Chapter 133 - The Lion Can Change
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The Lion's lament read as provocation to Seraphax. The sorcerer-lord shook off the news of the Imperial fleet's arrival and refocused.
No time to waste.
The Star of Chaos that Sevatar's chain-glaive had destroyed, Seraphax reversed it with a small pulse of psychic power, winding time back on the shattered stone until the fragments crawled together and the Eight-Pointed Star reappeared.
The ritual resumed.
Something was wrong with the Lion's body. A tugging sensation, deep and insistent, like fingers closing around his soul. He looked up at the mirror. It appeared ordinary. Unremarkable.
But he knew. The mirror was pulling at him.
"This is a ritual I learned from a book." Seraphax couldn't resist the opportunity to boast before his Gene-Sire and brothers, smug satisfaction written across his face. "The last gene-primarch whose body was taken — whose soul was sealed inside a mirror — was my father. I trust you know him well. The Phoenix Lord of the Third Legion."
"Fulgrim?"
The Lion's eye twitched.
"What are you trying to do?!"
"Borrow your body, of course. To seek an audience with the Emperor of Mankind." Seraphax's gaze slid to Kullen, bound in chains. The Warp's power peeled back the old knight's history like pages of a book. He saw everything.
Fortunate man. He had followed Horus back to Terra and stood before the Golden Throne itself.
Had it been Seraphax, he would never have let that pass.
The sorcerer-lord pulled his gaze away and answered the Lion's question.
"Kill the Emperor of Mankind. Then help him ascend to godhood."
"This is a great undertaking, Father. You will understand, in the end."
The silver mirror swelled, larger, brighter, its light pressing against the Lion's eyes. He felt his consciousness being drawn toward it. Not pulled. Dragged. Inevitable.
The mirror showed him the galaxy entire. Every world. Every suffering. He had sworn to protect them all, and there were too many to count, too many already lost, too many beyond saving. The weight of it settled over him like stone.
How much could he actually change?
Since his awakening, everything had grown worse. And there was nothing he could do about any of it.
Give up.
Lion El'Jonson.
The voice drifted at the edge of his hearing, intimate as his own thoughts.
You have always been your father's tool. Even now, your sons serve only to help the Emperor. How is that different from being a tool?
All for the Emperor...
"No!"
The weakness burned away. The sorrow burned away. The Lion fixed his gaze on Seraphax like a blade.
"I am Lion El'Jonson, loyal son of the Emperor of Mankind! Nothing will shake my loyalty to him! He needs me! The Imperium needs me!"
His will rose like a wall, the kind the master of the Imperial Fists would have built, stone upon stone, immovable. Seraphax had been creeping into the Lion's mind, slow and patient. Now the wall stopped him cold.
The sorcerer-lord's patience snapped. He was drawing back to strike when a volley of bolter fire tore through the hall.
Too late to stop it.
The rounds punched through the silver mirror. Silver liquid poured from the cracks and splashed across Seraphax, head to toe, soaking him.
The Lion's sons stepped through the doorway. They had just finished the fight in the courtyard and arrived in time to find their Gene-Sire.
"You fools!"
The burning half of Seraphax's face disappeared beneath a mask of silver droplets. He screamed, raw, agonized fury.
"You've destroyed me! Destroyed humanity's future! Destroyed the entire galaxy!"
The scream became a weapon. His psychic power erupted at full force, slamming down on the Lion's sons and pinning them. Bevain, the last surviving psychic Epistolary among the Fallen, threw himself against it and was hurled back by the backlash, badly wounded.
"Forgive me, my lord." His voice was strained. "I haven't used my powers in a long time. I cannot match Seraphax. But I will buy you time..."
The Lion could see it on his son's face. The decision already made. The acceptance already settled.
A tear traced down the Lion King's cheek.
"Do it, my son," he said softly.
The moment white light kindled in Bevain's eyes, a surge of vast golden power erupted from Kullen. It struck Bevain like a wave and threw him sideways into the wall, stopping him before he could complete the sacrifice.
The old knight had broken free of his chains.
