Chapter 118 - Lolicon, Holding Back Laughter
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Night had not yet fully lifted when the remote estate on Avalon received its most extraordinary visitors.
Lion walked at the front, four power-armored Astartes at his back, and Sevatar bringing up the rear in absolute silence.
The estate's master and his wife pulled open the door, and froze. A living Primarch stood before them. The man bent his spine as low as it would go, yet his face strained to contain a pride so fierce it bordered on rapture.
The legend their ancestors had passed down was real.
The girl, Otaria, slipped out from behind the door. Thrilled by the Primarch's arrival, she also spotted the old steward at the back.
"Yago!" She dashed forward and threw her arms around Sevatar's thigh, tilting her face up. "You really brought Lord Lion! Thank you for letting me meet a real hero, hehe."
Sevatar's gaunt old face went rigid. He raised a hand to push her away, then stopped halfway and let it drop.
Zabriel arched an eyebrow.
Lohock and Afka turned their heads aside.
Akae let out a few short, sharp coughs.
Four pairs of Dark Angel eyes turned on Sevatar with an entirely new flavor.
Even Lion tilted his neck a fraction and shot the Prince of Crows a glance.
Once they were seated in the drawing room, Lion cut straight to the point and demanded the old man's history.
The master of the house thumped his chest in earnest. Mister Sevatar had been with them since the founding generation, silently guarding the line for over 9,000 years. Every time a head of the family faced peril, it was this old steward who set things right. They had long since come to regard Sevatar as the family's living totem.
To prove it, the lady of the house hurried to the storeroom and dragged out an enormous stack of dust-laden family tomes, shoving them all across the table for Lion to examine at his leisure.
Lion casually flipped open the topmost volume, bound in parchment.
The pages held portraits of every successive family head, alongside a detailed record of an astropath girl from 10,000 years past. Her name had been Otanie.
The First Legion's master had perfect recall. It activated in an instant. He remembered her, an unremarkable astropath aboard his flagship 10,000 years ago. He lifted his head, and his gaze settled on Otaria, currently hiding behind Sevatar and chewing on a piece of candy.
Almost identical.
The cut of her features, the line of her jaw, even the tiny mole on her earlobe, all matched the Otanie of 10,000 years ago, down to the millimeter.
An exceedingly rare case of genetic atavism.
Lion's eyes drifted back to Sevatar, who stood off to the side looking thoroughly miserable. The Primarch's eye twitched twice. The dignity on his face curdled, with no attempt at concealment, into something distinctly resembling distaste.
Ten thousand years of an Astartes' life. To watch over one little girl's bloodline.
Sevatar felt his scalp prickle under that gaze.
He opened his mouth to explain. Lion cut him off with a flick of the hand.
Oblivious to any of this, the couple cheerfully ushered their honored guests out to the back garden to rest.
The atmosphere in the garden became deeply strange.
Akae's shoulders kept twitching. Every time his eyes swept across Sevatar's pale old face, he had to clap a hand over his mouth.
"Akae. What is so funny?" Lion did not sit. A Primarch's frame on a mortal chair could only end one way, so he remained standing.
"Nothing, my lord." Akae cleared his throat, then caught sight of Sevatar's face, black as the bottom of a pot, and lost it. A snort of laughter escaped him.
Sevatar's breathing thickened.
"I was merely recalling some ancient Terran texts I collected during the Great Crusade." Akae spread his hands, mischief written across every line of his face.
"You sure those aren't junk you picked up off the Thousand Sons?" Lohock leaned against a dead tree trunk. "Read too many of those sorcerers' books, you might start mutating."
"The Thousand Sons are ash." Akae waved it off, dropped his voice, and beckoned his three brothers in close. Then, almost as an afterthought, he beckoned Lion too.
The old Lion actually leaned in.
Sevatar stood a dozen meters off. Every instinct he had was screaming.
"There's a phrase in the old Terran literature," Akae said, voice pitched low, though it carried with crystalline clarity to every ear present. "Certain individuals of considerable age develop an excessively exaggerated protective urge toward petite, adorable human females. The ancient Terrans had a unified term for such people. They called them perverted lolicons. An entire shadow industry of subcultural material grew out of it. You follow my meaning?"
It wasn't exactly blunt.
But the Astartes present were not fools.
A full second of silence.
Then Zabriel turned, stared straight at Sevatar, and laughed out loud.
"I truly never imagined, the Prince of Crows, the man who once killed without blinking, doting on a mortal little girl?"
Afka fought to maintain a veteran's gravity. The muscles in his face were on the verge of cramp. He did not dare look in Sevatar's direction.
Lohock simply bent over his plasma gun, pretending to check the energy cell, his shoulders shaking violently.
Worst of all was Lion.
That eternally stiff, humorless master of the First Legion. His wrinkled face stayed stern as ever. But alongside his sons, audibly, distinctly, he laughed.
The old Lion was laughing at him.
"Do not mock me!"
Sevatar snapped.
His shriveled old face flushed purple-red with shame and fury.
A hoarse roar tore across the garden.
The executioner whose name had once been a byword for terror, First Captain of the Eighth Legion. Today, an entire pack of his oldest enemies, plus a Primarch, had cornered him face-to-face and crowned him a perverted lolicon.
It was worse than being nailed to a pillar of shame.
"I stayed behind to watch over this bloodline because I made a promise to Otanie!" Sevatar's fists clenched, veins jumping on the backs of his hands. "The Eighth Legion may have rotted to the core, but Jago Sevatar keeps his word! This has nothing, nothing, to do with some damned lolicon!"
Akae's lip curled. He was already winding up the next jab when Lion raised a hand and stopped him.
The amusement drained from the First Legion's master.
The wrinkles still bunched at the corners of his eyes, but the pressure of a Primarch's presence rolled over the garden and swallowed every trace of lightness.
"Whatever your original purpose was, Sevatar." Lion's gaze did not move. "You have not been corrupted by the Warp. You have not stirred trouble on Avalon. That has saved your life."
Sevatar's taut shoulders eased a fraction.
"But you will not remain here." Lion's tone shifted, and there was nothing negotiable in it. "Pack your gear. Come with me. If Curze has truly returned to the material universe, as you claim, then you will stay at my side as a hostage. When war comes, I will spend your life to leash him without a second thought."
Sevatar's jaw tightened. He turned his head and looked at the small window on the second floor of the estate, the one glowing with warm light. He knew, with absolute clarity, that he had no choice. Refusing Lion would not just doom him; Otaria's whole family would burn with him.
"So long as you do not bring harm upon this mortal family."
"I will not." Lion raised his hand. "I swear it. In the name of the master of the First Legion."
Sevatar froze.
In the old days, if the Eighth Legion passed a world that resupplied them, even with a single bolt shell, the Lion would call down Exterminatus and scour the rock bare. And now this old man would swear an oath?
He had changed.
At the very least, he had learned something of what it meant to be human.
"Very well. I accept, Lion."
Sevatar nodded.
➤ Next: The Thousand Eyes Warband
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