# begining



## gothik (May 29, 2010)

this is the first tale of my own character Sgt Mikhail Trueze of the Night Lords and his crusade to find who he believes is the reincarnated Night Haunter. i would appreciate any and all comments. 


_Santarga IX, Ten Thousand Years Ago

The landscape was fire.

The fire of the emperors’ darkest sons had brought illumination to this world. 
It had been, as it always had been whenever the Night Lords were ordered to bring a wayward human colony to compliance. Nothing but the total and utter subjugation of a world to the emperors’ rule and with the sons of Nostramo that would be nothing but utter compliance through fear and obedience

The stoic features of the Night Haunter watched as his chaplains executed the leaders. Cut the head from the rebels and they would loose faith in their cause but as always, when the Night Lords came to do the emperors bidding there was nothing left of the old regime.

He heard his son approach long before he had seen him and waited for the man to approach. 

The Marine was well built and Curze looked over him with an approving eye. This one he had almost raised himself. He had found him on the streets of Nostramo Quintus, almost feral with the months of living on the streets. 

Of course he had known the boy had been following him, he had known for weeks but he had observed him and finally he had made his presence felt. To his credit the boy had not flinched, he had not batted an eyelid; he had allowed a secret smile of admiration to cross his face. 

The boy had no family, both parents had been killed in one of the many lawless actions that he was fighting against and he had survived on the streets himself, doing what he could to survive. 

Now, here in this place of death war and destruction, clad in midnight black the boy was a man and what a man he was. He had been one of the first of Nostramos’ sons to accept the gene-seed and of all his sons he had felt close to this one man.

“My lord” The Marine bowed his head.

“Report Mikhail” The Night Haunter kept his gaze on the scene around him already knowing that any day now they would be called again to unleash the emperors violence.

“The insurgents have all been executed my lord, this world is compliant”

The Primarch of the Night Lords finally turned back to face the Sergeant and bid him to join his side.

“Mikhail, tell me, why have you never accepted the recommendations that you become a captain, you could lead your own company by now”

The Sergeant removed his helm with a hiss and tucked it under his arms. His midnight black hair was close cropped to his skull and his eyes almost shone in the night with a preternatural glow that gave him a hunter’s look.

“I like being a sergeant my lord”

The Night Haunter arched an eyebrow and folded his arms across his chest 

“That is not an answer Mikhail”

“My Lord, we leave you to lead us to glory and the captains to shine in your image but when it come to basic grunt work, that’s our job to keep the captains out of trouble and – with all due respect – keep your arse out of the fire”

Curze scowled for a moment and had it been anyone else, mortal or space marine they would have blanched under the glare that he gave, but not this man. He had walked in the shadow of the Night Haunter for too long to be cowed by the often-intense expressions of his gene-sire.

Suddenly he began to laugh and it was a rare sound, it was a sound that was not linked to any Primarch let alone the Night Haunter and it was a harsh thing but it showed the Sergeant that his master was in a good mood.

At least it stopped the visions and that was something Mikhail did not like to think about. This man was like a father to him, not just the template for his body but a proper father. 

The man before him had raised Mikhail Trueze long before the emperor came and he would do anything his master wanted of him.

“That’s what I love about you Mikhail, your honesty and your bluntness”

“It was you who taught me to speak as I find my lord”

The Primarch went to a crop of rocks and sat himself down and with a heavy sigh ran a thick hand down his pale features. Mikhail waited not wanting to disturb his masters’ thoughts.

“Sit with me for a moment Mikhail” 

Obediently the sergeant sat beside his master and waited for him to speak. For a long while the lord of Nostramos watched over the dejected populace as they wearily accepted their fate and as they walked sullenly past the observing Primarch they would not look at him or meet his gaze.

To do so would invite the risk of death and they had seen enough of that in the three days and nights it took for the Night Lords to bring this world to its knees and that is why they were the best at what they did.

Mikhail held his head high, proud to be sat beside his master and proud at the way that they had persecuted this theatre. Whereas the other Leigons had a certain thing about them that made them stand out, the Lunar Wolves had the speartip, the Raven Guard had their lightning attacks and the Ultramarines had their disciplined ranks to name but a few, the Night Lords were the masters of the dark and midnight clad they had come. 

They ruled the shadows if the World Eaters of Angron and the Wolves of Russ were the ideal of violence then the Night Lords were the undisputed masters of fear and it was a tool they used well.

“Tell me Mikhail, do you think I am going mad?” 

The question was so quietly spoken and so out of the blue it wrong footed the sergeant and he hesitated for a moment before answering.

“No my lord, your prophecies are part of your legacy from the emperor” He responded.

“No Mikhail, they are nothing like my fathers power.” 

The Primarch glanced at his favoured sergeant and rested a huge hand on his shoulder, the act itself humbled the Night Lord and he never felt closer to his master then that moment 

“Do you trust me Mikhail?”

“My lord, I have trusted you since I was 5 years old and you found me on the streets, you taught me so much there is no one I would trust more then you.” 

Mikhail stopped short of blurting out that he felt the Night Haunter was like a father to him in the biological sense. 

He did not need to say it anyway; the rare soft light that hit Curze’s eyes told him that he was well aware of the sentiment. 

