Chapter 37 - Cawl's Invitation — The Conversation
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"You've seen him?"
On the way there, Cawl couldn't help but ask Saint Celestine.
"What condition is he in?"
"His Highness is in excellent condition. No traces of Chaos corruption."
Saint Celestine answered plainly.
"He is still as you remember him from ten thousand years ago — certainly not as he was during the Horus Heresy."
"My memory archives hold impressions from that era. During the Great Crusade, he was a born commander. Exceptional. Full of justice and reason. The kind of man people worshipped without being asked to."
Cawl paused. Concern threaded through his tone.
"But I am uncertain whether he still holds loyalty to..."
"The God-Emperor sent me."
One sentence. All suspicion, severed.
A few faint electrical currents flickered through Cawl's secondary cerebral cortex. The logic chain closed. The Living Saint was the Omnissiah's most powerful extension of will in the material realm, her purity was beyond question. If that variable carried even a trace of heresy, Celestine's blazing sword would have reduced it to ash long before anyone thought to summon him here.
Tens of minutes before arriving at Cadia, Cawl's analytical array had still held a high-probability contingency: that this was some cloned replica produced by Fabius Bile. That creature had manufactured such counterfeit constructs countless times over 10,000 years.
The Living Saint's guarantee struck that option from the record.
"Have you informed anyone else?"
"Only I know. I have no intention of telling others." Saint Celestine gave a soft laugh. "Otherwise, the Inquisition and the sons of the Great Angel Sanguinius would lose their minds."
"Not only that," Cawl said. "It would also spur the Great Despoiler to attack Cadia — and he would be far more frenzied for it."
"We cannot allow Lupercal to fall into the Chaos Warmaster's hands again."
Saint Celestine agreed. "His Highness's current situation lacks any political foothold. The Imperium views him as the root of all evil. If the traitor forces learn of his return, they will stop at nothing. The optimal solution is to wait for another loyal primarch to awaken and vouch for him. Then return to Terra and have the God-Emperor issue a decree of absolution."
Cawl's primary brain flashed an image of Roboute Guilliman's stasis chamber.
"The computational redundancy this variable introduces — he will be trouble for us."
The electronic vocalizer delivered its caustic verdict. But deep in the underlying code layers, a rare waveform was quietly generating. One designated: hope.
A primarch's return, whichever one it was, would be a shot of adrenaline straight into the heart of this broken Imperial machine.
They reached the door. Saint Celestine bent her knuckle and rapped on the metal panel. The code lock disengaged, hydraulic valves contracted, and the heavy door slid apart on both sides.
Cawl rolled in.
Optical sensors adjusted focus.
The interior was nothing like a pre-combat briefing room. No grim tactical displays, no ranked officers. What greeted him instead was something almost domestic.
A round table.
A chessboard.
Kellen, the mortal captain, sat in a mud-stained Astra Militarum uniform, a wargame piece pinched between his fingers. Kullen, the First Legion veteran in Maximus-pattern MK4 power armor, had his helmet set at his feet and his arms folded, watching the board. And in the seat at the head of the table sat the transhuman whose sheer bulk occupied half the room.
Pearl-white Cataphractii Terminator plate. Paintwork from a bygone age.
Three people, playing out an old-fashioned game of military chess.
Cawl's logic array suffered a severe overload.
His secondary brain locked down the language module outright.
He had run tens of thousands of simulations. It hadn't mattered. When truth was laid bare directly before the optical probes, all that data went pale.
Hearing the hydraulic door open, the three at the table went still.
Horus set his piece gently on the board.
The primarch rose to his full height.
That height, even among Astartes, was a different order of magnitude entirely. Yet when Horus turned to face the Archmagos Dominus, his gaze had to angle upward. Cawl's hybrid body, assembled from tread assemblies, mechadendrites, and reactors beyond counting, was far more massive than the primarch.
Horus stepped forward, crossed the narrow gap, and stopped directly in front of him.
