Blood of Asaheim

Chapter Five



The storm howled up from the Hunter’s Pass, bringing snow-swollen clouds boiling over the sheer passes. The mountain’s shoulders were lost in a haze of churning ice-white, piling up drifts against the old causeways and choking the ravines below.

Only at the summit of the Fang, high above the surrounding peaks of the Asaheim range, was the air clear. Thunderheads circled below the Valgard landing stages, angry and majestic, buffeting and snagging against the granite cliffs like breaking black-foamed waves.

Gunnlaugur studied the maelstrom remotely from the shelter of Vuokho’s cockpit, still waiting on the hangar apron.

‘A big one,’ he observed, watching the sweeps of brume and blizzard rotate on the auspex.

Jorundur, strapped in beside him, flicked the final launch controls on the console.

‘Fenris always gives a send-off,’ he said, frowning as he concentrated on the pre-launch sequence. ‘She never likes to see her children leave.’

Gunnlaugur grunted, and sat back in his seat. Valgard hangar 34-7 stretched away from them, perched right at the pinnacle of the mountain and open to the elements at the eastern end. A maze of red lights blinked on and off, half hidden behind the veils of gusting sleet that spilled in from the entrance. He could hear the grind of refuelling tankers running clear, and the shouts of kaerls as blast-hatches were slammed and locked.

‘Try not to kill us on exit, eh?’ came Olgeir’s cheerful voice over the comm. ‘Nice and smooth now, Old Dog, nice and smooth.’

The rest of the pack were in the aft crew hold, below the cockpit. Gunnlaugur could hear coarse laughter in the background. That improved his mood. For all their complaints about the mission, the pack were glad to be under way and doing something, and that was reassuring.

‘You want to fly, hálfvit?’ replied Jorundur, his voice sour. He activated the main drive system, and a throaty, sclerotic roar broke out from below.

Olgeir’s bellow of laughter made the comm-link crackle with feedback.

‘Any signal from the frigate?’ asked Gunnlaugur, shutting off the feed and watching the last of the ground crew scuttle out of view. The whole structure of the gunship shuddered as the engines gunned into their hammering rhythm. A messy tide of oil-speckled, fire-dotted smoke poured across the apron from the exhausts.

‘Not a thing,’ said Jorundur, easing power to the atmospheric retros. With a jerk, Vuokho lurched up from the rockcrete floor, buoyed by a raging cushion of flame and smog. ‘But it’ll be there. Believe me, no one else will have taken it.’

The lumen-bank mounted over the hangar entrance clicked off, and a whole series of indicators on the gunship’s control console went green. The cockpit’s head-up display flickered into life, overlaying a jumble of runes and vectors across the grimy plexiglass viewers. The whine from the main drives intensified, ready for the explosion of energy that would hurl them clear of the mountain.

‘It’s a decent ship,’ said Gunnlaugur, bracing for detonation. ‘Blackwing-class.’

‘That what they told you?’ Jorundur laughed. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s a heap of shit.’

Before Gunnlaugur could reply, Jorundur switched power to the main thrusters. Vuokho pounced forwards, blazing down the short hangar length before thundering clear of the mountainside. They cleared the cliff-face in a bloom of evaporating snow and engine backwash. Jorundur took the gunship out wide before banking hard, bringing the prow up and feeding more power to the main thrusters.

Gunnlaugur glanced down out of the port viewer. Below, already receding fast, was the pinnacle of the mountain, crusted with a dirty layer of sensoria towers, pockmarked hangar gates and defence batteries. The summit speared up through the moving layers of bruise-dark cloud, a lone bastion of rock and ice amid a continent’s-worth of seething squalls.

It looked besieged. It looked as if the rage of the planet had closed in on it, throttling it, sweeping up to grab it by the neck and snuff the life from it.

Gunnlaugur knew the history of the mountain, at least as it was related by the overlapping and semi-legendary saga-tellings of the fire halls. He knew that the Fang had been besieged more than once: by the forces of the great enemy, by armadas sent by the Ecclesiarchy in the civil wars of the past, by the Inquisition itself.

Sky Warriors still boasted of those battles, chanting them in ritual war-rites or hearing them declaimed by the hot light of burning torches. Gunnlaugur loved them. He’d learned the Bjornssaga from the skjalds, word by word. He knew other legends by heart, other songs, some of them older than the Fang itself, their origins lost in the violent years of humanity’s first stumbling amongst the stars.

