Warhammer 40K: System Error, I Summoned the Arch-Traitor!

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"Supreme Grand Master. There is a matter I must put to you."

Cullen spoke, then glanced at the Custodian beside them and gave a small nod.

The Custodian respected this ancient Terran-born warrior who had been pardoned by the Master of Mankind, and turned to leave.

Azrael watched him go. The wariness coiled in his chest did not ease, it sharpened.

This was the posture of a man about to share secrets that should never see the light.

"What do you wish to ask?"

"In the current archives of the Dark Angels Chapter, was it the Lion's fleet that struck Caliban first, or... did we strike first?"

Truth be told, even harboring all the resentment he did toward the Lion who had given those orders, Cullen still understood his Gene-Sire better than any of these later generations.

Lion El'Jonson was never an unhinged madman like Angron. His brutality, his slaughter, had always carried purpose. If no one had lit that powder keg, the Lion would never have issued the order to scour his own homeworld without a word of warning.

"Caliban struck the Lion's fleet first."

Azrael was silent for a long moment, then answered.

"Caliban launched the attack. The Lion was enraged."

"Was it Luther? Or Astelan?"

Those were the only two leaders on Caliban at the time Cullen could think of who held that kind of authority.

The Supreme Grand Master's brow furrowed.

"Were you not Luther's man? Were you not all gathered under the same banner, traitors to the Lion and to the Emperor?"

Cullen let out a cold laugh at that. He raised his right arm and tapped his index finger against the Aquila on his chest. The crisp metallic note rang across the landing pad.

"Look at this symbol." Cullen's voice rose. "I am Terran-born! A veteran who has followed the Emperor's Aquila banner since the Unification Wars! However much I despise the Lion, I would never betray him, and I would sooner die than betray the Emperor!"

Azrael said nothing. Behind him, the Deathwing Terminators exchanged glances, deeply unsettled.

"I don't know what those moth-eaten archives of yours actually record about the real quarrel between Luther, Astelan, and the Lion." Cullen kept his anger banked low. "But back then, most of the brothers in the Legion knew nothing. Nothing at all."

"What do you mean?" Azrael pressed.

"Many of the men you call Fallen — men like me — we simply received orders from Luther and Astelan to fight the Lion. According to them, the Lion had already gone over to the rebels."

"Of course I never believed the Lion would do such a thing. But it didn't matter. The veterans pulled back from the front to recover, the Caliban-born recruits fresh from gene-conversion who had never even seen a battlefield, every one of us was kept in the dark."

"Especially those Caliban recruits. Their first battle wasn't against xenos. It wasn't against Horus's traitors. It was against the Lion's wrath..."

Cullen spoke it slowly, deliberately.

"You're saying Luther and Astelan used you? That they deceived you all?"

Azrael could scarcely believe it, and behind him the Deathwing Terminators stared at each other.

"That, plainly, is the truth."

"If the Lion had been willing to stop and speak with us, perhaps Caliban would never have burned... ah."

The old knight's long sigh carried all the helplessness and grief of an age long past.

Azrael stood where he was, the taut wire in his mind pulled and pulled again.

Reason told him the Terran veteran's account was watertight, that it filled in too many of the blanks in his Chapter's history with uncomfortable precision. But emotion, and ten thousand years of doctrine, refused to let him accept so monstrous a conclusion at once.

"This is only your account." Azrael shook his head firmly. "It cannot stand as fact. The archives have been worn to fragments by time. Even the high lords of the Inner Circle cannot verify most of what remains."

Cullen cut him off before he could finish.

"The archives are incomplete. They have almost certainly been twisted over the millennia. If we want the truth — the real truth — then we must put what happened that day to the Lion himself!"

He could see his younger brethren staring at him as if he had lost his mind.

"But the Lion is gone. Where would you have us go to find him, to make him confirm what happened? You're talking nonsense!"

At that, Cullen remembered the cheeky, grinning face that young Kaelen had worn the last time they spoke.

In spite of himself, the corner of his mouth tugged upward.

"And what if I told you the Lion is about to return?"

"What did you say?!"

.

Elsewhere. Deep in the corridors of the Imperial Palace on Terra.

"Lord Konrad, sir, I really must say, all this scurrying about is causing me considerable distress..."

Loken trailed after him, his face a study in helpless patience.

