Random tat 40k prose
The Lady Raina is black, like a raven. The Lady Raina smiles less than she should, and laughs when she mocks.
The Lady Raina knows what lives in the dark.
That is what I know of the Lady Raina.
No. I know one more thing.
The Lady Raina is the love of my Liege. And when she is there, he is alive. When she is there, his world is better and he sees the brightness of the sun. When she is there, the screams of the dying no longer sound in his ears.
That is what matters really, isn’t it?
*
The Lady Raina is dead.
I am not sad. I did not expect to be. She did not love me and I did not love her. I owed her nothing. I do not owe her tears.
Still, I feel it.
I feel it in the silence on the ship. I feel it in the emptiness in the library. She used to walk there often. It was the only place our paths ever crossed.
I feel it when I look in her daughter’s eyes.
Istil said to me “I dreamed of her when I was a child,” and then walked away.
*
What do we owe the dead?
We owe them their stories. It would not do to write and let Lady Raina be forgotten. She has to stay at the heart of it all, or there is no meaning.
Do we owe them tears? Do they care if we cry? Do we owe them vengeance? Lady Raina is dead, no matter how many souls we send after her into the dark.
On Arkangel, my father never mourned the dead. That which is gone has no value. You cannot sell a corpse. There is no point buying a memory.
Istil still wept.
*
Lady Raina was the Consort of the Head of the Dynasty.
I sit in my cabin and look at the walls.
A Dynasty is not just ships and steel. A Dynasty is blood and honour.
Steel rusts. Ships fail. Blood lives. Honour endures.
There is a planet, a long long way from here, where the dead guard the borders of every tribal territory. When the tribe falls, their dead are exhumed and their bones cast out. Then the bones of the invaders are interred in their burial mounds.
Blood lives and honour endures when the flesh has turned to dust.
*
Our ship is becalmed in the warp.
This is not natural.
It keeps my Liege away from his Lady.
I presume this will mean nothing. Her funeral will wait. What kind of fool would insult an entire Dynasty by burning their Lady without her family?
(I presume a fool who has grown very weary of living. That must be a blood insult.)
I do not know who has stranded us in the warp either. Navigator…warp sorcerer…who can say?
I have suggested to my Liege that when we get out, we can kill them all. The God Emperor will know his own.
*
My dreams have been strange this last month. Once, I only remembered gardens and books. Now I remember blood and fear.
In training yesterday, I cut my Liege. Perhaps it is his grief which weakens him.
I don’t owe Lady Raina my tears. But I did owe her my honour. I did owe her my sword. And I owe my Dynasty everything.
We will return. My Liege and the Lady Istil will say their farewells, and that is a private matter. But as a Dynasty, we will honour our fallen. Either with pomp and ceremony, or with bloody vengeance absolute.
*
The Lady Raina is black, like a raven.
I have a raven’s feather. I found it living on a planet where the flowers did not grow. It fed on the dead and sang in the dark.
I laid the feather on the altar and lit a candle.
“I can’t honour you with words,” I said out loud. “Or with tears. You wouldn’t want them from me anyway, but I have a sword. The Dark Eldar will die. And everyone who has tried to dishonour your memory with this storm will die too.”
The candle burns bright as I walk away.