# Blood Always Tells- Extract



## Black Steel Feathers (Aug 17, 2011)

A small bit from fanfic I'm planning to write... Tell me what you think!

The doctor became concerned when his 'son' wasn't asleep in his bed, even though it was three hours before dawn. He wasn't in the Training Room, either, nor in his favourite spot under the spreading iron orchid tree in the garden. He eventually found him in his lab, his hunched-over figure illuminated by the light of a single angle-poise lamp. Machine parts were scattered over the bench in front of him.
He looked up when the doctor approached, his eyes adjusting to the shadows effortlessly. "Father." he said, nodding a silent 'good morning'. His father sighed, noting the number of his tools that had been fine last night but were now either bent or snapped; they lay around like sad little corpses, telling of a night of activity.
"Did you sleep at all, or were you too busy breaking my tools?"
His son didn't rise to the bait, merely turned a brass cog over and over between his forfinger and thumb. It said something of his height that a part the size of the doctor's fist seemed small when held by him; he was almost ten foot, even without his boots. "It's not my fault, you're the one who keeps increasing my strength. As soon as I get used to it, it changes." he said mildly, the annoyance he obviously felt barely audible, placing the cog onto the bench and picking up a tin of metal polish.
"If you're awake, though, we may as well go ahead and download the Seige of Terra... And carry on with your sword training."
The other ran a hand over his bald head and pulled a reluctant face, his fingers pausing over the ports in back of his head his father used to dowload his 'lessons' directly into his brain. The size of a walnut, the skin around the gleaming metal and black plastic looked red and sore. "Do we have to? I'm not recovered from the Massacre at Istvaan V... My head's still pounding!"
The doctor crossed his arms. "Yes, you do. How are you supposed to fight the Imperium if you don't know it's history? How are you supposed to avenge my dishonour, and the way they dishonoured you? This is vital!" he snapped, then paused and seemed to calm down. "You are the Warmaster Horus reborn. His blood is the same as yours- his face, his body... Even his voice. You owe it to him, your real father, to fight the forces of the False Emporer. It's quite literally what you were made for!"
Horus' clone looked down at the bench's pitted surface, eyes flickering as if searching fir answers in the wood grain. He looked grim, and the doctor could only guess as to what he was thinking. After a minute, Horus spoke. "But what if I don't want to?"
The doctor's blood turned to ice. He'd been so wrapped up in his pet project, he'd missed the warning signs that now seemed so obvious. The increasing grim moods, the reluctance to learn, the way he spent more and more time staring at the sky. The clone he'd spent so long creating had become independant- it had found the power of free will. He was still frozen with shock when Horus spoke again.
"I can't fight them, Father... I can't kill innocent people. That wasn't what my gene-father ws created to do, and it's only thanks to Chaos he did it all. But I'm not him. I'm not being corrupted like he was! Everyone makes their own path- I'm not livong someone else's life again..." He paused, taking a deep breath. "Not for you, not for anyone."


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## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*Pretty good*

I like it. there are a lot of misspelled words and the paragraphing needs to be more pronounced to give the eyes a rest, but I like it.


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## Black Steel Feathers (Aug 17, 2011)

You can blame my so-called SmartPhone for that. Typing on this thing is harder than getting a Nurgling to bathe. Or, as originally typed, gerting a Nturglung to bathe.


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