No wariness. No scrutinizing suspicion.
The Warmaster who had once commanded countless fleets across the Great Crusade gave him a smile, open, unguarded, and completely without armor.
"I am Horus Lupercal." The primarch spoke first. His voice was deep and warm, the kind that dismantled defenses without trying. "How should I address you, Magos?"
No warp-energy residue. No corrosive radiation that would make probes scream.
What stood before him was simply a physical construct of the divine.
Cawl severed three alarm-triggered secondary nerve bundles.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, great Lupercal."
"Don't be so formal, Magos. There are no outsiders here." Horus spread his hands. "You know my background, hollow honorifics can be dispensed with. Look at my current situation. I'm just an ordinary Imperial Guardsman."
An amusing piece of self-deprecation.
Cawl did not take the bait.
The massive semi-mechanical torso leaned forward. Several augmetic eyes loaded with high-precision instruments spun in their metal sockets, projecting pale blue scanning beams. Treads rolling, the Archmagos circled halfway around Lupercal, conducting a full-spectrum sweep without a shred of apology.
By Imperial diplomatic protocol, this constituted an extremely egregious offense.
"Your emergence confuses me. Your motives invite my skepticism. I cannot fully trust you, because I still remember the atrocities you and the traitors committed 10,000 years ago."
"The past is the past. The present is the present." The interjection was abrupt, cutting straight through Cawl's inquiry. "Skepticism is fair. But there's no other choice now, is there? Archmagos, the Imperium of Man needs to be saved and changed. Otherwise, it will perish."
Kellen had left his seat and moved to stand at the primarch's side.
Horus showed no irritation at being interrupted. He simply shifted, making room.
"Allow me to introduce him. He is my friend, Kellen." The primarch's tone was easy. "I am a relic lost to the ages. He was the one who pulled me back. The mess left by the Anathame, he helped me purge that as well."
To provide visual evidence, Horus lifted his left hand, caught the gap in the ceramite neck guard with his fingertips, and pulled it outward.
Above the thick carotid artery on the side of his neck, a dark red scab stretched across the skin.
Cawl extended a metal tendril tipped with a micro-analyzer and held it 3 centimeters from the wound. Green sampling light washed over that patch of skin, again and again.
Completely healed. No residual pathogenic strains. No trace of Chaos god blessing.
The toxins of the warp had been forcibly cleansed by a treatment method entirely beyond the Imperium's current capabilities.
"An incredible purification protocol." Cawl retracted the tendril. His internal skepticism model had been cut by more than half. The Archmagos looked squarely at the mortal he had previously paid little attention to. "Your intervention patched the largest vulnerability. Thank you for your assistance, Captain."
"A trivial effort."
Kellen's response was modest. Then he made his request.
Not for himself.
"I need you to provide Lupercal with assistance, political asylum, and technological and weapons support. I also ask that you trust him."
"During the Chaos Warmaster's offensive, Lupercal killed one of his Chosen. Abaddon must have sensed it by now. I don't know whether he'll try to kill him or drag him back to Chaos, but either outcome is detrimental to us. I hope you understand that."
"Your concerns possess ample logical validity, Captain."
Cawl nodded.
"Lupercal's importance and influence are immense. They bear upon the fate of the Imperium of Man. I will consider this carefully."
"However, my current maximum computational capacity must be allocated to another core task. The Blackstone Spires standing on Cadia's surface. They are the critical network nodes preventing the veil of reality from being torn completely apart."
Cawl's augmetic eyes swept across Kellen, then Kullen, and finally fixed on Horus's face.
"I am proceeding deep into the ruins to decode the Blackstone matrix. During that time, my defensive coefficient will drop to an extreme low. I require the most reliable force available to clear out anything that tries to interfere with the research."
The Archmagos issued his formal invitation.
"Would any of you be interested in taking on this assignment, and accompanying me to the Blackstone Spire?"
➤ Next: Father and Son
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