Chapter 123 - Primaris Upgrade
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Since entering the Dark Imperium, Kaelen had been seeing Them constantly, the gods of the Warp.
He saw Them whispering among themselves, like the classmates he remembered from school back home, the ones who always pointed and gossiped behind his back. Whether they meant any real harm was hard to say. But they were irritating.
If he had the Emperor of Mankind's ever-present, all-encompassing power, Kaelen thought, he swore he would beat all four of those beasts senseless.
The attitudes behind the gods' murmuring were many. Kaelen could only sense the loudest ones: resentment, delight, rage, and anticipation.
The gods resented the changes he had brought.
They also delighted in those same changes.
They raged that he had dragged once-dead primarchs back into the present, causing Them no small amount of trouble. But at the same time, They anticipated whatever new amusement he might yet create in their game.
Right, and occasionally They would murmur to tempt him. The effect was minimal. But for every psychic-capable being in the galaxy, the gods' murmurs were always that close and that seductive.
Kaelen had the system holding the line. Most of the time it screened those voices out for him. There were exceptions, during Warp transit, he couldn't avoid hearing them. He treated those murmurs like the muffled drilling from a downstairs renovation. Sometimes he even paid attention to the content.
How to put it?
About as wholesome as the internet back in the world he came from. Stuffed to the brim with zero standards, trampled morals, and imagery and ideas no decent person would touch. If something came up that Kaelen hadn't seen before, he'd go "huh," and mentally swipe to the next one.
Dead face. Weird internet war. JPG.
The British guys who cooked up Warhammer probably just wrote in everything they could imagine, and all of it had precedent somewhere in human history. As for the dark, murmured temptations Kaelen used to read about before transmigrating — the ones people acted like were so sophisticated and layered, turns out they were mostly just brute force piled on more brute force.
Occasionally a philosophical angle would slip in. That approach worked pretty well on someone like Magnus.
But most sentient beings, at their lowest or most emotionally raw, would hear the gods answering exactly what they craved.
There is no free lunch in this universe. As the price, they hand over their souls.
Kaelen was not that kind of fool. He was a transmigrator. He had the system. That was enough. No reason to go out of his way and court death by reaching out to those things.
---
The fleet completed its Warp jump, returning to realspace through the Mandeville Point. Kaelen left his quarters and made his way to the ship's operating theater.
A Rubicon Primaris surgery was underway. The patients were Kullen and Loken.
Kullen's application made sense. He was about to meet the Lion and his fellow Fallen Angel brothers, and he was looking forward to it, eager enough that he'd chosen a surgery that would make him taller and stronger, treating it like a kind of last-minute grooming. A way to straighten his collar before walking in the door.
That way, he could show off before his gene-father and brothers the absolution he had earned from the Emperor of Mankind.
Loken's reasons were more straightforward. He'd exchanged blows with the Lamenters' Primaris Astartes in the arena and found himself at a disadvantage in both strength and reaction speed.
The former Luna Wolves captain was not the kind of man to accept falling behind, and he was not inflexible either. With the surgical risk now significantly reduced, he had put in his application for the upgrade without much debate.
Kaelen stood outside the observation window. Horus and Curze were there too.
Horus watched his son and his old friend through the glass, arms folded, saying nothing. Curze scratched the back of his head and thought to himself that when his own son Sevatar eventually came back, he'd book him one of these surgeries as well.
Kaelen glanced at Horus.
"The die is cast. They'll both cross the Rubicon. Just as..."
"...that ancient consul did. Julius Caesar. An irreversible choice. Whatever the consequences, you see it through to the end. Either death, or rebirth."
Horus clapped his friend warmly on the shoulder.
"I'm not taking it that hard. Besides, Loken has always had decent luck — he survived Isstvan III, didn't he?"
"That joke is a bit dark, my Wolf King."
Kaelen said it with a crooked grin.
Horus laughed. The reason he could make that joke at all was because he had already received his answer from his brother Konrad.
"Curze told me Loken will live, until he fulfills his destiny and completes his task."
"And what exactly is that, Lord of the Night?"
Kaelen looked over at Curze. The Night Haunter only shrugged.
"A thread of fate. A reference point, not a definitive answer. The future has no predetermined outcome." He paused, and his eyes met Kaelen's. "That future simulator you sent me is quite good. It's given me a lot to think about."
Beyond the professional texts, Kaelen had also given Curze a future-projection sandbox built on real-world logic. It was nothing compared to Curze's near-prophetic abilities, but adjusting a single starting condition could send the whole trajectory spinning in a completely different direction. That had caught the Lord of the Night's attention.
In his downtime, Curze had taken to sitting in his room and running scenarios on the thing. Watching how different events cascaded into entirely different macro-trends. He found it endlessly interesting. More than that, it had shown him clearly: the future was never just one road.
Sevatar had been right, all those years ago. He wasn't stupid. He was lazy. Too lazy to look at other paths. Looking back now, the younger version of himself had been a touch too stubborn, hadn't he?
Just as the three of them were about to settle into a conversation about the nature of fate, the warning light inside the observation window switched from red to green.
The heavy airlock doors slid open.
A rush of white condensed mist billowed out, thick with the sharp smell of preservatives.
Loken stepped through first.
No armor. Just an extremely oversized tactical towel draped over his shoulders. His physique had already been exceptional, but the Primaris organs had pushed it further, a hard, forcible increase in height, muscle lines even more exaggerated than before.
He clenched both fists. His knuckles cracked like a string of charges going off.
"Commander." Loken grinned at his gene-father. "I feel like I could tear through anything right now."
"Not bad, Garviel."
Horus smiled and patted his son's shoulder, then turned to look at Kullen, who emerged close behind.
The old knight looked less old. That was one of the most notable features of the Primaris transformation, many veteran Astartes who made it through the surgery came out the other side with dramatically improved physical function, and it showed on their faces and frames.
Dante of the Blood Angels, for instance. Hair that had gone white with ten thousand years of age had turned dark again after the surgery. Which meant more work, but that was a different problem.
"There's a trace of the Lion in you."
Horus said it quietly, studying Kullen. In him, he could see something of the young Lion El'Jonson, that familiar, proud bearing.
For a son of the Lion, there was no higher praise.
"You flatter me, my lord."
"No need for modesty, knight. You've earned it."
Kullen smiled. He looked toward Kaelen. The mortal gave him a firm nod.
"Showing up in front of the Lion and those Fallen Angel brothers looking like this — they're going to lose their minds."
"Get ready. We'll be heading to the Trevenum Gamma system shortly. On Gamma II, there are several of your Fallen Angel brothers waiting. They'll take you to see the Lion."
Kullen's brow furrowed.
"You and the lords won't be coming?"
"We still don't know whether the Lion has passed his trial. The Emperor said it's best not to disturb him before it's finished."
➤ Next: Gathering of the Fallen
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