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Sergeant Avernus

While the Celestial Falcon's leadership were discussing future operations, its rank-and-file were busy preparing for war. Serfs cleaned bolters, sharpened chainswords, and primed what precious few melta guns the fledgling chapter had. They checked and re-checked each weapon to make sure of its availability and reliability. A veritable army of men stinking of cleaning oil droned on rites of maintenance in the armories of the Battle Barge Brightwing, but the masters for whom they were tending the weapons were not idle, either. Especially not a certain assault sergeant.

Sweat flicked off of the mountain of muscle that was Avernus' half-nude body as he parried yet another strike from the training servitor and followed through with yet another counter-blow. His combat knife dived in from the side in a thrust like lightning, but at the brink of impact, the astartes asserted his muscles in reverse and reduced what would have been a fatal blow into the lightest, harmless tap against the lobotomized cyborg's temple. A terminal, at the corner of the training chapel within Avernus' peripheral vision, beeped, registering another good hit. Its display read "168" for one hundred and sixty-eight hits per minute.

Not good enough, thought Avernus, as he continued engaging the servitor's seven bladed arms. He was 12 points off of his target, despite his arms already being a veritable blur of action and reaction. He had been doing this for an hour already and despite his opinion that it was honestly rather dull, it was an important part of his daily training regime. It did not teach the veteran anything new, but it kept his body warmed up and got his blood flowing. Otherwise, it was very monotonous - monotonous enough for Avernus' mind leeway to think about many other things, despite the real and present danger of the servitor's legitimately effective weapons. Usually it would be about past battles, past glories - but at that moment he found himself thinking about the future.

They called themselves the Celestial Faclons and they were bright and bold despite being scions of the Raven. Their colors were white and gold and they were extroverted in areas where the Raven Guard were normally not - demeanor, tactics, training. New philosophies, new beliefs that were variants of the old. So different, so strange. They were the newest Astartes chapter and Avernus had been volunteered to their ranks.

Anger. That was what he felt. He did not ask to join the Celestial falcons. He purposely took a few sharp breaths and let the annoying emotion out in the motion of his controlled attacks. 170, 172, 174 - his hits per minute rose.

The sudden flash of red puzzled him. Avernus was sure that he had made peace with his fate deep within his twin hearts - but that was evidently not true at all. What was the cause, he wondered. He looked into himself. He saw it then - a strange twinkle of aberration sticking out subtly but surely from the general uniformity of his thoughts. He drew his mind's eye close to it, examining it - what was this thought?

It was fear.

"Hm," Avernus grunted from his otherwise silent meditation. He suddenly shifted his 32-step parry-and-counter flow from a clockwise to counter-clockwise pattern.

No, not fear, he reasoned. Astartes did not know fear. But the thought was close to that almost-forgotten sin, and so his mind prematurely labeled it as such. No, it was not fear. There was a more proper definition for it: anxiety. No. Excitement? No, not that either. It was a mix of both.

The Avernus Crusade. A new campaign, a new chapter master, a new episode in his life. Unexpected, unwarranted, new. It was new. Just that fact made him as nervous as close as an astartes could get to being nervous. But he was also looking forward to it. Funny, he thought. He didn't care when he listened to the Lord Commander's speeches about a new, bright future but it turned out he really did. How strange. That him and the campaign shared the same name also elicited foolish notions of destiny that Avernus deemed stupid and threw away immediately.

Adventure. Hah. His glory-seeking days were over. Avernus was no longer as young as he used to be and after how many battles in how many campaigns he had nothing left to prove to his brothers. He felled the enemies of the Emperor and conquered what was rightfully the territory of His Imperium - and he did it with his brothers, and he would continue to do so until his inevitable end; and he was very content with that.

And yet the notion of adventure appealed to him. Avernus had a hard time admitting it, but deep within the beating of his twin hearts his super-oxygenated blood vibrated with it imperceptibly. Excitement. Giddiness. His hits per minute were now recording at well over 186. The smallest of smiles tugged at his deathly lips. Some tiny, active part of Avernus was actually looking forward to new horizons and promises that entailed them.

But most of him didn't in so particular a manner. Duty was duty - but some troublesome bug in a lonely, deep recess in his mind believed that he had been taken out from his proper duties in the Raven Guard, and took special offense in that he was never even asked his opinion of it.

His hits per minute suddenly dropped from 186 to 178 and fluctuated erratically between those two numbers, before stabilizing at 182. He would continue this private, introspective combat training for another hour before cleansing himself and joining his squad in bolter drills. After that, he would visit the Reclusiam to ask advice from a chaplain regarding his residual unacceptance to his transfer.

"Only in death does duty end." That was one of Avernus' favorite precepts. Its sombre and loyal tone resonated with him quite well.
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