W A R P R I E S T
She walked The Ark like a blade through smoke. Slow, deliberate, hungry for the heat of what she'd built. She moved from regiment to regiment, from hulking forges where beskar sang under hammerblows to the humming chambers that guarded the Iron Heart Core, her presence folding the scattered, raw energy of the vessel into something sharper. It was her face the foundries turned toward when the bellows stuttered, her name invoked in the engine rooms when a weld held and when a bolt sheared. The city-monastery was a living liturgy, and Dima was both its priest and its taskmaster.
Her responsibilities spread across the Ark like a spiderweb: keep the forges hot, keep the Core stable, guard the vaults, and keep the stockpiles counted and true. Bring wandering clans from the forgotten corners of the stars back under the Manda'lore banner. Fund the propaganda grinders. Feed the War College. Tend to the foundlings who arrived in drifts, hungry, ragged, and perfect for remaking. It was endless. That was how power tasted best to her, an endless meal you could sharpen yourself on.
And yet authority never came to her naturally. As a foundling she'd been spectacularly incompetent at the small things others prized. She missed shots that should never have missed, broke more cockpits than she piloted cleanly, and the jetpack had once learned the warp of gravity the hard way because she couldn't be bothered to fuse the stabilizers. She'd been loud as a child, spouting visions and gods no one else swore they saw. A misfit, and a menace, wrapped in beskar with a grin sharp enough to split a skull.
Some things, though, did not break with experience, some things honed. Where others had steadied into bland competence, Dima's mania had narrowed into devotion. The madness that had once been chaos became prayer. The sword that had been a toy became an altar. When she stood before a blade now, she felt liturgy: the weight of metal, the story forged into its fuller, the lesson of a thousand strikes pressed into its edge. That private holiness made her dangerous in a way that rules and promotions never could.
It was late when she took the back lanes of The Ark, the market's hum thinning to the occasional clang and bark. Her cloak swallowed most of her, but those who knew the Ark knew her silhouette, the four-armed shadow that could fill a doorway. She heard them first: low laughter, the scuffle of boots on stone, the careless jangle of pilfered coin. Foundlings. Children adopted by the Ark, little storms wrapped in scrap and begging salt.
They were young enough to be forgiven. They were brazen enough to be punished.
They hunched in the darkness of an alley, trading trinkets and stories and the kind of petty theft born more of hunger than malice. When she stepped into the lane the air changed; the sound of their breathing hitched. Three of them, half-grown and half-hardened, drew small knives like talismans. The bravest of them, eyes bright, lips curling like feral mutts.
"Easy to ignore duty for the fruit of a belly," Domina said, her voice a low chitter, amused and not unkind. She blocked their only exit with a palm the size of a shield. "What separates us from beasts is our commitment to one another. Passion without purpose is just teeth and noise."
They stammered. She raised a claw to hush them and the movement carried more mercy than accusation. She had been those children, skipping the grueling drills, flirting with disaster because the grind bored her. She recognized the tilt of their feet toward mischief, the same tilt that had once landed her face-first into a crash pit when she was certain she had outflown fate.
"Do you know what day it is?" she asked softly, savoring their silence. Of course they didn't. The day's meaning had slipped them as easily as bread from a pocket. Disappointment made her hum; it was a shaping tool. "Mand'alore walks our halls today. He will see what we have done, the goodness of our gods work. Yet here you hide..."
She moved then, swift as a thought. No cruelty in the motion, only efficiency and the theatricality she loved. She seized them by shirt and wrist, uprooting the three like saplings, and drew them through the streets. The market's chatter rose into immediate hushed alarm as they passed; children were meant to be loved, yes, but the Ark loved them by rough hands as much as warm ones.
They arrived at the Iron Cathedral with the kind of grandeur that made small bones tremble. Domina flung the massive doors wide and the cathedral swallowed them. A vault of beskar statues, sagas beaten into walls, the hollow echo of a thousand oaths. The great statue of Ha'rangir dominated the room, a misery and an embrace in one.
She dropped them at the base of the idol like offerings, and instead of shouting she did something unexpected.
Dima sank to her knees. The foundlings froze, then mirrored her. The gesture had no sermon attached, no long, didactic speech. It was simpler and meaner and truer: An example.
Heads bowed. Armor clinked. The Warpriest who could be a wrecking ball became a supplicant, and in that small, radio-silent moment the foundlings felt something settle in their chests. Humility, not humiliation. The voice of the Ark was not only thunder; it could be the cool hand that steadied a burning one.
"Serve something greater than yourself," she said when they rose. The words were not new, but in her mouth they carried warmth. "Serve beauty made of steel. Serve the blade. Serve the family that chose you. Learn your art, and respect the art of others. That is how you wear your life."
There would be drills later, long, ugly, honest hours in the yard, and lessons on how to carry shame off the back and turn it into practice. There would be scripture, study, and the kind of discipline that feels, at first, like a bruise and later like a badge.
Warpirest Prime stood, the foundlings at her shoulder now not as captives but as apprentices of necessity. The Ark would be ready for the Manda'lore's arrival. The propaganda presses would run. The forges would keep their bellies red. The stockpiles would be accounted. And somewhere between the drills and the hymns, the children would learn that a fine blade was both art and covenant. Its edge to be wielded in defense of kin and in the pursuit of the order that made life meaningful.
Outside, the city-ship loomed, a monstrous choir of metal and flame. Domina cast a long look up at the iron ribs of the Ark and then back to the faces gathered beneath her. She smiled, not soft, not cruel, but true.
"For those who live by the sword," she murmured, both an admonition and an oath. "We will teach them how to die by it with honor."