He smiled as he remembered the stanzas. Even as the landscape dropped far below him, dwindling into a white haze, his mouth moved silently, speaking the eternal words soundlessly.

The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,

The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;

Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,

Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

Seeing the proud spike of the mountain below made his hearts swell. That place was eternal, founded by gods and guarded by savage angels, an inviolable citadel amid a darkening galaxy. It had stood for millennia before his birth and would do for millennia after. Other worlds might fall into corruption or ruin, but the Fang would remain unsullied forever.

That was what he had always believed. That was what he still believed.

So it ever has been, he breathed, watching the sweep of the planet’s atmosphere drop into a glistening curve. So it ever shall be.

Gunnlaugur knew that he could never have done what Ingvar had done. He was body and soul of the Fenryka: the most deadly, the most faithful, the most potent of the Allfather’s many servants. No others compared with the Wolves of Fenris. No life compared to that of the Sky Warriors, lived without compromise or quarter, thrust into the white-hot core of combat, gifted the mightiest weapons of humanity, charged with its ultimate defence where all others faltered.

Gunnlaugur respected his brothers in other Chapters. He had fought alongside many of them, and recognised their skill and devotion. He had fought with mortal men too, many of whom had fallen with honour.

But they were not Fenryka. They were not Russ’s sons.

Much do I know, and more can see.

The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free.

Gunnlaugur smiled. War was coming again. He was leaving the Fang, taking murder out across the sea of stars. Whatever else had transpired, that was good. It was the proper state of things.

‘Clearing the grid, vaerangi,’ said Jorundur, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engines. ‘We’ll get visual in a moment.’

Gunnlaugur looked out ahead. The milky grey of the sky had faded to black as the atmosphere thinned to nothing. Familiar constellations emerged into pure clarity, obstructed only by dozens of gunmetal-grey defence platforms in orbit above the planet. The closest of them was less than a kilometre away and hung massively in the void, the marker lights on its gun turrets blinking in the dark.

‘I don’t see the ship,’ said Gunnlaugur, scrutinising the view forwards as the platform slipped by beneath them.

‘I’ve got a fix,’ said Jorundur. ‘We’re not at full tilt yet. You know this thing shouldn’t even be flying?’

Gunnlaugur ignored the snipe. For as long as he’d known Jorundur he’d been complaining about the readiness of the ships he flew. He’d have found something to complain about if Russ himself had given him Hrafnkel to pilot.

‘There it is,’ announced Jorundur, gesturing to a glowing rune on the viewer display. ‘Take a look at the realview. How sharp are your eyes?’

Gunnlaugur narrowed them, scanning the velvet darkness. For a long time, he saw nothing. Hundreds of vessels, from tiny system runners to gigantic capital ships, occupied the Fenris system at any one time, but few lingered for long in the planet’s shadow.

Then he saw something glinting in the empty gloom like a sliver of alabaster. As Jorundur steered the Thunderhawk closer, details emerged.

It was small for a frigate, of an old design. The engine-level on it looked big; its weapons array looked small. Its shell was black, with old Rout images painted on the flanks in chipped yellow and grey. Its bridge was set lower than usual, surrounded by charred bulkheads. Faint plumes of gas vented from something jagged and reflective under its hull.

A single word, Undrider, had been etched along its side.

Gunnlaugur pursed his lips. ‘That’s the one?’

Jorundur nodded, bringing Vuokho to approach speed. As he did so, hangar doors on the receiving ship slid slowly open, spilling warm yellow light into the void.

‘I’m told it’s fast,’ Jorundur said.

Gunnlaugur felt deflated. ‘Right,’ he said.

Jorundur smiled in vindication.

Heap of shit.

‘Welcome aboard, lord,’ said the Undrider’s master.

Gunnlaugur grunted acknowledgement, barely looking at him.

The master, an experienced kaerl rivenmaster named Torek Bjargborn, used to the perfunctory ways of Sky Warriors, didn’t miss a beat.

‘We’re ready to go, on your order.’

Gunnlaugur’s eyes roved around the command chamber. The pack stood alongside him. None of them looked impressed.

