[Necromunda 01] - Survival Instinct by Andy Chambers

Author:Andy Chambers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-21T23:28:27.376247+00:00

'We in the Spire are taught from birth that the family will be your first loyalty, now and always, and the family's honour is your next. I was still very young when I saw that revealed as a lie. One of my own sisters pushed another to

her death with the encouragement and approval of a third. Everything I thought I knew came apart at the seams that night.

'I was placed in a narrow tower on the flank of the Spire, an ancient marvel of the lost arts with tutelage engines and exercise regulators, and machine spirits of great age and nobility. At first I believed I was therefor my protection but as the weeks passed I came to understand that I had committed some sort of crime against my family. No one came to visit me and the tower would not permit me to leave. I was imprisoned.

'Time became hard to gauge but I think it was a year before I had my first visitor. The spirits had taught me and kept me company so 1 was happy enough, in my own terribly young way, but for the aching gap in my heart left by the absence of my family. But I began every day honestly believing things would change for the better and that my mother or my sisters would come visiting. So I was not surprised when the spirits told me to prepare myself for a visitor, just excited.

'So imagine my shock when the lock opened to reveal not my mother or my sisters but my father, Patriarch Sylvanus, in all his finery. He berated me for my slipshod appearance and stalked around the tower for an hour, criticising me for living like an animal and being a disgrace to the family. Every time I tried to speak he angrily commanded me to silence. When I started to cry he flew into a towering rage, shouting that weakness and petty blackmail wouldn't gain me the family's forgiveness. When I wouldn't stop crying he almost struck me. Instead he turned and left, stopping at the lock just long enough to express his own disappointment in me, all sadness now that his rage had blown over.

'At the last he bent down to me and whispered as if he were afraid that others would hear (and the tower would, it remembered every word that was said inside it). "You must

try harder, D'onne, for all our sakes." And with that he was gone.

'Imagine the child separated from its family who hears those words - how hard does it try? With every iota of its being, with every ounce of the raw, young energy beating in its innocent heart.

'My father did not visit again for a month, but every day I scrubbed and cleansed and preened and prepared in case he might come. When he did visit again I was devastated by his criticism of my appearance once more. But this time I did not cry, and I noticed his displeasure seemed less as he stalked about the tower.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.