My ID says "female" for some reason, and I am into guys, and thus I kinda despise female protagonists (and especially INCLUSIVE! BS like that..). Nevermind them usually being written cringe-worthily awful and endowed with bigger breasts than me, I need me some towering, battle-scarred, muscle-bound, one-liner spewing, mini-gun toting space marines to gawk at!
"Valence also smiled, though his was a pensive smile, a smile of reverie. He regarded Lexandro musingly as a brother might a sister whose honour he must protect – a sentiment which Lexandro had purged from his own soul, though he recognised the symptoms. Aye, in warped guise.
Briefly, the image of Lexandro’s own two indulged foolish siblings, Andria and Phoeba, flitted through his consciousness for what seemed the first time in years. He had rightly abandoned them, since the only way that honour could be restored was the path he had chosen; or rather, the path on to which he had been propelled. The path of the Adeptus Astartes, the star warriors. In the intricate weave of the universe, his was the golden strand, and his sisters’ was dross, part of the vast lumpen knot of the ordinary, the confined mortal mass that bred and died on a million worlds like some foetid yeast in order to ferment a spirit such as his, a spirit which a God-Emperor could sip.
Marines defended that yeast from pollution and corruption…
They defended with fire and explosive bolts.
Was this the “higher justice” that Valence sometimes babbled about? Aye, babbled sanctimoniously! When, for its sake, Valence himself had abandoned his own tech kin! Brother Yeremi must be a hypocrite.
In that pensive pucker of Brother Yeremi’s lips Lexandro sensed that he himself was now becoming a focus for Valence’s hypocrisy…
Phoeba and Andria… A comely pair, resembling Lexandro himself in countenance… Refined…
Even now that he was so brawny with musculature, rooted over ceramically reinforced bones, Lexandro remained personable.
Andria and Phoeba… Faces… Names… Yet not whole bodies, in the way that his own was whole – enhanced and complete. In his mind’s eyes Lexandro could no longer quite capture nor comprehend the essentially alien anatomy of his quondam sisters. The anatomy of… woman…
Sister… Mother… high-hab whores whom the Lordly Phantasms had amused themselves with… those were mere spectres now, white ghosts.
Abandoned ghosts.
Lexandro stared at Valence, and it was as if their minds conjoined for an instant – Valence would never abandon Lexandro. He would haunt him, so as to complete some aberrant equation within his own brain which allowed Brother Yeremi to pursue his exalted, disingenuous ideal."