It was a small, cramped place by the standards of interstellar craft. The captain’s throne was surrounded by concentric banks of cogitator stations. A dais had been raised behind it on which the pack had congregated. The floor was polished black marble. Cracks in it had been repaired with a dull grey aggregate.

Beyond and above the throne was a dome of bronze-lined crystal viewers, thick with tarnishing. As on all such ships, a low murmur of machine-clicks and human muttering provided a constant accompaniment to the grind of the sub-warp engines. An aroma of sacred oils rose from the deck, spiced with an undertone of human sweat and engine lubricant. Servitors, many hard-wired into consoles, clattered away at menial functions. There were more of them than usual, and fewer human crew.

‘What’s your complement status, master?’ asked Jorundur.

Bjargborn didn’t hesitate.

‘Twelve per cent down, lord. But we do have extra servitor provision. Demands on the fleet are heavy, I’m told.’

The look on Jorundur’s face said all that needed to be said.

Gunnlaugur turned to Váltyr. He gave a half-shrug.

‘It only has to get us there,’ he said.

‘Can it even do that?’ replied Váltyr.

Bjargborn had the stomach to look affronted.

‘It will, lords,’ he said. ‘And back again. It may not look much, but it’s voidworthy, and it’s fast.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that,’ said Gunnlaugur. ‘Very well, master, you have the order. Take us out to the jump-point. We’ll cross the veil as soon as we can.’

Bjargborn thumped his chest, bowed, and resumed his seat in the throne. Around him the machine chatter picked up in volume.

Jorundur’s nostrils flared. ‘This ship stinks.’

‘All ships stink,’ said Baldr.

‘Not like this one.’

‘I’ve known worse.’

Gunnlaugur ignored the conversation. He walked slowly away from the throne, under the observation dome, looking out and up at the stars. The constellation of the Hewer was visible, framed by bronze.

In a few hours that view would be gone, replaced by heavy lead shutters to blank out the madness of the empyrean. On arrival at Ras Shakeh it would be replaced by an alien set of constellations, each with its own name in another language.

The underpowered ship irritated him. It pricked at his pride, wearing at it like acid on metal.

We cannot be that short-handed. It is an insult.

He flexed his fingers, trying to let his annoyance flow out of him. It would be some time before he could exorcise the emotion through combat.

Hjortur would have railed against this. He would have howled the Fang down until he got what he wanted.

He closed his fists, squeezing hard against the inner membrane of his gauntlets.

He could be a poor judge. There will be a time to howl; this is not it.

Gunnlaugur felt the floor beneath him vibrate as the frigate began to power up. That did something to ease his mood, and he felt his clenched hands relax a little.

At last.

For what it was worth, for what little it meant to him, the mission was underway.

Ingvar didn’t sleep.

Warp travel always had the same effect. He felt nauseous, unquiet, unable to meditate, unable to think, unable to do much beyond prowl back and forth in his cell, his fangs bared.

A long time ago, back when he’d been a Blood Claw, he’d asked Hrald, the Wolf Priest, why passage through the empyrean affected him so badly, whether it spoke of some taint or flaw within him. The old hook-nosed warrior had looked deep into his eyes for some time before clapping him roughly on the shoulder.

‘Who knows?’ he’d said. ‘The warp – it’s Hel. You should hate it. Only worry if you come to like it.’

Ever since then he’d suffered in isolation, keeping himself locked away, breaking off contact with his brothers until the cramps and the dizziness faded.

Jocelyn had been scornful of that. The Dark Angel had been the one he’d had most trouble with in Onyx. The others had all rubbed along together well enough, but the pale-skinned son of Caliban had been difficult: proud, high-strung, close.

‘Why does it make you sick, Space Wolf?’ Jocelyn had asked him during a jump, his deep eyes suggestive of mockery as much as curiosity.

Distracted by his sickness, Ingvar had growled at him involuntarily. That alone had been a minor humiliation. His squad-brothers needed no extra inclination to think of him as bestial.

‘Why does it not make you sick, Dark Angel?’ he’d replied. ‘Unless your kin feel at home here. I’ve heard that said.’

Jocelyn had laughed that off, not deigning to show anger. Later, Ingvar regretted the exchange. Matters never came to head between them after that; equally, they never succeeded in breaking down that fog of early suspicion.