Seraphax was still trying to understand how when golden light blazed through the tactical lenses of Kullen's helmet. His entire bearing transformed. Something sacred radiated from him, filling the throne room, and every Chaos-corrupted creature in that hall felt it. They scrambled for the shadows, pressing themselves into corners, away from that light.
The Emperor's Champion.
Seraphax recognized the transformation. He had seen it before, in another life. The fury drained from his face and left something else behind.
Fear.
Bevain's eyes filled with tears.
"No!"
Kullen didn't wait for Seraphax to finish. No words. Both hands closed around his masterwork power sword, and golden flame ran the length of the blade.
He swung.
The blade touched no one. But the countless invisible threads connecting the Lion's soul to the mirror, every single one of them, snapped at the same instant. The sound was a shriek that only psykers could hear, sharp and final.
The Eight-Pointed Star exploded in the shockwave. Dark red light bled from every carved groove, then went dark.
The soul-transference ritual was destroyed.
The backlash hit Seraphax like a fist to the mind. He staggered, stumbling backward, his concentration shattered. The chains binding the Lion lost their psychic charge. Lion El'Jonson flexed, and every chain burst at once, pure brute strength, nothing more.
The sharp crack of breaking iron rang through the throne room. All of Seraphax's careful craftsmanship, and it couldn't hold a lion.
Kullen hit the ground hard. The golden light faded from him slowly, like embers cooling. He had spent everything the fragment of the Emperor's will could give.
The Lion snatched up the Lion Sword. He raised it over Seraphax's neck.
Seraphax smiled.
"Kill me if you want, Lion. But every Dark Angel in this room dies with me."
"Release them!"
"Kill them first. Then you can tell everyone you won a victory — at the cost of twenty Fallen Angels."
"That was me ten thousand years ago! Not now! I will not abandon a single one of my sons!"
The Lion Sword was in his hand. One swing. That was all it would take.
But he didn't know what would happen to the psychic brands when Seraphax died. If Akael would die. If Galad would die. If Bevain, already pushed past his limit, would die. If Kullen, lying unconscious on the floor, would die.
He couldn't gamble with that.
He was not the cold beast he had been ten thousand years ago. He knew what he owed them. Without their loyalty, without them standing beside him in his darkest and most isolated moments, he might still be that hunter wandering alone through deep forest, no direction, no purpose, no meaning. He had brought them here to do something right. To protect the Imperium. To cut out a threat.
He would not buy his victory with their lives.
He would not be the one left standing while they bled out on the floor.
Lion El'Jonson lowered the Lion Sword.
The tip dropped toward the ground. The power field hummed once and went dark.
Bela stood behind Seraphax and watched every moment of it. The sword raised. The hesitation. The sword lowered. His Gene-Sire, for the lives of twenty sons, had set down his weapon.
The Lion who had once been cold enough to sacrifice anything for the mission had chosen differently. For his sons.
Bela had lived a long time. Long enough that a certain logic had become the only logic he knew: the objective was all that mattered, and any cost to achieve it was justified. The young Lion had taught him that. Seraphax had reinforced it. Chaos had preached it. The brutal reality of the galaxy had proven it, over and over.
But his Gene-Sire had just shown him something else was possible.
Some things matter more than victory.
The last of his guilt released. His hand tightened quietly around the Blade of Fanaticism.
Seraphax laughed. Unrestrained, hoarse, shrill, a hysterical delight that filled the throne room.
The Lion. The Lion that even Horus had never dared to underestimate. Today, he had shown Seraphax something new.
Father had gone soft.
"You disappoint me, my Lion King! I thought you would accept twenty sons as the price!"
"But it doesn't matter. You can change nothing. And I still have a way, I still have a way to complete the soul transference!"
"I will have you, Father! Body and soul both! You will witness my great work. My brothers will witness it too! Together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish! Bela, bring the, "
The words stopped.
Seraphax's body went rigid.
He looked down slowly. A sword tip jutted from his left chest, wet with his own blood, dark red, threaded with the faint residual sheen of psychic power.
The tip of the Blade of Fanaticism.
Bela pressed his lips close to his knight-captain's ear.
"Forgive me, my knight-captain."
His voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that belongs to a last conversation between old friends.
"The Lion can be changed." A breath. "And he can change."
➤ Next: Brothers Reunited
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