The transport shuddered and shook around Cassandra as it cleared the shrine world's atmosphere, the rush of atmosphere on the hull dying off in a dull roar as the shrine world vanished behind them. Seated in the cargo bay, Cassandra kept her arms close around herself and tried to shake the feeling that she was on a ship bound for hell itself. This wasn't a prison ship, nor a refugee vessel, but a typical freelance transport between worlds. Though it did not feel like it at that moment.

The man in the long coat was seated next to her, slumped against the bulkhead and looking like he was enjoying his first rest in weeks. The dull glow of his false eye through his eyelid make something in Cassandra's mouth turn sour, and she wondered for the hundredth time why she had not simply kicked him off of the bridge when she could.

* * * *

She had reached him in a matter of seconds, pushing listless pedestrians out of her path like a madwoman. With the ring in her clenched fist, she aimed her hand at the man's head, prepared to tackle him and beat a confession out of him as to where he had purchased the lost ring, or why he would taunt her with such. Her affiliation with House Valorn was a guarded secret, one she protected for reasons she did not fully understand. The memories of that day brought a surge of guilt, shame, and tears she never wanted to draw again. For a passer on the street to so casually violate that secret was horrifying.

"You!"

That was all she was able to utter before he turned around. A brilliant blue light in a metal socket existed where his left eye should have been, and its sickly gaze stopped her in her tracks. He was not some streetwise lowlife as she assumed, but a towering brick of a man, with decades of war etched into his face. His presence caused her charge to falter, and he raised his hands as if to display a lack of weapons. Behind him was the dizzying plunge into the undercity, and part of Cassandra's brain screamed at her to kick him over as hard as she could. She stopped, and opened her hand, displaying the ring.

"How..."

The man raised a hand to silence her, and began to walk across the bridge, motioning for her to follow. She became acutely aware of at least four other pedestrians who had stopped and now stood around her in a loose circle. These four watched her with silent eyes, their frames malnourished and wiry, but possessed of a palpable eagerness for violence. She took a single step towards the man in the coat, who turned his head towards her, fixing her again with that artificial blue stare.

"Come, and I will tell you."

* * * *

His name was Lazarus, and he too remembered the fall of House Valorn.

He and his cronies, assembled behind them on an isolated balcony in a ruined habitat building, were tasked to pick through the wreckage after the ambush. He had found the ring then, and kept it rather than present it to his master, who he would not name directly. It didn't matter, Cassandra had heard many tales of the so-called Flayed Lord during her exile, though she tried desperately to avoid any mention of the terrible events that day. The fact that she stood in the company of the same heretics who had fought Valorn that day was abhorrent, but curiosity overwhelmed her. Lazarus was freely offering what had been denied to her since the Deathstrike missile claimed her family's house: answers.

Including what had become of the Knight wreckage once the city fell.

"Rebuilt?" She uttered in disbelief. "What do you mean? They all perished, I saw it."

Lazarus offered a heavy sigh. "Nothing truly dies. Things may change, be granted new forms or banished to the Immaterium, but they do not die." He shook his head and turned to look at her. "Some are kept alive when they should not be. Other things are reforged when they finally fall."

She waited a long moment before daring to speak again. This was heresy: the words he spoke, the fact that she listened, even the mere fact of his existence was an affront to the God-Emperor. But in the silence of the past years, her anger against the Legion had become a bitterness towards the Emperor who allowed her family to die. "The machine you spoke of. It..." She couldn't bring herself to give the words voice. Lazarus nodded in understanding, choosing his own words carefully as he spoke slowly.

"It was forged from the remains of the Valorn knights. Their spirits are still strong, and they seethe in its shell."

She wanted to scream, to retch, to lash out at him with her meager fists. Her fingers went white as they clutched the balcony railing, but she did not have the strength to strike him. Her anger died, she had none left to fuel her indignant rage. All of her anger had hemorrhaged away long ago, and only sadness and grief remained. She shivered, gritting her teeth and willing herself not to tear up in front of this heretic. His hand touched her shoulder, more as means to hold her upright than to comfort her, and she wanted to cringe away. But in the years since the house's fall, she had come to understand that she was utterly alone.

She had no one left. They had all been burned away, and those who lived had gone to rebuild while she went into hiding. Never would she be able to face Amanda or the others with that shame on her soul. No, that faint connection, be it to the depraved traitors or not, was the only connection she felt remained.

She straightened, biting back tears before they could flow.

"I...I want to see it. The Valorn machine."

For just a moment, in his organic eye, she thought she saw the flicker of emotion. Sympathy, fear, and sadness, like that of a parent sending their child to war. He did not want her to ask, he wanted her to walk away and vanish back into the crowds of parishioners and vagabonds. But she couldn't, she had defined the past years by the fall of the Valorn, and the promise of a relic of that fight was too much for her to allow to pass. That was why he had used it.

"I know."

* * * *

The cargo bay shuddered once more as the transport's engines pushed into a departure lane. Around her were a dozen or so of the Brothers, as Lazarus called them, but she saw them as his lean thugs. None of them spoke to her, but the four from the bridge kept staring in her direction. Their gaze did not speak of disgust, or lust, and it took her a moment to put a name to it: it was awe. And she did not understand why. She cleared her throat towards Lazarus, but her voice still came out smaller and weaker than she would have liked.

"How long will it take?"

Lazarus did not respond immediately, but the darkness of the cargo bay was interrupted by the blue flicker of his eye as it opened. Cassandra clarified, a bit louder but still unsure of herself. She had boarded with too few questions, an error that had been racing through her head for the last half hour. She did not know if they were bound for another world, a ship...or some Warp treachery that would shred her mind within moments.

"To get to the...ship? Are we going to a ship?"

Lazarus smiled softly, almost amused, closing his eyes and resting his head against the bulkhead. "It won't take long."

Immediately, a shrill siren erupted, and the sound of panic ran through the corridors. The deckplate shuddered as the transport's engines braked hard, trying to drive the clumsy ship out of its lane. A voice boomed through the ship, an eerily calm servitor declaring their potential doom in a low droning tone.

++WARP CONTACTS IMMINENT++ ++UNIDENTIFIED BATTLECRUISERS++ ++BRACE FOR EVASION++

As one, the Brothers rose to their feet, producing autopistols and makeshift weaponry as if from thin air. They said nothing aloud, some muttered profane chants under their breath and some tied white cloths around their mouths. They abandoned the appearance of tired passengers and became like feral animals to her eyes, stalking to the cargo bay door like hungry predators. Lazarus stood as well, stretching his arms as if the few minutes spent seated had been a complete night's rest.

"They're coming to us." He lifted a length of metal pipe, extending one end to Cassandra. "We're simply meeting them halfway."

From outside the cargo bay came the strangled scream of some hapless crewman as the Brothers shoved sharpened metal through his stomach, leaving the body to fall as they ran towards the bridge. Lazarus inclined his head towards the pipe, an inviting gesture, but in the blue glare of his false eye she saw the cold recognition that he might have to kill her with it if she did not come along. Not that it mattered. Cassandra knew she was beyond hope the moment she had first spoken to him on the street. She wrapped her fingers around the pipe, hauling herself to her feet and nodded once, firmly.

"Let's go."

* * * *

++PRIORITY DELTA DISTRESS++
++PRIORITY DELTA DISTRESS++
++SHRINE WORLD ALKATH UNDER ATTACK BY TRAITOR FORCES++
++REQUEST IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE++
++THEY BEAR THE MARK OF THE FLAYED LEGION++