They became stereotypes of their Chapters with one another: the snarling Wolf, the haughty Angel. They should have done better, perhaps. It would have been nice to transcend expectations.

Ingvar reflected on that, alone in the practice cages of the Undrider, blade in hand, his stomach churning. He moved the sword back and forth, turning it under the harsh light of the lumens, finding some solace in the familiar rituals.

He wondered where Jocelyn was now. Perhaps he still served with the Deathwatch. Perhaps he was back on the Rock, rediscovering the ways of his old Chapter, just as he had done. Perhaps he was dead.

Ingvar would never know. He had no special access to information, no back-channel route to the Inquisition. They had severed things completely, rendering him as ignorant of future operations as he had been before they’d first come to Fenris to take him.

For all that, Ingvar found it hard to conceive of the universe without Jocelyn’s sardonic presence in it. The Angel would be fighting somewhere, just like the others. All of Onyx Squad would be, scattered to the six corners of the galaxy, alone again, trying to relearn old lives, trying to forget what they’d seen together.

‘Still don’t like it?’

Ingvar didn’t turn around. He’d not heard Váltyr enter the cage-room. That had been sloppy.

He completed the manoeuvre. His blade flickered in the semi-dark.

‘Nothing changes,’ he said, watching sidelong as Váltyr moved into his field of vision.

The blademaster wore his armour but went helmless, just as Ingvar did. Holdbítr was sheathed at his side.

‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ said Váltyr. ‘This ship creaks and moans like a skiff in a gale.’

Ingvar said nothing. He moved into another manoeuvre, one taught him by Leonides. It was a complicated, difficult switch, something that would seldom be used in real combat, mainly a means of training the mind to work with the blade. The Blood Angels had an interesting philosophy on close combat. As in all things, they valued the aesthetics of a gesture as much as its effect.

Váltyr watched him as he worked, peering through the wire of the training cage.

‘You’ve learned new tricks,’ he said. ‘That was not taught on Fenris.’

Ingvar let dausvjer fall away.

‘Too artful for the likes of us.’

Váltyr smiled. ‘Don’t let Gunnlaugur hear you say that,’ he said, reaching for the door to the cage. ‘May I?’

Ingvar nodded, though he had no appetite for it.

Why are you here? To prove you can still best me? Or worried I’ve moved beyond you?

Váltyr closed the metal door behind him and drew holdbítr. The blade was longer than Ingvar’s – straight, double-edged, rune-etched, spell-wound and with its edge honed down to a vanishing point that would hew a Rhino’s hide.

It was a fine weapon. It wasn’t dausvjer.

‘I was bored, in your absence,’ said Váltyr, swinging the blade around him lazily and taking up position. ‘Baldr can handle himself, but it’s all hammers and bolters with the others. I missed our sparring.’

Ingvar pulled his sword into guard. He hadn’t missed their sparring. He’d always been able to appreciate the skill of the blademaster, but had never loved going up against him. Váltyr’s fetish for the weapon was something that disturbed him. A blade was for use, not for worship.

‘Nothing too strenuous,’ Ingvar said, watching the tip of holdbítr warily. ‘Just loosening the arms.’

Váltyr nodded, and started to circle him. His lean face caught the shadows, and the pinned black in his golden eyes seemed to shrink into nothing.

‘Your stance has changed,’ he said.

‘Has it?’

When Váltyr moved, it was characteristically quick. He seemed to have the facility to leap from total immobility into action with nothing in between. It was a fearsome talent, made all the more lethal by his habitual coolness. Ingvar had seen Váltyr eviscerate opponents before they’d even known he was planning to move.

Holdbítr swooped, and dausvjer flickered up to meet it. The two lengths of metal clashed, sparking from one another.

Váltyr didn’t press the attack. He pulled away instantly, dancing back, resuming guard.

‘Who fought best?’ he asked. ‘Can you tell me names? Chapters?’

Ingvar kept his eyes fixed on Váltyr’s hands. Watching the blade was an error; the hands were where the attacks came from.

‘I learned that such things are meaningless,’ he said, shadowing carefully. ‘We all had our gifts.’

Váltyr looked disappointed. ‘Diplomatic,’ he said, before bursting into a flurry of attacks.

Ingvar met them all, and the swords spun around one another.

