Chapter 87 - Night Haunter, I Have Come for You!
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The Emperor of Mankind sighed, visibly impatient.
"This is a dreamscape, Kaelen. I'm not sending you to physically brawl with him. In the Warp and the realm of the subconscious, muscle and bone mean nothing. What matters here is will. Concept."
The beautiful youth folded his arms and continued.
"Besides, I'm not sending you in bare-handed. I'll grant you a portion of my psychic authority. Your durability and strength here will be enough to go toe-to-toe with his subconscious projection."
That was what he said. But Kaelen had absolutely no desire to fight Konrad Curze.
His mind was full of everything he knew about the man.
If you really pressed him, was Konrad Curze good or evil? Kaelen genuinely couldn't give a clean answer.
That Primarch's mind simply didn't run on normal moral logic.
And yet Curze had this quality. A twisted, warped personal magnetism that Kaelen couldn't quite dismiss. Among all the figures in this universe, Curze was one he'd never been able to fully hate.
The reason was simple. Curze never held double standards.
He'd grown up in the rotting sewers of Nostramo. Even half-starved, he'd rather gnaw on dead rats from the gutter than steal a single moldy loaf from a commoner's stall. The rules he set for himself, he enforced more ruthlessly than he ever did on anyone else.
The type who committed every evil imaginable while preaching righteousness and morality? Kaelen would kick that kind of person into next week without hesitation. If the old man told him to go beat up Erebus, that bald scheming swindler-priest, he'd grab a weapon and charge in without a second thought.
But Curze was different. A tragic madman driven to the edge by prophecies he never asked for. Kaelen genuinely couldn't bring himself to throw the first punch.
Because he understood that anger. The fury at a world where law and rules couldn't touch the people who deserved it most. In those moments, violence and fear really were the most direct solution.
He just had more conscience than Curze. More reason. He knew where the line was.
He couldn't do what Lion El'Jonson did, draw his sword the moment he laid eyes on Curze and start hacking without a shred of mercy.
"What's the matter? Scared?" The beautiful youth raised an eyebrow. "You schemed against that blue bird-man to his face without blinking. Now you're backing down from a Primarch with a few mental issues?"
"I just can't bring myself to do it!" Kaelen shot back. "This guy's already had it rough enough, grew up in those sewers, then got used as a tool by you, his completely irresponsible father. Now I'm supposed to run over and beat him up? That makes me the bully."
The Emperor laughed. It was a bright, clear sound.
"Put away your overflowing sympathy, Kaelen. Konrad doesn't need it. Nothing disgusts him more than being pitied. The more you feel sorry for him right now, the more excited he'll be when the fighting starts."
"If you truly feel sorry for him, then beat him awake." The smile faded. His tone went serious. "Use your ideals to shatter that extreme closed-loop he's trapped in. That is the only way to break the Dareth Star's obfuscation. Are you ready?"
"Wait! I haven't — "
Kaelen didn't get to finish.
The beautiful youth swung a foot forward and planted it squarely on Kaelen's backside.
The streetscape collapsed instantly. Every image shattered into countless white specks of light.
Weightlessness swallowed him whole. Kaelen plummeted through the void, wind shrieking past his ears.
"You dirty old man! That's not how you treat people!" His cursing stretched and faded into the white.
He didn't know how long he fell.
Then the sensation cut out. His feet hit damp, hard ground with a bone-jarring impact.
Kaelen stumbled several steps before he caught himself.
The air hit him first. Thick rust. Raw sewage. The kind of stench that coated the back of your throat.
This wasn't the bizarre but clean metropolis from before.
This was a cramped, dark alley. The high walls on both sides were slicked with disgusting green moss, black filth seeping from every crack. The night sky overhead was choked solid by industrial exhaust, not a single point of starlight made it through.
Quintessential Nostramo slum.
"Ugh — AHHH!"
A blood-curdling scream tore from the depths of the alley and ripped through the oppressive silence.
Kaelen's chest tightened. He looked toward the sound.
Less than 20 meters away.
An enormous figure stood with its back to him. Skin deathly pale, smeared with filth. Fingernails long and razor-sharp.
Beneath the giant's feet, a gaunt middle-aged man lay crumpled on the ground.
The man had already been scared out of his mind. His face was soaked in blood, both hands clamped desperately over his left eye socket, nothing left there but a gaping hole. He writhed backward across the wet ground, inch by inch.
"Please... my lord... I only did it to buy medicine for my daughter... I never meant to embezzle the factory's material funds, I swear..." His voice had completely broken. A dark stain spread from his crotch, the smell sharp and sour.
The giant let out a low, hoarse, unhinged chuckle.
"Greed. Betrayal. Lies."
The voice was deep and raspy, carrying a tremor that made the air feel dangerous.
"You stole the wages of thirteen workers. You condemned them to starve. Your sins must be cleansed with the most exquisite agony." The giant slowly raised its right hand, nails poised to descend.
The man's pleading warped into a raw, distorted shriek.
Kaelen watched. He bit down hard on his back teeth. He didn't stop to weigh whether the man deserved it. He didn't stop to calculate whether he could actually win against whatever was standing in front of him.
He just knew that if he let this madman keep going, there'd be no conversation to have.
"Hey! Stop!"
Kaelen stepped forward and bellowed.
The screaming cut off.
The towering figure froze. Those razor nails hung suspended in the air and did not come down.
Slowly, the figure turned around.
Skin so pale it looked like something that had never seen sunlight. Deep-set sockets holding a pair of completely black eyes. Greasy, matted black hair hanging lank on either side of his face. The features underneath were actually striking, genuinely handsome, but all of it was ruined by that neurotic, twisted quality that lived in every line of his expression.
Eighth Legion Primarch. Konrad Curze.
Curze tilted his head and studied the mortal who had appeared out of nowhere several dozen meters away.
"An unmarked intruder." His voice was light, almost curious. "This is my private theater. How, pray tell, did you get in?"
Kaelen forced down the crawling dread that came from being stared at by those black eyes. He held Curze's gaze.
"Your father sent me to find you. Said you've been sleeping down here too long. Time to get up and get to work."
"Fight me, Konrad Curze."
A knightly longsword had appeared in his hand at some point. Kaelen drew on everything Cullen and Horus had drilled into him back on Cadia and settled into his stance.
Curze tilted his head the other way.
"You've committed no crime. We don't know each other. Why would we brawl?"
Damn. He'd forgotten what it took to trigger the psychotic flying rat into attacking.
Kaelen looked around. The alley was empty. He thought for a moment.
Then he spat on the ground.
"How about now? Is disrupting public order and fouling the environment a crime?"
"Hmm." Curze considered it. "You're not wrong."
He rose slowly from the terrified man beneath him and stepped away, walking toward Kaelen one deliberate step at a time. A strange grin spread across his face.
"That is indeed a crime."
"And for any crime, there is only one punishment."
He paused.
"Death."
Curze launched himself forward like a bolt of black lightning.
"Night Haunter — I have come for you!"
Kaelen roared and drove his sword forward to meet him.
➤ Next: Defeating the Night Haunter
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