Chapter 74 - Gacha Pull! — Face to Face
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"I've been waiting for you. I forgive you, my Augustus... So you can actually talk, huh, Old Yellow?"
Kaelen scoffed and glanced sideways at the corpse on the throne.
"How come you never said anything like that to your other sons during the Great Crusade? Take poor Angron — you could've saved his gladiator sisters. Or at least said something to comfort him."
"His situation was special. Those gladiator sisters of his were all actors hand-picked by that bastard on the Brass Throne — seeds the Blood God deliberately planted and hid away. Saving them or not made little difference. On the contrary, saving them would have been like Lorgar bringing his adoptive father into the Legion. It would only have accelerated Angron's fall."
The Emperor's answer caught Kaelen off guard.
For once, from the man who had actually lived through it, he was getting an answer that wasn't the one everyone told.
"The truth is usually this absurd, this upside-down." The Emperor summed it up. "Just like this rotten play that's been running for ten thousand years."
The hall went quiet for 2 full seconds.
Then, without any warning, the Emperor's tone pivoted.
"Calling you 'Outsider' all the time makes it sound like I'm watching for a thief. Can't keep treating you like a stranger."
Old Yellow's voice abruptly turned sly.
"Either I give my friends some absurdly badass title, or I just call the people I don't like 'bastards.' So — what should I call you?"
Kaelen rolled his eyes.
"Skip the theatrics. Just Kaelen."
"Alright, Kaelen." Static hissed twice from the vox-speaker. "What do you think of Saint Celestine?"
Kaelen's eyelid twitched. Dark lines all but materialized across his forehead.
That fluttery, lovestruck feeling he'd had after meeting the Living Saint, he'd written it off as some trick of Old Yellow's. He hadn't expected the man himself to just come out and admit it!
"Not interested. Thanks."
Kaelen gave a cold laugh.
"Please. Nuns and fish, you can't possibly tell me you take care of business with fish all day. Nuns are way better, I'm telling you. Back in my day, when I was running around with those nuns? Absolutely fantastic. Renaissance period, if I'm remembering right? Slipping away every other night for secret rendezvous with the strictest, most ascetic sisters. Mamma mia~ That delicious sense of ripping through the forbidden, you cannot imagine how it lingers. You should try it!"
Kaelen went numb.
This was Holy Terra.
The solemn, sacred Throne Room.
The Master of Mankind, ruler of the galaxy, worshipped by trillions, was sitting on his suffering golden toilet, sharing his glory-day pickup tips with a random mortal.
The image was just too surreal.
"I do not currently have those kinds of needs!" Kaelen snapped, exasperated.
"I'm starting to seriously suspect that the Master of Mankind in front of me is actually the Dark Prince of Pleasure in disguise!"
"Hssst, don't compare me to that dead hermaphrodite with the hot dog dangling under its long ears! Fine, if Celestine's not your type, I've also got a Commorragh Supreme Membership Card lying around. They get really creative over there. Interested?"
Commorragh. Current haunt of the Drukhari.
Also home to one preserved corner of the Aeldari's pre-Fall glory, because, of course, it was precisely the Aeldari's creative pursuits that had birthed Slaanesh in the first place.
Kaelen pressed a hand against his forehead.
If he kept talking to this old lecher, his cerebral arteries were going to rupture.
What kind of pervert had ten thousand years of solitude turned this god into?
"I don't want it!"
"Can you please stop talking to me like this! Can we get to something serious for once! You old salted ham sitting on a toilet!"
Called an old salted ham to his face, the Emperor didn't get angry. He erupted into laughter, the strangest, most maniacal barbell-clanking laughter Kaelen had ever heard.
It rolled through the empty hall, and that only made things worse.
Kaelen clenched his fists. He wanted, very badly, to drive one straight into that yellowed pile of bones.
The laughter went on for a full half-minute before subsiding into a piercing burst of static.
"Thank you, Kaelen."
"It's been a long time since anyone spoke to me like that."
"I'm so tired..."
The anger lodged in Kaelen's throat slowly dissolved.
Whether Old Yellow was genuinely showing emotion or just messing with him like some street-corner scoundrel, Kaelen couldn't be bothered to figure out which.
"I don't know how to comfort you. I'm not Malcador the Sigillite. Or... Oll Persson, your first Warmaster. I don't know you the way they did."
Kaelen kept his face flat as he said it.
"I know. Yes. You are not them."
At the mention of those old friends, the Emperor's voice dropped lower.
"Let's get to business. I can already sense the soul fragment of my ninth son, Sanguinius, on you, Kaelen."
Since the Emperor had called it out, Kaelen stopped hiding it and produced the fragment.
It floated in midair, radiating a sacred glow much like the Emperor's own.
"You've got a fragment of your own, right?" Kaelen asked.
"Mm. When I faced Horus and those four bastards aboard the Vengeful Spirit, I took my chance and recovered a piece of Sanguinius's soul."
The Emperor was silent for a moment.
"Can you bring him before me, Kaelen? The way you fished Lupercal over."
Kaelen drew in a long breath.
One salvage attempt left.
Was he really about to fish for the Great Angel?
"I can't guarantee I'll actually pull him through." Kaelen got the warning out early.
"Try anyway. Even if what comes out is Russ, that'll do."
"Russ..." Kaelen smiled helplessly at the name. "Russ was exactly what I was aiming for the first time. For survival insurance. And instead, out popped Horus."
Well, things were where they were. Might as well try.
Old Yellow was right here. Even if the System completely shorted out and dragged through some daemon primarch or whatever other disaster, the Master of Mankind could pin it down on the spot.
"System. Initiate salvage." Kaelen sent the command through his mind.
The half-transparent panel snapped open.
[Beep. Salvage attempts depleted. Preparing salvage protocol.]
[To improve salvage success rate, host may consume soul fragments to boost probability.]
Kaelen froze.
That was an option?
Hand over the Great Angel fragment he'd just received?
Bet the bike, ride home on a motorcycle.
Kaelen gritted his teeth and snapped his head up toward the throne.
"Old Yellow! I need that angel fragment of yours!"
"But I'm telling you up front, I'm gambling right now, pure and simple. I can't guarantee the odds!"
The Emperor didn't refuse.
In his life he had gambled countless times. Won countless times. Lost countless times. He had long since stopped caring.
"Go ahead."
The words had barely left him.
From the withered chest cavity above the throne, a soft golden halo bled through the bone.
A second pure-gold soul fragment drifted down and settled neatly into Kaelen's palm.
Two fragments of nearly identical origin twined together, and Kaelen threw them both into the System.
[Special soul fragment detected x2]
[Salvaging. Please wait...]
A spinning loading icon flickered onto his retina.
Kaelen stared at it. His heart pounded hard enough to leap up his throat.
Gacha.
This kind of waiting was always the worst part. No wonder the Four Gods were so obsessed with blind-box pulls.
As the progress bar inched forward, Kaelen reached for the most reliable superstition from his old gaming days, sacrificing other people's lifespans.
He threw his head back and howled.
"I SACRIFICE ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF EZEKYLE ABADDON'S LIFESPAN! GIVE ME SANGUINIUS!"
The roar rang through the Throne Room.
And the instant his voice died,
A blinding golden light, so radiant it instantly drowned out the glow of the Golden Throne itself, erupted outward from Kaelen as its center and swept across the entire Throne Room without warning.
➤ Next: The Battle of the Lion's Gate
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