There was a kind of raw perfection there. They were alone. No one witnessed their skill, their neatly matched violence. In the past, Ingvar would have found that a waste; boastful Fenrisian souls liked the open display of prowess. After long years fighting in the shadows, locked in a quiet world of enforced secrecy, that urge had abated.

He wondered if Váltyr felt the same way. The blademaster had always celebrated purity. That might have been the key to him. Or perhaps it was something more. Perhaps Váltyr needed the reassurance of it all, the gentle, repeated reminders of his uniqueness.

Holdbítr jabbed down, held double-handed. Ingvar darted away from it, letting the accumulated power in the strike dissipate. Then he pressed in close, swinging dausvjer hard.

It didn’t trouble Váltyr. Nothing seemed to.

‘I don’t think you’re any faster,’ Váltyr observed, his voice as calm as ever as he worked.

‘Speed is not the only thing,’ said Ingvar.

Those words were Callimachus’s.

‘But it is, Gyrfalkon. Move fast enough, and the gods themselves will bleed.’

Váltyr demonstrated the point. He came back at Ingvar in a spinning, dazzling series of rotations and cuts.

For the first time, Ingvar struggled. He let the blows jar against his parries, attempting nothing more than defence, retreating back across the cage step by step, riding out the storm.

‘Blood of Russ,’ hissed Ingvar. ‘Does this have to–’

Váltyr silenced him with a vicious left-right swipe that nearly hurled dausjver from Ingvar’s grasp. Then he piled in again, mixing up standard thrusts with the chaotic, freeform bladework he loved.

‘Just keep up,’ he said. ‘If you can.’

Ingvar crashed against the wall of the cage, scraping along it as he fended off the incoming storm.

So that’s what this is, he thought. You are here to remind me of the order of the pack.

Ingvar shoved clear of the cage edge and moved back towards the centre. Keeping holdbítr at bay took up every last dram of his physical skill. Facing Váltyr’s expertise again was a chilling experience.

‘Show me something new, then,’ said Váltyr. ‘Unnerve me.’

That was when it happened. The moment was over in less than a heartbeat, less than a thought, but the clarity of it was breathtaking.

Ingvar saw the gap, opened by Váltyr’s enthusiasm. Leonides would have called it a half-breach or sotano, the sudden thrust upwards at a three-quarter angle, jutting past the guard and beneath the breastplate.

The twist to get there was excruciating, too narrow and confined for all but the sharpest hands. But he knew, in that instant, that he could do it. He knew he could stab the blade through, blooding him, throwing him off, ending the fight.

Ingvar had never beaten Váltyr before, not truly, not when he was concentrating.

So when he pulled back, the fact that he hadn’t made the move was a choice, not an omission. It was not a mistake. He had not erred. Another decision had been made.

Váltyr hammered away at him, his sword-edge smearing into a silver gauze of movement. Two, three more strikes, and Ingvar was rammed against the cage-edge again, his room for movement closed down.

Ingvar looked down. Holdbítr was pressed against his throat, lodged up to the skin.

Váltyr smiled. ‘Close, this time,’ he said. ‘You still know how to move.’

He let his blade fall away, leaving a thin line of blood against Ingvar’s flesh. Ingvar reached up to feel it, wincing.

Váltyr strolled away from him, swishing his sword idly through the air. Ingvar watched him go.

‘You missed something, Eversson,’ said Váltyr. ‘I made a mistake, right there at the end.’

Ingvar sheathed dausvjer.

‘Didn’t catch it,’ he said. ‘You were too fast. Again.’

Váltyr laughed. ‘We should do this more often. Perhaps you could teach me some of those Blood Angels tricks.’

Ingvar nodded. ‘Surely. When this is healed.’

Váltyr bowed, with a victor’s gratitude. ‘Perhaps I’ll sleep now,’ he said, opening the door to the cage and stepping through it. ‘You should do likewise.’

‘I’ll try.’

Ingvar watched Váltyr go. There was a slight spring in the sverdhjera’s step – barely perceptible, but definitely there.

Alone again, Ingvar drew his blade and looked at it for a moment. Then he stepped into guard and executed the sotano. Perfectly.

I could have done it. I could have halted him.

Callimachus came to mind again, soft-spoken, courteous, reserved.

‘Why didn’t you strike him?’ Ingvar had demanded, back when Jocelyn had initiated yet another challenge to the squad leader’s authority.