He and Curze had only just stepped out of the Throne Room. And now the Primarch was acting like a paranoid child, pressing himself against carved stone pillars, slipping into shadows, then poking his head out to scan the surveillance pict-feeds in the ceiling.

A short distance away, several gold-armored Custodians stood with halberds in hand, watching the spectacle from afar like men at a sideshow.

The former captain of the Luna Wolves felt his face burn. This was the sacred Imperial Palace of Terra. Curze's behavior was beneath dignity itself.

"The prophecy has shown me something most foul." Curze pressed against the back of a pillar, voice rasping like a blade dragged across sandpaper.

"I saw that arrogant little bird coming for me, bringing your father with him, and that hamster from Macragge who only knows how to balance ledgers. Tch. They are insufferable."

"...Would they kill you?"

"No. It is a form of execution far worse than killing."

The words had barely left his mouth when Loken's vision blurred.

A few faint scrapes of ceramite, that was all, and Curze's towering frame melted into the corridor shadows and was gone.

But the sharp-eyed son of Cthonia caught it: the heavy metal door of a storage room on the left side of the corridor had been eased open the barest sliver.

At that moment, the sound of weighty footsteps rolled down the far end of the corridor.

Three vast figures approached. Loken's heart lifted at the sight, his Wolf-God, and two other lords besides.

"Wolf-God."

"How did your audience with the Emperor go, my son? Did he frighten you?"

Horus came forward, smiling, and slung an arm around his son's shoulders.

"No."

Loken shook his head and recounted what the Emperor had said during the audience. The Wolf-Shepherd was very pleased to hear it.

Of course, part of what was said had concerned Curze.

"Loken, do you know where Konrad has gone?"

Sanguinius turned to him with a smile.

Loken, with the faintest motion, tipped a finger toward the storage-room door that hung very slightly ajar.

The three Primarch brothers traded a single glance, then pushed the door open.

Alas, the room was dim, swallowed in darkness.

"It's pitch-black in here," Horus observed.

"That's no trouble. Watch."

Sanguinius let out a soft laugh.

SHHK, a blinding, sun-bright pulse of holy radiance erupted without warning from the Great Angel, like the direct glare of a star.

From somewhere inside the darkness, the Nostraman bat let out a shriek of pure terror.

"AGH! MY EYES!"

Curze's eyes were nearly burned blind by Sanguinius's light.

He scrambled in a panic, trying to bolt between the legs of the three Primarchs, only for Guilliman and Horus to seize him by both arms with practiced ease and hoist him bodily into the air.

Sanguinius dimmed the absurd halo as quickly as he had summoned it. He leaned in close to Curze, who dangled helplessly between his brothers, and offered him a smile that, in Curze's eyes, was indistinguishable from a daemon's.

"Just out of an audience with Father, and you don't even want to catch up with your brothers? Konrad. That hurts."

"Get away from me! Arrogant little bird! You glowing overgrown goose! I will never submit to you lot! I am NOT taking a bath!"

Curze thrashed all four limbs, fighting like a cornered alley cat.

"Oh? I'm afraid that won't do. We can't tolerate a brother reeking of dead rat, one foul enough to contaminate the Palace's air filtration, no less, lurking about the place all day. Unless of course you'd like to take over Mortarion's current position."

Far away, in the Garden of Nurgle, the Morty-Stink in question sneezed.

Sanguinius clapped his hands lightly with a smile, and Guilliman and Horus, in perfect wordless coordination, hauled Curze off in the direction of the baths. Curze flailed, kicked, bit, gnashing his teeth at his brothers, but the two were sealed in power armor, and however sharp his fangs, ceramite was ceramite.

At a corner, Curze caught the wall, his razor nails dragging ear-splitting sparks across the stone.

He stretched his neck out and bellowed back toward his grand-nephew.

"SAVE ME! LOKEN!"

Loken stood exactly where he was, turned his head with great and visible stiffness toward a ten-thousand-year-old fresco on the corridor wall, and pretended to study it with the rapt attention of a man who was, just at that moment, profoundly and absolutely deaf.

(Caught a cold, not sure if there'll be another tonight. If inspiration comes, I'll write.)

➤ Next: What to Do When the Konrad Curze Cow-Cat Hisses During Bath Time?

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