“I have told you that I have foreseen my own death and whilst not many believe that a Primarch can die, it is true that we can and I have seen it, I have charged varying members of the Legion with tasks that will come to light in due course. I have a task for you my son, one that I can give no other”

Adrenalin surged through the sergeant, the thought of serving the Primarch in a task that was for him alone filled him with more pride then any other task he had been given in his years of service as a Night Lord. 

“I am ready my lord” He proudly spoke.

“What I charge you with is simple. When I am gone Mikhail they will squabble, all sons will squabble and they will fall this I have seen, and this will come to pass do not forget me Mikhail, do not forget what I was or what I am and come find me”

Mikhail frowned a little unsure of his masters meaning and he could feel the hand of the Primarch squeeze his shoulder guard. 

“Do not forget me”_

**************

Mikhail Trueze glared at the scene before him. Everything about it filled him with disgust.

When they had sided with Horus in his rebellion they had prided themselves on not being the pawns of the powers of the warp, the Night Lords needed no unearthly powers to make them feared, they were feared.

When the assassin of the Callidus killed their master what he had said had, in a sorrowful way, come to pass. 

The Axemaster and Talonmaster had fought for the Corona Nox, the Talonmaster eventually vanishing with first company fighting the eldar although the rumours he had heard about the first captain leaving his company to die seemed out of character. 
Lord Periclitor stood before the assembled throng of warriors and Mikhail sneered behind his helm in sheer disgust. 

His master had expressley forbade paccts with the other powers but certain individuals had craved the power such pacts granted and slowley but surely he had seen the vaunted raptors become corrupted into something redsembling neither man nor marine, the Axemaster Acerbus Krieg had long since become a demon of the warp, 

The Exalted, one of their greatest void war warriors too had bcome something demonic and now it seemed that more and more of his brothers were falling to the sway and the lure of the chaos gods and now it seemed so too did Lord Percilitor. Since the attack on the Howling Griffons he was already beginning to change and be9ing near to him csaused some of his brothers to cramp up. 

Not the stomach cramps that one got near to a Primarch but the foul powers that were starting to take over his lord were so different to that and not so comfoting to one of the same genes. 

Periclitor stopped before the vaunted sargeant and cocked h is head a little. He turned to Captain Kados, a man that Mikhail had argued with on their last field of battle, his refusal to go midnight clad and trust in the powers of the warp had led to five battle brothers being killed and that was something the Night Lords could ill afford. In Mikhails opinion they were a leigon in decline.

“You did not trust the word of your captain Trueze?” Perclitor asked.

“No lord, he refused to go midnight clad and it got five brothers killed”

“And because you receive visions of our lord you believe that to be the reason for your disobedience of a superior officer!” 

Mikhail ignored the snoiggers of the sycohpnats and set his jaw straight. They could 
mock all they wanted, it would not change what he had seen in the centuries since his masters death.

“I know that what he does and you is against the will of Lord Curze” Mikhail retorted.

A hush fell upon the room as the lord stepped back a little. He regarded the veteren and in some circle much respected sargeant as though he was looking over a morsel of distasteful meat..

Noone had ever spokemn to the lord like that before and even those that were Trueze’s oldest battle brothers, who had fought beside him throughtout the crusade and beyound, men of his own squad; Squad Nightfear who would have died for him now wondered if their sargeant had gone too far.

“has it ever occurred to you little one, that our master foresaw all this, that in order to brng about the universe of fear this needed to happen” 

Perclitor cooed, his voice soothing 

“and that in order to usher in the new age of the Night Lords,”

“He did want us to rule the stars with fear to the guilty and justice to the righteous but not to crave power from beings who would see you become slaves” 

Mikhail set his face close to the lord 

“and that’s what any of you who make pacts with the beings in the warp are, mindless slaves”

He was struck and sent flying across the room and the other Night Lords parted the way. two of his squad went to his aid but were stopped at the last moment by Periclitor.

The changing marine walked towards the groaning sargeant and crouched down.

“I know what our master throught of you Mikhail and it is for that reason that I do not kill you. You will see that I will rise to ascendance and I will be glorious in my battles with our brothers,.” He got up 

“you however are not to see it. leave here and do not return, if you think you can find our lamented master then take your crusade but you are gone from this company and no other Night Lord wil accept you.”

Mikhail got to his feet and launched a punch that hit Kados on the jaw wiping the smirk off his face. He spat on the floor at the feet of the lord and stepped back.

“Hear this, I will find our master, it is said that he will be given back to us and I believe he will.” 

He tore his helm from his head and swept his dark gaze round everyoine in the room leaving them in no qualms about the fact that he meant every word 

“I have not forgotten him. I never will forget him and I will find him.”

He turned on his heel and walked out into exile and a crusaude that would taken him to places that he had never been.

*********


_Tsagualsa 

Trueze almost jumped out of his skin as his masters hand rested on his shoulder. He had been tasked with patrolling the outer halls although for what reason he did not know, just that his captain had ordered it.

The Primarch motioned with his head and Trueze followed him, unnerved that he had not head his masters approach but then no one would have heard him if he did not want them to hear him, it was how he had brought Nostramo to its knees.

“Mikhail, you must allow events here today to transpire”

“Lord?” 

“My son, one of the few I call that with any affection, listen and listen well. You recall what I told you on Saratoga?” Mikhail nodded 

“That day has arrived my son. When the time comes come find me, no matter hopw many years pass do not forget me son for I will never forget you”

Less then a few hours later his beloved Primarch was dead, his head cut from a his shoulders and the Night Lords were never the same.
_


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