Callimachus had looked at him with a tolerant, cautious eye, as if weighing up whether a Wolf of Fenris could really be expected to understand such things.

‘I was taught this,’ he’d said. ‘Do not win every battle that you can, only those that you must. I did not wish to shame him.’

‘He’ll think you’re weak.’

‘What does that matter? I am not.’

Ingvar looked up, out towards the door that Váltyr had taken.

The decision had been the right one. Váltyr did not need another reason to resent his return; the inevitable tension between them would be eased by his victory.

For all that, frustration burned away within him. He was too much of a Fenrisian not to chafe against defeat, real or imagined. Before Onyx, he would never have willingly lost a fight.

Before Onyx, he would not have had the skill to avoid it.

These contradictions will grow, he thought. I will become a contradiction.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep. The hours would pass in wakefulness, made sharper by the knowledge of his concession to another’s pride.

He started to move again, forcing his aching muscles back into practice strikes, making them move faster than before, more savagely.

I could have done it.

The sword danced in the dark, tracing tighter arcs than ever, propelled by his sullen anger.

He imagined Váltyr’s face before him, not bright with triumph, but open-eyed with surprise.

I could have done it.

Baldr woke suddenly. His eyes snapped open, staring into perfect dark.

He lay on his back, breathing heavily. He could feel the layers of sweat on his skin, chilling rapidly. Both his hearts were working hard, beating out a tremulous pattern that he could hear as well as feel.

‘Lumen,’ he whispered.

A single globe flickered into life, casting a bleached glow over the narrow cell. It showed up pressed metal walls pocked with bands of rivets; a mesh floor; a low ceiling; a single bunk, worked out of a solid slab of stone.

Baldr didn’t move. He watched, he breathed, waiting for his body to recover.

He could still hear the echoes. The voices were very faint, hovering just on the edge of hearing, but they were still there. He hadn’t been able to understand them even in his dreams. Now they ran through his waking mind, cycling in an incessant babble of half-sensical syllables and phonemes.

He reached up for the warding pendant at his chest, only then remembering that he’d given it to Ingvar. His fingers closed over emptiness.

That may have been rash.

The grind of the engines hammered away far below, thrumming up the walls of the cell and making them shiver. The hum of it was maddening after a while unless you could tune it out, which he couldn’t.

That is surely the problem. I cannot tune them out. I must learn to ignore them.

Baldr knew he should have sought out Stormcaller while on Fenris. The problem had become too intrusive, too frequent, and he’d long since passed the point where guidance had become necessary.

He wasn’t even sure why he’d resisted it. Not fear, not of a straight-forward kind. Perhaps caution, or maybe an unwillingness to trouble the great ones on account of half-remembered nightmares and unidentifiable inklings.

It was worse when in the warp. Many minds had strange dreams while in the warp. Baldr knew that Ingvar suffered, and he had considered confiding in him. Years ago he would have done so without hesitation, but now, after so much time and space had come between them, things were not so easy.

He opened his mouth, taking a slow draught of cold air. His second heart stopped beating. His first returned to its normal rate.

He could hear the activity of the ship on the decks around, above and below him. Kaerls trudged down corridors, filtration units wheezed as they pushed recycled air around, slaved stabiliser systems ticked over gently, emitting occasional chittering bursts as the Undrider’s machine core instructed them to adjust some parameter or other.

It felt like being in the belly of a single giant organism.

He pulled himself up onto his elbows. No more sleep would come to him that night. His clammy hair fell in lank strands around his face. He lifted a hand up to his eyes, and saw sweat glistening on the flesh. He watched a line of moisture run down the curved surface of his palm, leaving a thin trail like rain on glass.

Things would be easier once out of the empyrean. Perhaps a stint of garrison work, leavened with manageable combat missions, would be beneficial. Dull, perhaps, but restorative.

Baldr let his hand fall back to the bunk. The sweat on his skin evaporated fast, chilling him. He didn’t reach for a cloth to wipe it clear – his body was more than capable of adjusting. In any case, the cold would do him good. It would introduce some clarity.

He lowered himself back down, resting his head again. His open eyes stared, defocused, up at the ceiling.

Dull, but restorative.

I should not hope for such things.

It would be easier once out of the empyrean.