liberal applications of currency. Even when the vast dig site he had commissioned had resulted in the deaths of dozens of local inhabitants, The Chamberlain found that a quick show of wealth was usually sufficient to avoid conflict.

 

And finally, after four months of exile on this acrid, sand blasted hole- the dig had yielded results. Slipping the data slate back inside his robes, The Chamberlain found his fingers drumming with nervous anticipation as the cutter crested a dune, revealing the vast dig site ahead of him.

 

The desert wind carried the stink of dozens of petrochem engines, bulky industrial earth movers that loomed over an area of excavated sand the size of a city block. Their massive bucket loaders shifted gargantuan amounts of the desert around the dig site as the teeming locals below worked away, erecting a hasty plasteel framework of walkways that descended down into the vast excavation.

 

The driver weaved the sand cutter in between the gargantuan earth movers, easing the manta ray shaped vehicle past the workers that now crowded the edge of the dig site. He cut the engine, the cutter descending gently as the suspensor field under it's belly gently winked out. Vaulting over the side of the vehicle, the driver pulled his headress about his face and held a hand out to help the Chamberlain from his seat.

The older man waved him off impatiently, climbing bent backed, from the cutter, his footing slipping slightly under the loose undulating sand. Grimacing against the wind that let sand slip into his robes, the Chamberlain made his way steadily to the edge of the pit.

 

 

One of the excavators, his hair lank and bathed in sweat, bounded up the crude walkway. He stared up at the elder man, wild eyed, his pupils darting behind a dust caked face.

“Come Sahib!” He beckoned with a frantic arm.

Hitching the hem of his robes, The Chamberlain began to descend the walkway after the man.

 

The excavation site itself was a gargantuan rent in the desert. An area the size of a city block had been pulled away, leaving a gaping chasm in the ground. The earth movers had to maintain a constant pace, their bucket loaders fighting back the desert as the sand sought to spill back into the dig site. Around the edge of the pit, local labourers bolstered the walls of the dig with plasteel struts. Descending into the belly of the chasm, a series of walkways, hammered into the wall of the pit, led down into dark.

 

The Labourer fished into a hide pouch about his waist and passed a glow globe to the Chamberlain. The elder man took the proffered globe, stroking his fingers slowly over it's surface, activating it and letting the sphere attain it's full brightness before clutching it outwards before him.

The walkways were unsettlingly unsteady underfoot, bouncing and jarring with every footfall, sending flakes of sand dropping from the braces in the wall. Despite all this, the labourer bounded nimbly down the walkways, darting ahead into the darkness. His excited pace threatened to take him out of sight and so the Chamberlain gave a curt hiss, curtailing the man's progress.

 

“Please my friend I am... Senes. Old.” The Chamberlain explained flashing the man a smile he did not entirely believe in. He was hot, his entire frame ached and he just wished for the months of expectancy and waiting to be over. They descended at a more measured pace, the darkness slowing wrapping itself around them much like the Sal'shytha robes around their body. The globes offered scant illumination as their path took them deeper away from the sun, barely illuminating the walkway ahead of them. The Chamberlain cocked an inquisitive eyebrow as he fancied he saw the globe's light gutter for a moment.

 

After some time, they descended into light. The bottom of the excavation had been more thoroughly bolstered with portable lumen arrays set up at intervals along the pit floor. Stepping off the walkway, The Chamberlain removed his wire framed spectacles, brushing sand from the lenses before perching them back on his nose.

Staring upwards, he traced his eyes along the walls of the excavation, noting the regular lines and divides in the stone. As he scanned across the chamber, he caught a glimpse of a carven window. With a start, he realised that what he had first mistaken for bedrock in the earth was actually the remnants of some ancient building.

“Come Sahib.” The Labourer broke his reverie, motioning for him to follow. They passed a team of workers chipping away at a passage way, steadily carving the rock away from the fascia of the uncovered building. Lumen strips had been set into the rock and the pale glow revealed that they were passing beneath an archway.

“Be careful Sahib, the ground is unstable.” The labourer warned as they descended down a set of steps set into the bedrock, a crude plasteel fix, evidently placed there in lieu of the building's long crumbled staircase.

 

At the bottom of the stairs, they found themselves in a small chamber. The air was ancient and musty, the dust scratching at The Chamberlain's throat and he bent double, a series of coughs racking his frame. The Labourer went to help him but the elder man waved him off, righting himself and wiping a fleck of spittle from his leaps.

“Lead on.” He wheezed.

At the rear of the chamber, an array of lumen strips were pointed towards what seemed to be a stone carved dais. A gaggle of workes chipped away at the stone around it, their picks shockingly loud in the cramped environ. Straining his eyes through the lenses of his glasses, the Chamberlain caught a glimpse of something sat into the rock.

“Stop them!” He called to the labourer.

 

With a few barked orders, the Harran worker made his colleagues drop their tools and they parted respectfully as the elderly man approached the dais.

“Ah yes...” He began, a thin smile forming on his lined face as he beheld the object on the dais. It was a tablet, no larger than the data slate hidden beneath his robes. Though covered by centuries and dust, he could still make out a few of the carven images- human figures dancing before a rolling maelstrom.

 

“Let me Sahibb.” The labourer reached into his belt, pulling out a small horse hair brush. He leant forward and began to gently clear the dust from the tablet.

As he worked, the Chamberlain noticed the tablet suddenly gleam. Dismissing it as the light from the lumen strips catching on the surface, he brought his eyes back to the emerging pattern.

 

It shone again. Undeniably this time. The tablet seemed to shimmer, quite apart from the lumen strips, it's surface seemed to run like oil as it glittered. with a myriad different hues of purples and blues and greens.

The silence of the chamber was shattered as the labourer began to scream.

 

He stumbled back from the tablet, the brush falling from his hands as the man spasmed, his voice ragged and wailing as he fell to the dusty ground. The Chamberlain backed slowly away from him as he writhed on the ground, the tendons in his neck pulled taut as the man was wracked with agony by some unseen force. A crowd of workers gathered around, their eyes wide with fear as they watched the labourer scream incoherently on the floor.

 

Then, quite without warning- he burst into flames.

 

The workers scattered, bolting for the chamber's exit as the labourer's prostrate form was wreathed in flames. Only the Chamberlain remained, his eyes locked on the burning man, as he watched with fascination as the flames changed hue, switching from red to blue to green and then finally dying out, leaving no sign of their passage, save for a small pile of ashes at the base of the dais.

The Chamberlain reached out for the tablet, running a palsied hand gently along it's surface, eliciting a cry of alarm from the fearful workers. They made the sign of the coiled serpent about their breast, warding themselves as they stepped over the remains of their colleague.

 

Turning towards them, the elderly man swept his hands into his pockets, retrieving the data slate. His crooked fingers worked frantically over the pad as he sounded out orders to the stunned workers.

“I want this piece and this piece only, to be excavated immediately. Once on the surface, I wish it to be couriered to my private shuttle as soon as possible. Is that understood?”

The workers nodded dumbly as the Chamberlain slipped the slate back into his robes and walked bent backed from the dais.

 

After long months, he felt a sense of elation. A thrill of excitement ran through his bones, dispelling the pains of age as he turned to address the workers once more.

“And do be careful.” He added with a predatory grin, pushing the toe of his sandals through the man's ashes for emphasis.

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